29 Clare
29 Clare
Clare Grandhart was getting his ass kicked.
In fairness, the fight was ten against one. Furthermore, his hand was already bruised from his duel with the intrepid impersonator.
Not that he was making excuses.
He had been thrown out of the tavern, which, like most in Vermillion Vale, unfortunately opened onto the indoor gambling hall,
not the outside road. Instead of landing on soft terrain, Clare wound up crashing onto one of the nearby gaming tables with
a thud. Chips went flying. Cards were flung from gamblers’ grasps. With startled cries, panicked guests fled. Clare hoped
none of their hands had been good. He’d known the pain himself of a wayward fight interrupting a winning streak.
Other pains found him now. His whole upper half hurt, courtesy of the Order’s flurry of fists. He winced and hauled himself
up. When one of his assailants lunged, he managed to redirect the man’s momentum, ramming his head into the gaming table.
The victory was short-lived. Three more Order men descended on him, kicking him in the ribs.
Clare wondered how much worse one day in Vermillion Vale could possibly get.
“Where’s all that heroism I keep hearing about?” Leonor the Overlord mocked, striding up while his companions continued their handiwork. Is it handiwork if they use their feet? It mattered not. “Ten fucking long years of Clare Grandhart being declared Mythria’s finest,” Leonor went on. “Look at you
now.”
Replying was difficult under Clare’s circumstances. Instead, he fought to stand from all fours.
He did not get far. Leonor kicked him hard, right in the gut. The man was muscle personified, which, Clare knew, drove his
resentment for Clare uniquely. One of Mythria’s most popular horseball players until his personal politics leaned into overthrowing
the queen, Leonor was exactly the sort who had once imagined Spark’s Sport Potions sponsorships for himself. Nothing warped
men like perceived entitlement deferred.
With the kick, Clare fell onto his side, wheezing. The casino floor where his foes were surrounding him—the well-lit gaming
tables now empty, the guests having fled—was unyielding, the slick stone offering him no purchase. He was faring poorly, if
he was honest with himself. He used to know how to take a beating, how to block out the pain and will himself to keep moving.
He’d gone too long without real fighting, however. In the comfort of luxurious Farmount, his days full of indulgence, he’d
lost his grasp on the man who had once earned his fame and fortune.
He was not living up to the heroism he chased, which he’d proven perfectly well outside. What’s more, while heroes did find
themselves in predicaments like his present, he could not picture Galwell on the ground, gasping, clumsy, outnumbered.
Yet he was not Clare Grandhart, either. Not the old Clare, the outlaw who could withstand punches without flinching.
Which left—who? If he could not fight, and he could not lead, and he was not worthy of the woman he loved, he was... no
different from the performer he’d wrestled outside.
He was just one more Clare impersonator in an endless crowd of them.
“When the Order is restored to its rightful place,” Leonor continued, evidently enjoying the fine practice of villain speeches
overmuch, “when Todrick rises and rules the realm the way it should be ruled, people like you will be relegated to where you belong.” He stepped over Clare. “Beneath... my... boot,” he
said slowly, savoring the words, while his heavy heel pressed Clare’s face into the polished stone floor.
Out of Clare’s existential embarrassment, panic surged forth. He tried to buck, wrestling to escape, but hands held him down
everywhere. Tears sprang into his eyes while the pressure mounted on his jaw.
Until the very moment he knew he could withstand no more.
Then, release. Leonor’s boot lifted. “Let’s head out, boys,” the Overlord directed his men. “I reckon we’ll not even need
to tie him up. Grandhart is more pathetic than I thought.”
The Order men removed their hands. Clare half-wished they would resume punching him. Shame inflicted deeper wounds now. He
seethed on the ground. When he struggled to right himself under the casino’s unflinching lights, his punished muscles would
not cooperate.
Leonor laughed. “Told you.” He knelt down in front of Clare, looking him in the eye. “You should have joined the Order when
you had the chance. But I suppose you’ll help us in the end. You’re to be our gift to Todrick,” he explained. Somber reverence
grasped the man’s voice. “One final soul for the Sword of Souls, taken from one of the Four responsible for his death.”
Clare’s vision blurred. He fought to hold on to consciousness. His opponent’s words didn’t help. One final soul. It was perfect, really. He had to commend the Order for their flair for poetry.
Behind Leonor, the doors of a lift opened. People inside gasped when they saw Clare, and then the doors closed on their frightened
faces.
No one was coming for Clare Grandhart.
Yet he would not give up. He thought of Galwell, who never ran out of strength. While the hands of the Order’s men hauled
him up, his mind strayed to more of his heroes. To Elowen, who had faced so many fears in so few days. To Vandra, who was
fighting for a better life despite her past. To Beatrice. Who despite every hurt they’d inflicted on each other had wanted
to kiss him today.
He did not know whether he could ever be worthy of his fame. He just knew he needed to be worthy of his friends.
With every bit of vigor he could muster, he rose up. Headbutting backward, he connected with the nose of the man holding his
arm. It worked marvelously. The man cried out in pain, releasing Clare. Freed, Clare limped toward the lifts.
He focused on the lift doors. The magic lanterns’ light illuminated the gold frame. The effect was ethereal. Salvation itself.
Right as he reached his destination, someone grabbed him and shoved him up against the closed doors, ready to smash his face
in. “It’s over,” the Order man growled. “You’re done.”
Clare grinned. Surprise stopped his assailant’s fist. “You’ve forgotten one thing,” Clare said, feeling like Galwell about
to storm the Order’s stronghold. “I’m Clare fucking Grandhart.”
His catchphrase didn’t need eloquence. Not when it had heart.
As the words left his mouth, he went limp. The lift doors opened, and he fell inside, exactly like he planned. His maneuver
unsteadied the man enough for Clare to kick him off, sending him stumbling.
It left Clare sprawled on his back on the lift floor—which was when he realized the lift was not empty.
Over him stood Beatrice.
Understandably, she looked shocked. She’d changed her clothes, he noticed. Would she have caught his eye were she clad entirely
in rough-spun cloth? Yes. Was the white blouse she wore belted into her leggings desperately distracting?
Definitely.
Their gazes met, both of them stunned silent for a heartbeat. The last time they’d locked eyes, she’d run from him, from the
kiss she wished he had not witnessed. Perhaps, he intuited, enclosing herself in a small lift with him was not the refuge
she’d intended.
However, he did not have the chance to wonder if she would leave him again. In the next instant, she was pulling her arm back
to land a solid punch on Leonor, who was trying to climb into the lift.
The hammering strike pulverized the Overlord’s nose. He withdrew clumsily, crying out while blood poured down his face. While
Beatrice urgently pressed the spelled runes on the wall, prompting the doors to slide shut, they could hear Leonor howl.
“Fall back!” he commanded his men in wretched frustration. “It’s only a matter of time!” he yelled at the closing doors, to
them. “Tomorrow there’ll be no hiding from the Order!”
Beatrice tensed, her fighting stance ready, her eyes flashing. She was poetry in combat, Clare found himself observing. His
favorite sorts of poetry were lyrics of hard-fought victories—and, in recent years, love songs. Watching her, he could not
decide which one rang louder in his pounding head.
Her gaze rounded on him. No poetry echoed in her ears, he noted. Sharp evaluation swept over him.
“You’re hurt,” she commented.
“The Order is here,” he explained. “They jumped me.” He was grateful for the safety of the lift.
She knelt, wiping blood from his lip gently as she examined his face for injury. “I figured,” she murmured.
Beneath them, the lift rose. Carrying them up, into the sky. It filled Clare with an odd euphoria. “You kissed me,” he stated.
Her finger paused. Her eyes narrowed.
“Is now really the time?” she asked.
Yet hidden within her irritation, he heard— yes . She wanted to know how he felt on the subject. “We could find ourselves in this lift with Todrick himself and I would still
consider the matter of you kissing me to be the most pressing issue on my mind,” he said.
She laughed a little at that. How he loved her laugh. It was like the glimpse one could catch of the crescent moon in daylight
on summer evenings when the sun had not entirely set.
“You’re concussed,” she said, covering for how he’d charmed her.
When she reached up to turn his head to the side, continuing her examination, he grabbed her hand.
“I’m thinking more clearly than I have in ten years,” he replied.
If she wished to reject him now, she could. He would not, however, have her mistaking his devotion for a medical malady.
That silenced her. Swiftly, she stood, ending her inspection of him—rather prematurely, he felt. He knew no healer or heart
magician who could relieve pain the way the charge in her eyes erased every hurt from his pummeled body. He felt new. He felt
fucking fantastic .
Rising to his feet, he followed the wondrous feeling. He stepped toward her, pressing her against the railing in front of
the transparent spelled wall of the lift. Past them, Vermillion Vale lay spread out under the sky. The lift ascended slowly,
showing off the Vale’s panorama. The road of glittering inns and taverns lit up with iridescent colors in the setting daylight.
“The doors... are going to open.” She exhaled.
“I don’t care,” he said.
“Someone could come in.”
“I don’t care.”
She was intoxicatingly close. He could smell her, the scent he would never forget. Something sweetened with secrecy, flowers
opening in moonlight. He could not help his hands finding her waist. She didn’t shy away or withdraw. Instead, she... wavered.
Like she was warring with herself.
“You’re bleeding,” she remarked, valiant in her fight.
“ I ,” he repeated. “ Don’t. Care. ”
He ran his nose along the curve of her neck. Under him, he felt her shiver. And—
The lift doors opened. The knife of disappointment cut into Clare, deeply enough he nearly gasped. Instead, the sound came
out half frustration, half something else. No part of the utterance, however, seemed to reach the reason for their interruption.
Outside the lift stood a pair of gentlemen in elaborate formalwear, the sort under which even Clare’s handsome earnings would
strain.
One held in his hand purple liquor. The other nodded his head exuberantly to music only he could hear. They were, Clare intuited,
on their way to the inn’s rooftop revelry club.
Not on this lift, they weren’t.
“It’s occupied,” he shot over his shoulder, still hunched over Beatrice.
Their dauntless interlopers—damn them—weren’t deterred. In the corner of his vision, he even noticed one of them roll his
eyes. The prospect of a canoodling couple didn’t bother them, Clare guessed, when such dalliances were common in the Vale.
Nevertheless—did the name of Sir Grandhart command no respect? And just how often would Vermillion Vale’s cast of unpredictables
prevent him from kissing Beatrice?
He was preparing to round on the young nobles, ready to let them know exactly what he thought of their cravats, when Beatrice reached past him. With one purposeful finger, she stabbed the spelled rune to close the doors.
“Sorry, boys,” she said, her voice diamond hard. “You heard him.”
The lift doors closed on the gentlemen’s indignant frowns.
Clare’s heart raced. Hearing her like this, feeling her this way... He wondered if it was possible for these sensations
to incinerate everything in him, leaving a creature of pure desire. Her eyes found his. The lift restarted its gradual climb
higher. He leaned closer...
Yet no matter how fierce his need, no matter how many punches the Order’s men struck, one question clung in his head. No longer
could he leave it unspoken. It had the power, he understood, to define his life.
“Why did you try to kiss me?” he asked.
In response or on instinct, she opened her legs, just enough for him to press his between hers, bringing their bodies close.
He knew he was hard. Embarrassingly hard, under other circumstances.
Now? He didn’t care.
“I—I guess I wanted to. I... always want to,” she ventured.
He’d heard of the rush dragon riders felt racing for the sky. He suspected he knew the feeling. Combined with the closeness
of her, it produced a humming growl in the back of his throat.
“Then why did you run?” he pressed.
His hand rose up her front, finding her breast. When he felt her fingers rise to his chest, he very nearly lost consciousness.
If he was concussed, she was not helping. If he wasn’t—well, it did not matter. He felt like he was. Dizzy, uncomprehending, wrecked.
“When—” she started, then swallowed. “When I kissed... him, there was a moment where I wondered if you—he—you would laugh.
Or worse, gallantly and gently reject me like the gentleman you’ve started pretending you are. When he kissed me back, I was...
relieved .”
He had gone still, listening closely. Only the fragility of her voice now was capable of distracting him from her warm figure
under his hands. He’d rarely ever heard her sound vulnerable in this way.
“I felt like I’d saved the realm or survived some impossible odds,” she went on. “But when I saw you , I realized I’d won nothing. Everything I feared could still happen. It was... too much to face.”
In his embrace, she seemed to shrink. It was quietly devastating, watching the strongest-hearted woman he knew collapsing
under the weight of the shadows stalking her soul. He needed to help her—not out of heroism or chivalry or obligation. No,
he needed to. Desperation consumed him whole.
“Perhaps I’m a coward,” she confessed. “I probably am. When it comes to you, I’ve been the greatest coward for ten years.”
With her final words, his path illuminated. Hearing in them the naked purity of honesty, he knew he did not need to encourage
her, or inspire her, or flatter her.
He need speak only the truth.
“Then kiss me,” he implored her, “and see what I do. See where this will lead.”
Her eyes rose. How he loved what he found in them. Yes. Loved. Defiant pride lit her perfect features, moonlight meeting firelight now. Her response was exactly what he’d hoped, and counted
on. For while she could chasten herself like no one else in Mythria could, he knew she was no coward.
Slowly, she slid her hands down his chest. To his belt.
No coward indeed.
He pressed into her, meeting her vigor, feeding her fire. In kind, she leaned forward, her lips inches from his. The precarious
proximity was enrapturing, nearly hallucinatory. He felt himself on the edge not only of consciousness now. He was on the
very edge of sanity.
When she kissed him, he lost himself entirely.
With how hard he pressed her into the wall, he would fear hurting her—except she was strong, he knew. She was his warrior,
his champion. His general, his crown, his realm.
Desire drove her forth. She pushed back, warring with him, each of them fighting the other for the lead in the kiss. Feeling
her insistence, he opened his mouth to hers. Yet wanting to win something for himself, he grasped under her, hiking her onto
the railing inside the lift so her legs could wrap around him.
Higher and higher they rose, the view outside ever more magnificent. The entirety of Vermillion Vale playing host to their
passion.
He placed his hands on either side of her, pinning her possessively. She kissed him hard until he wrenched himself from her,
needing to speak. “I think it’s pretty obvious,” he murmured, “I’m not fucking laughing. Or rejecting you. I’ll say yes to...
whatever you want.”
She raised an eyebrow, evidently intrigued by the suggestion.
Then the lift doors slid open once more.
He groaned, pretending his heart was not hammering. How in the realm could this keep happening at the worst possible times?
What would he do if poor lift logistics pulled her from him? How would he survive? “Ignore it,” he implored. “Ghosts above, Beatrice, ignore it.”
In reply, she— no . She smirked . He’d shown weakness. He’d demanded mercy from his fellow fighter, his kissing duelist, his devoted opponent.
She pushed him away, walking past him. In defeat, he gripped the railing, his knuckles white.
“Our room is this way.”
He looked up, finding her where she’d spoken. In the hallway, watching him. Expectant. Waiting for him. Her smirk was more smile now, less sly.
“Aren’t you coming?” she asked.
Her meaning was unambiguous.
Clare was not ashamed to stumble out of the lift after her.