He stormed after her. “I never asked for—”
“No,” she interrupted, tucking her shirt into her trousers, “you didn’t. The High Priest did. The Proctor did.” She put on her leather vest, then began taming her hair into a braid. “And you may have never asked for me to be assigned as your guardian, but I am, and one way or another, I won’t let anything hurt you. Whether that means you staying behind here or me splitting my focus to protect you out there is in your hands.”
He forced out an angry breath. “If there were nothing between us, you wouldn’t—”
“If there were nothing between us, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be confined here while I handled the threat to your safety.” She buckled her belt. “But because I love you, I want you to understand why this is the only reasonable course of action. And I want you to agree. I want there to be no resentment between us.”
He crossed his arms and looked away. “You want me to cower in the bedchamber while you go into battle?”
She put a finger to his lips. “I want you to live.” She paused, and his eyes softened. “I need you to.”
A shadow passed over his face as he took her finger and peered at the hand he held with a contemplative frown. He then removed the singular ring he wore, the silver one he was so enamored of twirling pensively. Forged with ivy vines engraved on the band and the Terran moon at its center, it bore the Sodalis crest. A symbol of his oath, a paladin would part with it about as willingly as he would with his arcanir.
He took her hand and placed the ring in her palm, then closed her fingers around it.
“Jon—”
“The center stone is arcanir.”
Indeed, at the center was not silver but arcanir, its sage tint faint but present. If she felt the battle fury, she would have but to touch it for safety. His eyes locked with hers.
“I know you don’t need my protection,” he said, his eyes flaring and his voice rising at the words, “but take this ring at my insistence. It will make all this more—tolerable.”
“I can’t accept this. It’s too much.” As helpful as it could be to her, he had few things to call his own, and parting with even one could not be easy.
“Accept it, with my love.”
She uncurled her fist to reveal the ring in her palm. A way for Jon to be with her, to help her from afar. “I’ll treasure it.” She slid the ring onto her thumb, the only finger it wouldn’t slip from easily.
He swept her up, held her close, then tipped her chin up to his mouth. Her lips parted to him, and her eyes fluttered shut. Being with him felt natural, like coming home, a wave inside her flowing in to shore. He stroked her hair, keeping her close, inundating every bit of her doubt with love. Breaking away with one last light kiss, he cupped her face, and they breathed the same air.
This wasn’t goodbye; he would be safe here, and she would return with the assassin in custody.
He released her and stroked her cheek. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this madness.” He sighed heavily, his body held still as if by a thousand unspoken arguments. “Go, before I change my mind.”
She gave him a faint smile. “I’ll see you soon.”
He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He couldn’t be pleased with the circumstances, and so his acquiescence meant all the more.
When she pulled away, a line etched between his eyebrows, but he stood unmoving, his every muscle taut. She warded the quarters against intruders and headed for the door.
It was time to hunt the assassin.
Chapter 49
Outside the castle, Brennan could finally breathe.
It was too much. Too damn much. She reeked of her lover’s scent, and that commoner bastard had been bathed in hers, drowned in hers. It was enough to make the Wolf raise its hackles and claw to come out. He hadn’t missed the Sodalis ring, either. The paladin was actually trying to claim her. My betrothed.
He gulped the city air, grateful for the odors of the unwashed masses, the rotting garbage, the dust, the cats, rodents, and stray dogs, the Melainese dumplings cooking, even the damned tannery so far away but close enough to add to the millions of scents diluting hers. Lifeblood. Surfacing from the crushing depths of her and him, he inhaled.
“Are you all right?”
“You reek.” Countless women nearby smelled like sex, but this one was his betrothed. His.
“I—” Her face contorted. “No, you know what? I’m so sorry you can’t tolerate me having a partner, despite the countless women you bed. I’m so sorry about your fragile little ego cracking. So very sorry.”
He forced a breath from his nose, listened to her racing pulse, smelled her anger. And she was right. He did bed whomever he pleased. But reminding him of that didn’t assuage his indignation. Some passersby glared their disapproval at what must’ve looked like a lovers’ quarrel.
An angry response would just vindicate her, bolster her fury. No. Let her stew in guilt later—that was the better choice.
He mustered his most indifferent sneer. “Apology accepted.”
While she fumed, he merely headed for Nilda’s. Rielle would follow. She had no choice. And indeed, she fell into a heavy, stomping stride behind him.
“What are you smiling about?” she asked bitterly.
“Your folly.” He paid her a lazy glance.
“My folly?” She spat. “What about you, threatening Jon? Did you think that would work?”
“It almost did, until you poured your guts out.”
She glared at him and then jerked her face away, wisps of golden hair misbehaving in the dirty city breeze. Conversation was out, then.
He led her on a meandering route through the city, down shadowy alleys and into fetid gangways, through the more presentable districts toward the Mélange, where poverty, opportunity, and debauchery met at an ever-bustling crossroads. A street performer’s lute, myriad disjointed voices, and the stench of piss and garbage shrugged a welcome to the crush of bodies moving in seedy self-interest. Full of thieves, whores, sen’a and trux peddlers, smugglers, counterfeiters, and the honest poor who could afford no better home, the Mélange also housed Melain’s largest immigrant population.
Past the whisperings about the dead Faralles and the Moonlit Rite, under a brown canvas awning, a woman sat splayed in a chair, her knees pitching a billowing black batiste skirt, its hem dusted with the road’s filth. The bodice, once presentable perhaps, had laces worn with use, fastened and unfastened by countless eager, uncaring fingers. Her head thrown back, her glassy eyes consumed the nothing above; her olive face dulled in a frame of fraying sable tresses, curled with weather, age, neglect, and Nilda’s pomade.
Rielle halted and stared, her lip curling; but then she swallowed. “You’ve brought me to a—a—”
“Resonance den,” he supplied. He pulled his black hood up. “We’re going in.”
Her chin trembled, but she set her jaw. With a curt nod, she pulled up the hood of her cloak and followed him.
Her weakness for sen’a had long been known to him, written to him three years ago by his Tower spies, and a mere moon ago, she had been trancing again. In Bournand.
But he wouldn’t coddle her. She needed to master looking into the abyss without falling in. The next Duchess of Maerleth Tainn, Marquise of Laurentine and Tregarde, Baroness of Calterre, could not afford such vulnerability.
Nilda’s was a poorly lit nest of alcoves, begrimed with writhing trancers and furious truxheads, all in varying stages of pleasure and decay, lolling and fucking, and somewhere in the back, fighting—no, the whisper of a death rattle—dying. All beneath a shroud of smoke.
No sign of the assassin.
Sen’a, trux, filth, sex, body odor, and curling pomade dominated the air, but somewhere farther in, there was a stale smell. Old earth. Dust. A cellar.
No one had stopped to question them. A clerk lay sprawled over a desk, trancing. Brennan smirked. Some guard. He nodded to Rielle, but she stood, frozen, her ga
ze fixed on a trance pipe. She exhaled a quivering breath. Weakness.
Resist.
He grabbed her hand and led her through the resonance den, following his nose to the cellar door. A soiled curtain swayed ahead of them, and he threw it aside. A private room. Rielle yanked her hand free and looked around.
Cushions covered the seats in a lounging booth, but his sense of smell had taken them to the right place. He tossed aside two worn cushions to reveal a door and a ladder descending into the darkness. Behind him, Rielle gasped, but he merely opened it and gestured to her.
Her face tightened, but she drew in a preparatory breath and descended. He replaced a cushion atop the open door to camouflage their entry as well as he could, then followed her into the dark.
Down here, the scents of a number of people lingered—truxheads, leather-clad thieves, sea-washed smugglers, mages. Sen’a and trux scented the air heavily. A hub.
Sileni leather. Danewort. Olive oil.
The assassin woman. She’d been here, perhaps still was. He’d know her scent anywhere. Four years ago, when he’d gone with Father to Mor on business, this woman, cloaked and hooded, had been in the villa’s study with him. Upon Brennan’s entrance, their meeting had hastily concluded.
If Father had anything to do with her—with any of this—all the more reason to kill her. No loose ends. Protect the family.
The only light was a distant torch until Rielle’s hands glowed a mossy green. She raised them to her eyes. “Divine. The place is teeming with people. I can see them through the walls, winding and myriad like veins.”
In this network of tunnels, she could see people through the walls, but he didn’t need magic to know how many humans littered the place. Scents inundated his nostrils, dozens, along with traces of recondite.
He swept his fingers over the walls, their telltale grooves. “Ancient recondite mine.”
“The assassin’s down here?” A rustle and a whisper of air—she removed her hood.
He shrugged. “If she isn’t, she was.”
“She?”
“Yes. An illusionist with curly hair, wearing Sileni leather. A truxhead.” Even if he relayed everything of significance to her here, she could hardly dismiss him now.
“Could be Phantom.” A soft scuff—she angled her body toward him. “You’ve seen her?”
“No.” Not recently.
A pause. “You got all that from a scent?”
All that and more. His lungs expanded to their fullest. With a hint of a grin, he stalked toward the torch, trying to pick up the assassin’s scent amid the many. The clean smell of ice mingled with the stormy musk of elemental magic—Rielle had conjured an ice shard behind him. As they proceeded, the human scents intensified.
Changing, even partially for the claws, would make for easier battle, but not a single person could see his Change and live to tell the tale. But down here, he couldn’t ensure death for all witnesses. Too many twists, turns, and rat holes.
Black powder. The odor hit him, heavy and near, and he grabbed Rielle before she could take another step.
“Tripwire,” he whispered.
A flash, and she conjured candlelight in her palm and crouched, illuminating the trap and the small kegs rigged to it. Candlelight in one hand and ice shard in the other, she puffed an exhalation.
An explosion would exceed her infamously meager healing abilities.
Unease settled in the pit of his stomach. He could kill mages and warriors threatening her, but against severed limbs and hemorrhage, there was little he could do. And it grated.
He breathed deep, tensed his muscles. “Tread lightly, and let’s go.” He cocked his head toward their destination.
Rielle lit their way, the ice shard still glinting in her other hand. The candlelight would give away their advance. He didn’t need it—the narrow mining tunnel, although dark, was clear to his eyes—but against loss of limb for her, it was a necessary risk.
They crept toward the torchlight and a door of some kind in the tunnels. As they neared it, he motioned for her to take up a position to the left while he took the right, where it opened. Immune to magic and with preternatural healing, he took point.
Mouthing a countdown to Rielle, he reached for the doorknob.
Footsteps. Damn.
The door opened. Two men walked out.
He seized a throat and ripped it out. Blood spattered, a gurgle ushering in the end.
The other turned to him, eyes wide, trembling hand reaching for a dagger.
A shard of ice burst from his chest, drenched in red. The man’s shout emerged as a whimper, screaming death hushed to a pathetic end. He thumped to the ground. No others nearby.
“Let’s find your assassin.”
She nodded and conjured another ice shard. “Lead the way.”
He passed through the doorway. The perfume of sen’a—sickly sweet, floral, rounded with a certain thick richness—prevailed. Sparse torches lit the chamber, crates stacked to the ceiling to form a maze to the other side. He moved through, Rielle tiptoeing behind him.
“Eastern distribution,” she said, her voice matter of fact. “This place probably supplies all of eastern Emaurria.” She was silent awhile. Stable. “What do sen’a suppliers have to do with assassins?”
King Marcus had threatened a ban on both sen’a and trux over a decade ago. If the assassins were Heartseekers, perhaps King Marcus had reconsidered the ban—and the smugglers had planned for both eventualities, hiring assassins to kill him but expanding the underground tunnels in case they failed.
Heartseekers with access to this hub would use it as base for nearby operations. Perhaps the Heartseekers had contracts for Rielle and paladin reinforcements arriving in Monas Amar. More blood would flow.
“Let’s find out.” He took her through the narrow winding path between the crates until they reached another door. He sidled up to the right side, she to the left. No one nearby, although his ears picked up distant steps, faraway voices. A dozen, perhaps.
He inched the door open and peeked through a crack. A long, dark corridor ended at another door, lit by two torches. A dozen smugglers loitered in front, half playing cards at a primitive table, the others sparring, drinking—the one mage among them, an enforcer, napping.
Enforcers always smelled the strangest, like a winter’s night in the Tainn Mountains. Icy, crisp, slightly sweet—tingly. And although they were dangerous to him as mages went, this one was sleeping. Brennan shut the door softly.
“Your turn,” he said softly to Rielle. “Twelve targets, distracted. One mage, enforcer, asleep.”
A determined nod. She dispelled the ice shard and conjured fire in her palms. It blazed high, bright, arcing between her hands with an excited roar. There was the slightest curl to the corner of her mouth.
Mistress of flame—warmth and destruction. Death incarnate. Blessed of Nox. Some part of her loved it. The power to comfort. The power to kill. Power.
She assumed a ready stance just out of the door’s path and inclined her head to him.
He mouthed a countdown, then threw open the door.
Rielle crossed her wrists and unleashed a torrent of flame. Scorching down the corridor, it charred the walls, consumed all in its path with fiery hunger as it surged toward the doorway.
Explosions boomed—small barrels of black powder combusting.
Close behind the spell, he charged. Screams barely emerged before the deafening roar of the pyromancy burned them.
The stench of charred flesh conquered the air, even as the fire left nothing but ashes and a bewildered enforcer behind a repulsion shield.
Brennan tackled him, grinning as the enforcer’s desperate spell failed, and snapped his neck.
The door and its wall burned, flames licking the sides of the tunnel. Rielle made her way to him.
Behind the door, rustling, stepping, creaking. Entirely resistant to the pyromancy, Brennan kicked it open.
An arrow hit his shoulder.
&
nbsp; He rushed the archer, ripping out the arrow midway, and tackled her. She fell to the ground, and he crushed her skull.
The room was clear, but on the other side, the door was open, still moving. The scent of Sileni leather, danewort, and olive oil lingered. He listened for footsteps—and there they were, a door opening and closing, the turning of a lock, and then, silence.
He smiled. Nowhere to run.
Rielle entered. Her gaze darted to a map on the wall, and when she approached it, so did he. Several duchies, marches, counties, viscounties, and baronies were marked, linked with black thread, all over Emaurria. Even Maerleth Tainn.
“A distribution map.” Rielle moved to a nearby table and pushed it toward the wall. Slowly. Pathetically.
With a sigh, he grabbed her hips and lifted her.
“What are—”
He carried her to the wall. She grimaced but began taking down the map, squirming against him as she worked.
Great Wolf, she felt good in his hands—satisfying, soft, substantial. Those trousers of hers did little to camouflage that generous curve of her hips, her ass, luscious thighs, soft and...
What would she be like in bed, that softness wrapped around him, at his fingertips...?
His mouth watered, and the Change brushed up against his control, tufts of fur spiking through skin, sharp teeth protruding in his mouth. Even the Wolf hungered for her. Patience, Wolf. Patience. Fur and teeth pulled in, the Change subdued.
She wouldn’t have him. Not before. Not now. Maybe never, if he failed to convince her of his repentance. What would it take?
“Got it.” She folded the map.
He let her slide along his body to the floor, suppressing his need. She gave him a once-over and raised an eyebrow at him.
He sighed. Some things couldn’t be suppressed. “Beyond my control,” he snarled. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“For that, I’d have to care.” With a dismissive shrug, she wandered to the various surfaces in the room, leafing through papers, opening containers.
He let her enjoy her little victory, the knowledge that he lusted after her. It didn’t mean much—he lusted after many a woman.
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