“Sundered flesh... and shattered... bone, / By Your Divine Might... let it be sewn.”
Pain choked out of her in the healing, cry after cry, more excruciating than the glass had been; her teeth screeched against one another, so hard her head hurt, but she persevered until it was done. Jon held her hand, even as she clenched it tight.
She sucked in a breath. Light. So light she could almost float. She moved her fingers and toes, testing her ability.
Gasping, Jon pulled her close, held her. “You will be the death of me,” he whispered in her ear. He kissed her head.
Reaching to touch his face, she found a wet streak.
Booted footsteps thudded near—knights, men-at-arms, servants. Soon, a halo of people gathered, voices bleeding into a cloud. Jon helped her to her feet, but light-headed, she clung to him.
Brennan had disappeared.
“An accident,” she assured everyone. “I was injured, but I’ve healed my wound.”
“Your Ladyship—” a Prevost knight began, his brow furrowed.
“I thank you for your concern, but I am well. Monsieur Ver will see me to my quarters.” She nodded at Jon, pleading with her eyes that he agree.
His face hard, he stared out into the night. He glanced in her direction, then turned to the knights with a thin smile. “It is as Her Ladyship says. I will see her safely to her quarters.”
The knight vacillated, then barked orders, dispersing the group. Jon met her eyes and glanced in the direction of his sword.
Damn. His bloodied sword. Lest everyone assume he tried to murder her, she had to help him retrieve it somehow before they noticed.
Behind her back, she gestured a wind spell to blow out the Black Room’s candles. A commotion spread through the dwindling number of Prevost staff.
Without missing a beat, Jon bent to retrieve his sword, shook it off, a whisper of metal against cloth, and then he sheathed it. Cold and quick, no doubt something he’d done countless times.
“Allow me,” she declared. With an elaborate gesture, she lit the Black Room sconces.
The few remaining knights, servants, and men-at-arms gaped, but before they could speak, Jon scooped her up.
She struggled to keep her torn bodice closed as he carried her from the garden into the Black Room and to the hallway, square shouldered and stiff. His jaw hard-set, he faced forward and wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Jon?”
He peered down at her coldly for a moment, then looked away again. “Do you have any idea what you just forced me to endure?” Anger rumbled in his voice, pain raking it raw. A shudder shook through him, solitary and unsettling. “Making me watch you almost...”
Her breath quickened, pulling the risk of tears along. No. Not now. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. The oath, calming and safe, came to her. I, Favrielle Amadour Lothaire, pledge myself, from now for eternity, to the holy Divinity of Magic...
One calm breath, then another.
She’d done something horrible.
But she’d stopped Brennan... and exacted a promise that he wouldn’t hurt anyone she loved. If it had cost her—if it had cost her Jon’s love, she wouldn’t pay it happily or easily, but to save his life, she would pay it. “I thought if I could just—”
Jon drew in a sharp breath but didn’t look at her, his cold, narrowed eyes staring down the path before him. His chest expanded, tense, under strain.
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “I watched you nearly die. I dueled a monster to whom you’re betrothed. He’s abused you both emotionally and physically. And has gotten away with it.” He exhaled roughly.
The tightness in his face, his clenched jaw, his corded neck—every part of him aligned to violent intention.
Any attempt on Brennan would only end in tragedy. And he didn’t know Brennan the way she did. He knew a few terrible things, but not their context or history. As contemptible as Brennan could be, contempt was not his sum.
Yet the prospect of defending Brennan to Jon in any way knotted her stomach.
As Jon ascended the stairs, he rearranged her in his arms. Not all too gently.
“Jon,” she began, “I know you feel that way now, but isn’t it a bit extreme—”
When he glared down at her, wild eyed, she shivered.
“You’re defending him?” he snarled, nostrils flaring. “Him?” His hold on her tightened to discomfort.
A tremor rattled her bones.
His eyes widening, he relaxed and swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“No matter what he’s done, he’s still the heir to Maerleth Tainn. Killing him would cost you your life.”
“I know.”
When he cooled, she allowed herself to rest her cheek against his chest.
At the wetness of his blood, she gently pulled aside his shirt to inspect his wounds. Indeed, he had pulled some of his stitches, but he wasn’t bleeding profusely. She would need to treat the claw wounds, too. “How you fought like this, I don’t know.”
“Slower,” he replied, “but if I let pain stop me, I wouldn’t be much of a paladin. Or alive.”
Still, he would need care. “I have my travel treatment kit in our room. Let me take care of you.”
Jon hesitated, then nodded.
There was no doubt she’d hurt him with her stunt. And as upset as he was about her keeping the betrothal from him, the revelation of Brennan’s werewolf nature had revealed even more duplicity. Where did they stand?
She’d tell him everything, come what may. At least then, if he turned away from her, she will have tried all she could to convince him of her trustworthiness. “About Brennan—”
“He was the one who killed the scouts.”
So he was putting things together. “Yes.”
“And you met him in the forest that night you asked about forgiveness.”
“Yes.”
He lowered his contemplative gaze, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Eyes shadowed, he looked anywhere but at her face. “And how many times, exactly, did you lie to me to keep his secret?”
She froze, holding her breath as he carried her. She had no love for Brennan, but as the only werewolf she knew of, hiding his true nature just so he could stay alive, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell anyone his secret. Not Leigh. Not Olivia. Not even Jon.
Time and again, she’d made the conscious choice to lie, to omit, and it wasn’t right, wasn’t fair, but revealing Brennan’s secret and possibly putting his life at stake wasn’t right either. No matter her decision, telling or lying, it would’ve always been the wrong one. “I did my best not to lie to you, Jon. Not directly, anyway.”
He exhaled a sharp breath. “Let’s not pretend keeping it from me wasn’t lying.”
“It was. I know it was.” She dropped her voice to a crestfallen croak. “I wish I could say I was sorry, that given the opportunity to make that choice again, I’d choose differently. But that wouldn’t be genuine of me. Lying to you wasn’t fair, but revealing someone else’s mortal secret”—she winced as Jon clenched his teeth—“even his, wouldn’t have been fair either. I wish I would’ve never been in that position, forced to do one wrong thing or the other, making a choice that disrespected you, but I can’t change that.”
He still wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“But I’m in that position no longer.” At least one good thing had come of this entire mess—the truth was out. “You can ask me anything. I promise I’ll answer truthfully. Anything you ask.” No more lies.
He hesitated but finally glanced at her. “How are you two bound?”
“An ancestor of mine cursed his bloodline—every firstborn son of a firstborn son to become a werewolf.” She paused when he tensed, but he didn’t interrupt. “When I was a child, I accidentally formed a blood bond with him. I provide him with control over his beastly nature, and he provides me with service... when it suits him. We are drawn to each other monthly before the full moon.”
J
on raised an eyebrow. “To do what?”
“I... give him my blood.” When his eyes narrowed, she added, “Just a drop. Really.”
“He’s a monster,” he hissed.
Brennan was a werewolf, but calling him a monster painted him with too broad a brush. Much more had spanned the long years of her betrothal to him than she could relate. Despite his brashness and temper, he’d helped her when it suited him.
She took a deep breath. “The only way to break the curse is for our bloodlines to become one.”
“To have a child,” he said, his voice barely audible.
“Yes,” she confessed, “but I have no intention of doing that.” Grapes would ripen on the willows before it came to that.
Cold eyes paralyzed her. “Then your choice is either to conceive a child and never be free of him... or not to, and never be free of him.”
Her chin dropped to her chest. Jon was right. She would never be free of Brennan.
Chapter 45
In the Red Room, Rielle spelled the candle in the nearest sconce alight, and Jon set her down. Clutching her torn bodice, she pulled a chair out for him from her vanity table. No more bleeding allowed—those wounds of his needed treatment. “Sit.”
He unclipped his sword belt, placed it on the vanity, and dropped into the chair, his face frozen in an empty stare as he spun his silver Sodalis ring. She gave him a towel and bade him hold it to his reopened wound.
She headed to the armoire and, in the dimness, shed the bloody, ripped remains of her dress. Blood coated her skin from her belly down—she washed hastily and threw on her white silk robe.
Jon was quiet. Too quiet. What was he thinking now, his face so expressionless? That he was angry with her? Disappointed? Or perhaps he was beyond caring anymore.
If she asked him, he might tell her to leave him alone altogether. She pressed her lips together and, with a pull of the robe’s sash at her waist, hurried back.
“Sorry,” she whispered for the delay, but he shook his head and perhaps—if her eyes didn’t deceive her—smiled a little. She retrieved her treatment kit, poured a cup of brandy, then laid out the tools and tinctures she’d need. She moved aside the towel he still held, and grabbed his shirt to pull it over his head.
So much red. A quick candlelight spell illuminated the blood caking his wounds. Although it looked serious, as she began to clean it away, his injuries weren’t so severe.
Plunging the wet cloth into water, she nodded toward the cup of brandy. “It’ll help with the pain when I redo the stitches.”
He glanced at it and then at his sword. “I’ll be fine.”
Why wouldn’t he choose to dull the pain? But the words died in her mouth. After so much fighting tonight, she couldn’t handle any more. She only hoped her ministrations wouldn’t hurt so much.
The coppery smell of his blood thick in the air, she went back to cleaning his wounds, then treated the claw marks and re-stitched the surgery incisions. A slight tensing of his body revealed pain. A clenched jaw that only betrayed the slightest twitch. Hard eyes. And not a word.
So distant. So closed. She couldn’t stand it.
The length of his reticence stretched on until she reached the next stitch and blurted out, “Do you still love me?” Divine, stupid, so stupid, but—
His chin jerked, and his gaze shot to hers. “Of course I still love you.” That same fiery anger rolled in his voice, but then he glared down at his empty hands and exhaled lengthily. “You didn’t trust me. You could have told me at any time that you were engaged to a vile man who turns into a monster, and I would have fallen in love with you anyway.” He pinned her with a long, pained look, then broke eye contact. “But you chose to manipulate me.”
She continued stitching, but her eyes watered. She should’ve told him sooner. At least he knew now.
“I was wrong. I should’ve told you about the betrothal.” She finished the stitching.
“The worst of it is that I can’t do anything to free you from him.” He clenched his empty hands into fists. “That monster has humiliated you, disgraced you, abused you—and he’s gotten away with it. He’s lost nothing and learned nothing, while you are bound to him, betrothed to him. Stuck with him.”
Through blurred vision, she stared at her feet.
He reached out to rest a hand on her waist, imparting the warmth of his reassurance through the robe’s thin silk. “It’s destroying me,” he said, raw. “Hangman or not, I want to kill him.” His fisted knuckles cracked.
“And I love you for it, but you can’t.” Heart swelling, she leaned over and applied a tincture to the re-stitched injury to prevent infection. The strong scent of myrrh and cloves became overpowering.
Brennan had been born into privilege, the kind not afforded the man she loved; if Jon pursued this, he wouldn’t be insulated from justice like a noble would. Like a Marcel would. She could handle Brennan’s moods, but not losing Jon.
“You need to let this go.” Finished, she cleaned her hands and inspected her work, then offered him a small smile, hoping to assuage his quiet intensity. “Especially after I’ve worked so hard to keep you alive.” She was about to walk away when his strong, firm hands settled on her hips.
“Rielle,” he said, his voice smooth and deep, “I am past letting go.” His hold lowered. “Far past.”
They weren’t talking about Brennan anymore.
Silence beat between them.
“Then don’t.” Swallowing, she covered his hand with hers, her heartbeat quickening.
He reached for her silken sash, grasped it, and pulled. The knot slowly came undone. When her robe parted, his gaze traveled the length of her body, and his palms found her skin. Leaning forward in the chair, he encircled her waist, closing his hold until he drew near enough to lavish her bare skin with kisses.
She embraced him, raking her fingers through his hair. She closed her eyes, relishing the feel of his hands, his lips on her skin, the rising heat in her own body, the tension coiling in him beneath her touch. He held her tighter, rising—
Not with those injuries. She pulled away, took his hand, and led him to bed.
She broke away and slipped the robe off her shoulders and to the rug while he pulled off his boots, trousers, and braies, his gaze consuming.
His bare form could have been sculpted by the Divine’s own hand. Perfect. Ready. Wrapped in his order’s exotic tattoos from neck to foot. Divine, he was art. She longed to memorize every line, scroll, and symbol, to learn each one with her eyes, her hands, her mouth.
She closed and urged him onto the bed; his gaze never leaving hers, he stood firm a moment too long, only the slight narrowing of his eyes and twitch of his lips betraying his curiosity before he acquiesced and then leaned his back against the pillows and the headboard. She wouldn’t have him pull those newly sewn stitches, even at the height of desire.
No, she had much different plans for him.
She sat at his side, facing him, his wide eyes. Burying his fingers in her hair, he drew her in and kissed her, but she traveled downward, kissing his neck, his chest, worshipping her way down his hard body slowly, methodically, eliciting a growl. Audible anticipation. Smiling, she dropped another kiss on his abdomen. When she at last reached his lap, she took him in her mouth—and was rewarded with a drawn-out moan as his head hit the headboard.
He hissed an oath—words that only emboldened her.
The nervous tension that had coiled in his body ebbed away as she pleasured him, replaced by something else. Mounting urgency. His hands smoothed over her back, caressing, kneading their way up to her neck to tangle in her hair. His touch was a loving gentleness, familiar as if he’d always been part of her, and she of him, always intended, to be close, to be one, his whispered breaths reaching beyond sound to stroke something deeper, something that reveled and craved. He tensed and urged her upward, and she did as he wished, let him pull her in to kiss her between panted exhales.
He rested his forehead against
hers, smoothed her hair, and blew out a raw breath. “That was—”
A shiver shook through him. He kissed her again, brief but anxious, hungry, with lips that had been abandoned too long and craved union. He gently raised her chin, and she looked at him, her lover, how he brimmed with passion and a beating intensity, a tender depth.
He stroked her cheek. “I wanted to see your eyes. I want to see your eyes.”
Her face heated beneath his gaze, and smiling, she leaned in to kiss him once more. She brought her knees down around his hips, and he seized her, drawing her close, capturing her mouth with his. His breaths quickened, deepened until she had him in hand between her thighs; he shuddered an exhalation, and with the sound, her need built up to a level not unlike pain.
When she began to descend onto him—slowly, carefully—his entire body went taut beneath her until at last, she was gloriously filled.
He swore, holding her close.
Stunned at the incredible sensation of fullness, she rocked her hips against his, each rough movement sheer bliss, yet intolerable, bittersweet torment. His mouth trailed from her lips to her neck, awakening her sensitive spots, kissing, nipping, sucking. Unbearable anticipation. His hold on her hips was so firm it hurt, but she didn’t care, moving with his urging, savoring every motion.
He drew against the skin at the curve of her neck and broke away to exhale a cool breath, making her shiver. He grazed her shoulder with his teeth, and she writhed in pleasure, riding him hard. Rough. Merciless. She wanted him to never stop touching her, kissing her, making her whole. But her peak was so near, irresistibly near.
His strong hands braced her, aiding her movements, and she broke away from his mouth only to focus on the mounting urgency at the heart of their colliding hips.
Release—her body begged for release, the tension of her core heightening and heightening.
She gasped—almost within reach, she could feel it, she could almost touch it, in desperate need of relief, moaning with every thrust, again and again, and then, it was there, right there, within reach, and she took it, a high note of ecstasy escaping her lips as she peaked.
Blade & Rose (Blade and Rose Book 1) Page 40