“That one’s pretty, huh?”
Reeve inhaled sharply over his teeth, but the woman was already headed up the northern road and didn’t notice him at all which was probably for the best. “I thought you didn’t have eyes,” he said with a relieved sigh, her skirt swishing around her calves as she went. Even in the dark he could see they were nice calves.
“Doesn’t mean I’m blind.” Sid laughed lowly in the throat he didn’t have. “And I’m only asking because I have no idea, I just know that you went all stiff.”
Reeve snapped his gaze downward, but only the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker was jutting up from his hip where it hung, and Reeve had inadvertently grabbed onto it, allowing the sword to see into his desires. He grunted and released it, heading for the inn she had just vacated. “You know, I think you’re right,” he said, avoiding the question but less skillfully than he thought. “One night of recuperation and then up with the sun to face destiny would be wisest.”
“That sounds like a good plan, buddy.”
CHAPTER 4
BED CHAMBERS AND BAD MAGIC
Celeste teetered on the threshold of Delphine’s bed chamber.
Well, the bed chamber that had belonged to Delphine.
Once a private meeting room for the priests of the temple on its upper floor, it had been modified heavily to suit her sister’s tastes. Velvety drapes hung over the stained-glass windows, a luxurious bed covered in dark furs filled up one wall, and on the other was a fireplace decorated with thick candles, a jagged crystal that hovered over a silver base, and the skull of an unidentifiable creature staring disapprovingly out over the room.
Maybe Celeste should have brought Plum with her for moral support, but the wyvern was having too good a time with the chunk of bread he’d been given for breakfast. The chamber was a place Celeste was rarely allowed, and the last time she’d been inside was to sever her sister’s enchantments and free Damien. The fear from that time filled her up all over again as she hugged fresh linens to her chest and crept into the room. The uninvited feeling didn’t dissipate, but it did compound with the presence of arcana.
Delphine didn’t need to keep noxscura on her person like Celeste, but she did hoard the stuff when it sought her out. Hidden pockets of dark arcana lingered in the bed chamber, and in Celeste’s company, it began to stir. Shadows flicked at the corners of her vision as she continued up to the bed, but she ignored them and set to stripping the linens. She made quick work of it, fitting fresh blankets on, and then tossed the old ones at the fireplace: maybe she would burn them later.
With the linens changed, she surveyed the bed once more, large enough for two to sleep sprawled out. When she pressed a hand to the fluffy furs, the mattress sprang right back instead of sagging. That would be much more comfortable than the one in the tiny acolyte’s chamber she stuffed herself into, but…but her cot was fine. There was another large chamber beside this one that she could use, currently Delphine’s old wardrobe, but that too was unnecessary. The room downstairs along the acolyte’s hall had served her well enough for the years she’d lived at the temple before, and it would continue to.
She stepped back from the bed and sighed, shaking out her hands in preparation for what she truly needed to do. “All right, you can come out,” she whispered.
Shadows rose from behind the curtains and baseboards in answer, noxscura looking to be collected and used. She tapped a nail on her locket, waking up what swirled inside, and then flicked it open, calling the dark arcana to her. So much stronger and faster than what had been forming the barrier outside the temple, her blood ran cold as she was surrounded. Celeste felt herself be lifted by the sudden presence of it curiously prodding and scratching at her limbs, digging its way down the neckline of her dress and up under her skirt.
She snapped the locket shut well before she captured it all, and the magic fled back into its hiding places. Flexing fingers to regain feeling, she snorted—thathad been unpleasant, and she was suddenly thankful her own chamber had always been down the stairs and on the other side of the temple so she couldn’t hear whatever creative ways her sister had used such strong magic.
Needing fresh air, she turned to leave, but in the doorway stood a figure, tall and wide-shouldered, and her innards went right to jelly. For a moment, Celeste thought she’d accidentally conjured him out of the wanton noxscura since he was the most handsome man she had ever seen in the entirety of her twenty-six years, but then she realized that was impossible—if she could do something like that, a lot of things in her life would be different.
“Um, hello?”
At her greeting, he drew himself up from the hunched position he had taken, and, oh dear, he wasverytall, and her face was gettingverywarm. “Hello, miss.”
Celeste’s throat went thick, and she tried to smile, but a mental vision of her own discomfortingly wide mouth grinning in the dark made her press her lips back together. Her gaze fell away from his too-attractive face, quickly taking in the width of his chest and trying not to imagine what was beneath the embroidered surcoat he wore, but then flicked right back up, away from the symbol there.
“Valcord,” she whispered, and her brain mimicked the mush her guts had yet to recover from.
The need to flee flooded her, but there was nowhere to go except the attached bathing chamber. A vision flashed in her mind of fisted hands and holy symbols, but before panic truly took her, she brought herself back with words she’d taken to repeating when her fear became too strong:I am not a child, and I am not trapped in a temple.
Well, actually, shewasin a temple, and shewassort of trapped with him filling up that doorway, but it wasn’tthe same, was it? She wasn’t as little as she had been then, though she also wasn’t much stronger. At least there were no angry priests giving brutal orders, but also missing was the protection of her sister.
Celeste dragged in a deep breath and pushed the panicky thoughts away. This was one of Valcord’s holy knights standing before her, and if a holy knight had wandered into a disused temple, he was probably looking for something or someone. Someone…dead? There had been a body covered in plate in the courtyard beside Tempest. “Oh, no, are you his friend?”
The man’s amber eyes went wider. “I am…Valcord’s knight.”
“Right, I can see because of the sun on your,”—she pointed meekly at his surcoat—“I meant the dead man, the one out front.”
“Dead man?”
Swallowing hard at the way his brow pinched, she tripped over her words as she went on, “Well, he’s not in the front courtyard anymore because I buried him out back, but I could show you his armor, it’s stacked up around here somewhere, and his sword’s stuck in his grave.” Messy as her words were, a curtain of peace draped itself over the nerves she’d nearly surrendered to. That wasn’t the worst explanation she’d ever given, and surely he would be astute enough to understand—
“Do not attempt to threaten me with the fate of a brother-in-arms,” he said with a darkness his face didn’t carry.
Threaten? Celeste blinked and lifted her hands. “No, no. He was already dead when—”
