by Aiken G. A.
“I said, aren’t you being a bit of a hypocrite?”
“About what?”
“About your demon horse.”
“It . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment. “She is not a demon.”
“Fine. Abomination then. You’ve given Keeley such a hard time about her wolves, going on and on about them but now, when that thing is clearly unholy . . . suddenly you have some moral objection to doing what is obviously right, which is chopping it into the tiniest pieces, salting them, and performing whatever banishing spell is necessary to send it back wherever it came from.”
Gemma was silent for so long that Quinn thought she was simply going to walk away. Perhaps never speak to him again. But after several very long seconds of staring at him, she finally said with extreme, absolutely terrifying calm, “I am going to go over there and kill Sprenger. And when I’m done with him, I’m going to come back over here, cut your centaur balls off, and feed them to Kriegszorn.”
There were several more moments of brutal, silent staring until she exploded with, “Is that hypocritical too?”
Laila stepped in front of Quinn to protect him but Gemma had already stomped away.
“Was that the kind of irritation you were talking about?” he asked his sister.
She lovingly patted his back. “One day the elders of our tribes will tell tales of your sacrifice, Brother. And your sad, early death.”
CHAPTER 12
“Are you done chatting with your friends?” Sprenger asked with more sarcasm than Gemma could take at the moment.
So she handled her fury more like a Smythe than a brother of the Order of Righteous Valor, barking, “Oh, shut up!”
“Brother Gemma!” Brother Thomassin scolded from where he stood with the other elders. They were no longer on the raised dais, but grouped with Ragna and the other generals. The highest-ranking monks created a half circle around the Challenge pair.
“Sorry,” Gemma muttered. But she wasn’t. Not really. Because she was thinking.
“You both know the rules of Challenge,” Thomassin reminded them. “And . . . and . . . Brother Gemma . . . are you going to pick a sword?”
“Pardon?”
“One sword. Not two.”
She looked down at the two swords she had in her hands. A long sword and a broad sword. She spun around and stared over at her traveling companions. Actually . . . she was staring at Quinn. He knew it too. He picked up Keran and lifted her so that she blocked his face.
“I don’t appreciate this,” her cousin told the centaur.
“Brother Gemma?” Thomassin pushed.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Biting her lip, she looked down at the two swords and decided.
“Shona. Gladius.”
Shona reached back, pulled the short sword from the sheath tied to her back, and tossed it to Gemma. She caught it and chucked the other two swords back. Shona caught the broad sword. Laila caught the long sword. And everyone else ducked. It was not pretty.
“Okay. Made my choice,” Gemma said.
“Excellent.”
“Only took you two hours,” Sprenger muttered.
Gemma held the weapon in her hand and it felt right. But still, she felt annoyed. Irritated. She looked at Quinn over her shoulder. He immediately noticed.
“Are you listening to me, Brother Gemma?” Thomassin asked.
“Yes. Of course. Challenge. Rules. Blah blah blah.”
It wasn’t that she wasn’t listening to Brother Thomassin. It was that she was staring at Quinn and thinking about everything he’d said to her in those last ten minutes. He’d managed to irritate her in a way that had her completely livid in seconds. If the two of them were about to fight, it would have been smart.
“Is your disgusting Amichai lover distracting you, Princess?” Sprenger loudly mocked, his group of sycophants laughing along with him.
Gemma focused on Sprenger again, taking a moment to examine him closely. He was taller than her by several inches. Taller than Keeley. Not taller than Quinn or his brother, though. He was also not wider or nearly as fast as Quinn and the other centaurs, but the bastard was quick in battle. She’d seen him fight. She remembered now. He was brutal. Especially when starting out. He moved well too, considering his size. And he knew how to use a sword, his blade picking up momentum and power as he slashed again and again.
So maybe everyone else had been right and she’d been wrong. Maybe Sprenger hadn’t tricked Joshua during the fight. Maybe Joshua had simply lost.
Of course, none of that changed Gemma’s desire to destroy Sprenger; it simply changed her approach to killing him.
Again, she turned and looked directly at Quinn. If he could piss her off that quickly, maybe she could piss off Sprenger that quickly. She just had to find the right thing to set him off.
* * *
“That woman is going to chop my balls off.”
“The way she’s staring at you, Brother . . . it’s possible.”
“You could sound a little more concerned, Laila. She’s planning to geld your brother.”
“I told you to irritate her. Not send her spiraling into a universe of raging insanity. She’s not even paying attention to her opponent! He’s going to cut her head off. How are we supposed to go back to Keeley with just her sister’s head?”
Laila was right. Gemma was so busy glaring at him, she was completely ignoring the man she was actually supposed to be fighting. And the more Quinn watched Sprenger, the more Quinn was convinced that Gemma had underestimated the grand master’s skill level.
Quinn could also see that he and his sister weren’t the only ones beginning to feel this way. Thomassin was watching Gemma with great concern. “Brother Gemma,” he asked, “are you sure about this?”
“She’s sure! Aren’t you, Princess?” Sprenger asked. “Although you must be disappointed, yes? That your fondest dreams won’t come true tonight.”
Gemma blinked and looked at Sprenger over her shoulder. “My fondest dreams?”
“To become grand master of this monastery. To take over all this and finally be in charge of the brotherhood. That is what you want, isn’t it? What you’ve always wanted,” he brazenly taunted. He knew she was angry about something. He was trying to tip her over into careless anger by insulting her honor. And with Quinn already pissing her off, it would probably work.
Fuck. Caid was going to kill Quinn when he came home with just Gemma’s head.
Gemma faced Sprenger and gripped the gladius by the hilt, adjusting it carefully.
She now stared at the grand master the way she’d been staring at Quinn. That terrifying, blank, “I’m-about-to-cut-your-balls-off” stare.
Finally, after a few long seconds, she calmly announced, “I’ve never wanted to be grand master.” She briefly stopped and looked down at the sword in her hand, tightened and released her fingers around the hilt once, twice. Then finished with, “I just couldn’t allow a vile rapist to run the brotherhood I love so much.”
It was as if time itself froze.
Everyone stopped moving. Stopped speaking. Stopped breathing.
Quinn realized in that moment Gemma had said the one thing no one in this monastery had ever spoken out loud before. And by doing so, she’d unleashed something very ugly. Not among the other monks, but within Sprenger himself.
His joking expression faded, his eyes grew wide and black in their anger and slowly swiveled in their sockets until they locked on Gemma. She didn’t seem to notice, busy as she was, still adjusting her hand around the hilt of her sword.
“What . . . what did you say to me?” he barely managed to ask; his voice was a low, panting growl.
“What did I say?” she asked; still so calm. “I called you a vile rapist. Because that is all you are. That is all you have ever been. That is all you shall ever be.” She lifted her gaze to his. “And you shall remain so upon death. Is that clear enough for your understanding? Or is more necessary?”
Sprenger’s rag
e was so strong, his entire body began to vibrate. And Quinn was sure the man had yet to blink. His eyes were wide black pits of unspoken evil and fury.
When the explosion came, it was mighty. His roar of rage reverberated off the stone chamber walls. Sprenger slashed his sword down with one hand, aiming for Gemma’s neck. She brought her weapon up, and Quinn waited for the blades to clash.
But then Gemma twisted to the side. A spin, like a dance move. To the grand master’s exposed right. His blade stopped in midair. As all of them watched, he finally blinked, dazed, his anger seeming to drain away.
Quinn focused on Gemma and that’s when he realized she’d buried her blade deep into Sprenger’s right side, just above his waist. Her other arm wrapped around Sprenger’s chest and held him tight; then she pulled the weapon out, and shoved it back in. Yanked it up a bit, tearing the flesh along the way, pulled it out, and shoved it in a few more times.
Sprenger dropped to his knees. He was trying to breathe. His blade was still gripped in his hand, but he was no longer able to lift it.
Gemma pulled her arms away and stepped back—the gladius now buried up to the hilt in Sprenger’s side—and held her hand out. Katla tossed a dagger to her and Gemma easily caught it. Then she moved behind Sprenger and grabbed him by his gray hair. She pulled his head back and put the blade to his throat. She didn’t quickly slash as she had been taught to do. As Quinn had seen her do in battle many, many times before. Instead, she rammed the tip of the blade into the major artery on one side of his neck and dragged the blade from one side to the other, nearly cutting his head off.
When enough blood had flowed from him that the only one who could possibly bring him back was Gemma herself, and that was only as an undead thing, she shoved him to the ground.
Still gripping the dagger in one hand, Gemma pulled the sword from Sprenger’s carcass with the other. She looked at the remaining monks, slowly turning in a circle.
“Anyone else, Brothers?” she called, which seemed strange. Wasn’t the Challenge over now? She’d defeated Sprenger in what seemed to Quinn a fair fight. But just as he had that thought, a monk broke free from those surrounding Gemma. He charged toward her, swinging a sword, but she ducked and slashed her own up, cutting him across the chest and throat. He went down and another attacked. A woman monk with an axe. Gemma blocked the oncoming blow with her sword and stabbed the monk in the neck.
“That’s it,” Laila said, moving forward. But Shona grabbed her shoulder just as several monks moved in front of them to keep them from helping.
“Sprenger’s allies,” Shona said in that flat, emotionless way of hers.
“They’re still loyal,” Katla explained. “They won’t let Thomassin take over.”
Laila searched out Ragna. She now stood in front of Thomassin and the other elders, a double-headed battle axe in her hands. Her team of loyal soldiers with her. The two females exchanged long glances and Ragna finally nodded. Laila turned to Quinn, and she didn’t have to give him any sign. They’d been speaking to each other without words since the day she’d dropped from their mother. He, in turn, signaled Farlan and Cadell.
They didn’t have their weapons but they didn’t need them. They had weapons all around them. They simply had to take them.
Quinn moved first, shifting into his natural battle-ready form and rising up on his hind legs. The monks in front of him were so shocked, he was able to bring down his front legs on them, crushing their skulls in the process. Cadell and Farlan took swords and war hammers from the bodies before shifting themselves and moving toward Gemma. Laila kept her human form but took the spear casually tossed to her by Shona and speared the first monk who attempted to strike.
That’s when all hells broke loose. Sprenger loyalists fought everyone else while Gemma stood at the center of it all since it was she who had killed Sprenger.
Quinn made his way to her side. They’d fought side by side more than once in their time together. But their space was tight here and it was hard to know who was friend and who was foe when everyone was wearing the same thing, down to their short haircuts.
So Quinn stuck with defense rather than offense. He kept the monks off Gemma’s back rather than going after anyone. He didn’t want to accidentally kill a loyal friend she hadn’t mentioned to him.
Laila, Farlan, and Cadell had taken up position by Thomassin and the other elders, alongside Ragna and her troops. A good thing, because they were getting hit hard as well. There seemed to be a new leader among them now that Sprenger was gone. A woman monk filled with rage that someone had taken her messiah from her. She was calling out orders that had the allies attacking the two groups again and again.
“We need to take her down,” Quinn said against Gemma’s ear during a very brief lull in attacks.
“That’s Brother Millie. She adored Sprenger.” Gemma briefly stopped to cut off the leg of one monk and the arm of another by swinging her blade back the other way. The benefit of pure momentum. “She won’t go down easy. And the loyalists won’t let us near her.”
“We need to do something. There’s more of them than I realized.”
“And the rest of our supporters are outside reinforcing the battlements. We need to get word to them.”
A spear aimed for his front legs had Quinn shifting back to human, flipping over the spear, and returning to his natural form. He kicked out his back legs and sent the spear handler flying into several of his brothers.
Before they could decide what move they should make next, Laila walked between them and stared up at the very high windows.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Gemma asked her.
“Do you hear that noise?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
But Quinn heard it. It was a strange, moaning wail and he detested it more than anything he’d ever heard.
* * *
There it was again. So distracting, she looked away from whatever was happening at the monastery. And something was definitely happening at the monastery.
Ainsley turned toward the noise and as she had suspected . . . it came from the clearing. The one that knight had warned her to stay away from. An order she intended to follow. But she still climbed higher in the tree, trying to get a better view. Because she knew something was definitely wrong. All the animals had fled. Birds no longer sang. Foxes no longer hunted. Wolves no longer howled. Even the snakes had slithered away.
That only happened when the earth was about to shake, when the wind was about to blow, or the forest was about to burn. Or . . . when armies marched.
Standing as high as she could, Ainsley looked out. She still saw nothing, but the wailing became so loud she nearly covered her ears. Something was in distress. She knew that.
She climbed down until she reached the ground. She whistled between two fingers and heard her horse gallop toward her. As she gathered her things, she stopped briefly to touch her hand to the earth. It was still distant, but it was there. The rumble of many hooves pounding the ground, coming closer. And whatever was making that horrible sound was in that army’s way.
Ainsley mounted her horse and briefly debated her next move.
She rode toward the sound, frowning as she got nearer. It took her a second to realize that a scouting party had already reached the clearing. And they’d used wizards to break through whatever protective barrier had surrounded it. Now they were torturing whatever was inside. When she was close enough, she dismounted from her horse and pulled her bow. She nocked her arrows and shot the scouts who were supposed to be standing guard at the opening, but were so fascinated by whatever nightmare was going on inside, they’d turned their backs.
Ainsley crept close and peeked inside. Wizards surrounded the tormented beast while seven soldiers held ropes around its throat in an attempt to keep it steady. The wizards chanted spells, but she honestly didn’t know if they were trying to trap it or kill it.
She didn’t wait to find out.
She nocked three arrows in
her bow, aimed, and let them fly. She took out two of the wizards and one of the soldiers. She immediately nocked two more arrows while running to a new position. She was able to fire again. Two more soldiers. Soldiers came at her and she ran. With several of the ropes now unmanned, the beast was able to break free. It took off running, but it didn’t run away. It attacked. Charging the soldiers, picking up one in its mouth and biting him in half, then spitting him out before trampling over several others.
While the creature ran, it grew tusks on either side of its bottom jaw. Ridiculously long ones aiming up that it used to impale the wizards throwing fireballs and lightning at it. When it did get hit by magick, it seemed to absorb the damage and spit it back out. Its back legs sent other soldiers flying, possibly miles away.
Ainsley used her bow to block further attacks, but then the beast was there, dragging off a soldier who’d gotten Ainsley on her back and was about to impale her with his sword. It dragged the soldier off and proceeded to toss him around like a limp doll. Banging the man from side to side, up and down, until it tossed the decimated carcass away.
When it was done, the tusks vanished but it was still some half-dead thing that Ainsley had never seen before. Horrifying to look at. She still felt bad for it. And it had still saved her.
If nothing else, it hadn’t tried to eat her. That was something, right?
Eyes wide, she remembered that the ones the beast had killed were only a scouting party.
“You need to run,” she told him. “Run! I have to warn the others.” She scrambled to her feet and took off, stopping to mount her horse along the way and riding hard toward the monastery.
* * *
“It’s stopped,” Laila said.
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. It was strange. Like an animal but . . .” She lifted her gaze to Quinn, and then the siblings looked at Gemma.
Gemma knew that expression. “It wasn’t necessarily her.”
“Are you sure?” Quinn leaned in. “What if she got out? What are you going to do then?”
“Don’t we have bigger issues to deal with right now?”