So close, the wine’s sweetly bitter scent was intoxicating. She turned her head farther from the goblet.
The captain exhaled sharply. “Truly, girl? The wine? Now?”
Stiffly, she shrugged. Let him live three days without a drop of water, and then he could question thirst.
Sighing, he brought the goblet to her nose, then pressed it to her lips and tipped it.
Holy blood of the Divine, the bittersweet red danced in her mouth, invigorated, its oaky body embracing her tongue, fruity notes dancing on her palate, and it cooled its way down her throat. It wasn’t the water she needed, but she’d never tasted anything so soothing.
He pulled it away long before she had her fill, and stood. “Now, as I was saying”—he strolled back to the desk, set down the goblet, and recorked the bottle—“I may be heartless, but you’re no use to me dead. This ship, my crew and cargo, can have an… effect on sheltered girls such as yourself. As my very special guest, I was going to offer you a choice.” A smile playing on his mouth, he leaned against the massive desk. “Stay fully aware and conscious throughout the rest of your time aboard this ship—”
She blinked, and he blurred before her. Two captains… Three captains. Blurry eyes—she just needed to rub them—
But her hands were chained to the twelve-pounder. Her head spun.
“—or drink this wine, specially prepared for you, and choose to be fully unaware and unconscious throughout the rest of your time aboard this ship. Everybody wins. You avoid injury, I avoid your feeble attempts at rebellion, the job goes as planned, and my generous patron is satisfied.”
She tried to raise her head, but it wouldn’t cooperate.
“The… wine…” She blinked sluggishly, weakness vining through her limbs.
“Drugged.”
The door to the cabin opened, and the captain nodded to the—she turned her head, so slowly she wondered when she’d ever see—
Shades blotted out the light, tall and dark, a circle of large forms closing in. She willed her limbs close to protect her body, but they wouldn’t move. Couldn’t. She struggled in the chains.
Break… free…
Metal clinked and thudded to the floor. Large callused hands grabbed her. The shades. Her gaze traveled their faces, but they were just—shadows. No faces. Shades. Their arms bore her to the door, and she craned her neck to look at the captain—
A shade amid streaks of crimson and gold. Laughter rumbled like thunder, amusement and malice, distant and massive.
The fading light poured in from the windows behind him, and she was through the doorway. The sky turned to shadow, to black, a storm rolling in over the sea, clouds stealing what little light remained. She rolled her head along her shoulders.
As the ship bobbed, darkness shrouded her completely.
Feet thumped, again and again—stairs?—and into blackness they went, the shades and she, but somewhere across the vast waters freedom waited, and at the opportune moment, she would seize it, no matter what a red stain thought.
If she could survive the storm.
Her hand clamped over his mouth, Drina Heidrun slit the man’s throat in the night’s cloak. He raised his hands, and she pinned one to the tree with her blade and twisted the other behind his back. Blood gushing, muffled whimpers, gurgles. Old notes, as beautiful now as the first time.
Bent, she held the man as he bled out onto the forest floor. A strong, cool, northeasterly wind swayed the tall pines bearing quiet witness, watching the last of his life abandon his body. Without a sound, she lowered him to the ground, listened for any signs of presence, then stripped him of his gear.
After the siege, she’d buried a weapons supply cache outside Courdeval, and for days, she’d bided her time, watching the coast southwest of the capital, waiting for the right target. A lone traveler, someone whose identity she could easily assume. Finally, one had come.
This traveling apothecary, a hedge witch healer who also sold remedies for illness, traveled alone. Her father, Lyuben, had been a medicine man, and she’d studied herbalism extensively at the Kezani Tower. Perfect.
She’d hidden in the tree cover, planning to cut his throat as he slept, but the fool had gone among the trees and stopped just shy of her spot to relieve himself.
Easy prey.
She donned his tunic and loose breeches, his many-pocketed belt, and his faded black cloak. She pulled up the hood and headed into his camp to sort through his possessions—a donkey, ample provisions, and plenty of stock to sell. The animal bucked at her touch, but she patiently waited for its ears to rise once more, its breath to slow, the whites of its eyes to disappear.
She stroked the donkey’s neck and whispered in soft Kezani.
Everything surrenders with time.
She settled at the campfire and stirred the stew bubbling there, then removed her gloves. The brand had faded, but it yet remained. Pine bark, corroded bronze, gall, and vitriol. Such a simple thing, but when she and Marko had wed, they hadn’t wanted rings in gold or silver, or anything that could ever be removed. They’d wanted a symbol of their union that represented what they truly were: forever.
I don’t want you tonight, volyena. I want you forever. Marko… It had been nine years since she’d seen his face, black curls about his shoulders, gamesome smile. She rubbed the brand.
At the Kezani Tower, she’d been content to do no more than needed for her daily meals and lodging—it had been more than her farming family had provided on the lifeship. In birth, she’d killed her mother, and her family had always cared for her begrudgingly, a runt whose insignificant life had taken the place of a hard worker, a beautiful woman, a breeder, someone worth ten runts among the Kezani Dragos.
And as soon as her shadowmancy had manifested, her father had been eager to be rid of her and sent her from the Dragomir lifeship Spas to the Tower. She’d hated farming anyway.
There, she’d met a handsome young apprentice named Marko, whose far-seeing eyes had drawn her in, stolen her heart. Marko, who’d loved her as no one else had ever done, brightening every day at the Tower with his dreams of the future.
The Tower… Daily meals, clothes, a warm bed—she could live out her days content with such luxuries. But Marko, virtuoso augur, had always had his eye on the North.
Silen, volyena, he’d said. Magehold. If we become hensarin, the Grand Divinus’s most trusted agents, we’ll want for nothing. A few years. A few years, and we’ll take our coin and start a proper life, volyena.
Laurentine was supposed to have been Marko’s last job. Disguised as a pirate with his squad, sent to awaken a girl the hensarin augur had predicted would become a quaternary elementalist, a great asset. To liberate her from her noble parents, who had kept their eldest son from the Divinity, who would keep the girl from the Divinity as well. Dominique Amadour Lothaire, the eldest girl they presumed, who had not yet had her éveil.
Only it hadn’t been Dominique who’d awakened.
It had been her younger sister Favrielle who’d burned Marko alive, along with her own family. Favrielle, who the Divinity had chosen to retain, to protect, denying Drina her rightful vengeance.
She rubbed the brand until it hurt.
The day two hensarin had found her on mission and delivered word of Marko’s death, she’d descended into fureur—stopped only by the arcanir they’d come with. Her inner barriers and her life had shattered that day. Forever with Marko had been reduced to a lone brand for a two-hearted promise.
The two hensarin had stopped her descent into madness, had brought her back from the brink, called her wandering mind back from the Lone, restored her inner barriers. The Grand Divinus needs you, shadowmancer, they’d said.
A shadowmancer. A master of subterfuge and stealth. The Divinity didn’t release what it could well use.
She’d stayed. Stayed long enough to steal anything she’d needed from Magehold—records, artifacts, weapons. A recondite skeleton key. Enchanted daggers. Anything that she could use to
finally achieve her justice. She’d taken it all back to her home, the ruined tower on the Isle of Khar’shil.
And she’d planned, for years. Someday the girl would become a woman and fall in love with a man—a man with whom she’d make a two-hearted promise. A man who could be torn away from her.
Nine years later, Drina had given up and decided to simply torture and kill the girl herself.
She laughed under her breath. Fate spun her threads in such strange ways. When she’d tired of waiting, the girl had finally found the man.
And now Favrielle Amadour Lothaire was on her way to a life of well-earned punishment and waiting.
Waiting for the day she, too, would know that keen pain of losing forever.
A bitter taste in her mouth, she rose and laid the camp wards. Tonight, she would rest well, and then… Then she would plant herself in Courdeval, deep, invisible, and prepared for desire to meet opportunity.
For her chance to kill Jonathan Dominic Armel Faralle.
You will finally have justice, Marko. And so will I.
From beneath a dark hood in the corner of the dimly lit pub, Flagon & Flotsam, Brennan Karandis Marcel had a clear view of Radovan Vilín, an otherwise unremarkable sailor but for his rumored time aboard the pirate ship Siren.
Vilín sat with a table of drunken sailors, downing his ninth ale. The sling around his arm explained why, despite being on the Siren’s crew list at the office of the Registrar General, he remained in the port of Suguz.
Days of careful investigation had led to this hole in the wall in the densely populated Shoal district, which he had learned Vilín frequented nightly. After several hours of waiting, Brennan’s patience wore dangerously thin.
Nursing his second flagon of dark lager, he tried to ignore the mounting annoyance within, fed by the loud guffaws in the pub. His hands brushed against the sticky surface of the worn wooden table, and he cringed while trying to focus on the conversation at Vilín’s table. A night of bawdy anecdotes had paved the way for trading estimations of some cheap brothel’s wenches and no useful information. The stretch of boredom made it seem like Vilín would never leave, and Flagon & Flotsam’s poor-quality ale did not mitigate the annoyance.
But tonight, one way or another, he’d learn the whereabouts of the Siren. And Rielle.
A shiver wove down his spine. It had been long. Too long. And the more time these fools cost him here, the worse Rielle’s odds of survival became.
It had taken about three weeks to travel from Courdeval to Suguz, and his time in the Kezan Isles, with Rielle missing, was a far cry from the never-ending party that he’d remembered from his late teens. The bars every fifty steps, the free-flowing ale, the enthusiastic gambling, and the abundant beautiful women had served a young scoundrel well, but they wouldn’t quench the needs of a man on the verge of losing his humanity. And certainly not the Wolf ripping it away inch by inch.
The peace, the solitude, the level of control he longed for didn’t exist in this densely populated place. And neither did she.
The night of his last Change, it had been sheer luck that he’d found a small island. The Wolf hadn’t been keen on swimming toward the Shoal. Without her blood, it was only a matter of time before he fully lost control.
Finally, with a drunken swagger, Vilín rose from his chair and slammed down his empty stein.
“’Night, boys,” he slurred. “Time to pay ol’ Milena a visit!” He patted his groin for effect.
Common boor.
Brennan’s upper lip curled as he placed several coins upon the table, and when Vilín stumbled out, Brennan slipped away, drawing as little attention to himself as possible. He seemed to escape notice but for the barmaid, whose eyes snapped to the coins left behind before suspending care.
Outside, he drew in the air deeply, separating away the smells of the humid night—seawater, trash, and a tannery, among others—to single out Vilín’s faint, malodorous scent. Brennan fell into step behind him down the littered thoroughfare.
The Wolf in him raged for a hunt, mouth watering, catching scents of stray dogs and humans, but he fought the urge, breathing slow, deep breaths in an attempt to pacify it. Since his bond with Rielle had gone silent, the Wolf had been winning more battles than it lost, but he couldn’t kill Vilín—not until he extracted the information he needed.
Once I have what I need, you can kill him.
The Wolf calmed, receding a measure.
The streets of Suguz were busy even after the midnight hour, but he needed to get Vilín alone. Of course, the red-light district had an active nightlife, but the last thing he needed was the Wolf taking over in full view of witnesses; he could do without a mob bearing torches and pitchforks calling for the slaying of an abomination.
A keen glance ahead of Vilín revealed a small alley. Vilín tottered toward it—the chance Brennan had been waiting for. Vilín braced himself against a building before the alleyway, and Brennan dashed in the shadows, a fluid breeze of darkness that wrapped around Vilín and stole him into the alley.
With a hand clamped tight over the man’s mouth, he dragged him to the alley’s dead end, muscles bulging, barely containing the Change. Not yet. Patience. His body stabilized, just enough.
The pressure and rumbling against his palm was Vilín’s screaming.
“Be silent,” he hissed into the man’s ear.
Vilín persisted, his one uninjured hand clamping down on Brennan’s gauntlet and pulling to no avail.
He had to chuckle—what hope did this fool have of getting away?
Vilín continued to scream against his palm and kicked his legs in protest. Annoying. Brennan executed a quick strike to the fourth lumbar vertebra. Vilín’s legs went predictably limp. A deft strike to the seventh cervical vertebra, the vertebra prominens, and Vilín’s shoulders and arm also went limp, falling away from Brennan’s gauntlet. His years of study with his own hand-to-hand Faris master had lasting benefits.
He leaned in close to Vilín’s ear. “Be silent, or the next one kills you.”
The vibrations against his hand stopped, and Vilín nodded.
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth,” Brennan said, “but if you make any sound other than to answer my questions, I will kill you. Nod if you understand.”
Vilín nodded again, wheezing.
Slowly, his fingers curled away from Vilín’s mouth. The man’s breath came harsh and ragged. The sharp stink of alcohol stung Brennan’s nose.
“Where’s the Siren?”
Vilín’s breath came faster. He quivered. “I-I don’t know.” Irregular heartbeat. Terror and—something else. The man knew something.
And he will tell us. Brennan knocked a knuckle against Vilín’s seventh thoracic vertebra. “You know if I hit you here just right, you will die a horrible death.”
The unmistakable smell of urine inundated the air. Brennan stepped back, getting his boots clear.
“I-I really don’t know!” Vilín sobbed.
Brennan pulled his hand away to strike.
“Please,” Vilín begged, “you—you can check with the Registrar General!”
Narrowing his eyes, Brennan sighed. “I already checked his office. Try again.”
“N-not his office,” Vilín stammered, “or his home… but he does keep a second set of records for bribes. If Cap was sailing somewhere off the books, the Registrar recorded it in his second set. Please, will you let me go?”
Off the books. He hadn’t considered that anything was worth going off the books for in Suguz. His mouth watered, and his hands tingled with violent intention. The Wolf wanted its way.
“Where?” He grabbed Vilín’s chin.
“An apartment above the Bonded Jacky!” he immediately answered. “W-will you let me… let me go?”
The Wolf in him lingered just on the edge.
“Yes,” Brennan replied. He grabbed Vilín’s temple with his other hand.
The man gasped just before Brennan wrenched his head to th
e side with a gruesome crunch of bone—and let him go.
The sound riled the Wolf within. As Vilín’s body thudded to the filthy ground, the Wolf brushed up against Brennan’s precarious control, sending a shiver through his unwilling body.
The Change rode the shiver closely, pulling up tufts of fur, claws, and teeth in a beastly ripple, emerging and—when he forced them to recede—fading.
Soon. Soon we’ll hunt. I promise.
Nostrils flaring, he focused on breathing until the Wolf was calm once more. The full moon was weeks away, but the Wolf had been pushing its advantage at every opportunity—every frustration, every rage, every kill. Its manifestations had been getting stronger, and desperate deals wouldn’t work forever. If he tasted blood, tasted flesh—
It wouldn’t be long before his control failed completely.
He needed to find Rielle. Soon. For her sake and for his own.
To read on, check out By Dark Deeds, available now!
Blade & Rose (Blade and Rose Book 1) Page 64