Kitabı oxu: «Seraphim»

Seraphim
Michele Hauf

www.LUNA-Books.com

To Jesse Marvel Hauf, aka Bob

Because this story is filled with all the things guys like:

Danger, adventure, sword fights, giant bugs, fire demons,

poison-dripping castles—with just a touch of romance.

But you know what? We girls like that stuff, too!

Love, Mom

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

EPILOGUE

COMING NEXT MONTH

PROLOGUE

France—1433

The black knight’s sword-tip drags a narrow gutter in fresh-fallen snow. The tunic of mail chinks against outer protective plate armor. Footsteps are slow. It is a struggle, the short walk from horse to a wool blanket laid upon the snow. There, a squire stands waiting to disassemble the heavy armor and remove it from the knight’s weak and weary shoulders.

Thick white flakes have begun to blanket the muddy grounds surrounding the Castle Poissy, making foot battle difficult, slippery. Yet successful.

Mastema de Morte, Lord de Poissy, Demon of the West, has fallen, his head severed by the very sword that now draws a crooked line in the snow.

“You did well,” the squire says, not so much encouraging, as merely words spoken to break the hard silence that follows the soul-shredding events of the evening.

The squire, lank and awkward in a twist of teenage limbs, takes to the removal of armor. Gauntlets are tugged off and deposited on the blanket with a cushioned clink. He unscrews the pauldrons starring the knight’s shoulders, and lifts the heavy bascinet helmet off the mail coif. Working from shoulder to leg the squire carefully, noiselessly, sets aside the pieces of armor. Wouldn’t do to draw attention to their dark hideaway a quarter league from the castle. Earlier, the squire had found the perfect spot tucked away inside a grove of white-paper birch limning the river’s edge. The Seine flows in quiet grace, accepting with little protest the fallen soldiers who have given up the ghost in battle.

“Hold out your arms and I’ll lift the tunic from your shoulders. Steady.”

It is difficult not to sway. The knight’s legs feel cumbersome, leaden. Arms are weak from swinging the heavy battle sword. Though forged and designed especially for the bearer, the weapon had become a burden after what seemed hours of blindly swinging and connecting with steel plate armor, chain mail, and human flesh and bone. Though it could have been no more than a quarter of an hour from the time of entering battle to the moment of success.

This act of participating in war, in bloodshed and mindless cruelty is new. But necessary. And not mindless. Not in any way.

The tunic, fashioned of finely meshed mail, is lifted from shoulders, lightening the weight on the knight’s tired, burning muscles. Carefully the squire works the mail coif from a tangle of dark, sweaty hair that has slipped out from under the protective leather hood.

Suddenly granted reprieve from the heavy weight of steel and mail—and revenge—the knight’s muscles wilt and limbs bend. The hard smack of cheek against ground feels good. Cool snowflakes kiss feverous flesh and melt tears of the new season over eyelids and nose and lips.

The squire, sensing the immense toll battle visits upon his master, allows the silent surrender to rest, a dark oblivion rimmed with promises of salvation that only angels can touch. He lifts the mail tunic and places it in the leather satchel spread across his horse’s flanks. Necessary tools this heavy armor and meshed steel, as they travel the unseasonably frigid desolation of France from one village to the next in this insane quest for revenge.

Insane, but certainly warranted.

“You have felled both Satanas and Mastema de Morte,” the squire offers, holding observance over his silent master. “But three to go.”

“This one…was for Henri de Lisieux.” It hurt to stretch a hand up to brush the snow from a bruised and aching face. The knight squinted against the sharp bite of cold. It is not natural, this heavy snowfall. But what since the coming of the New Year had been natural? “Have you caught wind of where the next de Morte plans to strike?”

“Nay,” the squire responded. “But I wager word will be bouncing off the tavern walls in the next village. If you can find a de Morte foolish enough to venture out after the death of two brothers. I fear Abaddon de Morte will remain sealed behind a fortress of stone once word of another brother’s death reaches his ears.”

“He is the…Demon of the North,” the knight managed through breathless gasps. Lying in a state of weary triumph, surrender to the bittersweet kiss of winter is effortless. “We shall be on to Creil and meet the man on his own domain.”

“Insanity.”

“Is there any other way?”

The squire sighed, and kicked at the fresh-fallen layer of white flakes with a tattered boot he’d peeled off a dead man’s foot less than a week ago. “There is another way, it is called retreat.”

“Not an option, squire. Do you live in fear or faith?”

He wanted to simply mutter fear, for of the two ’twas that to which he clung most often. To him, faith was a whole new world, one he’d hoped the abbe Belloc could lead him toward, far away from the sins of his past.

“It is fear…for now.”

“Then I shall have to keep the faith for both of us. We ride.”

The squire had known that would be the command. As he had come to know every rational suggestion he made would be immediately discounted by this false knight of vengeance. But whom had he left in this world to listen to anything he should say? “Tomorrow then, we ride to Pontoise, it is six leagues from here. We shall keep our eyes wide and our ears open for any word of the North Demon’s plans.”

“We shall ride tonight.”

“Six leagues?”

Unhinged, the squire thought of the knight sprawled on the ground. Completely lunatic.

“It is what must be done.” The tone of his master’s spoken words had changed since the first morn of the New Year. Commands and utterances had become deep and alien, laced with an unwelcome evil.

“Very well.” Resigned that he would get no sleep this night—as he had not gotten for the last two nights they had ridden by moonlight—the squire rubbed his itchy eyes. With resolute regard, he toed a mass of the black hair that swirled around his master’s shoulder. “If you intend to continue this charade I wonder should you cut this off. These luxurious curls are a dead giveaway that you are a woman, my lady.”

“I’ve no intention of disguising myself as a man. It is unnecessary. Rumors run rampant of a black knight come to exterminate the de Morte clan. Who would suspect a woman?”

“True. But the road is a dangerous ride, my lady. You are a beautiful woman. Would not you prefer the safety of disguise over the possibility of further harm to your person?”

“There is not a brand of harm left in the tattered kingdom of France that can further wound this blackened heart.”

“Really?” He hated to challenge her so, but the squire knew otherwise. This woman’s heart glowed a brilliant silver.

A lightning swift hand lashed up and unfastened the dagger from the belt the squire wore at his ankle. Another dead man’s gift.

Seraphim d’Ange handed Baldwin Ortolano the weapon, handle first. “Do it then.”

ONE

Lucifer de Morte tightened his jaw and clamped his eyelids shut. The sheep tallow used to oil his saddle oozed between his leather-gloved fingers.

“Just last night,” Mastema’s emerald-liveried messenger said in a tone too soft and fearful to blossom from a whisper. “I rode all night, my lord. I beg thee forgiveness.”

At a dismissing flick of Lucifer’s fingers, the messenger bowed and backed from the private chamber positioned deep in the center of the fortified lair. Lucifer remained stiff, his hand fixed in a scrubbing position on the cantle of his saddle.

To his right, a blazing fire spat angry sparks across the tiled Istrian-marble floor. The hearth—forged of iron—resembled a demon’s mouth, complete with curved fangs, and above the gaping jaws, carved recesses for eyes where the flames danced high, animating the macabre face in wicked design. Overhead, suspended from the pine-beamed ceiling, a stuffed eagle, preserved and mounted with its eight-foot wingspan regally spread, silently mocked Lucifer with its glistening ruby eyes.

The black knight, the messenger had said. Again.

In a rage of motion, Lucifer pushed away from the saddle stand and crossed the room, scattering tallow and steel saddle furnishings in his wake. His sword, propped by the hearth, flashed violently as he swung the jagged-edge espadon through the heat-festered air.

He spun once, his anger, the pure force of his loss, drawing the pain up through his arms and to the end of the espadon. With a grunt and a thrust, he dashed his blade against the stone wall. Steel clanged dully. Limestone chips spattered the air. He thrust again. Clang. And again. He smashed his sword against the wall until his arms burned with exertion and foul sweat poured from his scalp.

Staggering to the wall, to which his back connected with a jaw-cracking thud, Lucifer finally dropped his sword with a clatter. A spark from the hearth leapt into the air and landed an amber jewel upon the deadly steel.

Lucifer raked his fingers through his tangled mass of dark hair. He squeezed his scalp until he saw crimson behind his closed eyelids. The color of blood.

The black knight’s blood.

Some fool bastard had taken it upon himself to exterminate the de Morte clan. Why?

No! It mattered not the reason. Lucifer knew well there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of reasons; the bones and scarred flesh of those reasons buried copiously beneath the frozen French soil or floating down the murky waters of the Seine.

But why now? Why, after nearly two decades of de Morte reign, had some demented soul finally decided to exact revenge? And to succeed?

Mastema had been beheaded in the middle of the battlefield. He always surrounded himself with his own men. Always. After learning of their brother Satanas’s death on the field but five days earlier, surely Rimmon, Mastema’s Master of Arms, must have been at his side, his eyes peeled for oncoming danger?

With a guttural grunt, Lucifer kicked at the flaming ember that simmered on his sword blade. It sailed through the air, a sizzling missile launched by hatred, to land in the fire with a grand explosion of heat and blue-red flame.

Still panting from the toil of his anger, Lucifer stood before the blaze, fists clenched at his thighs. Heat blistered his face in delicious warmth. He could feel the sweat bubble upon his flesh like the surface of a witch’s cauldron. So difficult at times, this sheath of mortality that he wore.

But obviously not a challenge for much longer, if this black knight would have his way.

Satanas had lived south of Paris in Corbeil; his nickname, the Demon of the South, as the villagers had taken to calling him. Hell, half of France used the monikers years of destruction and debauchery had attributed to the de Morte brothers. Mastema, the West Demon, had resided in Poissy. Sammael, the Demon of the East, resided in Meaux. The four brothers surrounded Lucifer, who lived in Paris.

But if the black knight was systematically attempting to erase the de Mortes from the planet, north would be his obvious next move.

Abaddon.

Squeezing his fists so tight the tallow and sweat and his own blood mixed to a hideous ooze, Lucifer decided on his course of action. He would not leave his own fortress to aid his youngest brother. Abaddon was an ox in size and vigor; he did not require Lucifer’s help to flick away an offensive gnat like the black knight.

But he would send out a scout—no, a mercenary—to track this vengeful knight, and stop him in his tracks before Abaddon even need worry about defending himself against the revenge the de Morte family surely deserved, but would never tolerate.

The road to Pontoise stretched a long white ribbon this chill January eve. Flakes as light yet massive in size as swan’s down fell quietly through the night. Seraphim blew a breath through her nose. Ignoring the ice-fog that lingered in a pale cloud before her, she slipped the leather hood from her head. She scratched a hand over her newly shorn locks and eased her heels into Gryphon’s flanks to pick up the pace.

Gryphon had been her brother Antoine’s prized mount. A fine black Andalusian bred for battle stealth and stamina, it measured near to sixteen hands. The beast’s coat glimmered a blue sheen under sun and moon. “Power,” Antoine had always whispered, as he’d brush down Gryphon’s coat—a formidable partner to sword and shield.

Behind Sera, Baldwin dutifully followed on his borrowed roan, clad in borrowed clothes and borrowed life. He was a reluctant squire to Sera’s bold, black knight. The man—teen—had been studying under the tutelage of the abbe Belloc, an ill attempt at penance against his former life, when Lucifer de Morte’s raid upon the d’Ange castle the first morning of the New Year had taken down all but a handful of household servants and knights.

Much as Sera would rather shoulder the quest for revenge entirely herself, she took comfort in the young man’s company. There was no favor for a lone woman riding the high roads by night. Even if the disguise of armor and distempered countenance did fool some, it certainly would not fool all. And as Baldwin had implied, she might be physically prepared to fight off attackers, but mentally, there were no promises.

Sera had endured much since her mother’s illness had rendered the taciturn matron useless about the d’Ange castle a decade ago. But she had endured so much more in the short days since the New Year had begun.

The moment she allowed herself to stop, to think on what had occurred just weeks earlier, the nightmare would engulf her.

Never. I will not allow it.

“Oh my—bloody saints!” Baldwin hitched a clicking sound at his horse and rode up alongside Sera. “I—I’m so—damn—so sorry!”

She regarded him slyly, for to turn her head any more than a fraction of an arc pained fiercely. Exhaustion from this night’s battle clung to her muscles. She needed rest. Even the chill air could not rouse her to any more than dull interest. “What be your concern, Bertram?”

“Your…” He gestured at her head with long, pale fingers that she’d always remember as clutching a bible. Or a toad. The makeshift squire stretched his mouth to speak, but after a few more gesticulations and widemouthed gasping, couldn’t express his obvious dismay with any more than, “I’m just so sorry.”

Sera rubbed a hand over her scalp, assuming his chagrin to be directed at her hair. “’Twill grow back.”

The sound of her own voice, abraded and sore, was an odd thing. She did not recognize the deep rasping tones. New, shiny scar-flesh had begun to appear beneath the scabbed wound on her neck. Little pain lingered. Save that which seeped from the tear in her soul.

“But…it’s so—oh—Mother of Malice! Why did you command me do such a thing in the dark of night, my lady? It is hideous! You look a sheep shorn by a swillpot. It juts here and there and—Heaven forgive me!”

His dismay made her smile. Briefly. Soon as she realized her swing toward mirth, Sera checked herself and drew on a frown. Much easier lately to touch sadness than any sort of joy.

“It is but hair, Bernard.”

“Baldwin is my name, my lady, I have it on very good authority from my mother and father.”

“If you insist.”

The man was not averse to correct her; nor should he be. His forthright manner was one of many reasons Sera had invited him along on her quest. Baldwin Ortolano would do whatever the situation required to survive, be it honor-bound or criminal. A favorable ally to have.

There was also his plea not to be left behind at the castle d’Ange in the blood-curdling wake of battle. Sera could not have ridden away, leaving the teen alone, fearful, and so lost. Especially when she felt virtually the same. Alone, lost—but not fearful. Never choose fear.

One final scrub over her lighter, choppier coif brushed off a scatter of half-melted snow. “It will grow back.” Her words did not work to cease the man’s sorry head shaking. “Come, Baldwin, I find it quite refreshing. I have lived four and twenty years, each morning being a struggle to pull a comb through such a long tangle of hair. So many treacherous curls, all coiling and slipping over my…shoulders.”

She made sure her sigh was as inaudible as possible. So much had been lost in so little time. Now, the last vestments of woman had been shorn from her head, making her more an anomaly than she had ever before felt.

But regret would not serve her mission.

“Now, you see, I’ve only to give my head a shake and it is done.”

“’Tis a fine circumstance we’ve not a mirror in our supplies.”

Sera yanked her leather hood up over her head. Lined with thinning white rabbit fur, the hood provided a bit of softness to ease the mental pain. “I shall keep it covered if it vexes you to look upon it.”

“That is all well and good, but I fear your reaction when finally you do come upon a mirror. You were always so beautiful, Seraphim—”

A twinge of regret spiked in her breast. “The removal of my hair has made me ugly?”

“Oh, er…nay.”

Sera straightened her neck, lifting her head regally. Insistent revenge pounded back the regret with relentless gall. The luxury of her past was no more. Tomorrow only promised trial, which must be faced with iron will. “I should hope so. As you have said, I cannot risk anyone discovering I am a woman.”

Mustn’t allow any more time to ruefulness. Last night had been for Henri de Lisieux, her fiancé. Five days ago, in memory of her brother Antoine, Satanas de Morte had fallen. The future held justice for her mother and father.

And Seraphim d’Ange.

“With your hood up and those smudges of dirt on your face, I wager you shall pass as a man in the next village,” Baldwin offered. “But you mustn’t bat those long lashes or allow any man to look upon you too closely.”

She felt for her dagger, secured at her waist inside a thin leather baldric. “You could cut my lashes, as well.”

“Don’t be silly, I would blind you in an instant. What a fine pair we’d make, the blind black knight and the postulant-cum-squire-former-toad-eater, traveling the countryside seeking to extinguish the minions of Lucifer de Morte.”

The black knight. At both battles Sera had heard the moniker. Issued in awed wonder as she’d exacted her revenge with a mighty swing of her blade and then, mission accomplished, had ridden off into the darkness.

The armor she’d plucked from the dead body lying in the bailey of her family’s castle had been of smoked steel, dark enough to be considered black. With little time to pick and choose, she’d lifted a set of scaled gauntlets and slid them over her blood-stained fingers, following with a breast plate. It was the only armor that would fit her frame; tall and slender, with broad shoulders and remarkably muscled arms. She hadn’t the stout torso or powerful, heavy thighs of a spurred knight. But on more than one occasion Antoine had teasingly accused her of hailing from a lost tribe of Amazons.

Indeed, the lot of d’Anges were a hardy breed. Sera had gotten her height and persistent work ethic from her father; her thick black hair, blue eyes, and undaunted pride from her mother. Years of practicing in the lists alongside her father’s knights had gifted Sera with the arm strength to swing her sword and deliver the killing blow.

Ah! Two weeks ago she would have never thought such a thing. The killing blow? ’Twas a term used only by knights and thieves and, well…men. Much as Sera had always embraced her power, her freedom and lack of feminine wiles, her mind-set had been irreversibly altered by one vicious act.

And she would not rest until that act was served the justice it deserved.

“I don’t like it,” Baldwin muttered. “Not at all.”

“I have already told you I shall keep my hood upon my head. Cease with your whining, squire.”

“I am not a squire, I am a postulant. I’ve subscribed to the Catholic church. Get that straight. And it is not your damn hair I am whining about!”

Sera chuckled, her breath freezing before her in a manner to match the clouds that puffed from Gryphon’s nostrils. “For a man who wishes to serve the church you’ve quite the cache of oaths spilling from that mouth.”

“Aye, and I’ve paid penance for them a thousand times over. I cannot control my tongue. There are just so many words, and at times so very few of them to express my feelings. I try to control it. I know the Lord cringes with every damn—every bloody—every—”

“Squire!”

“Forgive me, my lady.”

“It is, my lord,” she corrected with a stern rasp. With a painful jerk of her head, she shot him a steely look. “Don’t forget it, either.”

He ceased what might have been another tirade at her casting of the eye. She’d honed the evil eye to an art form on the lackwit scullery maids that dallied more than dutied in her father’s home. That, and the mongoose eye always served her silence when she wished it.

“Now, pray tell what it is you do not like besides this new coif with which you’ve gifted me?”

Sera slowed Gryphon and Baldwin sidled up beside her. His pale blond lashes were frosted with tiny icicles. “What you have become,” he said boldly. “What you are becoming. This is not you, Seraphim. You have killed two men—”

“I know what I have done.” She heeled Gryphon in the flank and the gelding clopped two paces ahead of the squire. “It is what is necessary,” she called back, the deep grit in her voice gifting her with an authority more suited to a man. “I am adapting. A week ago my soul was torn to shreds and stolen away by Lucifer de Morte. With that evil triumph in hand he stole my family’s souls, as well. I will not rest until I can reclaim what was taken from me. An eye for an eye, squire.”

Gryphon dug heavy hooves into the snow and pounded ahead, leaving the shivering squire in a wake of fine, diamond-glittering particles of winter.

An eye for an eye, indeed. Seraphim d’Ange had changed drastically upon the entrance of the New Year. A change Baldwin could attribute to the surprise attack laid on her father’s home, and all she had suffered from such.

But she was wrong about her stolen soul. The woman still possessed a soul. The evidence of such blazed brightly in her pale blue eyes, and in the fire that lit her path toward the ultimate goal. Mayhaps it had been damaged, for it had been stripped and beaten and bruised by that bastard Lucifer de Morte, the leader of the de Morte demons.

Was Seraphim d’Ange’s soul beyond repair?

Baldwin prayed not. For she would need a soul intact to battle the devil himself.

Tor’s breaths powdered the air before his gray suede nose. Dominique San Juste spied a village just ahead, settled like a giant’s stone tossed amidst a thatch of forest. A fortuitous discovery, for he was weary, peckish, and he’d already once caught himself dozing.

He knew Tor would not stop should his master fall in a dead sleep to the soft pillowing of fresh-fallen snow. Dominique imagined the elegant white Boulonnais might be waiting for that very incident. The stallion would suddenly notice the loss of weight upon its back and, without pause, pick up into a gallop and be off, never to be seen again.

He leaned forward and gave Tor a reassuring smooth across his withers, then scratched the sensitive spot just below his long feathery mane. “Not yet, my fine one. When this mission is complete, I promise you the freedom you desire. You have served me well over the years; you deserve as much. Mayhaps we shall someday find that which has been lost to you?”

In response, Tor lifted his head and tamped the air with his nose. At the stamp of an agreeing hoof, spray of snow sifted up, coating Dominique’s face with a fine kiss of January cold.

Unseasonable, this heavy snowfall. And the frigid chill. There was something amiss in this fine and darkened moon-glittered world. Since the morn of the New Year, Dominique had felt the odd fissure between nature and the mortal realm. But he could not explain it any more than he could reason his acceptance of this bizarre quest he now found himself embarked upon.

One final mission and then he, too, would find the freedom he desired. The Oracle had promised as much. If that is what the ghostly figment of an innocent-faced boy who had been appearing to him over the past few years really was. Could be a damned ghost, for all Dominique knew. Didn’t resemble any child—living or dead—he had known. Oracle was as good a title as any.

Leaning forward once again Dominique smoothed his palm over the bald spot on Tor’s forehead, reassuring in a manner he knew Tor understood. Perfectly round, the wound never did heal, though it did neither fester. It merely remained pink and moist, as if waiting. Waiting to become whole once again.

“We both seek wholeness,” Dominique whispered, then straightened, and closed his eyes.

Another battle last night. Mastema de Morte had been executed; his troops had retreated behind the safety of twelve-foot-wide battlements. Word told that a mysterious knight clad in black armor had arrived midcombat. Deftly, he’d woven his way through the clashing, battling men, right up to Mastema de Morte. One swift blow had cut through leather coif and flesh and bone to sever the man’s head from his neck. That done, the black knight had turned his mighty black steed and galloped away in the same mysterious manner that he had appeared.

He’d done the same less than a week ago, when Satanas de Morte had laid siege to Corbeil for no more reason beyond boredom and the need to see fresh blood purl down the groove in his sword.

The black knight sounded more myth than legend to Dominique. But he was not the man to dispute the tale. Especially not in these troubled times, when the common man needed a vision of heroics to cling to in the face of certain death.

’Twas rumored the de Mortes served the English king who occupied Paris in his never-ending attempts to possess French soil. The French king, Charles VII, who had been crowned but two years ago thanks to the ill-fated Jeanne d’Arc, had yet to banish all the English from Burgundian France. After almost a century of fighting, these were surely the blackest years yet.

But at this moment in time Dominique did not care for any man other than himself. He was on a mission. The finding of this legend.

Tor’s lead took them dangerously close to the prickles of a bushy gorse. Dominique’s spur caught up on the spiny branches that splayed out over the path. At contact, a cloud of iridescent particles coruscated into the air.

Dominique eased Tor to a stop and dismounted. “Not at all favorable,” he muttered, as he slapped at his left calf with a leather-gloved palm. The platelets scaling the back of his gauntlet chinked with the motion. “It’s been too long.” Another slap released a generous cloud of glitter from his lower leg. The accursed dust permeated all clothing, even his leather boots and braies.

A few stamps of his feet and finally, the last of the renegade particles dispersed. It besprinkled the ground and lay upon the moonlit snow like diamond dust.

He had to be cautious. Dominique was destined for the first tavern that offered fire and food. It wouldn’t do to wander in and seat himself in a dark corner only to begin to coruscate.

Then rationality overtook peevishness. Anger served no man but to draw him farther away from his own soul. Besides, anger was for the dawn.

Drawing in a deep breath of icy air, Dominique lifted his face to the eerie white moon sitting low and fat in the sky. It hung as if a pearl framed between the black iron latticework of a twisted, leafless elm. Midnight. ’Twas the time of the faeries.

The first time he’d ever heard that phrase—the time of the faeries—Dominique had been nursing watered ale in an ash-dusted tavern, sharing a table with a grizzle-bearded old man. With a bristle of his shoulders, and a hearty swallow of his own ale, the man had then nodded toward the door, where the moonlight seeped through cracks in the boards. “’Tis the time of the faeries,” he’d said, as if imparting great wisdom.

And so, Dominique had walked outside, lifted his face to the moon, and had decided that indeed midnight and all its mysterious darkness was a time of magick.

“The stroke of midnight finds the Dragon of the Dawn at his weakest,” Dominique muttered now. He closed his eyes and drew upon the moon’s glow as if it were the sun and cast beams of heat upon his face. “Avoid the dawn. Triumph beneath the moon.”

Seeking to break the cold silence that had settled between the two of them since he’d inadvertently mentioned Sera’s new coif was rather ugly, Baldwin hiked a heel to his mount’s side, and came upon Gryphon. “’Tis magical, no?”

“What? Your amazing ability to irritate?”

“No, my lady, the air, the sky, the—why the moment. Look all around, the moon glimmering upon the snow. ’Tis as if the faeries have danced about and laid their magical dust over all.”

“Speak not to me of the foul creatures,” she snapped.

“Foul—you mean—faeries?”

“There shall be no more talk of such.”

“Very well.” Baldwin smoothed a palm across the saddle pommel. That attempt at lightening the mood had gone over about as well as a cow tiptoeing through a pottery shop.

“They are mischievous, evil creatures,” Sera muttered.

Evil? He’d always thought faeries rather whimsical, fey things. Course, should the abbe Belloc discover he had such thoughts—well, it mattered not anymore. That dream had been dashed on the eve of the New Year.

Baldwin pressed his mount faster so he could hear Sera’s quiet words. She did not pay heed to her own request for silence. “When I was twelve my mother gave birth to my sister, Gossamer.”

He’d not known the d’Anges had another daughter. When Sera was twelve? That would have been, hmm…right around the time Elsbeth d’Ange had taken ill.

“Gossamer was but one month in the cradle when the faeries stole into my mother’s solar under the blackness of midnight and made the switch. A changeling they laid in the soft nest of silk and down where once my sister had cooed.”

Baldwin cringed at Sera’s dour recitation of the word, changeling. The mere thought of such a beast curdled a shiver from his spine up to his earlobes. Everyone knew changelings were hideous, sickly things; far from whimsical.

“The creature lived but a day. My mother was not the same after that. She grieved in silence, would but utter few words. She closed herself from others. I could see her limbs literally begin to curl in on themselves. Until finally she was so crippled she could not take up a needle or even walk without assistance. ’Twas then I took over her duties as chatelaine.”

“I’m so sorry,” Baldwin said, meaning it, and wishing he’d never tried to brighten the mood. Brighten? He’d just snuffed out any light that had existed. There was much he did not know about Seraphim d’Ange.

“No more mention of faeries?”

“Most certainly not—” A glimmer of steel flashed in the squire’s peripheral view. “What is that yonder?”

They came upon a lone rider dismounted at the edge of Pontoise. Moonlight poured over the sharp angles of his face and glittered in the plush snowflakes capping his shoulders.

Sera did quick reconnaissance of the man. Leather jerkin and braies, a grand black wool cloak ornamented with metallic-black stones around the collar. Hematite, she knew, a stone that quickened the blood. A two-handed battle sword and dagger glinted at his hip, both of simple design, with brown suede wrapped about each hilt.

No doubt a knight—no, his spurs were steel, not gold. Perhaps he was a mercenary, looking for his next purse.

“Good eve to you,” Baldwin called, as he and Sera passed by the stranger who had not yet opened his eyes, only appeared to be worshipping the moon. He must have heard their approach.

“It is,” the man finally responded.

Gryphon eased by the man’s white stallion. Seventeen hands for sure, Sera judged the remarkable beast from the added height it grew over Gryphon’s withers. Impressive.

“Headed for Pontoise?”

“If that is the name of yonder village, indeed I am.”

Sera wished the squire were not so friendly with strangers. They could trust no one. But the stranger did no more seem eager to share conversation than she.

As they completely passed him by, she turned at the waist, propped a fist on Gryphon’s hindquarter, and saw he still stood a silent sentinel, his face lifted to worship the moon-glow, his eyes closed.

The beginning of a black beard shadowed his square jaw. The trace of a mustache squared his lips in an inviting frame. Black shoulder-length hair glimmered blue, like Gryphon’s coat, in the eerie midnight illumination. A graceful, yet sharply boned profile, he possessed. Gluttony was not his vice. Perhaps a bit of pride, though. He could be a knight, valorous and brave, for not all wore the gold spurs when not riding in battle.

It might have been the play of moonlight—surely it was—for the man seemed to give off a glow of sorts. It caressed his figure, romancing him in a cocoon of white light.

“Sera?”

Caught in a silly swooning pose, Sera spun around and took up Gryphon’s reins, keeping her sight from what she sensed to be a smirk on the squire’s face. “Onward then,” she said.

But she could not resist twisting at the waist and stealing one final glance at the moon worshipper. And from deep inside her scarred and damaged being, the damsel she had once been emerged—and sighed.

TWO

“Bertrand, what say you?” Sera dangled a chunk of stringy brown food above her trencher, imploring the squire to comment.

“It is meat.” Her traveling partner shoved another piece of the greasy fare into his mouth. Whenever they came upon food he became focused and voracious in his endeavor to fill his belly.

“Aye, but what sort?” Pressing her lips together in consternation, Sera turned the meat this way and that. “I cannot determine, there is so much salt.”

“Most likely venison,” the squire muttered through a slobber of watered ale. “But say naught, for the king’s men could be within hearing distance.”

“Yes, but which king?” She prodded the remainder of her trencher with a fingertip, wincing at thought of consuming such unremarkable fodder. All her life she’d eaten her meals from plates. Oftentimes a fine silver fork had been provided, as well. This salted, stale, indeterminable fare she’d seen over the past week was enough to make one’s stomach close up and choose starvation over death by disgust.

“Certainly, it is not what you are accustomed to, my lord.” The squire was not one to disguise his frequent bouts of sarcasm. Not one of the reasons Sera had elected to have him accompany her on this quest. “You always receive the finest cuts, while the lower table is given this salted ferment, or if we are lucky, your table scraps.”

“Bernard, I’m sorry—”

“It is Baldwin,” he hissed, spattering his own trencher with spit. “And if you do not wish your portion then I shall gladly consume such, for I fear it will be another full day before we again stop to fill our bellies.”

If all went well. Sera figured a two-day journey to Creil. Tonight they would rest, then greet the dawn and ride the entire day through by following the winding Seine. It was critical they reach Creil as quickly as possible. No doubt word of Mastema’s death already beat a sweating horse’s trail to Abaddon’s ears. She did not want to give him more time than necessary to prepare.

“So, is it mine?”

A glance to Baldwin’s finger-pocked trencher found it bare of meat and gravy. At that moment Sera’s stomach moaned in protest. She had not been eating well, could feel it in the lightheadedness that accompanied her yowling innards. With three of the five de Mortes left to hunt down she must keep her wits about her, and her strength. This bitter battle must be fought—or die.

She bit into the hard chunk of salted deer. All she could do was offer a negative nod, for she suspected this small morsel would need a good chewing.

“I do believe we are on Charles VII’s land,” Baldwin added quietly. “That damned English king holds but Paris now, does he not?”

“Aye, the bastard,” Sera muttered, equally as quiet. ’Twas difficult to know who was one’s enemy with the English occupying Paris. Many a Frenchman had deserted and gone to serve Henri VI. They craved the organization and rumored frequent pay dates that were quite the rarity in the French musters.

Never, Sera thought to herself. I shall serve my homeland until I die. As had her father and her brother.

Fact was, Lucifer de Morte was allied with the English king. Another good reason to take his head.

“Ah, there,” Baldwin whispered. “Yonder comes your moonlight knight.”

“Do not speak so loud,” she muttered. A glance to the tavern door witnessed the cloaked stranger stroll in with but a nod to the barkeep and a cursory scan of the room. “You will raise suspicion.”

“What suspicion worries you? That my lord was romancing over another knight?”

“Baldwin!”

“Ah, so she does know my name. When it serves her authority.”

“Enough.” Sera lifted the pewter tankard to her lips and forced a swallow down her throat. While the watered-down spirits were anything but appetizing, just the feel of the cold liquid running down her wounded throat alleviated the haunting pain.

The large vessel also blocked the moonlight knight’s view of her face as he strode by the long trestle table where she and Baldwin sat across from a half dozen dirty-faced men.

The man sought out a lone chair at the back of the tavern. There in the darkness, a single candle set into an iron sconce shone upon his face and the scaled-armor gauntlets he tossed on the table before him. A serving wench, thin brown hair tucked up with a few pins, limped over to his side and, with a few exchanged words that Sera could not hear, she then wobbled away to retrieve—most likely—more inedible meat.

In the main room of the tavern, two knights who had been quietly exchanging defense instruction, now clanged weapons in a good-natured display of method. Metal rivets studded the leather jerkin of the barrel-chested fighter and clinked with the misplaced touch of a sword. The moonlight knight didn’t pay them a glance. Instead, his dark velvet eyes remained fixed on…Sera.

She quickly looked away and drew a finger along her crusted trencher, as if the food now promised great gastronomic delight. “He’s looking at us,” she hissed to the squire.

Baldwin, already breaking his rye trencher in half and preparing to devour that as well, glanced to the dark recess at the back of the tavern, making great display in turning his body completely, so anyone who might be looking would know his intentions.

“Don’t do that,” she pleaded hoarsely.

“He’s not looking at us,” Baldwin replied around a bite of bread. “He’s looking at you.”

“Me? N-no. Really?” The damask- and silk-clad damsel that Sera had been but a week earlier shivered beneath the chain mail and scars and butchered coif. To capture the eye of such a dashing man—was no longer thinkable. “Let’s be off, Bertrand.”

“I’m not finished.”

“Finish it in the stables. Our horses need tending.” She stood, but the squire made it clear he had no intention of moving until every last crumb of the gravy-soaked trencher swam in his gut.

Sera cast a sideways glance toward the knight sitting in the darkness. He inclined his head in acknowledgment at the pair.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Baldwin wondered.

“I did nod,” she lied. “Hurry. Methinks you are making me wait apurpose.”

“Dominique San Juste!” A gray-bearded man, dressed in olive hosen and wool cloak, crossed the room and set his tankard on the table before the moonlight knight.

Dominique? Sera toyed with the name in her mind as she placed a hand on Baldwin’s shoulder, staying him for the moment. ’Twas a fine enough name, honorable, elegant and…beguiling.

The one who’d called out the name was a burly old man with young blue eyes flashing above his long beard. A scar pinched the corner of his left eye shut and dipped to his nose. ’Twas a match to the scar that puckered the flesh on Sera’s throat.

“Good to see your ugly face again, man.”

Sera had to close her eyes and concentrate most fiercely to hear Dominique’s reply.

“You say Abaddon de Morte has plans to ride on Clermont in two days?”

“That was the word that blows on the wind,” the scarred man said. “Was, that is. There’s serious doubt the Demon of the North will leave his lair now with half his numbers obliterated by the black knight. They had been sent to aid Mastema’s siege, and did but a handful return to their master.”

“Ah yes, the infamous black knight. You wager he has set the rest of the de Mortes to a cowardly shiver behind their castle walls?”

The bearded man shrugged, scratched his generous belly. “Abaddon’s the biggest and strongest of them all. If any of the de Mortes were to stand off a single, armored man, it would be him. Though rumor tells Lucifer has hired a mercenary to stalk the black knight and cut him down before Abaddon need worry of breaking a sweat.”

“A mercenary? Lucifer not up to the task himself?”

“Perhaps shivering like a coward in his stinking lair. The black knight is a force! They say he rides into battle on his great dragon of a steed, the beast blowing smoke from its nostrils.”

Dominique waved his hand dismissively. Sera did not miss the mocking gesture. “Gossip tends to grow a man’s muscles tenfold and his amours by many hundreds,” he said.

“Aye, but the black knight swung his sword and severed Mastema de Morte’s head from his body with one swift and mighty blow.”

Baldwin shot up like a rabbit bit in the tail by a curious mastiff. He pressed his hooded visage close to Sera’s face. “You severed the man’s head?”

Sera looked away from the greasy-faced squire, zoning in on Dominique San Juste’s furrowed brow. The beguiling knight took great humor in listening to the man’s tale. He didn’t believe a word of it, she could fathom as much from the smile that wriggled his lips. Such white teeth beneath the thin black mustache. Captivating, in a most alarming way.

A hand clamped over her wrist, forcing Sera to redirect her attention. “You cut off the man’s head?”

She shrugged out of Baldwin’s greasy clutch and whispered, “So?”

Taking the eyeshot of a nearby traveler as warning she might speak too loudly and reveal more than she wished, Sera turned and stalked out of the tavern, followed closely by Baldwin. The slam of the heavy wood door released a mist of snowflakes upon their heads.

Baldwin skittered up on Sera’s heels, her pace intent for the stables. “That’s so…so…barbaric!”

She raised a brow, smirked, but did not slow her pace.

“That’s not you, you’re not that—bloody saints!—wicked!”

“I was mounted in the midst of battle,” she hissed under her breath. “The man needed to be taken down. I did what was necessary.”

He gained her side, a sad shake flapping the ragged wool hood on his head back and forth over his still-chewing cheeks. “You’re changing, Seraphim. This is no life for a woman.”

“You are not my lord and master, Bernard.”

Breathing in a deep breath, Sera put the squire’s comments from her thoughts. It would not do to think on what was wrong with her life. Only, she must focus on what must be done to avenge her family. With that vengeance would come peace for many thousands of French villagers who every day suffered at the hands of the de Mortes. The villains raped and pillaged and burned for reasons no more obvious than that of their own twisted pleasure.

For each de Morte slain, dozens of families would benefit.

The chill of nightfall slipped between her cheek and the rabbit fur lining her hood. Sera shook off a shiver and strode through muck of mud and snow to the stable.

Here in the stables it was warm, dank, and sweet with hay and animal-scent. Gryphon nuzzled into her cupped palm. Sera did the same against the magnificent beast’s warm neck. She slipped a hand over the knobby row of witch knots that Antoine kept braided into the glossy black mane. Fond memories of helping Antoine feed the horses and oxen early each morning before the sun broke the horizon filled Sera’s thoughts.

She recalled her insistent daily question to her brother. “When will you let me ride Gryphon?”

Antoine would always smile his wide, devil-take-me smile and chuck a knuckle under her chin. “You do have a way with Gryphon, I can see that. This beast won’t allow any but the two of us to touch him without putting up a raging fuss.”

“Today then?” she’d eagerly wonder, her fingers already curling around the saddle horn in preparation to mount.

“Soon,” Antoine would always say.

And Sera’s hopes would wilt. She knew he hadn’t been ready to share with her his one private passion. For she shared his every other passion, such as sword-fight, tending honor through patience and diligence, and respect for their parents.

“You were good for him,” she whispered now against Gryphon’s smooth black coat. She drew her fingers over the silky and thick hide, shimmery in the rush-light glow. “I know you miss him, but you serve your former master well in allowing me to ride you now. Thank you, Gryphon. Together we will avenge my family’s cruel demise.”

“Not if you insist upon such theatrics.” The squire’s voice echoed in from the stable doors. “Riding into the midst of battle on your great and fiery dragon-steed? A swing of your sword decapitating the enemy? Sera!”

“I don’t want to hear it.” She pat Gryphon’s rear flank and picked up a curry comb that hung from an iron hook on the wall. The horse bristled his coat as she smoothed vigorously over it with the brush. “You may leave my service if you wish.”

“I—your serv—” He struggled to place his tongue on the words.

Sera knew the man had nowhere else to go. He was hopelessly lost when it came to religious pursuits. And toad-eaters were certainly out of vogue.

With a curt straightening of his shoulders and a proud thrust of his chin, Baldwin replied, “I would never.”

“Then silence your objections from this day forth. Do you understand?”

Baldwin Ortolano, tall and slim, his hands and wrists jutting way beyond the hem of his borrowed shirtsleeves, merely nodded, defeated. “I fear my attempts to cease uttering oaths may have to be renewed should I remain by your side.”

“It is not me you must answer to in your final days,” she said. The curry comb skimmed through Gryphon’s sleek hide, warming her fingertips with the brisk motion.

“You would do well to remember the same,” he said.

The fine wire brush stopped on a glossy patch of hide. When her final day did come Sera knew exactly who would ask of her mortal sins. And she did not fear Him. She could not. She was doing the right thing. So many lives would be spared with the swing of her sword.

Though, she sensed there was a deeper reason she had taken on the quest. But that reason was not immediately to hand. Normal females did not take to the sword to sever heads. What was she doing? There was no doubt she had not a clue beyond that she was angry. On the other hand, ’twas very much…a compulsion to battle. She knew not why, only that the rage that boiled within pushed her. Enticed her forward. Someone had to put an end to the de Mortes’ reign of terror.

And that someone would be her.

“Creil is another two days’ journey,” the squire offered in the silence of torch flicker and horse chawing. “Might we bed down here tonight and start afresh in the morn?”

“That is what I intended.”

Baldwin’s sigh of relief could have been heard in the dark cacophony of yonder tavern. Sera smiled, but turned her face to Gryphon’s flank so the squire would not see such emotion.

“Shall we get a room?”

“Is there one available?”

“I believe there is.”

“You have my coin stashed safely?”

“I do.” He patted his hip where a conglomeration of baldric, gauntlets, leather bone-bag, and wool cape made it impossible to determine just how slender the man really was. He kept her coin in his codpiece, Sera knew, from the rhythmic tink that accompanied his strides.

“We’ve enough to see us through many months.” Though she prayed this quest would end much sooner. “Go ahead. One room. I shall sleep on the floor.”

Already eagerly on his way to make arrangements, Baldwin stopped in the doorway. He turned with a pained moan and pinched grimace. “Sera, you know I will not sleep a single wink should you be lying on the floor while I have a straw pallet to cradle my weary bones.”

“Are you propositioning me, squire?” Sera peeked under her arm to catch his reaction.

“Why no!”

He blushed a deep crimson. The two of them had never shared more than a brief nod in passing through her father’s castle, or whispered morning prayers in the chapel. But she had heard of his former profession, the very reason that pressed him to seek atonement by applying to the church. Baldwin Ortolano had done things to survive—cheating, lying, stealing—acts that branded him a criminal. Those same acts also fashioned him imperfectly human. And she certainly needed human right now, imperfections and all.

“If the bed is wide, we can share. We shall lie so our heads are opposite one another’s feet. What say you?”

Baldwin lifted a suede-booted foot and rubbed it along his opposite ankle. “I’m not sure…”

Sera gestured through the air with the brush. “I’ve smelled worse than your feet in my lifetime. Now be gone with you. Run up and find us a room with a fire and have it blazing for me when I return.”

“Yes, my lady—er, my lord.”

A while later, Baldwin strode out of the Dragon’s Eye, pleased that his mistress’s coin had purchased them a fine room with a wide bed, fresh water (melted-down snow for washing), and clean straw.

Sera hadn’t come in from the stables, and an odd twinge of foreboding had prompted him to seek her out. She was, after all, a woman. A young female of four and twenty who should not be left to defend herself against any danger that should approach.

Oh, he knew Sera was not your average amiable, submissive female. He’d lived at the d’Ange castle for nine months, and in that time had learned Sera had taken over chatelaine duties when she was but twelve. Elsbeth d’Ange, Sera’s mother, had developed twisted joints that would not allow her to do anything with her hands, save brush aside the bed curtains to receive her maids.

He now knew that affliction had come following the abduction of Elsbeth’s newborn daughter. Faeries, eh? Fine enough, the little winged creatures. But the idea of a changeling, mewling in a newborn’s crib…well, it just gave Baldwin the shivers.

When Sera could not be found taking accounts in the larder, or purchasing food and fabric at market, or mending clothing, or shearing sheep, she stole a free moment here and there to practice in the lists with her father and brother. An unusual female, Seraphim d’Ange, in that she wanted to do it all. If her brother Antoine could do it, she could as well.

And her father had encouraged her masculine pursuits. Marcil d’Ange, a stalwart lord possessed of a compassionate but fierce heart, had treated Sera as if a son, but not without the occasional gentle smile and knowing wink.

Beyond such knowledge of her abilities, the fact that Sera had beheaded two of France’s most notorious villains still troubled Baldwin. When ensconced in the black armor and charging through the roar of battle cries with a steel-clashing sword, Sera rode a strange sorcery that tricked her mind into believing she would succeed.

Baldwin prayed that sorcery would keep its hold on her until this quest was finished. For if and when she did fall, it would be a hard fall, indeed.

Just as he had suspected! A strange man leaned over a figure lying on the freshly spiked straw at the end of the stable. Long, narrow legs and wide hands splayed over the nest—he stood over Sera!

In a cacophony of tinking coins, jangling bones, and breathy huffs, Baldwin dashed through the stable door. He tripped up his feet on a block of wood, righted himself with the expert skill he’d developed since his teen years had seen to stretching his limbs to ridiculous lengths, then scrambled to the end stall where Gryphon was tied.

Before Baldwin could blurt out an angry shout, the man turned and backed away from Sera, acknowledging the squire with a nod. ’Twas the dark-haired knight that had set Sera to a swoon.

“That is my lord at rest, and I shall thank you to leave her—er, him at rest.”

Baldwin knew his eyes bugged at that slip, a response to mistruths he had never been able to tame. Indeed, he’d played a blind toad-eater, wearing a scarf over his eyes to keep the innocents from reading his grift.

He clutched the bag of bones tied at his waist. For strength. “Pray, tell what you think you are doing, sir?”

“Forgive me.” The man raised his hands briefly to show he had no ill intentions, then stepped back. “I was just seeking my own resting place for the night. All the rooms are taken.”

Baldwin took a moment to look over Sera. On her back, the heavy mail tunic pressed her body into a snug nest of straw. Her hood was still up and her eyes were closed, a soft snore purring from her mouth. So tired, she hadn’t even made it to the room he’d rented. But, thankfully, curiously androgynous under cover of sleep.

“What is wrong with him?”

“Hmm?” Baldwin turned and looked over the man. Two black eyes beamed at him. Dark hair slicked over his ears, and a shadow of a beard progressed dash-and-scatter from his cheeks to his jaw. There lived an eerie peacefulness in the depths of those eyes. Perhaps he was a little handsome—ah, hell! What was he thinking?

“Your master.” The man gestured to Sera. “To look over his face one would wonder…”

Sweet Mother of Wonder, did the man suspect?

“Is he ill?”

“Ill?” Not the suspicion Baldwin had feared. He swallowed a melon-size gulp and tried to act nonchalant. He pressed his hand to the stable wall, crossed his legs at the ankle—and winced at the pinch of coin digging into his delicates. “Wh-why do you say that?” He quickly uncrossed his legs.

“It is only because he looks it. Those dark crescents under his eyes and the gaunt flesh over bone… Mayhap he is frail?”

“He is no thinner than I, my lord.”

The obsidian eyes of the stranger took in Baldwin’s lank frame. Dressed in squire’s tunic and the tight-fitted brown leggings borrowed from yet another dead man, Baldwin felt awkward and exposed. But better to distract attention to himself.

“You’re not a soldier, are you?”

“A postulant, actually. I am soon to become a monk.” Though for as much as that was worth anymore, he might just as well go back to eating toads.

“Really? I thought you a squire to this man’s knight.”

“Well…” Baldwin twisted his head upon his neck, fighting the sin of mistruth even as he babbled a thousand lies. Closing his eyes to avoid discovery, he offered, “That, too.”

“Have you a condition yourself, man?”

“Condition?”

“Your eyes—”

“No. No, no…just, you see—I’m terrible exhausted, my lord. Traveling all day, you know. It tends to tire my eyes.”

“Indeed.” Not a spark of belief in the stranger’s condescending tilt of head. “Pray tell, what is your lord’s name?”

“My lord?”

“Yes, the man lying here on the straw.”

Baldwin shrugged, felt the color of blood flush his cheeks hotly. “My lord?”

“You just said that.”

“That is what I call, er…him. My—my lord.”

“Ah. But he must have a name?”

“He is of the d’Anges.” Yes, and leave it at that, Baldwin thought.

For the week they had traveled the roads the moniker of the Black Knight had served Sera’s alibi. He could not just announce to this man that “my lord” was really “my lady.” He couldn’t tell anyone, for that matter. Much as he wished an entire army backing he and Sera on this suicidal quest.

“D’Ange.” The knight, in thought, thumbed the scruff of his beard. “Were they not set upon by Lucifer de Morte? I thought the entire family murdered by that bastard less than a fortnight ago?”

“Yes, well, there were…” Baldwin fidgeted with a stray point that dangled from his shirt, and closed his eyes, “two brothers… One survived.”

“I see.” The knight cast another glance over Sera’s inert figure, then flashed his eerie eyes upon Baldwin. “And his name?”

“Who, sir?”

“The man sleeping on the floor. Your master?”

“Er, Antoine.” Baldwin gripped the bag of bones tightly. Pity he hadn’t been able to procure Jude the Obscure’s wrist bone last market day. ’Twas the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes, he. And this lie was certainly hopeless. “Yes, Antoine d’Ange.”

“Antoine d’Ange.” The stranger walked a few paces across the straw-littered floor, then turned on Baldwin, drawing his angular face up close until his breath hushed in cold clouds across Baldwin’s nose. Within the depths of the steely black eyes, Baldwin sensed the Fates toyed with his string at this very moment. “You’re lying to me, squire.”

“I am not a sq—er—squire. Yes, indeed. I am a squire.”

“Liar.”

“I am but a novice! I—I am not yet accustomed to answering to that title.”

“There is something up.”

“What is that, sir?” Damn, but he needed that bone!

The knight fit his hands at his hips. His studded leather jerkin skimmed his knees, and shiny black boots shrouded his legs from thigh down to his spurred heels. He was a tall man, slender, but possessed of thick arms and muscled wrists capable of matching blows in battle. “I had better find my own nest of straw before all the drunkards come spilling out of the tavern. Good eve to you, squire.”

“Good eve—” All the drunkards?

Baldwin flashed his gaze over Sera’s peaceful form. How soon before someone discovered she was a woman? And what would they then do to her—no, he didn’t want to think of it. He’d heard one perfectly horrific tale of abuse from Sera, had seen enough…

He could not leave her alone.

Baldwin glanced to the tavern, up to the second floor where he and Sera’s room waited. Already paid for. A warm bed waiting to cradle his tired, aching limbs. ’Twould be a shame to let it go to waste.

A sniffle, a crunch of hay, and the chink of chain mail accompanied Sera’s turn upon her makeshift bed. She curled on her side, pocketing her hands up near her chin, her knees arrowing toward her stomach. Sleeping like a babe. A woman’s position.

“You will be the death of me yet,” Baldwin muttered. “You there!” He hailed the stranger back over to his side. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Dominique San Juste,” the knight offered with a short bow. The black stones set around his cloak collar clicked with the graceful movement.