This was why he needed to leave. Every lingering moment risked his ability to return to the Order.
“Promise me you’ll go with me.” Her words commanded, but her voice was breathy, soft. She rested a hand on the cuirass covering his chest.
Focus on the goal. He grabbed her waist. The time for reasoning was over. “Take us up. Now.”
“Or what?” She covered his hands with hers. “You won’t hurt me.”
He clenched his teeth. She was right. His fingers squeezed the supple flesh of her waist. His eyelids grew heavy at the pleasing give. The longer this went on—
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re both trapped,” he bit out, but his gloved fingers betrayed him as they caressed her. “You can’t negotiate favorably this time.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Jon.” She moved closer, close enough that he could smell the rose balm she used on her lips, and he closed his arms around her waist. “If you don’t agree to work with me, I’ll just follow you and guard you from afar. All you’ll be doing is setting the pace.” She leaned in.
Was she going to kiss him? He breathed raw, deep breaths as she invaded his space.
She turned her face aside. “So if you want to be rid of me,” she whispered in his ear, “you’ll have to kill me. Right now. Or you can promise to go with me. Your choice.”
She could have kissed him. And he wouldn’t have done a thing to stop it. He didn’t want to stop it.
Desire blazed within him, made his chest pound, roused him to a painful state. Terra help him, he wanted to take her here, on the ground, please her in the dirt and mud until she cried his name. He wanted to be with her, be whatever she needed him to be, give her everything. The want of it all threatened to ruin life as he knew it.
With a coarse exhalation, he grabbed her shoulders and held her away. He wouldn’t kill her, now nor any other time. And that meant she was right: his two choices were to go with her or be followed by her.
“Fine. I promise. Now take us up.” He raked a hand through his hair.
“Your word.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You have my word. I promise to go with you.”
The ground trembled beneath his feet as it began to rise. She grinned. “Wise choice.”
He narrowed his eyes. “But—”
Her grin faded.
“You swear to never do this again.” This saucy woman, this audacious mage, had not only stolen under his skin but into his heart. If she had but a sudden whim to cast, he would fall completely under her spell. Until they reached Monas Amar, he would have to be on his guard.
“Trap you?” A glimmer shone in her eyes.
“Twist what I feel into a weapon.”
She gasped. “I—”
“Your word.” He speared her with a stare. There was no denying she’d used his desire against him. So she would swear this. She would swear it, or there would be no peace between them.
She deflated. “I swear.” Her eyes stole to his briefly. “I swear it, Jon. I’m sorry I—”
“Take us up.” No, after what she’d done, she didn’t get to alleviate her guilt. She didn’t get to say the words and hold her head high a breath later. At the Tower, he’d decided to do as Derric had bidden, decided to go with Rielle, but here, she’d taken his choices away, forced his hand, degraded him.
And if he heard the rest of that sentence, he would explode, mage or no, woman or no, promise or no.
Her eyes brightened feverishly and she rubbed her lips together, but she nodded and stepped back, gesturing a spell. Good. He’d have his space again.
If he held to his vows, he might be a paladin again. And if he didn’t...
I will.
By tonight, they would be in Bournand. At least there he wouldn’t have to share such close quarters with her. Even if his self-control waned, walls and doors would hold fast.
As long as he didn’t allow himself to lose control and break them down.
Chapter 17
Gnarled oaks lined the Kingsroad as far as Rielle could see. Their branches curved overhead like a lane of curious eavesdroppers awaiting some tidbit of conversation. She sighed. The wait would prove fruitless.
Jon had remained silent. Steadfastly silent. They’d found the horses without a single word from him, then packed up and took to the road.
She couldn’t fault him. Although she’d never intended to use his feelings against him, it had certainly appeared that way. What would have been worse to claim—that she was manipulating him, or that she’d been pathetically attracted?
But he’d said what I feel... What he felt... for her.
Divine, it made her smile like a novice with a crush.
It had to be contained. If she opened that part of herself, everything would burst free, the pain, the anguish, the sorrow, the rage of nine years ago. The person she’d been that day. And that could not be allowed. Never be allowed. She winced.
For the rest of the mission, she’d respect his wishes and keep her distance, and in turn, perhaps she’d save herself... and him.
Storm clouds gathered on the horizon, and the hay-like scent of the forest’s ferns intensified, mingling with the fresh, earthy smell of inevitable rain.
“We’ll need to take shelter soon,” she said over her shoulder. Not that he’d reply.
“Move!” Jon called hoarsely, reining his mount aside toward her, bumping her horse away. He dismounted, sent his horse running, and drew his blade.
A wave of fire rushed toward them.
Earth. Instinct took over. She raised a wall of earth before them, her hands aglow in the verdant green of geomancy. It spanned the road and beyond, thirty feet high and as thick as she could muster.
Jets of flame and searing heat shot past the wall’s sides and top, trailing windswept dirt and dust. The dead smell of scorched earth stung her nostrils and irritated her eyes as it corrupted the air.
Bright orange flames licked the oaks. Sooty pillars of thick, gray smoke reached toward the sky.
Another elementalist. A heretic.
Rielle dismounted and swatted her mare, sending her galloping toward the trees. She scrambled for cover, and Jon ducked down next to her.
A wave of heat blurred the air. She craned her neck to see a tower of flames soaring up from the wall. It would build in heat and melt through.
Not much time.
Jon stole a glance at the trees, then fixed her with a resolute stare. “You keep him busy. I’ll take to the trees and flank him. He won’t see me coming.”
A flurry of images rushed her mind, all in a split second. Flesh crisping. Faces melting. Screams burned to silence.
“Rielle,” he grunted.
She blinked. Firelight glinting off unmoving armor. Glassy eyes fixed on the sky. Fair hair stroked by the chill wind.
“Now is not the time to vacillate!” He shook her shoulder. “I’ll handle him.” He rose and faced the heretic, sword drawn, as if no wall stood between them. Soon, no wall would stand between them.
He could die.
All those years ago, she couldn’t save her family. She couldn’t save Bastien. But she could save Jon.
She held out a green glowing palm toward him and curled her fingers inward. The earth beneath him rose at her command to form a circle.
It would build into a sphere an arm’s length thick and large enough to encase him.
He peered down. The sphere formed to chest level. He turned to her, his face devoid of color. “Don’t you—”
“I’m here to protect you,” she said with a forced calm, wincing as the wall spell weakened. I want you to live. He’d be able to break his way out soon enough.
He swore, pressing against the spell-built earth. She’d conjured nothing, simply rearranged the earth into a new form with magic—built. It wouldn’t dispel at contact with his arcanir.
“I don’t need—”
She met his eyes, steely, burning with reflected spellfire.
The wall crumbled.
She rolled away, raising a fire shield at her arm. Her earthen wall disintegrated, its remnants hurtling toward her in a fiery blast. She held fast, the fire shield burning all to dust that swept over and around her.
Where was the heretic? She squinted.
On the road ahead, a man in a black leather coat stood cloaked in flame. A heretic. Red-bearded, he had a shock of shoulder-length red hair to match.
Once the wall dissipated entirely, he ceased casting. Silence settled over the scorched road and burning autumn grass and trees. The choking smoke hung low.
She faced him resolutely and broke the silence. “Who are you?” she called out across the field of battle.
The man rumbled an amused laugh. “Flame,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
Flame. A shiver crept up her spine. There was one notorious mage by the name of Flame—but earning his attention took much more than traveling down a road. Since Signy, General Evrard Gilles of the Crag Company had corrected his company’s deficit of mages. He’d recruited three of the most formidable and lethal heretics to ever prowl the kingdom. Flame built his name burning the company’s enemies—entire armies, villages, cities—to a cinder.
She stilled her racing breath. Now was not the time to lose her nerve. He meant to unsettle her.
Ego was a weakness. An exploitable weakness.
“Should I have?” she shouted back.
He gnashed his teeth. His face contorted into a grotesque snarl.
When his arm shot out, she was already moving, rolling, dodging. A surge of fire jetted from his joined hands, following her every movement.
She met it with her fire shield, one-handed, imbuing it with anima. A contest of focus.
“What impressive focus!” she shouted, hoping to goad him, and wincing from the exertion of maintaining the shield. “You must defeat novices with it fairly often!”
He snarled. The unending surge of fire intensified, and her shield with it. More anima, but it hid her better. The sky dimmed.
The storm. Behind her back, she wove an aeromancy spell, gathering a lightning storm to target him. The natural storm clouds would offer stealth to her magic, but the spell would take time.
She needed time.
“I can do this all day!” he shouted. “Can you, girl?” He laughed.
Shade descended over her eyes and line of vision as her spell wove seamlessly into the storm clouds, swirling above at her call, filling the air with the scent of damp earth and metal.
He would need to divert power from his fire surge if he was to defend against a lightning storm from above. Duels were won and lost with distraction.
She staggered. Plumes of flame wreathed her shield, ate away at it. No, it wouldn’t hold much longer.
The clouds darkened to grim black. It was time. Kill or be killed.
Darkness shrouded the road. Heavy rain inundated the area, falling hard, pounding. Bolts of lightning sparked and converged around Flame.
One strike would end him. Adrenaline coursed through her veins.
Trapped in the lightning storm, he shielded with fire from above.
Now. She kept her fire shield with one hand and formed a circle with the other. The ground beneath the heretic cracked and broke. He wove his fingers in a fire rune beneath him. The rune snaked a molten pattern and formed into a solid platform.
She abandoned the geomancy spell as he gestured—
A fireball.
His spell would burst on impact and burn from all sides. Her shield wouldn’t protect her.
She dispelled it in favor of a flame cloak, clothing her entire body in thick threads of pyromancy. Whether it held depended on whose focus was greater—
He palmed the fireball as it grew in size to eclipse her.
She’d have to time it perfectly.
He raised his arms. She held her right hand above her and, with as much focus as she could muster, spelled three ice spikes shooting high into the sky. She didn’t have long before they’d plummet back down.
Immediately, she raised three fingers on the same hand, her right, conjuring stone arrows behind the heretic.
He threw the fireball her way. Whirring, it hurtled, a great consuming sun of flame.
She infused her flame cloak with anima as it hit, a raging inferno eagerly pushing against her power. Consuming. A relentless assault.
Her two stone arrows were ready, behind the heretic, waiting.
The ice spikes plummeted from the sky.
No time.
With her right hand, she held the stone arrows behind Flame. Her left maintained the protection of the flame cloak. She needed another hand to direct the ice spikes.
She’d have to sacrifice her flame cloak. Dispel the only thing keeping her from the burning death of his fireball.
Trapped in the blaze, she beckoned with her right hand. The heretic brought up a fire shield behind him, but she split her fingers, split the arrows—one to hit from behind and one from the side. He put up another shield at his side.
A split-second before they hit—the blaze around her persisted, but the ice spikes would hit the ground.
Flame cloak or ice spikes. She had to choose.
As the ice spikes nearly came down on her, she threw them with her left hand, her flame-cloaking hand, at the heretic’s front and curled inward the fingers controlling the arrows.
Her flame cloak dispelled. Fire closed in on her.
With burning fingers, sweltering heat scorching her skin, she recast the flame cloak, hoping she wouldn’t pass out. Throwing her arms up to cover her face, she fell to her knees.
“Sundered flesh and shattered bone,” she croaked, “by Your Divine Might, let it be sewn.”
Searing flames assaulted her from all sides. But her flame cloak held. The pain of healing strangled all inside her with a barbed grip, wrenched a scream from her throat. Fire roared in her ears.
She faltered onto her hands, remnants of her sleeves crisping away.
The fireball dissipated, and she chanced a hopeful look ahead, her vision blurry.
She ran her free hand over her body, finding her mage coat singed, tattered, but her flesh renewed. Her skin and hair had regrown. Recovered.
White light constricted her vision. Charred branches, doused with the rain, crumbled from the oaks and fell.
The heretic lay on the black-scorched road.
Praise the Divine. Catching her breath, she collapsed into the mud.
Had Flame been working alone?
Her heart stopped. She tried to lift herself from the ground and faltered. Dizziness spun the rainy ground, and her weakened arms wouldn’t cooperate. Damn it, damn it, damn it. She howled.
Jon. She scrambled to turn around. Dragged herself. Clawed into the ground until she could stagger on hands and knees.
Please be alive, Jon. Please. I can’t—
What if someone had—
Past the blackened earth and charred trees of the dueling ground, the earthen sphere came into view in the pouring rain. An arcanir-clad arm protruded from a gap in the sphere, and the rhythmic thud of a pommel crushing against the dense earth came from within. Grunts of effort and exasperated curses accompanied the noise, her own name given pride of place among words she’d long considered unspeakable by paladins.
She sighed with relief, collapsed. The sky was a sea of white. Brilliant, spreading, blinding.
She dispelled the sphere. The loosened earth fell away, and then everything went white.
Jon struck the earthen cage again with the pommel of his dagger. It crumbled.
The pounding in his ears hadn’t ceased. She’d stuck him in a cage. A cage. He cracked his neck from side to side. When he got his hands on her—
When he hit it again, it crumbled entirely. Seething, he stormed out. “Rielle!” he roared, booming. “Terra save you, mage, because I’m going to—”
The gathering storm had blackened, blotting out the sky. Smoke hovered in the distance, death lingering over charred skeletal oaks. Rain poured, pounding the ground into submission.
He lowered his gaze to the road. A dark heap lay there in the mud. In a puddle.
His cold fingers turned icy. He ran, his heart thudding in his chest.
She convulsed. Face down in a puddle, she shook violently. He raced to her, caught himself with a hand in the mud, slipped to the ground, and rolled her over.
Her face caked in mud, she went limp in his arms. He cleared off her nose and mouth, and shook her.
“Rielle,” he said. He repeated her name, shook her harder. “Wake up.”
No response.
He lowered his ear to her nose. No breath.
No.
He shook her again, clapped her back. She wasn’t breathing. Wasn’t—
Wake up. Terra have mercy, wake up. He lay her down, applied pressure to her abdomen. Breathe.
Nothing.
He raised her chin and respired into her mouth. Once. Twice. Again. Again. Again.
Come on. He fought the racing of his heart, on the verge of explosion.
Again. Nothing. Again.
She coughed, spluttered muddy water, and he rolled her to the side. He bowed his head, drawing a relieved breath through his nose. She was alive. Eyes closed, he let his head fall back. Another minute, and she would’ve—
He shook his head and peered at her. Coughing but breathing. Soot soaked her hair, like the rest of her, and all her clothes were blackened, crisped, singed, and now drenched in rain. Her sleeves were no more than tatters; her boots no more than scraps of leather barely held together. He opened his mouth, but no words emerged.
She’d nearly gotten herself killed, and him. What had she been thinking, caging him, sending him away? Dispatching a pyromancer would have been a trifle to him. He could have walked up to the heretic and run him through easily. Pyromancers posed no danger to paladins. None at all.
Blade & Rose (Blade and Rose Book 1) Page 14