Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Preview of By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Series Book 2)
Blade & Rose
Blade and Rose Series Book 1
Miranda Honfleur
Copyright © 2017 by Miranda Honfleur
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Mirela Barbu
Editing by Dominion Editorial
Proofreading by Roxana Mihai
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9994854-0-8
http://www.mirandahonfleur.com/
To my husband, Tony,
for being in my corner while I pursue my dream.
You inspire me, motivate me, and make every day better.
Contents
Author’s Mailing List
Map of Emaurria and Surrounding Lands
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Miranda Honfleur
Preview of By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Series Book 2)
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Map of Emaurria and Surrounding Lands
Chapter 1
Out the fifth-story window, or not at all.
It was her only chance to sneak out unnoticed. Rielle sprang from the bed and grabbed a coat, white wool with the master mage’s four-bar chevron, and fastened the double rows of buttons from neck to hip.
Gloves next. No glow of spellcasting to give her away. She slipped her hands into the wool-lined leather and flexed her fingers. A new pair. The heat of her pyromancy last mission had ruined the previous set.
With a flick of her wrist, she extinguished the fireplace and every candle in the room, willing the flames away until only darkness and the faint glow of the gibbous moon remained.
She tossed her braid over her shoulder and opened the window latch. Her boot perched on the sill, she peered at the ground. Dark. Quiet. Empty.
Farther from the Tower, torches illuminated the walls of the inner bailey, dotted the outer bailey and the gates. Beyond them, white pines challenged the midnight sky, their peaks silvered by the moon. The forest—that was her destination.
If a guard on wall duty looked at the Tower of Magic instead of out at the gates and the surrounding wilds... Well, a mage jumping out her fifth-story window would not go unreported.
And yet, Olivia’s silence—and the capital’s—went ignored. On her desk was Olivia’s latest letter, which she’d read a dozen times already and replied to three weeks ago.
No response.
She’d told the Tower’s Proctor, asked about the capital… Nothing. Either no one knew, or no one cared. She curled a fist.
Tonight, she’d get her answer.
She tapped the window frame.
An early autumn wind riffled her coat. She shivered, eyeing the five-story drop as she climbed onto the sill.
If she got caught, she’d never see anything but the inside of a dungeon ever again, and Brennan—well, a werewolf was the kind of monster thought to exist only in fairy tales. The kind of monster that incited mobs bearing torches and pitchforks. And yet—
With a curl of her index and middle fingers, she called an updraft st
rong enough to catch her and held it. This better work.
She jumped.
The spelled wind pushed against her boots, her coat, her, as she descended, the force strong enough to keep her from breaking upon the rough white-marble courtyard.
Suspended just above the ground, she uncurled her fingers, dispelling the aeromancy.
Her boots clicked upon the courtyard’s flagstones. She caught her breath. Divine be praised.
Briefly closing her eyes, she chanced an inward glance. Her anima’s inner luminosity remained bright. As long as she kept her spellcasting limited to her innate elemental magic, she probably wouldn’t need to find another mage for resonance later.
In the shadows, she crept to the eastern edge of the white stone inner wall, watching for patrolling guards on the battlements. Thankfully, they guarded against intruders and not escapees, but tonight, they were nowhere to be seen. Slacking off?
She shrugged. No matter. If they weren’t here, her escape would be all the easier. In the cover of the inner wall, she sidled against it until she reached a stack of hay bales.
Scanning the battlements for patrols, she climbed over the sweet-smelling hay, prickly even through her gloves. Near the top, she stilled, holding her breath.
Not a single guard.
Something wasn’t right.
She listened for something, anything, but heard only her own heavy breaths. Perhaps she’d see something from a vantage point on the wall.
With a grunt, she dragged herself onto a crenel, waited for any sound, and hearing none, emerged from between the merlons. Crouched, she scanned the length of the stone wall in both directions.
No one. There should have been at least two guards here, two more near the corner on the southern inner wall, but she couldn’t see any.
A distant shout. She darted to the nearest merlon on the wall’s outer face.
About five hundred feet away, just inside the outer bailey by the western gate, spells lit the darkness. Flashes of brilliant color popped in disarray. A skirmish.
A small group clustered around a single armored intruder. Torchlight glinted off his blade as he dueled a mage guard, evading, defending, attacking.
Her eyes widened.
Wildfire. He moved like wildfire.
Armor of massive plate—sage tinted. She knew it. Arcanir.
He had to be a warrior-priest of the Order of Terra. A paladin.
What was one of them doing here?
She counted the guards—six. All of them? No one left to even sound the alarm? They engaged the paladin at the western gate. Rainier Valentin fired a purple blur of conjured daggers while the paladin fought another mage wielding a massive scythe.
No, not another mage—another Rainier. All six of them were Rainier. He’d created five apparitions of himself, all of them attacking with ethereal weapons, distracting the whirling paladin. Every strike with the arcanir sword dispelled a conjured blade.
The five other mage guards lay afield, already defeated. Only Rainier and his apparitions remained to protect the Tower.
She spelled her eyes with earthsight. The fallen guards still glowed with threads of bright anima, were still breathing. She dispelled it. If he’d left them alive, the paladin wouldn’t kill Rainier either.
Across the outer bailey by the eastern gate, two small forms crept in the faint torchlight—children? Tower novices, nothing separating them from the intruder but the length of a cobblestone path. Fiery red hair... and a shaved head. Jacqui and Luc. What were they doing out at this hour?
She curled her fingers into a fist. Would he see them as mere children? Or only more mages to fight?
Being mere children hadn’t kept her or her brothers and sisters safe in Laurentine nine years ago. When the pirates had—
No, that’s in the past. She took a deep, cleansing breath.
Rainier would keep him busy until someone from the Tower took notice. After all, they fought in the outer bailey of the Emaurrian Tower of Magic... Over a hundred mages lived here, including a wild mage and a magister.
One paladin. The odds spoke for themselves.
And if no one emerged, well... His luck would run out. As much as she needed answers about Olivia, Jacqui and Luc’s safety came first. If the Proctor reprimanded her for sneaking out, so be it. She could handle another round of his discipline.
The paladin struck Rainier in the face with the pommel of his sword. No, an apparition of Rainier. Violet smoke puffed, rose. Dispelled.
“I mean you no harm!” the paladin bellowed. Barely a breath later, he breezed through three more apparitions. In a veil of smoke, he elbowed another in the abdomen hard enough to make him splutter and fall. Dematerialized on the ground. Another apparition.
The smoke cleared, and with an arc of golden light, Rainier conjured a fiery blade. No apparitions. Just him. He never did turn away from a fight.
“Let me pass!” The paladin raised the visor on his helm.
Rainier didn’t move. “By order of the Divinity, you are to submit to questioning, paladin.”
The paladin forged ahead toward the eastern gate.
She grimaced. Rainier’s conjured blade wouldn’t stop a paladin; while he was in his arcanir armor, no direct magic could affect him.
But with the conjured blade, Rainier set upon him anyway.
The paladin parried, his arcanir sword dispelling the conjured weapon, and coupled it with an armored uppercut to Rainier’s jaw with his knuckle dusters.
She winced. Where were the other mages? She needed to get to Brennan. A backward glance at the Tower’s doors revealed no activity. She looked back at Luc and Jacqui, huddled across the outer bailey, and then at the fight.
Divine’s flaming fire. She pressed her lips in a tight line.
Rainier fell to the ground but pushed against it with his hands.
The paladin elbowed him in the back. “Stay down.”
He did.
The paladin made for the eastern gate—and for Jacqui and Luc, who cowered together by the portcullis but assumed a battle stance. No. They had no chance of stopping him. But now they were definitely targets.
Magic coursing through her, Rielle focused on the paladin’s path and formed a circle with her hands, straining to cast five hundred feet away. Anima flowed from inside her, powering her spell.
Beneath the paladin, the ground cracked into a web thirty feet in diameter. He wouldn’t be able to jump clear of it in a full suit of armor.
He glanced down, then ran.
It was too late.
A great rumbling filled the air as the ground broke and collapsed, leaving the downed, injured mages gasping and coughing in the dust cloud.
Her spell transmuted the soil to stone, some twenty feet deep—she hoped.
She cast an updraft and jumped from the battlements. After landing on the soft grass, she cast candlelight, summoning a small flame to her palm to light the way through the darkness.
Ahead of her lay the pit she’d created, and within it, the man of the hour.
His little invasion would cost her information on Olivia tonight, and no doubt punishment from the Proctor. Besides the unquestionable fun of cleaning garderobes and scouring pots and pans, punishment meant having to stay in the Tower instead of going on mission. She’d enlisted with the Divinity to do some good in this world, not to play chambermaid.
All for some paladin’s whim. She huffed and shook her head.
Well, her last chance to avoid—she sighed—minimize her punishment was to handle this impeccably.
Paladins considered themselves mankind’s last defense against the so-called perils of magic. It had been centuries since there had been an official clash between the mages of the Divinity of Magic and the paladins of the Order of Terra. However, their relations had never been friendly.
But five years ago, during a mission in Signy, she’d healed a young paladin on the brink of death. They clung to honor. She could use that.
She approached t
he pit and knelt, crumbling dirt in from the rim and the freshness of earth into the air.
The paladin grunted. She poked her head over the edge to watch his futile attempt to scale the sides, his face contorted with the effort through his helm’s open visor. He kicked out, pounded his armored foot onto the stone bottom, his hands clenched into fists.
Without help, he’d be going nowhere. When she held the flame out, he glared up at her and planted his hands on his hips.
“I demand that you free me.” A deep, authoritative rumble of a voice.
She met his gaze squarely. “And I demand that you surrender.”
He snorted and looked away, scanning the confines of his prison. “Surrender? What about ‘no quarter’?”
No quarter. Yes, on missions, the Divinity required that mages give no quarter—take no prisoners.
“This isn’t a mission. You will not be harmed if you comply. But if you are so eager to die, that can yet be arranged.” When he didn’t look her way, she shrugged: a waiting game would end only in her favor. “Suit yourself. I can wait. I’m not the one trapped in a hole.”
The paladin pressed his lips together, still and staring into the shadows. His gaze meandered back to hers. “This has nothing to do with the Tower. I’m just passing through on my way to Monas Ver on the Order’s business.”
Blade & Rose (Blade and Rose Book 1) Page 1