14. Chapter 14
Owain
I was just pulling my boots back on when Muffin came barreling toward me, wiry fur along his back fully extended, making a whimpering, growling sound of extreme agitation.
Lunette.
I knew all the way down to my bones that something was wrong. Pain didn’t register as I jumped to my feet and jogged up the path she’d disappeared down a few minutes before. Muffin’s furry brown shape vanished into the dense underbrush, the rustling of leaves the only clue that he was following.
As I moved, everything faded. I didn’t know how I knew which direction she was in. I simply knew.
Underbrush tore at my legs. The cold air cut into my still-recovering lungs like glass. An image formed unbidden in my mind. I saw nothing but her slight frame backed against a tree, eyes wide, lips trembling. Someone touching her. Someone hurting her.
Her shout reached me a second later. My heart stopped then beat twice as fast. She sounded angry, not pained, thank the gods.
I crested the rise just as a large man wearing chainmail grabbed her arm.
He touched her. My world narrowed to that single fact. Doesn’t deserve to have arms.
In my mind, I envisioned severing both, affording him enough time to reflect on the reasons for his painful death.
A thought drifted up like rising smoke from the quiet corner of my mind where I’d suppressed everything about being Nocthel.
This is not wickedness. It is instinct.
Right now, instinct felt like serving bloody justice. A sound, raw with murderous intent, ripped from my throat.
The man’s head snapped toward me, shock widening his eyes. A second man stood behind him, trimmer, wearing a patchwork of leather armor and holding a poorly made sword. That one might be fast.
Yet Lunette wasn’t cowering like my running nightmare had shown. No, she’d dug her fingers into the arm of the man who’d grabbed her. Neither mercenary had the hum of magic about them, so neither could feel what she was poised to unleash, but I could.
It was…dark. Darker than my own shadows. Nothing like the warm healing magic I’d felt from her. That had been moonlight chasing away the dark. This was something that knew exactly where to go and what to ruin when it got there. I’d never heard of a healer with such a power.
I had no idea what she planned to do, but I wasn’t about to wait around to see. So I kept running. The large man yanked her forward by the wrist as the second man reached to grab her shoulder. They thought to use her as a shield.
Disgusting cowards.
A perfectly balanced obsidian blade formed in my grip. A split second after, I felt it. As potent and swift as any battlemage, Lunette unleashed the rapid surge of dark energy at the first man.
His hand immediately dropped from her wrist, and he looked at her with terror-stricken horror. But that wasn’t all. That same hand bent, swinging once, twice, like a pendulum hanging loosely within his sleeve. His fingers didn’t move. She’d ripped apart the architecture of it from the inside.
What is this?
The answer tried to surface, and I shoved it down with both hands. She was safe. That was what mattered. Everything else could wait.
I swung. The shadows were silent as they cut the air, shearing cleanly through his mail, flesh, and bone.
I could’ve disarmed him, but I chose not to. Because the darkest part of me reveled in the justice of the severed hand that had dared touch her hitting the ground with a soft thud. Blood sprayed, and he staggered backward, clutching the stump with an expression of horror on his face.
“Rowan!” Lunette gasped, alerting me to the second mercenary lunging at me with a short sword.
I almost got hit. I parried in time, but the impact sent a shock of pain through my injured side, leaving me gasping for air. My movements lacked their usual precision. I gritted my teeth and focused on controlling my magic.
I could let it run wild, turn the road black with shadows and red with blood like I had during the attack on the caravan. But given the state of my body—even with Luna’s mending—I didn’t know if I’d remain conscious after. That would leave her vulnerable.
More importantly, I didn’t want her to see me like that.
I’d been right about the second mercenary’s speed. He saw the opening and took a swing at me.
Swing away.
There was only one ending to this, because he’d made the fatal mistake of threatening her. I wanted him to feel pain for that, to suffer, but that damned line from the children’s book taunted me.
So I dropped beneath the swing, ignoring the hollow feeling traveling up my arm as a second shadow-knife solidified in my other hand. This one was shorter, curved like the ones they carry in Wynth. My upward thrust caught him across the inner thigh, slicing through the large artery buried there.
The trees echoed with the sound of his scream as blood poured down his leathers. He’d bleed out in less than five minutes. It would give him time for prayers, if nothing else.
Better than he deserves.
My restraint wasn’t flawless. I kicked his body to the ground, feeling the blood pour down my side from where I’d ripped Lunette’s careful stitches. I turned to finish his friend. He was still clutching his stump, Lunette standing over him like she was considering healing him.
She was too good. Had too much compassion.
And I had enough darkness for both of us.
She glanced up at the sound of my approach and immediately backed away—not scared, thank the gods.
She lifted her chin and fixed a surprisingly steady gaze on me.
There wasn’t a scrap of judgment there. Only…
understanding. The unexpectedness of it meant my feet kept moving forward without hesitation.
I drove the mercenary backward at the tip of my blade until his spine hit the nearest oak. I pinned him there, blade pressed under his jaw, drawing a trickle of blood. The coppery tang invaded my nostrils, making the feral thing inside me scream for more.
So I pressed harder, parting skin. But before my next breath, the words flashed before my eyes: To guard without cruelty.
Was cruelty defined by action or intention?
It didn’t seem to matter to me when it came to protecting Lunette.
I wanted him to bleed. Wanted him afraid. Really, I wanted to chop his fucking head off.
“Touch her again,” I said, voice softened by the revelation, “and you won’t see another sunrise. Who sent you?”
He coughed. Gurgled something about orders, about a bounty, and a missing noble the Mage Assembly wanted back in their care.
Back in their care?
My evocation magic wasn’t as strong as my conjuration powers, but I could feel flames rising beneath my skin from my restraint fraying to tatters.
The fucking Assembly had attacked my caravan to keep me from reaching Tir Gelida. To keep Larethia from forming a marriage alliance with their princess. To stop peace. Now they were sending mercenaries to put me in chains?
It didn’t matter, because after years of keeping it caged, of pressing it down until I couldn’t breathe beneath duty and protocol, the blinding rage that flared at the confirmation of my fears threatened to consume me. I moved to pin his neck to the tree with the tip of my sword.
“Wait, wait…” he blubbered. “My life in return for how we found you.”
I growled, “Why the fuck do you think I care?” I would let him live if that was what she wanted.
“Artifact,” he squeaked.
A bead of blood ran down his neck from where my blade held him. “Talk.”
“We knew you disappeared somewhere around here after the fight. The fancy mage gave us a ring. Said it tracked tainted magic.”
Had I already tainted her with my presence?
Yes, the answer was yes, a truth that resonated deep within me the instant the idea took shape. If they could track my magic, they could track her.
My fear turned to a cold, calculating focus honed in on protecting her.
The Assembly didn’t send two men into the borderlands on a guess.
They sent two men when they were reasonably certain, and a dozen more when they wanted results.
These two were scouts. Which meant more were prowling the foothills of the borderlands looking for me.
The only positive aspect of the entire encounter was their apparent lack of knowledge about Lunette.
The urge to end this now was nearly overwhelming. Especially when his eyes flicked to her.
“’Cept the ring pointed us to her. Witch hexed my hand!”
I knew of one person who’d touched a magic ring and gone mad. But this man seemed sane, merely foolish to think that two mundane mercenaries could kill a mage—even an injured one.
But I guess I wasn’t just a mage anymore. I was a Nocthel. “Where’s the ring?”
“On the hand you demons took,” he whined.
I was beyond caring what this human trash had left. But apparently, Lunette cared. Tension radiated from her as she swallowed emotion behind me.
I couldn’t help but glance back. Concern, fear, maybe something else entirely flickered across her face.
And the bastard took my distraction as an opportunity to try to open my belly with a hidden knife.
But I was faster.
I drove the blade upward, burying it in the bearded man’s throat. He went still instantly, blood pouring down his neck and my blade, arms going limp as his body scraped down the rough bark of the trunk.
The moment he hit the forest floor, my knees nearly buckled and my conjured weapon vanished. Pain crashed over me, and black spots danced across my vision. I’d pushed my body too hard.
The pain was nothing compared to the grim calculations now flooding my mind.
Two men sent. Two men dead. The Assembly would notice when they didn’t return, and they would send better equipped, better informed men with a far clearer picture of what they were looking for now that their ring had pointed somewhere unexpected.
I’d led them straight to her. The thought settled in my gut like swallowed glass.
Lunette was already there, her shaking hands reaching to be my support.
“Rowan,” she whispered. “Are you hurt? Did they—”