ALDRIC
The greatsword comes off the wall easily, and it feels as if it has never left my hand.
Seven centuries of dust have not touched it—I would not permit that—and the grip settles into my palm much like Clara settles against my side in sleep. I strap the scabbard across my back over my coat. No armor. Armor is for men who fear dying, and I have been denied that particular luxury.
Schmetterling waits on the courtyard wall, a gray shape against the last of the light.
“Guard the keep,” I tell him.
He stares at me, tail still, and for the first time in three hundred years he does not argue.
I haven’t left Blackthorn Keep and its surrounding land in hundreds of years.
This is the first time I have truly been free in longer than most nations have existed.
And yet, I am not thinking of my freedom.
Freedom is Clara. The world without her in it is a prison far worse than the one I’ve endured all this time.
The drag marks end at a logging road two kilometers past the lake, where tire tracks bite deep into soft mud. A modern vehicle, a heavy one, turned east. Her scent ends there too, but the road only goes two ways, and I can see the direction of their travel by the mud spatter.
I run.
The forest becomes a blur in the dark, and my legs do not tire, will never tire, and for the first time since the crone poured her dust into my wine, I am grateful for what she made of me.
A living man would have to stop. A living man would fall gasping in the bracken while Marco poured himself a drink.
I am not a living man.
The cabin sits above the valley, glowing like a lantern. A wall of glass faces the slope, golden light spilling out onto a wooden deck, and behind that glass men move back and forth like soldiers who believe the war is elsewhere, their postures relaxed.
The wind shifts, and I smell elderberry and basil and the copper tang of Clara’s blood.
My hands clench into fists at my sides.
He made her bleed.
I do not bother with a quiet approach from behind. I was never that kind of conqueror.
The front door is oak, iron-hinged, and it holds against my boot for less than a second. Apparently, they no longer build things as they once did. It leaves its frame entirely and takes a coat rack with it, and I step over both, drawing the greatsword as I come.
A man with a tattooed neck reaches me first. He is fast for someone so big.
He is not too fast for me. He swings a weapon I don’t recognize toward my chest, and I take his wrist and introduce him to the nearest wall with the full courtesy of my strength.
The wall wins. He slides down it and does not resume our wordless discussion.
The shouting begins then. Italian, fast and surprised, accompanied by stomping boots.
Another man comes at me, raising what I now recognize is a small pistol.
I’ve seen drawings and schematics of such weapons since their inception, but in these modern times, they seem obscenely small in a grown man’s hand.
His expression is blank and steady… right up until the firelight reaches me.
Until he sees the eye. The glow bleeding through my shirt. The sword taller than his employer.
“Che cosa—”
Whatever I am, he decides to shoot it. Sensible man.
I’m already moving when the muzzle flashes. The bullet hits my left shoulder, going straight through with a bite of pain. This wound will not close. None of my wounds do anymore.
“You should feel honored,” I tell the man. “That is the most lasting thing you have ever made.”
He does not get a second shot. I thrust my greatsword, impaling him on it straight through the chest. I carry him backward on the blade, three steps, right into the wall of glass and a view of the valley I must admit is impressive.
It shatters around him, and I withdraw my blade, leaving him in the ruin of shards.
The last man is standing by the cold fireplace with a pistol in his shaking hand.
I know him at once. His clothes are tailored out of expensive fabric, and his hair is cut with a barber’s precision.
He has the face of a man who has purchased everything he has ever pointed at.
I must admit he is handsome, and for a moment, I feel irrational jealousy.
But Clara did not choose to be with this man out of love or even desire.
And she surely didn’t choose to be with him now. No, he took her, and he hurt her.
“Stay back.” His voice doesn’t shake as much as his hand. I’ll grant him that. “Do you know who I am? Do you know what family I—”
I cross the room and close my fingers over the pistol and the hand holding it, then twist until the gun drops. He screams through clenched teeth, and I grab him by the throat, pressing him against the mantel.
Somewhere in the cabin, fists hammer against wood, accompanied by Clara’s voice demanding answers.
She’s alive.
The relief nearly undoes me, but I don’t let it show.
“Dio mio, what are you?” Marco rasps. His eyes are wide and terrified, and I can see the reflection of mine in them.
“Hers,” I answer, a simple truth.
He tries to claw at my hand, but I barely feel it.
“C—Clara? She’s my fiancée—”
I don’t let him finish, squeezing harder. “She is your unwilling captive.”
Marco blinks, his eyes watering. “Please,” he squeaks after a moment. “Please. I’ll disappear. She’ll never see me again, I swear it, I swear on my mother—”
I press my sword against his chest, against his beating heart. It may not be cold crystal, but he never once used it.
“You struck her,” I intone like a judge passing a sentence. “I smell her blood. The punishment for striking the lady of Blackthorn Keep is death.”
His mouth opens, but I don’t let him speak.
The blade goes through him and into the stone behind, and I hold him upright against the mantel until the light leaves his eyes. Then I let him fall into a heap on the floor.
“I swear to god, if anyone can hear me—what’s happening up there? WHO GOT SHOT?”
My knees nearly buckle at the sound of her voice, then I bark out a laugh. Of course she is interrogating the door. Of course she is.
I cross the great room, moving toward her like she’s a siren calling to me from shipbreaking rocks. I stop in front of a door with the key in the lock. Her prison.
I turn the key and open the door.
She stands three steps down, lit from below, a wine bottle gripped by the neck in one fist like a club. Her lip is split, and her chin is dark with dried blood, and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. My warrior princess.
“Little intruder,” I say, my voice hoarse.
Clara drops the bottle, and it shatters against the stone stairs. She takes the steps in two bounds and collides with my chest. I fold my arms around her, bloody sword and all, and she is warm and shaking and alive.
“You came,” she says into my shirt. “You enormous gothic idiot, you came. Aldric, they had guns.”
“They did.” I tip her chin up with two fingers, my eyes narrowing on her split lip. My expression must darken, because her hands come up to my face.
“Hey. Hey,” she murmurs. “Eyes here. I’m okay.”
My lungs heave like bellows. “He struck you.”
“And you struck back, judging by the redecorating.” She looks past my arm at the great room and its contents. At first, she looks equally sickened and satisfied by the sight. Then her eyes find my shoulder and go wide. “Aldric. You’re shot.”
“It passed through.”
“It passed—” She jams her finger through the hole in my coat, finds the matching hole in me, and makes a sound like a kettle. “It’s not going to heal!”
“One more scar for the collection.” I catch her hand and press her fingers flat over my heart instead, where the light beats against her palm. “A small price. I would have taken every bullet in this house.”
“That’s not romantic, you buffoon.” But her eyes are shining, and she rises onto her toes and kisses me despite her split lip. She tastes like Clara and like copper, and I would raze a thousand cabins to be reunited with her like this.
When she pulls back, she wipes her eyes with her sleeve and squares her shoulders.
“Right. Okay. Is there anyone left up there I should scream at?”
I raise my eyebrows. “No one left at all.”
“Good.” A breath shudders out of her. “Good.”
I sheathe the greatsword across my back and lift her, and she wraps herself around me without argument for once, her arms around my neck, her cheek against my mangled ear, weightless as a banner. I carry her out of the ruined cabin into the night air, and she does not look back once.
“The trout has gone cold,” I tell her as we enter.
“Heat it up when we get there. Unless Shmoo ate them all while we were gone.”
She burrows closer, her breath warm against my throat, and her next words hit me hard enough to leave another permanent mark.
“Take me home.”