“I seek her blessing. Isn’t that reason enough?”
“Hardly. There are many ways to gain the blessing of a god but leaping from this cliff is almost certain death.”
“You’re her high priestess. Have you ever made the jump?”
A wan smile came to Falina’s face. “Once. Many years ago. I was fortunate to survive, and not yet high priestess of her temple. I watched two of my closest friends succumb to the waves. One never surfaced again. The other…a strong swimmer pulled his corpse from the water. His head had struck one of the many rocks. It is not a decision to take lightly.”
“When was the last time someone jumped?”
“Some time. It was twenty-four years ago when last a woman made this jump. A blink in the life of my people. Three others perished undertaking the ceremony, but she walked from the sea foam like the ocean goddess herself. She…” Falina canted her head. Understanding dawned on her face, and Rosalia knew what she would say before the words were uttered. “She resembled you.”
At last, she understood where fortune had guided her and the ultimate purpose of her visit to Valanya. She had come for a date with a dragon; she would stay to earn a goddess’s blessing.
“I’m going to jump whether you permit it or not. Tell me what the ritual requires.”
To Rosalia’s great relief, the ceremony leading to the actual jump required very little. Were it any longer and drawn out, she’d have lost her nerve and turned back.
While she stood at the cliff’s edge, the high priestess anointed her with fragrant rose oils. Falina and another priestess taught her a prayer in elvish to the Ocean Mother, and then silence fell upon the congregation gathered at the cliff.
Word spread that there would be a jumper, the first in twenty-four years since the priests of Nindar forbade anyone else to die.
Heart ready to burst out of her chest, Rosalia glanced down the perilous drop for which the cliff was named. Waves splashed against rocks down below, sweeping in and out. She held her breath, wondering if she’d be little bloody pieces staining them pink soon.
“I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this?” Falina asked.
Rosalia raised her chin stubbornly.
“I didn’t think so. You may take the leap when you are ready.”
Behind her, a low hum began, though it soon became the gentle chorus of a thousand elven voices. She didn’t know their tongue, but she understood the meaning and felt it in her heart.
Good luck.
I make my own luck.
With Xavier’s words in mind, she flung herself from the cliff. The wind rushed up against her, buffeting her hair away from her face, while she reached deep within her soul and sought her spark.
And nothing happened except for the choppy waves coming closer by the second, flying up to meet her. White-capped waves frothed against the rocks at the base of the mountain cliff, though there was a narrow clearance of open water.
She struck the surface. Water still warm from the sun flew up her nostrils and into her nose, gagging her and stinging. Violent waves ripped her away from the cliff and swept her out into the sea, too turbulent to swim against. It bounced her against fire coral growth, scraping her arm and sizzling down her nerve endings.
In the end, she screamed and water rushed down her throat, choking her before it flooded her belly.
21
Obligations Unmet
21 Years Ago
On one fine summer evening, Dahlia made the most difficult decision of her life.
Holding her child in her arms, she stood on the Enimuran beach with warm sand between her bare toes, though it was rapidly losing warmth with the sunset. Rosalia hadn’t uttered a word since they disembarked from Utopia, the child usually quite wiggly and hyper, now soothed by a bellyful of milk, though she still nuzzled her breast in her sleepy haze.
For over a year, she had hidden in the most beautiful of the eleven kingdoms, a true paradise ruled by a pair of monarchs to make all other monarchs save Morwen appear hedonistic dictators. They’d certainly made Gregarus seem ogrish and uncouth by comparison, and she’d thought him a brilliant man compared to his bloodthirsty son once she’d gotten to know him. Once she saw past the rigid tradition and met a man willing to change.
“Promise me you’ll take care of her if I don’t return, Lacherra. Promise me.”
“Dahlia, what nonsense is this? You’ve been gone for years; now you surface again with a little one. What the hell have you been doing?”
Hiding. She shivered. Life on the run hadn’t been easy or fair to the drowsy tot clinging to her. Rosalia deserved more than a childhood of danger and chronic instability. Yet, she knew from the moment she approached the Salted Pearl that she was condemning the child to a risky future.
No other options remained, however. There was the dragon, yet something told her—a quiet little voice of intuition—that a barely adult weredragon had no desire to raise a child on his own.
“You told me three years ago you toyed with the idea of retiring soon from the life. Did you mean it?”
“Of course. I’m nearly thirty-five now.”
“Then watch over her. If you mean it, if you do plan to step back soon, watch over my little girl. I trust no one more than you and Hadrian.”
Lacherra’s mouth softened from its tight, too-severe line. “All right.”
Dahlia passed Rosalia into the other woman’s arms, ignoring the prickling burn beneath her eyelids. “Take care of her.”
“She’s certainly a beautiful little thing.”
Dahlia smoothed her fingers over Rosalia’s dark head
“What’s happening? Where are you going? You can’t sweep into our lives again, dump a child on us, then flee again into the dark.”
“I have one last obligation to honor. And…I fear I may not survive it. But it must be done. I have to try.”
“Then tell me what must be done and we can do it together, my friend. We can leave the little girl with Hadrian. Let me help you and increase your odds.”
Gods, it tempted her. But she’d seen the vision too clearly to risk it, sometimes sharper than a knife in the dark, then nebulous at other moments. Luck was too finite a substance. Frowning, she rubbed her thumb over the golden medallion dangling from the black cord around her neck.
“No. I won’t risk you too.”
“Who’s her father?”
Dahlia bit her lower lip. “Don’t worry about him.”
A silver brow rose. “He doesn’t know?”
“He doesn’t,” she said, removing the medallion and placing it around Rosalia. “And may he never realize. Keep this coin and my baby safe, Lacherra. I trust only you and Hadrian to do what’s right for her if I don’t return.”
22
Endeavors in the Dark
Someone was following Xavier. He knew it before he left the wharf district and reached the lane dividing Silver Hollow and the city square. He ruled out watchmen with ease, as they were neither dependable investigators nor spies, most likely to charge into his place of business again and tell him what they wanted. And since he’d promised to provide full access to his storerooms and property, he saw no reason for them to skulk behind him in the shadows, always at the edge of his vision.
Their tricks might have worked on anyone but a dragon, but he caught the same scent of ashes and magic on the breeze.
Curious. That meant they saw him as an ordinary mage and elf—not a dragon with a powerful sense of smell, otherwise he suspected they would have taken other measures to remain concealed and stayed upwind of him.
Were he not already overdue to meet with Rosalia, as well as tend to the needs of his other customers, he would have taken his time, made three or four detours, and merrily diverted his stalkers on a stroll through the city. But he had no time for games and wanted to know why the fuck a pair of mortals was following him.
At the next turn, he caught a whiff of a third person with the same underlying hint of ashes and acidic
bite in their natural odor. Doubting they bore any good intentions, he veered from the main road and took a lesser-used side street leading into the Squals, where the city watchmen rarely tread and the crown didn’t care about the welfare of its people. They existed to pay taxes, though the majority made so little Xavier considered it cruel to take their money. These people needed every red cent.
In the Squals, every inhabitant lived in poverty, scraping together their copper ramirans and hustling to make ends meet. An old woman swept the dust from the porch of a leaning shack with a crumbling roof. An oiled tarp had been tossed over the top of it, though that was sagging in. Thankfully, it didn’t rain often in eastern Saudonia.
Not far behind Xavier, a young dockworker trudged down the street from his long day, skin tanned deep brown and weathered from the sun. A haggard woman wearing patched skirts, holding a skinny toddler on her right hip, met him at the door and kissed him. All varieties of people went about their daily business, but they all noticed him in passing. Some whispered.
A guy like him attracted attention when he walked into the poorest neighborhood of the city with a gleaming pocket-watch chain dangling from his vest, but most of the criminal element had died with the Thieves Guild, the few stragglers left had been captured by the guard over the days that followed. And even if they hadn’t, he’d have been the worst mark for them to choose.
He left the main road and entered a narrow alley between two rows of dirty tenements with dusty, dry sand yards. He glanced up and down the vacant tract littered with refuse, smiled to himself, and ambled down the path. There wasn’t a person in sight, just as he wanted it.
The attack came when he reached the dumpster, a metal bolt striking the magical shield encompassing him. Otherwise, it would have buried in the back of his skull. A blinding flash exploded from the point of contact and magical warmth bloomed above his nape. He whirled to face his assailant as another arrow flew from an enchanted bow, augmented by magic that sent it sizzling toward him on a jagged lightning shard. Xavier swept his left hand toward it, batting it away with a counterspell. The arrow disintegrated with the surge of entropic magic, the electricity discharged harmlessly, and Xavier smirked at the black-clad bowman.
So that’s how they wanted to do it, testing him with and without magic. Before he could remark, two men in similar dark cloaks over black, oiled leathers jumped down from the rooftop and fell into position, flanking him, each wielding a pair of long, curved daggers in their hands. All three wore cowls, the face masks ending just above their noses leaving only their eyes exposed.
Xavier twisted back, avoiding two slices by a narrow margin, blocking a third with the wyvern skin cuff on his forearm. His shield charms only protected him from projectiles, not from close-range weapons slicing through the air. Those required his skill to avoid, bobbing and weaving effortlessly, jumping back a yard as needed while blades flashed in the dwindling evening.
One of them moved with remarkable celerity, damned near blurring like a shadow each time he launched another attack. Had to be an elf. A fucking traitor elf at that, because he couldn’t imagine anyone still under allegiance to Ilyria daring to go against him. Or Morwen.
His cocky opponent flipped away and ran up the wall, evading the wave of chaotic magic Xavier sliced his direction.
The archer had given up the fruitless endeavor. He vanished, but he couldn’t have gone far.
Aware of this, Xavier kept on his guard and reached out with his magical senses. Sorcery had a sensation, a feeling: it charged the air with particles of mana that buzzed across his bare forearms.
There!
Xavier spun on a heel, pivoting left and whipping a windstorm toward the archer when he emerged from the teleportation. He flew into the edge of a dumpster and didn’t move again. Then three more joined the fray.
One step forward, three steps back, he thought, grinning despite the all-out melee and the fact that three cutthroats had been on standby to murder him. With witnesses.
Most wizards required a staff to cast magic, but the most powerful of their kind required only a spoken word, a gesture, a thought. Though Xavier had never attended a school of magic—receiving his lessons privately from one of the greatest elven magicians in Ilyria—he’d been one of those spellcasters for two decades.
In addition to casting without a staff, one of his mother’s earliest lessons had been to teach him to charge one spell on each hand. He did that now, imbuing ice magic in his left and fire in the right, channeling that power while remaining quick on his feet, dipping to the side and evading their attacks no matter how fast the dual-bladed assassins came at him. Someone flitted behind him, but he reached back without looking and unleashed a cone of cold that howled in the narrow space, hitting with the force of a blizzard. Though Xavier struck one, the second attacker flipped over his head to the front, gathering with his remaining comrades.
Perfect.
Xavier’s hand warmed with power, green light surging over his knuckles. He’d chosen the alley for one particular reason above all others: strategically, it was the safest place to cast a fireball without collateral damage. There were probably no less than a dozen eyes watching from the safety of half-closed window shutters. All the better, as he’d need them to corroborate his story.
The man to the rear of the group stared, eyes growing wide. His hood had blown back, revealing the pointed ears of another half-elf. “Don’t allow him to release that spell!”
Too late. Fuck them.
“Isendalil!” Heat engulfed his open palm and fire raced down his fingers before he thrust his hand forward and released the spell. The flames flared three stories high, crackling against stone and licking the windows, scorching old glass and lighting the shutters but causing no damage to the structure aside from a few shattered windows on the first two floors. Those warped from the heat. The three assassins immolated within the globe of fire shrieked.
Right at that moment, a blade glanced past Xavier’s unprotected back as he whirled to keep tabs on his rear. Maybe it was residual luck from Rosalia, or maybe the gods were smiling down on him. His assailant knew where to strike and had been aiming for his kidney. It would have been part of a two-strike combo: first a kidney wound, then a slash over the throat when he arched in pain. When he didn’t so much as flinch, eyes widened in shock above his opponent’s cowl. Gods, it burned though. It burned like fire, and he had to wonder what the hell he’d been poisoned with.
Not that it mattered. As Nemuria had demonstrated in the Undercastle, dragons resisted all forms of poison.
Xavier snapped. “Priesellie.” Paralysis swept down the human’s body before he could attempt another strike, limbs first turning sluggish then uncooperative. Pleased with himself, Xavier touched the center of the man’s chest and tipped him over onto his back, then set his boot on the surviving assassin’s chest. “Who sent you?”
“I won’t tell you a thing, wizard.”
“Hm. Then you aren’t of any use to me, are you? If I were you, I’d be desperate to earn some leniency.” He glanced up and down the alley, counting the bodies before nodding to the frozen statue beside them. “How do you want to go? Like him, or like one of them?”
His captive said nothing.
“Whoever sent you, how much did they pay?”
No answer.
“I have no enemies here, so I can’t fathom why a team of seven would come to take me out. Whoever they were, they seemed to realize I’d give the lot of you trouble. That says to me they did their homework. I’ve never displayed my magical power in public, however. So that is rather telling, isn’t it?” He applied pressure, digging the toe of his boot beneath the assassin’s chin.
His victim made a choking sound, but otherwise remained unwilling to speak. Xavier didn’t mind. He continued to talk through his theories, wondering aloud, “Given that city watchmen already visited my place of business today, accusing me of harboring an illegal magical creature, I wonder if I’m the only mage to
encounter trouble in the city.”
“Fuck you,” the assassin finally spat.
“There are things I can do to you that won’t kill you. Not right off, at least. I want you to know that I’ll happily stand here and watch you suffocate after I paralyze the muscles controlling your ribcage. Or should I nick you with one of these daggers your squad of inept assassins came at me with and see what it does? I’m curious.”
“Suck my cock, you rich prick knife-eared cu—”
Xavier cut him off again, boot on windpipe. “Ah. Such language, especially for a man who works with—excuse me—worked with elves. I saw sharp ears on a few of your comrades here.” Xavier rubbed his chin. Despite his threats, he loathed torture. He’d always had a habit of dispatching adventurers seeking his treasure quickly and efficiently. “Alas, as you seem unwilling to part with any information, I’ll have to cut our interlude short.”
Xavier plucked one of the daggers from the ground and studied it, leaving his victim paralyzed on the ground but still capable of breathing. The blade curved like a viper’s fang. Turning it over in his hand exposed the narrow groove. When he raised it to his nose and sniffed it, a sharp and pungent odor raced up his nostrils. Poison. Not just any poison. The blade had been treated with a concoction made from the venom of the southern dusk viper, a serpent that only emerged at twilight and hunted in the Osk Oasis. He only recognized the smell because its venom had an odor an alchemist could never forget once they used it or survived an attack from one of the creatures.
Finding that choice peculiar, and perhaps a clue as well, Xavier sheathed one of the blades then tucked it inside his vest for Rosalia. With the other, he sliced the assassin on the cheek. Within the first minute, the flesh surrounding the area swelled and welted with deep blush color. The fine blood vessels of the face darkened.
Fool's Gold: a Fantasy Romance (Daughter of Fortune Book 2) Page 17