Page 65 of Beds and Blades

Caen nodded in approval.

Chapter eleven

Emissary

Ileft Caen’s tower and checked the sky from the landing window.

Orange. Actively dimming.

The keep stood across the courtyard from Caen’s tower. I had time, but not enough to waste.

I did not linger. I walked briskly.

Skip had told me to be in my quarters before nightfall. I was not going to my quarters. I was going to be in his quarters. I had made a decision, and I needed to tell him.

His quarters were near the top of the keep, six levels above the courtyard, just beneath the roof walk and the battlements. I crossed the courtyard, entered the keep, and started up the first flight of stairs. I calculated that I had enough daylight left to reach him.

I had made it only as far as the lower level when I heard it.

An explosion.

Stone burst apart somewhere beyond the walls, followed by the hard, uneven crash of rocks striking the courtyard and slamming into the fortress. Men shouted. Someone screamed. Steel scraped free of scabbards.

The crypt.

Boots pounded in every direction. Swords struck.

The screaming intensified. Steel clanged. Soldiers shouted orders.

The keep had two main stairwells. I was climbing the eastern one, nearest Caen’s tower.

I ran. I ran with full commitment, arms pumping, breath tearing in, sweat immediate beneath the leather. My lungs were staging a formal protest. The eastern stairs blurred beneath my boots.

I reached the upper corridor.

She was already there.

She was not breathing hard.

The vampire had come from the crypt, cut through a garrison built to kill her, crossed the keep, and climbed the western stairs ahead of me without becoming even slightly winded.

She stood between me and Skip’s quarters with composed patience, framed by torchlight, as though she had been waiting for an appointment rather than cutting her way through armed soldiers.

Her face was untouched by time. The corners of her mouth were smooth, her skin unmarked by weather, grief, laughter, anger, or sleeplessness. Nothing she had endured had written itself into her features.

Her skin had the colorlessness of something emptied. Blood no longer warmed it from beneath, leaving only a smooth, lifeless absence.

Her eyes were red. Genuinely, startlingly red.

She smiled, and every feature settled into flawless alignment. The expression had the shape of warmth without any memory of it.

“You are the woman from Earth,” she said.

Her voice wore warmth the way her body wore beauty—perfectly and without anything living beneath it.

“I am.”

“I am not here to kill you,” she said. “I want that established before we continue.”