“Stay back, foul witch.” The sound of metal rang out into the chamber.
“Foul?” Celeste’s gaze darted downward, but her dress was free of dirt for once. She covertly lifted a shoulder and took a sniff, but she smelled fine too. Oh, no—did she onlythinkshe smelled fine and was actually foul? But she bathed every night!
A flash of metal sliced through those questions and her tranquil shroud, the sword leveled at her much more worrisome than phantom odors. It was a huge thing, the blade shimmering and black, though that gave her pause. The man wore Valcord’s symbol and called himself a knight, he had to be a divine one, but she had only seen obsidian steel on the darkest of weapons.
Celeste bit her lip. “Oh, crickets.”
Then a veil of golden light lay itself atop the blade, the man’s hands pulsing in kind. Celeste had been privy to her fair share of arcana, and never once had the divine sort been good. Well, itwasgood, theoretically, just not for someone like her.
“Wait!” she squeaked, hands up a little higher. Her locket thunked impatiently at her chest, but the knight did indeed wait. She stuttered, not exactly sure what to do but confusion was an excellent distraction from fear, then blurted out, “Why?”
He stared back as if she were dumb. “You were casting the darkest of arcana and have desecrated the house of my god.”
“Oh, you saw that? Well, I didn’t—” Celeste grit her teeth. He wasn’t really wrong, but he wasn’t really right either. “Well, I didn’tmeanto.”
And then he swung.
Celeste shrieked and jumped backward from the spell as it splintered the air betwixt them. Her hand instinctively called to the noxscura hidden in the chamber that had been itching to attack since it sensed the divine knight. Shadows enveloped the magic flung from the tip of his weapon, smothering it, but then the noxscura fizzled out too.
She sucked in a sharp breath. Celeste was taller than most women, but she was slight—if his spell had landed, it would have done quite a bit of damage. “Please, this isn’t what you think!” As she gestured to emphasize her impulsive words, more noxscura unintentionally answered, striking from both sides of the room.
The knight slashed through one shadow and then the next, more luxerna pulsing along his blade. He was both big and quick, a dangerous combination, but at least he wasn’t getting hurt.
“I didn’t mean to do that!” she called, waving her hands once again as yet another shadow swept out from behind a dresser.
He ducked and spun deeper into the room as the darkness solidified and sliced through the place he had been standing. The floorboard cracked, and he snorted, eyeing her.
“Or that!” Celeste clasped her hands, vision tunneling with the pressing noxscura, the strength of it overwhelming.
Clearly, he did not believe her. “Witch,” he shouted, rising with his sword leveled at her once again, “your reign of terror ends this day.”
Divine arcana pulsed into his blade, and he readied himself, making it clear he was going to stab her and not at all in the way she’d prefer.
Celeste stumbled backward, knocking into the bed and clambering atop it. The knight attacked, the obsidian blade arcing through the air, golden light spinning around it. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t meant to kill her.
Oh, crickets, he was actually trying tokillher.
This time, she had to command the noxscura with a more aggressive purpose, and luckily there was so much of it in the room that it didn’t matter if her attempt was messy and ill-aimed. It swept between the two and knocked the knight backward.
He disappeared behind the shadow, and there was a crash and a groan. Celeste plastered herself against the black-stained wood of the headboard, balancing on the bed’s overstuffed pillows. “Are you all right?”
He was splayed on the ground when the shadows cleared, the chest of drawers splintered all around him. A hand rubbed the back of his head as he sat up, the other still firmly around his hilt. “Yeah, I think so,” he muttered, then glanced up from under a brown curl that had fallen into his face. “You’re a powerful witch.”
Celeste turned her hands over, smoke swirling about them. “It must be the temple, or maybe this room? But I’m not a—ah!”
The knight had sprung up onto the footboard, charging forward valiantly. He closed in on her, black steel glinting, and she crumpled to her knees, throwing her arms overhead and blindly calling up noxscura with the flail.
No sword dropped down to cleave her in two, and over her own panicked breaths, she heard the knight grunt. Celeste peeked up between her arms to see him struggling against her arcana, black tendrils winding about the blade and pulling taut in either direction, suspending it just above her head.
With a more deliberate swish of her wrist, the noxscura shifted, and the sword was yanked right from his grasp and flung across the room with a heavy clatter. But Celeste had no moment to celebrate as the knight toppled, still trying to wield a blade that was no longer there, and landed atop her.
Celeste was crushed beneath his heavy body into the downy pillows. She immediately lamented being enamored by how big he was.
“So sorry, miss.” His voice lost all of the edge he’d injected into it when calling her unkind things. He pushed up, and she yelped again, his hand trapping her hair and pulling. “Oh, apologies—ah!” He jerked his hand away and then immediately flopped onto her again.
Celeste could not suck in a full breath, his form too heavy, but she would perhaps not have remembered to breathe anyway when he more carefully placed his hands on either side of her and pushed himself up again. Hovering so closely, she could see the depth to the amber of his eyes, his pupils like dark stars against a sky burning with the profound warmth of a new day’s sun. His broad, straight nose led to a mouth quirking with mumbled apologies, and a faint shadow of stubble covered his square jaw looking uncommonly soft. She could test that theory by nuzzling against his cheek, and it would have been easy with his face inches from hers.
Thiswas Celeste’s type: classically handsome and completely unobtainable. It was an attraction she would have never shared with Delphine to avoid the mockery. Despite how well this man matched her fantasies, though, he was a holy knight, and that meant she should have been running. But he was calling hermissagain, and his voice had gone soft, and was that a dimple in his scruffy cheek? She sighed, his unfair features holding her to the spot better than even his body could.
