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.

Just what did the man suspect? He hadn’t pressed for the truth behind the lie. Maybe he had just been guessing. Baldwin prayed so.

“Sir San Juste, I’ve a room in the inn with clean water and fresh bedding. But as you can see, my lord has seen to a change of plan. Would you take our room?”

“At what price to me?”

“No price. I’ve simply no desire to see the room sit empty all night.”

San Juste considered the notion, followed Baldwin’s pointing finger toward the lighted window, and then, “Thank you for your kindness, squire, I shall accept.”

Baldwin raised a finger to correct the man, but stopped. It was too late; he was too tired; it wasn’t worth the bother. Squire was perfectly acceptable. For now.

“If I may ask, what is your destination, San Juste?”

“Creil.”

“Ah, ours as well.”

“Indeed? Perhaps we might share the road tomorrow? I do favor friendly conversation.”

A smile captured Baldwin’s countenance, so surprising, that he smoothed a hand over his jaw to verify its reality. To touch such an unrestrained emotion had become something of a quest for him this past week. “That is very kind of you, Sir San Juste, I accept your offer.”

Though he wagered Sera would not be delighted about another traveling companion, the advantage of having this rather imposing, broad-shouldered knight alongside them could not be overlooked. And beneath the wool cloak there glinted a sword and dagger; an extra set of weapons could not be refused.

“Tomorrow morning?”

“I shall meet you at dawn.”

Such luck to procure a room with little difficulty beyond a mere “I accept.” Dominique settled onto the bed, for to stand up straight was impossible beneath the angled pine beams that reduced the height of the room from a man’s shoulders to his waist in less than a stride.

He splashed too-cold water from a dented copper bowl over his face, then shook his head, dispersing droplets across the bed.

Fresh bedding, indeed. The nest of mice sharing the packed straw on the pallet might argue against that. But with the kitchen’s chimney bracing the wall before which the pallet had been laid, the room was warm, so he had no argument about sharing quarters.

It hadn’t been kindness that had prompted the squire to offer his master’s room, Dominique felt sure. For could not the squire have taken the room in his master’s absence?

No, the squire’s need to remain at his master’s side was more necessity. The lank young man had wanted to protect the sleeping knight. He, a mere squire, thinking to protect a spurred knight! But he would not protect for long with the skein of lies he wove.

Dominique wondered now if the squire realized the wide boggled appearance his eyes took on when he spouted an obvious mistruth. Exhaustion? Would not the man’s lids then be heavy upon his sight?

And what exactly was the man protecting? Could it be that his master also danced with an illusory shroud to his steps? Were they thieves?

Dominique had observed the duo in the tavern. The squire had no more thought than most men after riding all the day, to fill his belly. But the other, Antoine d’Ange, had plucked and prodded suspiciously at the fare the tavern offered. So…effeminate his actions. Just not…right.

Perhaps the two were engaged in more than just a partnership of the ride? Mayhaps there was reason the squire chose to bed down next to his master this eve. Dominique knew there were those men whose carnal preferences led them in sinister directions.

He smirked at the thought, then lay back. A few squeaks near his hip protested his position, but soon settled to sleep as well.

THREE

She pouted for two leagues, hunched on the saddle, every so often casting Baldwin the evil eye. She did have a knack for the evil eye. ’Twas a shade more intimidating than the lesser mongoose eye. Her pale blue orbs barely revealed color as her lashes meshed in the squint of hell. Baldwin felt its damning power bore deep into his gut, where it twisted his intestines into a nervous knot.

But he could not ignore the advantage of traveling with real muscle. And Dominique San Juste was just what a wayward monk-in-training-playing-squire and a mixed-up-lady-playing-knight needed.

Sera hadn’t been able to argue with Dominique’s request to accompany them; he had already been mounted and ready to ride. Instead she’d purposely stepped on Baldwin’s foot on her passage to Gryphon’s side, and had twice knocked him to the ground with an elbow to his ribs before they rode out of Pontoise.

Heaven knew no fury like that of an angry angel.

Dawn gifted the chilled riders with a slash of vibrant color. Pink painted the horizon as far as the eye could see, followed by amber, and orange, then the bright flash of sun, before all too quickly fading. To find the sun in the winter months was rare; most days it hid behind clouds that filled the gray sky, as if that were the natural tint instead of cerulean. And so Baldwin cherished the few moments of color.

Hours later he’d learned little of Dominique San Juste, save that the dawn beguiled him as well, yet it was midnight that truly bewitched the moonlight knight.

“It’s too damn dark,” Baldwin said. “Especially riding through the forest. A man cannot know when a creepy will jump out and rip him to shreds.”

“It is a time when I feel the greatest strength,” Dominique offered as his mount, Tor, sidled to a walk alongside Baldwin. “If there are enemies to be felled I shall wait for the moonlight. Perhaps I’m one of those creepies you fear?”

Baldwin shot the mercenary a look. All seriousness in the man’s expression. Much as he favored having him along for the ride, he did not have to trust him.

“And yet, you find the dawn most beautiful as well?”

“It is a compulsion I must meet every morning as the sun rises. And yet, I am drained and oddly weak at that moment. A bit testy, too.” He offered a shrug and a knowing grin. “I cannot explain it. Never have been able to, for as much as I’ve questioned it over the years. Have you an hour in the day during which your energy seems most frenzied?”

“I do favor the supper hour,” Baldwin said with a grin. “Aye, I challenge any man to stand against me when there’s a fine roast boar waiting on table with apples stuffed in its mouth and wine flowing from a fat wench’s pitcher.”

Dominique cocked an agreeing nod at Baldwin. “I shall see to remember such when we stop to fill our bellies, lest I might lose a finger to your ravenous appetite.”

With renewed interest Dominique changed tactics. “Have you a voice, sir?” he prompted from the other side of Baldwin. The squire’s master rode a horse-length ahead of the trio. “While I find your squire’s conversation most enjoyable, I wonder how you find this fine gray morning.”

A thick cloud of frozen breath blossomed before the rider’s face, and he rasped out, “Cold.”

Dominique raised an inquiring brow to Baldwin. The squire merely shrugged and looked ahead over the stretch of white-frosted ground. Rabbit tracks stitched a line in the quilting of snow and led to the forest edge where black-striped white birch grew tall and slender amidst the thick trunks of decades-old oak and elm. Within hearing distance, the Seine sang crisply, her waters impervious to frost. Beneath the snow cover verdant earth and grass slept in a moist bed until spring.

“I feel I’ve offended in some way,” Dominique said, more to himself than anyone. Not that anyone listened.

The gruff-voiced man who led their motley trio certainly did keep to himself. Fine with him. The squire offered enough conversation to keep a man’s jaw oiled in the stiffening chill. “What is your business in Creil?”

Baldwin started, “We’re to—”

The squire’s master blasted over with a quick, “What is yours?”

“Ah, a tidbit of conversation.” Dominique heeled his mount to catch the faster pace of the man.

What was his name? Ah yes, Antoine d’Ange, of the ill-fated d’Ange disaster less than a fortnight ago. So he would allow him the morose brooding. Surely he had lost much to Lucifer de Morte’s cruel rampage. “As for my business, I am on a mission.”

“Aren’t we all—”

“Squire!” d’Ange quickly silenced.

Dominique could feel the air crackle between the two. Tension held both stiff upon the saddle. Something had lit a flame beneath d’Ange’s mail chausses.

“I stop in Creil,” Dominique added carefully, all the while gauging the vibrations between the two. Though d’Ange spoke little, each word, every movement was charged with a remarkable energy.

“So you are a mercenary?” Baldwin called.

Such perception. Or rather, an obvious guess, for he was a lone rider, fit out with sword and a mysterious manner. No gold spurs on his heels. There was no necessity in remaining a mystery. Clues to finding the black knight were welcome from any and all. And he much intended to get to the core of this intriguing tension that shot back and forth between his travel mates.

“Indeed, a mercenary. I’m sure you’ve heard much of the dark knight who swoops into battle to claim the members of the de Morte clan? I’ve been instructed to seek this legendary knight.”

“Oh?” Baldwin and his master exchanged looks. There was a glimmer of—something—in Antoine d’Ange’s pale eyes. Dominique couldn’t place what it was, but it overwhelmed the haggard condition of the man’s face. An inner fire, perhaps that is what kept the poor soul going after his entire family had been murdered.

“Don’t tell me you’ve not heard of the black knight?”

“We have not,” Antoine d’Ange rasped, and in a stir of hoof-sifted snow, turned his horse from the trail. With a nod of his hooded head he beckoned the squire to his side. “A moment to converse with my squire, if you please, San Juste.”

Dominique inclined his head and crossed his hands over the hard, leather saddle pommel.

The twosome dismounted and walked off. D’Ange positively steamed as he pumped his fists and worked his way toward the forest. Filled with a raging force, he was. Their boots kicked up little parallel mountains in the soft layer of snow following their wake.

An interesting reaction to Dominique’s mention of the black knight. They must know something. Or perhaps they knew no more than any of the villagers claimed to know? That the knight was all-powerful and stealthy in his pursuit of the de Mortes. A legend amongst mere mortals.

Hmm… Dominique just couldn’t get a grasp on d’Ange’s physicality. The squire he’d already pinned as faithful, eager to spin a mistruth to protect those he served, and not entirely cut out for the journey he’d most likely been persuaded to embark upon. But d’Ange was a tough read. He purposely kept apart to avoid consideration.

What hid beneath that cold facade of utterly serious silence?

Slipping a hand down the side of his leg, Dominique mined for the itch that had tormented his ankle for the past few minutes. When he returned his gloved hand to the pommel he cursed the coruscation that coated his gauntlet.

“A fine day it is when you’ve invited the enemy to accompany us like hell’s guardian to our deaths,” Sera hissed, and punched her gloved fist against Baldwin’s tunic.

He gripped his shoulder and groaned, “Sera.”

“He is the one,” she said in harsh whispers, her eyes alight with accusation.

Dominique San Juste sat out of hearing range, but both were aware he kept an eye on them. Overhead, a hawk spread his wings wide as it skimmed the ground, plunged, and snatched up a field mouse in a graceful act of violence.

“What one?” Baldwin wondered, as he pulled his gaze from the death peals of the mouse.

“You recall the rumor we heard in the inn, that Lucifer de Morte has sent a mercenary to stop the black knight before he can get to the Demon of the North.” She punched a fist into her opposite palm. “Well?”

“Sera, do you not think if San Juste wanted to kill you he would have done it by now?”

“He knows not who I am!”

“And he never will. If only you would let him know you are a woman, his suspicions would never come to fruition.”

“He suspects me? What say you, squire?”

“He does not.”

“Then why speak such a thing?”

“I don’t know!” He gripped his scalp, then spread out a hand in dismay. “Your foul mood sets my brain aquiver. I cannot think aright with you hounding me like a rabid dog. I like San Juste. He’s a personable fellow. And I rather enjoy speaking with him.” Baldwin followed her frantic footsteps. “Did you hear he lives on his own? An available man, Sera. And quite the handsome face, too.”

“You change the subject to serve your lies. Besides—” she crossed her arms over her chest with a scriff of mail to armor “—I know nothing of his looks.”

“Come, my lady, every look you give the man is that of a swooning goose.”

“Geese do not swoon.”

“Very well, but women do.” Baldwin playfully tweaked his hand near her cheek.

“Don’t touch me, toad-eater!” She slapped his hand and he recoiled, but more from her words than her actions. “Sorry,” she rushed in at sight of his morose expression.

“I am no longer,” he managed, feeling the remorse for his past misdeeds coagulate in his throat. “Never once did I take a man’s life, only his money. You know I have always done what must be done to survive.”

“I should not have said it,” she said, punching her fist into a palm. “You coax me to false anger atimes, Baldwick.”

“It is false, for you use it to cover up those emotions you’d rather not touch.”

She did not reply, only fixed her gaze to the knight standing yonder by the brilliant white stallion. Fire had burned her path from the horse trail to here. But now the flames flickered in her cold blue eyes…and settled. Baldwin watched Sera’s anger simmer to a nodding acceptance.

Whew, he’d barely missed another punch to the shoulder.

With a thoughtful finger to chin, she finally offered, “He isn’t like most men, is he.”

“Doesn’t sound like a question. More an observation.”

“I’ve observed many a man.” She looked him right in the eye. Difficult to escape her arrow-true gaze. “Often.”

“Really?”

“How else could a woman blend into a man’s world? He’s different,” she said, as she turned to place the mercenary in eyesight. “Dark, yet peaceful.”

Indeed—but she spent all her time observing men? For some reason that information set a tickle to the back of Baldwin’s neck. What did she do when she observed these men? Did she think, well…things about them? When could she have had the time?

“So you watch men…all the time? Have you ever, er—” he drew a wide arc in the snow with his boot toe, trying to act nonchalant “—observed me?”

“Certainly.” Her summation of his expression worked a catty wink and a one-sided smirk to her thick lips. “Castle d’Ange’s reluctant postulant, who spends the hours he should be studying religion in the battlements watching the knights practice in the lists. He drinks the holy water after the abbe Belloc has left the chapel—”

Baldwin stifled a gasp.

“And,” Sera continued, “he attracts the women with a mere curl of his lips and a roguish wink.”

Baldwin released his held breath. “You have observed all that?”

“Aye. You are lithe, agile—now that you have mastered your growing legs—”

“Not quite, but I’m working on it. And about that holy water—”

She smiled, freely. “And—unless it has to do with religious pursuits—you are ever willing to please and learn. Very much opposite our mercenary. For some reason I feel San Juste has no need to learn, that he possesses wisdom untold.”

“Quite an observation for a morning spent fuming.”

“Aye.” She punched a fist into the birch trunk. “You have had your say then, squire. Forgive my rude treatment of you this morning. I remove the curse of the evil eye. Though, I shall not forgive you for inviting the mercenary along.”

“But what is wrong with seeking help? And moreso, with allowing softer emotions?”

Her mood quickly changing again, she slammed a clenched fist to her breast and croaked out in her battle-roughened voice, “This heart will not feel until all the de Mortes lie six feet under. And if you can even think I will bat my lashes at the very man sent to kill me, you’ve eaten one too many poison toads in your lifetime, squire. Now come, we are leaving San Juste behind.”

“Oh? And you think he will just sit there and allow us to ride away? Where, then, are you two off?” he mocked the mercenary’s proposed question. “Oh, we favor a head-start before you fell us with your sword.”

Sera paced in the snow before him, chewing her lip and punching her fist in her glove. The scaled platelets of armor riveted along each finger chinked. Erratic the rhythm. So…unsure about this new challenge.

“Men don’t do that,” Baldwin commented. She looked to him and he gestured to her mouth. “Chew their lips.”

She released hold of her lip. Baldwin noticed that what had once been plump pink mounds to tempt every man’s dreams of passion were now cracked and dry. Winter and the stress of battle had taken a toll on this precious angel.

Dominique had been right at guessing she was ill. But ’twas not a physical malady that darkened her eyes, but a ghost of weeks ago. A ghost that clung to her with horrid memories of the first night of the New Year.

“We must be rid of him.”

“Sera, you mean—” Baldwin sliced a hand across his throat in horrific display.

“It is the only way.” She gripped her sword hilt and slithed the blade in and out of the steel scabbard. “I must take him out before he assassinates the black knight.”

What could they possibly be discussing beneath the skeletal bower of birch branches? Dominique unwrapped the leather reins from around his gauntlet, then draped them between his thumb and forefinger. Perhaps he should skrit over there?—a series of movements so agile and quick, not even an ultra-alert deer could sense his presence.

No. He wrapped the reins tight again. He didn’t have time for tricks. Much as he had enjoyed conversing with the squire for the past few hours, he highly doubted the other would suddenly be gifted with the urge to speak any more than a few mumbles.

Though, the twosome were involved in a very animated conversation at the moment.

Hmm… Were his suspicions true? Could they possibly know something about the black knight? Mention of the mythical knight had been what set d’Ange into a sudden flurry of motion.

Dominique pricked his ears. He could not hear them talking from here. The only audible sound was Tor’s bursts of breath through gray velvet nostrils, and the press of the beast’s heavy hooves into the snow-packed ground. And Dominique’s own tense breathing.

Just ride, his conscience implored. You do not require conversation. Ride on to Creil and locate the black knight. End your own search for answers that much quicker.

Easier to think than to actually do.

Creil was a good-sized village, set apart from the imposing walls of Abaddon’s fortified battlements. Would the black knight be so foolish to just ride in to Creil, all glorious black armor and sword held high? The de Mortes had to be fully aware of who, or what, had taken down the first two brothers.

No, if the man had any sense to him at all—and Dominique highly questioned that for the brazen acts of riding into battle and felling two of France’s most notorious villains—surely he would lie low. A sneak attack this time. There were no rumors of a siege on Abaddon’s part. Dominique had not been alerted to such. And he would know as soon as the idea had birthed in the de Morte camp. For the Oracle was a relentless visitor.

It was decided. He would be off. Those two could offer no information that would help Dominique. He suspected something sinister between the squire who claimed to be a postulant and his mysterious partner. But that was of a personal nature; it did not concern him.

“San Juste! Dismount!”

Dominique jumped at the sound of the rasping command, which set Tor to a nervous stamp.

“Is there a problem?” Dominique wondered, as he slid from Tor’s back and his boots crunched upon the hard-packed trail. A glance to his heels reassured he’d not exposed himself with a cloud of telltale coruscation.

“Yes, there is a problem,” d’Ange announced. He paced before Dominique, his scaled black gauntlet working around his sword hilt. “But it shall be solved soon enough. Bertram!”

D’Ange’s sword was drawn in a sing of steel. Dominique was fleetingly aware that the squire led Tor away from him and d’Ange. The instinct to unsheathe his own sword worked the action before he realized he stood at the ready to defend himself.

Defend himself?

“What say you this problem?” Dominique barked. “Is it me?”

“Indeed.” D’Ange stalked the ground before him, carefully measuring his strides as each step closed him in to Dominique. “You seek the black knight?”

With a simple reply clinging to his tongue, Dominique bent to dodge the sweep of d’Ange’s broadsword. A quick riposte brought the blade of finely tempered steel back his way. Had Dominique not stepped back his head would be rolling toward Tor’s hooves.

“I,” Antoine d’Ange rasped, “am the black knight.”

“You?”

Seeing his challenger’s overhead hammer-drop slash toward him, Dominique swung his blade to the left, caught the tip in his gloved hand, and thrust it above his head to block the blow. The jar of contact rippled through his bones and shuddered to his feet.

Morgana’s blood, but the man had a powerful thrust!

But what the man had just announced. It could not be. Him, the black knight? Not this man, this—gangly excuse for a man. Especially a man he suspected to be something entirely different, at least regarding his sexual nature. Certainly not the type to become a knight, let alone, the legendary black knight.

Though he did have strength…

Drawing his sword arm down, Dominique’s blade slashed over the chain mail tunic that clung loosely to d’Ange’s lithe torso. The hindrance of the tightly meshed rings stymied his intentions and his sword merely slipped, steel over steel.

“Careful!” Baldwin yelled from where he stood by the trio of horses.

Dominique figured ’twas not he for whom the squire was concerned. But should the man not have more faith in his master?

There was something very odd about his opponent. Dominique could feel it through to his bones. And it was not that he suspected the knight and squire shared the same bed. Indeed, the man’s effeminate mannerisms in the tavern returned to thought now. So delicately he’d held his meat…with slender hands…

By all that is sacred—could he be?

“Why do you seek to stop the man who wishes to aid you in your efforts?” Dominique yelled. He ducked. Another slash of steel whooshed over his head.

“Aid me? Is that what you call murder then?”

“Murder? I no more wish to murder you than I wish my own heart to cease beating. Which it yet may if you are successful in this twisted attack. Cease, man! I surrender.”

“There is no surrender but death!”

The heavy blade of his opponent’s steel skimmed Dominique’s thigh. Pain-heat pinged and shivered in his serrated flesh. The blade had sliced through his leather braies.

Still the attack did not cease. “Did you hear me? I don’t wish you harm. I’ve been sent by a higher power to ensure the black knight succeeds in exterminating the de Morte clan.”

This time the angry d’Ange heard. He tried to stop a forceful swing, but the sword pulled him forward, and he had to jab the tip into the snow to break his attack. “A higher power? You speak insanity.”

“You think I am Lucifer de Morte’s mercenary?”

“Can you prove otherwise?”

“Nay.” What did the man require? A letter de cachet? The sacrifice of his head? “I do not work for the devil. How dare you? I was called to serve the black knight by one who wishes him success. It is your puny hide I’ve been sent to protect. And I see now why I was needed.”

“A higher power—” Antoine d’Ange spat out. He paused, huffing in exertion “—has sent you to see the de Mortes are murdered?”

“I have been instructed not to interfere in your quest, only to navigate and to provide protection on your journey from one de Morte to the next.”

“What is this nonsense? A higher power? Do you speak of God?” Forgetting his sword, the man splayed his arms before him and declared to all, “Murder cannot be sanctioned by the church. What sort of god do you serve?”

“A god that tires of watching the de Mortes reign over the innocent men, women, and children of France. A god that confuses me as well, for he has chosen a gangly misfit of a man to bring down his greatest enemies. Are you sure you are the black knight?” He looked to Baldwin. “He is not, is he?”

The squire stepped to his mount and lifted a wool blanket slung over the leather saddlebags. Beneath was revealed a collection of shimmering black armor.

It took an unnatural amount of control to keep his jaw from dropping at such a sight. Dominique swung back on his aggressor, who stood lean and lithe, yet heaving from a simple tryst of matched steel. Much as he could not believe it—did not want to believe it—this man truly was the legend whispered of in villages stretching from southern Corbeil to Paris and beyond. He’d expected a great and hulking man, virile and strong. A warrior. Not…this.

“I need no protection.” D’Ange turned, retrieved his sword that had been stuck into the packed snow, and gestured to his squire that he mount. “Take your sacrilegious beliefs and be gone with you. Creil is but a day’s ride. Abaddon de Morte awaits the end of his cruel reign.”

Had he known the black knight would be so obstinate, Dominique might have refused the delectable offer the Oracle had used to coax him to such a task. But the fact remained, he had accepted. And he never surrendered to opposition. “Tell me, black knight, how much do you know about Abaddon de Morte?”

“I know he is a bloodthirsty bastard, and the devil’s brother; there is nothing more necessary.”

How had this fool man succeeded in murdering two de Mortes thus far? Dominique felt sure Abaddon would not be the third. Not when this knight planned to blindly ride into de Morte’s fortress of clever ambushes and ensorceled traps.

“So you are aware of the man’s penchant for booby traps?”

Already mounted, the knight regarded Dominique with a cold-air huff, and a nod to the squire to get on with it and mount as well.

“You think you can just march into the man’s castle and slay him in his own bed?”

Dominique felt laughter most appropriate, and answered the call of humor. It felt good to draw in the cold air and fill his lungs. But this moment of mirth was oddly bittersweet.

“What need I know about Abaddon de Morte that you cherish so to your breast?”

Dominique crossed his arms over his chest. “I will tell you, if you will allow me to protect you.”

“Never.”

“My lord.” Baldwin’s voice sliced a sharp edge through the chill air. “Perhaps it would do to hear the man out. If he knows things about Abaddon—”

“Damnation! Already you’ve turned my squire against me, San Juste. And you wish me to put trust in you after such?”

Dominique tilted his head back to meet the traveler’s eyes, shadowed by the dullness of cloud cover. “Abaddon de Morte has many strengths—both physical and occult—that will keep your blade far from his neck. He has a weakness as well.”

The knight’s brow lifted. Considering. He smirked, pressed his thick lips together. Not a shadow of beard on the man’s face. Could he be much more than a child? Insanity! That the people’s legend was a mere, why a mere—Dare he think it?

“How do you know so much?” rasped out of the black knight’s throat. “Explain exactly why I should trust you and your misguided God.”

Certainly the Oracle had not provided a means to ingratiate himself into the black knight’s trust. But trust was not necessary to provide protection. Though tolerance would be a fine trade-off.

“I cannot say why, or even if trust is necessary. Only that you must take benefit of the knowledge I possess. We have a common goal, to see the de Morte clan terminated. You have taken down two-fifths thus far, I shall join you in the final rounds.”

“And how do you know what lies ahead? Have you spies? Inside the de Morte lairs?”

“Of a sort. Difficult to believe,” Dominique offered, at surprised looks from both his traveling companions, “but necessary.”

“Then why has nothing been done to stop the de Mortes until now?” The knight’s steed pawed the ground, impatient as his master. Power and cold air pressed out from the horse’s nostrils with each puff of breath. Counterbalance to its master’s fiery demeanor. With d’Ange’s smoothing glove to its neck, the horse settled and turned its master back to face Dominique. “Why? When so many have suffered and died at the hands of such demons?”

Dominique felt the pain in the black knight’s voice as he rasped out his tirade. ’Twas akin to the pain that clutched his own heart, a pain that had forced him to accept this one final mercenary mission. He just wanted to know why.

“You hold your tongue to keep me from success. I do not believe you, Sir San Juste. Ride on!” D’Ange hiked a spur to his horse’s flanks. “I’ve a mission, and I’ll not have you underfoot to hinder it.”

“Abaddon de Morte’s castle is a veritable cache of booby traps,” Dominique called, as d’Ange pressed his horse toward the trail where he and Tor stood. “Boiling water cast down from the battlements, spikes screaming out from hidden murder holes. Live spiders and locusts. There is a spell of enchantment over parts of the castle that can forever spin a man into a confusion of the senses. But if you can pass through the rumored seven hells your reward shall come with cleverness and planning.”

“Seven hells?” Baldwin’s voice cracked.

“Abaddon de Morte, Demon of the North, Master of the Seven Hells,” Dominique said. “You have not heard the moniker?”

“I’ve heard of the Demon of the North,” Baldwin said shakily. “Everyone knows of the four villains set to each corner of the compass, and their ruler, Lucifer, planted in the very center, somewhere deep within Paris.”

“The Dragon of the Dawn,” Dominique confirmed.

“You say Abaddon has a weakness?” D’Ange stopped his mount alongside Tor. The two horses mustered little regard for one another.

“Yes, but unfortunately it will do none of the three of us any good to know such.”

“Why is that?”

No harm in revealing the little he knew of Abaddon. Dominique had no intention of allowing the black knight to press on without him anyway. “He favors women something fierce. The man missed the siege at Poissy because he instead chose to stay home and indulge in a ménage. The man goes through women like a worm boring through a rotting corpse. He’s quite vain, as well.”

“Baldwin.”

Dominique followed d’Ange’s eyes to the squire’s face, a visage that had grown paler than the snow at ground with mention of the seven hells. The twosome had a way of communicating with a single look—

“Oh, no. If you even think to attempt such,” Baldwin said, “I shall tell San Juste all.”

“All?” Now this was beginning to sound interesting.

Dominique marched over to the squire’s mount and jerked the reins from his hands. “I knew you were a liar.” He released his dagger from his waist-belt in a swift move that defied any mortal man’s eyesight, and pressed it to the squire’s neck. “Tell all,” he barked at the black knight. “Now.”

“You call this protection?” d’Ange protested.

At his move to unsheathe his sword, Dominique pressed his blade harder. A narrow spittle of blood dribbled from Baldwin’s neck.

“My lord!” Baldwin managed, his eyes closing to squeeze out tears from the corners.

D’Ange turned on his mount. So he was a coward to allow his squire death while he turned his back?

“The black knight is a woman,” Baldwin spat carefully from behind Dominique’s faltering blade. “Her name is Seraphim d’Ange.”

FOUR

“Betrayer!” Sera jammed her sword in the snow and stomped toward Baldwin.

Dominique lunged right in her way. “A woman?” He couldn’t believe he spoke the word. But a strange comprehension fell over him as the lithe, gaunt-faced black knight approached him, anger huffing out in cold breaths of air. “I should have known!”

“And how should you have known?” She slammed fists to her hips. A feminine action. Dominique had suspected something of the sort upon observing the duo in the tavern. Suspected a pair of unusual males. But a woman? A woman had slain Mastema and Satanas de Morte? In the midst of battle?

Seeing Seraphim d’Ange was more intent on reaching her bristling squire than him, Dominique dodged into her path to prevent her from taking her anger out on the youth. If she had beheaded two de Mortes, what would she do to her squire for exposing her identity?

Dominique had heard of these odd, masculine women that chose to live their lives the way of their betters. Why, Jeanne d’Arc’s ashes still smoldered in the square of Rouen. Did Seraphim not see what she might bring upon herself if she were discovered? The label “witch” would be slapped upon her forehead. For the misguided d’Arc wench had seen to that.

“Release me!” she argued, as Dominique wrangled her wrists into a tight clutch. She was much stronger than he had anticipated. And now he could see she matched him in arm strength, as well as height.

“Much as I am stunned at what you have achieved thus far, my lady,” he said, twisting and bending to keep the fiery angel in grasp. “Tell me how you expect to continue? The black knight has become a legend, quite literally with the swing of your bloody sword. But you’ll not gain entrance to Abaddon’s castle without also gaining an arrow to your brain.”

“I shall think of something.” Her sneer stretched pale, full lips to reveal tightly clenched teeth.

“Damn! I cannot believe this!” With a thrust, Dominique released the struggling woman. He stepped back, half expecting her to explode upon him.

Something fired a mighty rage inside that slender form. And if rage is what compelled her to exterminate the entire de Morte clan, he could only guess it had been put there by one of the five demons.

But the fact remained…she was a mere woman.

“How do you expect to survive? Hmm? Tell me!” Dominique would not allow her the distance she sought. With frantic steps back and to the side he matched her every move, finding agility with ease, even in the thick snow. “Riding into battle upon your great steed and swinging a sword is one thing. But what of hand-to-hand combat? There is no sign Abaddon has even considered siege or attack. He will be tucked away in his lair, surrounded by his minions, lying in wait for you. Make me believe you can survive that!”

“I can, and I will.” The dark circles under her eyes had receded since last eve. Rest had served her well. Now only the glow of rage lit her pale eyes. Eyes of an indeterminable color, save the anger that flared there. Indeed, this woman had been sorely wounded by the de Mortes.

And it was now Dominique’s responsibility to see she survived to achieve her goal.

A woman? Il diable! Had the Oracle known as much?

Of all the fine disasters. He should just mount Tor and ride off, abandoning this fool to her idiotic quest.

There is but one reason you agreed to this insane mission. A reason that had haunted Dominique for over two decades.

So be it.

Using a trick to draw her attention, Dominique skrit around behind her, his movement faster than a mortal man’s sight. “Show me your strength!”

She spun round, surprised to find him behind her, but not commenting on his change of location as her anger held her in check.

Fired by this woman’s verve, Dominique jutted up his chin in defiance. Certainly he would not allow a woman to best him.

“Here.” He tapped his chin and matched her steps, a swift side-to-side lunge, a stride back across the hoof-pounded snow. “Deliver me your best. Come on then,” he coaxed at her reluctant pout with beckoning fingers. “Are you afraid to prove your mettle—”

Pain shuddered through his jaw. The retreat of Sera’s fist flashed in Dominique’s blink of astonishment. He pressed a hand to his jaw and stretched his mouth wide. No loose teeth. Indeed, she did have strength. But where speed was concerned, she was no match to his fey footwork.

“A child’s tap!” he mocked. “You’ve not leveled me, black knight. Come. Right here. Double me over.”

Determined feminine courage eyed his gut as he tapped and taunted. Her right fist hovered near her chin, though it wasn’t building to a punch. He sensed she had never before encountered such opposition. The devil take her soul, if she would not encounter such a thousand times over if she were determined to see the black knight’s goal to the end.

This had to be done. He had to make her understand just how vulnerable she would be in Abaddon’s lair. That she needed him at her side. For he would not allow her to cut him out of this bargain. Whether or not he approved that she was a woman, he would see this quest to its end.

This time Dominique saw her fist lunge toward his stomach—but he didn’t dodge. He wanted to feel her anger, to gauge the fire that blazed in this wounded angel’s heart.

Her fire was more forceful than he had expected. The initial blow doubled him. Breath wheezed out from his lungs.

“Seraphim!”

The squire suspected his master had actually hurt him? And what sort of name was that anyway? Seraphim? An angelic name for a woman whose punches wielded the power of a demon?

Dominique staggered, but he would not fall—not in front of a woman.

Although—on second thought…

He fell to the packed snow. The cold kiss of winter bruised icy crystals into his cheek, and he rolled to his back. A forced groan was necessary to lure his prey. She leaned over him—

“A-hah!” Dominique gripped Seraphim by her upper arms and laid her on the ground with a deft flip and a foot hooked under her mail-sheathed knee. He pinned her hips with his knees and pressed her shoulders into the snow. Her hood had slipped from her head, exposing a wild crop of black hair. Dominique stifled a chuckle. Had the woman thought to change her appearance by cutting her hair? And who was her barber? A fingerless blind man?

“Off!” she rasped, in what Dominique guessed to be a scream.

Her voice was not natural. Most likely she’d been injured. It had served her well for a day or two as disguise, but now…

She struggled like a pinned weasel, her head twisting from side to side, her eyes closed, and her fists blindly beating at his chest. ’Twas a child fighting for freedom from the monsters that haunted her nightmares.

Enough. She now knew the danger that could befall her.

Dominique pressed against her shoulders for leverage, bringing his weight upright to stand. The fallen angel sprang to her feet. Like a rabbit sprung from a trap, she dashed off to the woods.

“Seraphim!”

“Stay away,” she called back to her squire. “Keep him away!”

“What the hell did you do that for?” Baldwin shoved Dominique’s right shoulder. About all the man dared, Dominique wagered, for the flicker of uneasiness in the boy’s heavily lashed brown eyes. “You’ve sent her off in horror!”

“She fares well enough.” He brushed off ice crystals from his braies and cape. “I wanted the woman to see how truly helpless she is against a man. One single man. And do you know how many men await her at Abaddon’s castle?”

Wisely, the squire remained silent, his gaze switching from the woman’s retreat, and back to the ground before his feet.

“Morgana’s blood, a woman!” Dominique said, clenching his fingers into a useless fist. For what sense could his punches press into the woman’s head? She had come this far. And he certainly had no reason to stop her. To see her through this senseless quest would give him the answers he sought.

But a woman?

Dominique sheathed his sword and paced a short tread before the squire. “What devil got into her head to make her do such a thing?”

“Lucifer de Morte.”

He found on Baldwin’s square-jawed face a chill calm. The lank boy scrubbed a hand through his dirty brown hair and stared off toward the wood where Seraphim had retreated.

Lucifer de Morte. Known to many as the Dragon of the Dawn. “I suspected as much.”

“Aye, well you don’t know the whole of it.” Now the squire dared raise his voice and pound the air with an admonishing finger. “And you would do well to show a little more compassion. Sera’s been wounded. And she won’t rest until the demon that haunts her nightmares is extinguished.”

Dominique toed the tip of Seraphim’s abandoned sword. So Lucifer de Morte had set the blaze beneath this angel’s wings. Most likely the dark lord had no idea it was a woman who now stalked him and his brothers in the guise of the black knight. If Sera had been beneath the Dragon of the Dawn’s sword, or worse, his rutting loins, surely the villain must believe her dead.

Why did she yet walk this earth? Mayhap she hadn’t been in Lucifer’s path, only her family? No. It didn’t make sense. Lucifer never made a mistake, nor did he leave a trail. If he’d a grievance against the d’Anges, he would not have left their home until all had given blood to his sword.

But did the reason that Seraphim d’Ange walked this earth really matter? She had survived. And now she sought vengeance. And Dominique had agreed to see her through to the end. They both had their own motivations toward extinguishing the de Mortes. Personal reasons.

Lifting her sword up by the hilt, Dominique tested the weight, found it was surprisingly light for its length, then stabbed it back into the snow. Must have been fashioned especially for her. The black knight had so easily abandoned his—her—weapon. Further proof that this woman was well over her head in the thick of things.

What a hell of a way to begin a partnership. Though he mustn’t consider it such. He would merely serve as guide and protector. Seraphim d’Ange would be the instrument of destruction.

How odd did that sound? He, following a woman warrior? Though, stranger things had occurred in Dominique’s lifetime. He’d best accept Seraphim and get on with it.

“I should go retrieve her.”

“I will,” Baldwin said. “You’ve done enough for one day.”

She clung to the smooth, hard surface of a narrow birch tree. The thin layers of papery bark were cold, like sheets of ice laid around the wooden core. Her breaths worked frantic puffs of condensation before her face, her heart racing—and winning—the pace of each exhale.

Visions, the horrid, horrid nightmares filled her head.

Shoulders pressed to the cold stone floor. Impossible to struggle free. Still groggy; startled awake from a dead sleep—fire everywhere.

One dark man, a face unremarkable in the shadows save the glints of flame flickering in his eyes. Red. Red as the devil’s rage.

“I’ll see you in hell.” The heavy voice curdled over her bones like hoar frost freezing to flesh. He cracked a grin, spat on the floor, and shoved a mail-coated fist against her shoulder.

Pain seared between her legs. Screams pummeled up her throat. Escape. Let loose your voice. Someone will hear…. will rescue.

Where is Father? Antoine? What of Henri? And the guards? What is happening? So much fire, and…this devil grunting above her.

They’re all dead. Their throats cut…

Oh…the pain of the blade slicing across her flesh…

Seraphim pressed her forehead to the cold birch. She clasped her hand to her throat. No more pain. No… Make the memories go away!

But there is pain. She felt the scream, the cry of lost innocence gurgle up her throat. Heavy breaths, unbidden tears, and finally, the whimper of helplessness.

Fear droned from her mouth. It was not the same vivid scream of that night when her family had been slaughtered. Now the scars inside her throat muffled the pain, made it ache.

She had always slept like a dead man. Since taking over her mother’s duties Sera had risen at dawn and worked a long, hard day. At day’s end, sleep came easily, so heavy, and quick. Hypnos, the God of Sleep, always favored her with dreamless rest.

She had only wakened that early morning of the New Year when her chamber door slammed against the wall and that dark-haired man with the red, glowing eyes ripped her from bed.

Too late. Too late to scream for help. The damsel had been damaged.

Now, her soul tattered and torn by Lucifer de Morte, the damsel had shed her robes of silk and finery and donned the black knight’s armor.

It mattered not the violation, the robbing of her maidenhood. It had hurt. Nothing more. She would survive that humiliation. But in sparing her—in leaving her to live amongst the ruins of her family’s home, the silent lamentations of their disturbed spirits—that had been the true destruction. That she had lived to bury her parents, her brother, and her fiancé, had been the ultimate twist to Seraphim d’Ange’s soul-raped shell of a body.

And now, there came another, a man who would toy with her hollow carapace, the remnants of a life once lived with pride. Dominique San Juste.

Sera peered through the fencing of birch trunks. In the distance, Tor pounded the ground. His master paced before the brilliant white beast, his head bowed as if in thought.

No moon to romance him into your dreams.

San Juste could not have known what his threats, his forceful ways, would stir in her. She could not have known she would react so. And much as she hated to admit it, the man had been right. What would become of her when she stood surrounded by Abaddon de Morte and his minions, far from the advantage of riding Gryphon and swinging a deadly blade? It could happen. It would happen.

Mayhap, that is what San Juste had planned all along? To weaken her. To make her question her abilities. She had no idea who he really was. Sent by a higher power? What could that mean? At present, the de Mortes reigned over all of Burgundian France. The English King Henri VI ruled Paris thanks to Lucifer’s influence. Even Charles VII feared and bowed to Lucifer de Morte’s whim. Had not the d’Arc witch’s fate been sealed by Lucifer de Morte’s influence over the English?

Dominique’s claim that he was not the mercenary sent to assassinate her could be a clever ruse. Though, there was no reason why he should not have killed her moments ago. Follow with a blade across Baldwin’s neck and San Juste’s mission would have been complete. The de Mortes’ reign would be saved from total annihilation.

He is not a killer. He must not be.

Sera smirked at her conscience’s foolish pining. She did not want him to be the mercenary any more than she enjoyed this quest. But that did not mean he wasn’t dangerous. De Morte’s minion or not, he was still a mercenary, a man who killed for coin. She could not trust San Juste. Did not want to trust anyone but herself and the man she had chosen to accompany her on this journey through hell.

Blessed Mother. She pressed her forehead to the birch trunk. Her heartbeats had slowed, and her hands had stopped shaking. San Juste had proven her lack of physical strength. And he’d opened her eyes to the forthcoming dangers. She could not ride on to Abaddon’s lair without some protection. Years drilling in the lists beside her brother had given her a false reassurance. Of course, Antoine—why, any of her father’s knights—would have never given their all against her, but a mere woman in their masculine eyes. Hand-to-hand combat, as Dominique had just proven, would be a challenge considering her sex.

She did want to trust him. She wanted to feel the same relief Baldwin had felt at having the mercenary accompany them. Dare she allow him continue at her side? How to judge San Juste’s best interest was for her? What reason could a complete stranger have for joining such a suicidal mission? She had not offered him coin.

Blind to all but this stir of conflicting emotion that threatened to fell her to her knees, Sera let out another horrifying moan as she was grabbed from behind.

“It is me, Sera.” Gentle arms embraced her shoulders. Not harsh. No dagger. No demon horns formed by shadows dancing in the firelight.

“Release me,” she said, with a shove to the squire’s hand. Drawing in a breath of courage she expelled it in a thick cloud between the two of them. A decisive nod chased away the foolish trepidation. “I am better now.”

“What happened back there? Did he hurt you?”

She managed a mirthless snort. “I am not injured. I merely…needed some time apart. A moment to myself.”

She found in Baldwin’s silent gaze an understanding that neither need speak. For he had found her the night Lucifer had descended like his namesake upon the d’Ange castle. This man knew. He had seen the blood, her torn skirts, the devastation. He would keep her secrets—“Why did you tell him? I trusted you!”

“For your own good. You know well yourself, we need him, Sera. San Juste knows Abaddon’s secrets.”

“How? Did you ever pause to think about that? How do you know we can trust the man? We know not who he is. He claims a higher power sent him?” She propped her arm against the birch trunk and vacillated her attention between the squire and the distant mercenary. “To me that is Lucifer de Morte. How else would the man have such intimate knowledge of the layout of Abaddon’s lair?”

“You think Lucifer would send a man to watch the black knight extinguish his brothers?”

“Of course not, but perhaps this is San Juste’s way—deliver me to Abaddon’s hands, then watch a grand slaughter.”

“He would have killed you by now.”

She found conviction in the spark of white centered in Baldwin’s brown eyes. A certain integrity that had not been there during morning rituals in the cool shadows of the chapel. No, the church did not hold solace for this man. Not yet.

“You trust him?”

“I do.”

She gazed across the expanse of whiteness that separated her from her self-proclaimed protector. Her running footsteps had made deep prints in the snow, with Baldwin’s long strides stamping craters alongside. San Juste stood by his horse, brushing a reassuring hand along the rich ivory mane. He had frightened her something fierce by pinning her in the snow. Had she not seen the glint of violet in the man’s dark eyes she might have died of pure fright right then and there.

Violet. The color of peace and royalty. A gorgeous, passionate color. A color she could—wanted to—trust.

“If he indeed wishes to protect you,” Baldwin said softly, “then you can go about your business without fear. At least you will have someone watching your back.”

“And what is wrong with you?”

“Sera, I am not a knight. I’ve no inclinations to the sword. I am but a miserable toad-eater who relies on a bag of worthless bones to see him through strife. But I do wish the extra protection San Juste can offer.”

“And if it turns out he really is the enemy, sent to kill me at the finest moment?”

Baldwin opened his mouth to speak, but Sera stopped him with a curt response to her own question, “Then so be it.”

At least she would die knowing she had given her all to avenge her family.

Trust him? Never. But use his knowledge to make her quest easier?

“Perhaps Dominique will share all he knows of this castle of the seven hells?” Baldwin offered.

“He will, or he will answer to my blade.”

Baldwin opened his mouth to comment but Sera cut him off. “I thank you,” she muttered in the quiet of the chilled air. “You allow me to see through my rage with your simple wisdom.”

He shrugged, allowed a smile to wriggle his mouth. “I think that was a compliment.”

Despite her misgivings, the knowledge of this new protection released a cord of tension from Sera’s neck and shoulders. She had much to face in the coming days. Instinct must be honed, reaction burnished to mere seconds, and above all, she must keep her senses about her.

But now they were three. And Sera had to admit, this man did not so much frighten her, as put forth a challenge to the heart of the silk-clothed damsel hidden deep within.

FIVE

The moon glowed high in the sky when the traveling trio decided to stop at the edge of the thick forest that bordered the winding green waters of the Seine. Sera, who had been silent since granting San Juste his desire to protect, now settled against the rough, icy bark of an elm. She spread her wool cape out around her thighs and tucked it up over her knees to fight the chill.

They’d passed the Abbaye de Royaumont a half hour earlier. Now its single spire rose up majestically in the distance, decorating its little unpopulated spot of land with quiet grace. A sanctuary from evil, open to all who sought sanctity. Save the English.

Yes, please, Sera thought now, as scrapes of flint striking stone produced sparks at her traveling mate’s direction. Grant me sanctity. I want to be free of this quest, free of the rage and anger.

But Sera knew that such freedom must be earned. ’Twas the price she must pay for being the only survivor. Her brother and father would have done the same.

Soon a roaring blaze lighted their snug encampment. Fire sprites danced up toward the unreachable moon. Gryphon, tied close by, had settled to rest and Tor, untied, wandered the edge of the forest, seeking sustenance. The squire followed Tor’s untethered steps, then looked to Dominique—who offered but a silent shrug.

The mercenary excused himself, and took off over a hard pack of snow.

He needed a few moments away from Seraphim’s hard blue gaze to collect his thoughts. Every time she looked at him she gazed straight into his eyes. Not an evasive, coy look, as most women were wont to express. The feeling that she touched his soul with an imperceptible appendage was so strong. What did she spy in his own eyes of such interest?

He also sensed she still did not completely trust him. Wise woman.

But all for naught. He had every intention of protecting Seraphim until her mission was complete. Woman or no, he would not be granted release from the burning question of his parentage until he did such.

The chill air quickly attacked his exposed cock as Dominique drew a line in the snow with steaming urine. A man should wonder if the thing might take up the freeze and fall off for the times he must whip it out just to relieve himself. He could think of far warmer places to put it. Though present company would go unconsidered. The last woman he wanted to expose his starving lust to was a sword-wielding vixen like Seraphim d’Ange. That woman could emasculate with a mere glance. Rather, with the evil eye.

Securing the leather codpiece to his soft linen undershirt with a tug of the points, Dominique then slipped his fingers over the narrow slash in the thigh of his leather braies, courtesy of the black knight. ’Twas shallow, the cut. His flesh had taken on the chill, though the wound had already healed. There was not a drop of blood on his skin or clothing—at least not of the red variety. He smoothed away the congealed iridescent liquid, rubbing it between his fingers until it became powder and glistened into the air.

The only pain he felt was that of succumbing to his opponent’s blade. A woman’s blade, for the love of the Moon! He most certainly was not accustomed to such a bold woman. She deserved to be put in her place.

No. She deserves as much respect as you wish for yourself.

Indeed, he must set aside petty male/female comparisons. Seraphim d’Ange traveled a perilous course; she deserved nothing but his support. As their path drew closer to Creil, that course would only become more dangerous.

Tugging down his jerkin and drawing his gauntlet back on his hand, Dominique then punched a fist inside his other palm to stir his blood to a faster pace. He hated the chill and was most susceptible to drafts. Especially right between the shoulder blades. Once he exposed a bit of flesh the cold crept under his skin and remained until spring. He much preferred to grow a thick bushy beard to keep in the warmth, but the damned thing would do no more than sprout a thin shadow over his chin and upper lip.

Sorry man he’d turned out to be.

“Damned faery blood,” he muttered, as he cupped his palms before his mouth and blew. His warm breath briefly touched his nose and cheeks, but disappeared all too quickly.

“Your mission is progressing nicely.”

Dominique spun around, a stealthy movement bending him at the waist and crouching him into fight position, his dagger unsheathed and flashing before his face.

“You?” He relaxed his fight stance and jabbed the dagger-tip into the snow. “Morgana’s spine, but you follow me even when I am taking a piss!”

The Oracle remained serene, an odd expression on the figure that appeared to Dominique to be a boy of perhaps nine or ten. Short spikes of palest brown hair spurted here and there, as if bed-tousled. A flat nose only made his eyes appear all the more generous. A sweet fragrance, like a fresh spring meadow, overwhelmed him always.

The wide brown gaze of innocence teased Dominique to question his beliefs every time the Oracle glimmered into form—for that is the only term Dominique could summon for the sudden appearance of the apparition—swept in on a glimmer.

But for as young as he appeared, Dominique suspected the Oracle was decades older in wisdom. And if he were really a ghost of some sort, he could have been dead for ages.

“Do you realize the black knight is a woman?” Dominique asked.

“I…did not know that until now.”

Difficult to believe, knowing what Dominique did of the Oracle.

He regarded the vision with a careful summation of his visage. Not a flinch to his smooth features, the brown eyes held a frustrating clutch on naiveté. The Oracle knew everything. He’d given Dominique the layout of Abaddon’s castle, provided him with the information that he would meet the black knight en route to Creil, had even relayed details from both battles that saw the first two de Mortes fall. Why hadn’t he informed him of this important fact?

“A woman!” Dominique jabbed the trunk of a twisted elm with his boot, not hesitant at letting the Oracle see his disappointment.

“Can you keep her safe?”

“Against Abaddon, Sammael, and Lucifer?” Dominique shrugged a fall of snow from his shoulders then lifted his chin in challenge. “Sounds like a battle already won. And not by the black knight.”

“You must believe in yourself, Dominique San Juste,” the Oracle said in his whispery adolescent timbre. “You are of the earth; Seraphim is of fire. I chose you, knowing you would be a formidable match—as well a complement—to the d’Ange woman’s fire.”

“D’Ange,” Dominique muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. “An angel riding a quest against the darkest demons in France—wait! You said you did not know she was a woman. And yet—you just said you chose me to match her fire.” He raised an accusing finger on the glimmering figment. “You lie to me to serve your own selfish needs? What is the truth of my mission? Who are you, and why did you come to me?”

“You ask far too many questions, and already know the answers.”

“And you are a double-talking nuisance.”

“Have I yet steered you wrongly?”

The Oracle had first appeared to him three years ago. Dominique had been contemplating joining the English on the raid against Rouen, where Jeanne d’Arc would finally fall. No—contemplation had been all of a moment at sight of a purse gleaming with coin. He’d avoided siding with the English for years. But the coin…oh, that bright and sparkling coin.

The Oracle had appeared, insisting he go home. His mother needed him. Dominique had arrived only to hear his father’s dying words. “I have loved you so, son.”

Son. A word wrought of pure, priceless gold to Dominique’s troubled soul. Far more valuable than any English coin could offer. Yet beneath the gild lay a bronze core.

“Tell me, do you know why she quests so?”

The Oracle shrugged. Actually shrugged, which seemed to Dominique a very odd movement from one so otherworldly. “You have not asked her?”

“The woman is not one for conversation.”

“She fears adversity.”

“I am not the enemy.”

“Make her believe it and together the two of you shall triumph. She fears the same thing you fear, releasing the anger and following her heart.”

“I have no anger,” Dominique said, his jaw tightening.

“Really? Why then this mission? Perhaps it is not necessary to provide the answer you seek?”

“I am not angry about my past—only—all right! So I am angry.” He kicked at the snow, his frustration erupting in a powder of cold crystals. “It was not fair to be abandoned. To be left to my own devices in a world so unaccepting and…. and wrong.”

“You made it your own world, did you not?”

Dominique huffed. Another kick buried the toe of his boot.

“Come, Dominique, you tread too deeply in anger over such an insignificant portion of your life.”

His parentage insignificant?

Before Dominique could protest the Oracle’s suggestion, the waif of flowing robes and wide brown eyes was gone. Gone in a glimmer, a fizzle of twinkling lights and sweet scent.

“I hate it when he does that. Why can’t I do that?”

But the Oracle’s words lingered in his mind like heavy flakes of falling snow. Falling, but never landing on the ground…such an insignificant portion of your life.

No, ’twas not insignificant to his heart. To finally put to rest the decades-old question of who his real mother and father were was no little thing. He would have the answer, one way or another.

Pounding his boot heel against the elm trunk behind him, Dominique noticed the iridescent dust still coruscated from his person. He had to cast a glamour soon or risk exposing himself to Sera and Baldwin. A secret unnecessary to reveal; his mission did not rely on either of them knowing his truth.

Of course, he did not know their truths either. So many secrets. The squire—or was he a monk? And Seraphim d’Ange, the women who hid beneath a mask of male dress and bravery.

Well…he understood the need to hide. And for that reason he would not question.

Dominique pulled his cloak snug around his shoulders and flexed the muscles in his back. He’d hidden his true identity for so long he’d become accustomed to the aching need for release that always tingled between his shoulder blades. But not on this quest. He wanted the woman and her squire to accept him as an equal, not an anomaly.

Sera heard Dominique’s footsteps crunch over the hard snow behind her. Settled in for the night, she shrugged her hood down to her shoulders, allowing the heat of the blazing fire to simmer over her face and neck.

“We thought you’d been stolen away by the fair folk,” Baldwin offered from his tight little cocoon of wool cape as the mercenary landed camp.

“He thought as much,” Sera corrected. “I do not speak of such nonsense.”

“The nonsense that a man of my skill should allow himself to be stolen away?” Dominique moved close to the fire to draw heat into his chilled bones. “Or the fair folk?”

“The damn faeries,” she muttered.

“You—” Sera marveled at the muscle that tensed in Dominique’s jaw “—consider them nonsense?”

“You know naught of what you question, San Juste.”

“Ah, I see. A nonbeliever. So you believe only in what you can see?”

“Aye, but—”

“You cannot see the wind, yet it is so powerful as to fell trees.”

She regarded him with a wry smirk. No need to explain that she did believe, or to reveal her hatred for the hideous creatures. He was most likely a believer in the whimsical and magical ways of the fair folk, could have no idea of the true evil they wrought.

Dominique nodded, the movement of his hood clacking the hematite stones against one another in a canorous ring. “I shall grant you that, for the sake of peace.”

“I shall take it without your leave. Did you scan the perimeter?”

“We will be safe here in the forest for the night.”

“Your horse wanders freely,” Baldwin commented.

“He does.” Having no intention of elaborating, Dominique moved between Sera and the squire and picked up a leafless elm branch to poke at the fire. A few jabs raised a flurry of red fire sprites over the blaze in a spiral of escape. “Have you ale or wine?”

“No supplies,” Baldwin said with a shudder.

“You should have filled your belly in Pontoise,” Sera commented. If the man craved drink he could melt down snow for all she cared. “We travel light, nothing to burden our journey.”

“Just wondering,” he said, a dismissive tone to his voice. Sera gauged that he was not a man to anger easily. Unless one tried to lie to him about their identity.

She leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, and unfocused her eyes upon the brilliant orange flames. In her peripheral view, the mercenary’s stallion did indeed roam freely. Curious. But she didn’t trouble over the reason. Instead she released a sigh and allowed her shoulders to sag. It felt good not to think. To relax before the blaze. The warmth brought a numbness that spread to her skull. This night she would not worry of what the morrow may bring.

But close, sat San Juste. Too close for the damsel to disregard.

Just one moment for my pleasure?

Very well, Sera thought, being much too tired to conjure an excuse.

From the corner of her eye, she studied the side of the mercenary’s face, as he, too, voided out on the flames. His jaw was so sharp as to be deadly. Not a single line of age creased the unnaturally smooth flesh. Though black stubble lended masculine roughness to an otherwise tender visage. Indeed, a handsome man. But she was not taken to swooning, as Baldwin liked to tease. Had Sera ever before favored a man, she had required but a look and a bend of her forefinger to bring him to her side.

That was me, the damsel cooed.

Enough then. Sera lowered her head onto her knees and closed her eyes, forcing the damsel back into the darkness. ’Twas risky to allow such thoughts.

“From where do you hail, San Juste?” Baldwin asked.

“East of Creil, but five hours on a slow horse. Deep in the Valois Wood where my father built a cottage for my mother, far away from any village.”

“Your parents await their son’s return from a successful mission?” Baldwin wondered.

“I have not been to the wood for over a year. What of you, squire? How long have you been at the d’Ange castle?”

“Let’s see…since the May Day festival, I believe. Aye, I remember sweet Margot and her plump—”

“Benwick.”

Baldwin quieted at Sera’s terse reprimand. He offered a shrug and slumped into his nest of cape and supplies.

“Did you lose parents,” Dominique wondered, “loved ones in the New Year’s ordeal?”

“I am an orphan since six. Spent all of my life living upon the discards of others, the swiftness of my fingers, and the finely tuned wit of my brain.”

At Baldwin’s boastful declaration Sera cast him the mongoose eye. And he saw.

With a resolute sigh, the squire said, “Very well, if you must know, before I became a squire, well, er…a postulant, I was…a toad-eater. Though you mustn’t hold it against me,” he rushed in. “I atone for my crimes every day. I was seeking orders, for heaven’s sake!”

“Toad-eater?” Dominique wondered. The flames danced in his dark eyes. Sera could not look away from the beguiling sight. No red demons there, only violet allure. “Are not toads poisonous?”

“Oh, aye,” Baldwin offered. Then with a wriggle of his thick brows, he added, “If you really eat them.”

“I don’t understand. You say you ate them, and then you say you did not.”

“Exactly.” Baldwin sat up a little straighter. A proud smile beamed beneath his wearied brown eyes.

Sera would allow him such pride, for she was the first to admit the man was not the sort of hardened criminal that belonged swinging at the end of a noose. He was the closest thing to family she had left. She needed family. A place to belong. A place to be loved.

The squire spread his hand open, the long fingers splaying to catch the heat. “You see, I used to work for a magician, Melmoth the Marvelous. You’ve heard of him? Known through all parts of France and England, also a small portion of the Irish Isle. Anyway, I helped him sell his elixirs at market every summer to unsuspecting dupes—er, patrons.”

“I think I begin to understand,” Dominique said. “The patrons would witness you eating a poisonous toad. You would go into convulsions or some form of grand death charade. The magician would rush an amazing cure-all elixir down your throat, therefore drawing the poison from your body and curing you before all eyes.”

“And only three sous per six drachms!” Baldwin declared in his best hawker’s voice. “I never did eat the toad. Well, there were occasions—hell, a man tends to build an immunity by slowly exposing himself to poison. I can munch a whole toad now without worry of dropping dead. Rather tasty roasted.”

Dominique leaned across the distance between he and the squire. “And just how were you such a success when I myself have witnessed your remarkable inability to cover a lie?”

Baldwin drew his hand over his eyes to simulate laying a blindfold over them. With a laugh, he announced, “I was blind!”

“That’s quite a skill, the fool that fools while acting the fool himself.”

“A skill.” The squire clutched his leather purse and squeezed the contents. A reassuring gesture. “But no more.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“For as much as I relied on the scarf to blind the fools to my dupe, it did not serve to blind me. I began to notice the lost hope, the tragedy in the eyes circling Melmoth’s stage. Their eyes were wide with the hopes of a magical cure to end all their woes, their pains. They were so much like the orphan boy that stood before them on the stage. And I was selling them snake oil. Abbe Belloc reassured me that dedicating my life to God was a noble effort.”

“Indeed, it is. If you are prepared for such sacrifice.”

“I am. Maybe. Hell…” He sighed, riffled his fingers through his this-way-and-that hair. “I’m working on it.” He gave his purse another squeeze. “I’m not yet ready to give up the bones.”

“Bones?”

Baldwin shrugged. “I bartered in bones as well. No longer. But I do have some excellent treasures.” He dug in the leather purse at his hip. “See here, St. Miranda’s finger bone. ’Tis an excellent charm against mud slides and natural disasters. And here!” He displayed a thin white bone before his glittering eyes. “The finger bone of St. Jude the Obscure, patron saint of Hopeless Causes—” he cast a glance Sera’s way “—which could certainly be put to use in our endeavors.”

Sera shook her head.

“Well, St. Eustache’s toe bone really does work!” Baldwin insisted. “I rubbed it both nights you rode into battle.”

“I see,” she said. “And so I suppose they do work, for I am yet all of one piece.”

Baldwin gave an exacting nod.

Sera reneged her challenge with a deftly concealed smirk behind her hand. The man needed some faith to cling to. And until he was ready to accept his own courage—for he did possess courage—he would need the false reassurance the bones offered him.

“And what of you?”

Sera lifted her chin at Dominique’s query. No mistaking he had addressed her.

“You lost your family. A tragedy. Was there also…a husband?”

The smirk grew wider, and Sera had to dip her head to keep San Juste from seeing the mirth she knew glittered in her eyes. The mercenary’s question came across as more personal than the man might like it to sound. Did he have an interest in her beyond his mission? She who slaughtered men, and stomped about in armor, and was more in resemblance to a man than a woman with long beautiful hair and a delicate step beneath flowing skirts?

Her heart warmed to think such. She could not fight the damsel’s desire for love. Much as she had chosen to deny her tattered heart that emotion, she knew it was needed.

But it was not required for healing. Only avenging her family could provide that.

“I was to be married on the first day of the New Year.” She regarded Dominique for his reaction. A raised brow. The warmth in his eyes contrasted acutely with his sharp features; she wasn’t sure whether to trust this man or slit his throat.

She raked her fingers through her spiked coif and scratched. With a splay of her hand she said, “Despite outer appearances, I am marriageable. My father had land on the coast he wished me to have, so he found a husband. Someone who would not interfere with my desire to control the holdings.”

“In other words,” Dominique figured, “a man malleable to your desires?”

“In a sense. I am not a cruel person, San Juste. Nor was my father. It was simply the only way I could own land. Henri agreed.”

“Your husband?”

“Henri of Lisieux. He hadn’t any land to inherit after a brush fire, courtesy of Mastema de Morte, razed his father’s holdings. Lisieux was an interesting man…”

“Sera! You’d best run a comb through your hair and tidy up. Father has already declared the festivities begin.”

Sera stood up from brushing under Gryphon’s belly and pushed a long strand of hair from her eyelashes. Antoine slapped Gryphon’s flank, then chucked his sister under the chin, pointing out the smudge of dirt there.

Since when had he been overconcerned with her appearance?

Ah. She found the answer in her brother’s bright-eyed smirk. “He is here?”

“Father outdid himself with this one. Truly, you must see the man to believe it.”

“That hideous to look upon?” Sera handed Antoine the brush and jerked her rucked-up sleeves to her wrists. The red damask kirtle was clean, though hay clung to the hem, and certainly the odor of stable would cling for the day.

“No, no, Father would not be so cruel to his only daughter.” He slid an arm around her shoulder. “I still find it troubling that you allowed Father to choose your husband for you.”

“Fathers choose their daughters’ husbands every day, Antoine. Why should that disturb you so?”

“You are not like most women, Seraphim. Do you not desire…well, love?”

She shrugged, shooed away a metallic green hover fly from near her brother’s face. “What woman does not?”

“There is still time to make your own choice. Do you not care for any of Father’s knights?”

“Ha! They are adept idiots, the lot of them.”

“I will remind you that I am a knight, dear sister.”

“You are not stupid, Antoine. The knights that practice in the lists are adept at but one thing, and that is being men. Boisterous, unclean, single-minded, sword-swinging, idiot men. They reign on the battlefield, and I know they choose to reign in the bed chamber, as well. I cannot live with a man who will seek to reign over me, Antoine, you know that.”

“Indeed, I do understand. So you must go then, look upon the man Father has chosen. But be cautious you don’t frighten the mouse away with your overwhelming Amazon presence.”

Sera left Gryphon to Antoine’s care and strode out into the courtyard, destined for the great hall, where she felt sure to find amidst revelry and celebration her future husband.

So Father had done as she had requested. Just a proxy for her holdings; she and Father had agreed. Not a man who had designs on her future, let alone his own future. Someone compliant, simple, and agreeable. Though not meek. She did not wish a milksop to have to protect should her holdings ever be challenged. He must command a sword as well as a gentle tongue.

She would be no man’s chattel.

Offering a good day to the laundress who hung wet sheets to dry on the line, Sera marched inside the castle and followed the gay melody of lutes and harp-strings to the rush-strewn keep. Baldwin Ortolano, the abbe’s newest postulant, bowed and offered a “Good day, my lady.”

A gray-bellied dove swooped down from the rafters, flittering a breeze across Sera’s face. At the far end of the great hall Father and Mother were seated upon the dais. ’Twas a rare occasion that saw Mother out of her solar. She held her simply coiffed head regally, though her curled fingers were clutched tight to her stomach.

Mother’s lady-in-waiting stood with a hand cupped over her mouth. The object of her stifled glee stood on the floor before the dais, a maroon velvet liricap spilling from his head onto narrow shoulders. His doublet, belted in gold about his waist, did not so much hang from his shoulders, as drip. Two long sticks for legs were capped off by long pointed leather shoes. Not so much comical, as pitiful.

Had this man ever touched sharpened steel in defense?

Sera halted but three strides before the man. Behind her, surprising winter sun beamed through the windows set high upon the wall, lighting her figure in worship. She had planned her position thusly.

Placing arms akimbo, and raising her chin assertively, Sera spoke with a certain discernment, “My lord Henri, I presume?”

The man’s jaw dropped. He pointed a long finger then, thinking better, dropped the hand to his side. He stuttered on the first syllable, then finally spat out, “My—my lady Seraphim?”

“I told you she was a fine piece of woman,” Marcil d’Ange bellowed from his throne. “Wine! We celebrate from this moment until the stroke of midnight, when the New Year comes marching in. Let the First Foot bring blessings for us all!”

A lute player plucked an arpeggio of notes and the flute joined in. Serving maids rushed in with pitchers of wine and silver goblets, and the merriment of the hall resumed. But Sera remained, hands on hips, a smile curving her lips, as she studied Henri’s nervous gaze. Gold eyes rimmed with thick blond lashes dodged here and there. He dared not look upon any one part of her for too long, yet his gaze could not help but stride over her face, shoulders, and body.

He surely thought, What the hell have I gotten myself into?

“I do not bite,” Sera said, and offered her hand.

Henri stepped forward, bowed to one bony knee, and kissed the back of her hand. A sweet gesture. One that startled Sera. Amidst the stir of music and dance and drink, this man had just promised something to her. His faith, his trust, his acceptance. Such a simple victory. But hardly a triumph over one so…malleable.

“Forgive me if I stare, my lady.” Henri’s voice no longer stuttered, but he had to shout to be heard above the din of revelry. “You are quite remarkable.”

“My father claims the d’Anges come from hearty Amazonian stock.”

“No doubt. Er, but it is your beauty I remark upon.” He hastily removed his cap, exposing stick-straight blond hair cut in a fashionable circle that rimmed just above each ear. “I feel quite a shrew next to your bright shining star. I hope I can be everything you expect in a husband.”

She smiled at his humble confession. “You already are, Henri.”

Her father had chosen well.

Sera, deciding to walk alongside Henri, allowed him to take the first step up to the dais and lead her to the seat next to her father. For the evening she allowed the romance of marriage and gaining a man to claim her land to overtake reality. When it neared the midnight hour she was drunk, tired, and quite pleased with the circumstances of her life.

“If you’ll excuse me, my lord Henri,” she whispered in his ear. “I must retire.”

“You’ll not stay and ring in the New Year?”

“I was up before dawn, and have been busy in the stables and the garden and the larder all the day. The festivities have brought me to the peak of exhaustion. I wish to sleep, repair for the new day, which will find me a blushing bride at your side.”

Henri afforded an embarrassed smile. Sera couldn’t be sure if it was that, or perhaps excessive drink that colored his cheeks. Sweet man. He would be easy enough to ignore. Or perhaps, grow to love.

She pressed a palm to his cheek. “Good eve, Henri. May the First Foot bring happiness to our lives.”

“The First Foot?” Dominique asked. A blaze of sparks burst skyward at the poke of his stick. Somewhere above the encampment an owl hooted.

“The first man who crosses the threshold after the midnight hour,” Baldwin explained, his gaze fixed to the flickering flames, “holds the futures of all the family members within.”

“It is said a man with dark hair and a dark complexion is most favorable,” Sera offered, as blandly as the squire had. “He did have dark hair.”

Dominique looked to Baldwin for explanation. The squire muttered the name, “De Morte.”

“Did not the wardcorne announce his arrival from the battlements?” Dominique wondered.

“I found him with an arrow to the brain,” Baldwin said. “Lucifer’s entire army appeared as if bats rising up from hell. There were so many of them…”

A chill silence held the threesome. Had the flames voice they would have cackled wicked taunts at Sera’s tale.

Had her family been punished for the sanguine choosing of Henri de Lisieux as her proxy? No. Maybe? No. Father had been to arms against Lucifer de Morte for weeks. Lucifer demanded payment for the surplus wheat d’Ange lands had produced over the past three years. The new methods of agriculture her father had been testing had proven fruitful beyond imagination. Father had given the surplus to the needy villagers.

She could still hear the deafening roar of her father’s voice as he’d set Lucifer’s messenger to right. “You tell de Morte I’ll see him in hell before I bow to an English king. And the surplus has been given away!”

“Ah! But what of you, San Juste?” Sera chased away the haunting echoes by averting attention from herself. “Have you family? Tell us about them and lift this sudden darkness that has fallen over our heads.”

“My family.” Dominique stirred a branch in the snow at his feet, designing a circle. “My parents are both dead. ’Twas the plague brought over by the English a few years back.”

“I’m sorry.” She remembered that horrible summer. The plague had reduced the numbers in France by a quarter. Elizabeth, the young girl who had tended the d’Ange sheep, had been stricken. She had suffered two weeks of agony before finally surrendering to death. “Have you a wife? Children?”

“Neither a wife nor child.”

“That you know of,” Sera said with a hint of mirth. Anything to lift the spirits of this dismal trio.

Dominique rose. His expression showed no clue that he’d caught the mirthful mood. “I have no children, my lady. And believe me, I would have a care to know if I did.”

“Honorable words, uttered by many a man,” she said lightly.

“I know women believe men lust after any wench who should cross their paths, but that is not the case with me. My lady—” he gazed down upon her with fire-glinting eyes “—when I love, I love deeply. And I do not take the act of carnal relations lightly. Yes, there may be occasion when a wench will serve, but she will be treated with respect and dignity, as one should only expect. Unlike some people I have come to know, who bully others about with commands and choose the most amiable of matches to lord over in their marital bliss.”

He then turned and marched off into the forest, destination unknown. His exit left the encampment a cold hollow shivering amongst the cage of winter-raped trees.

Snapping out of the icy hold of Dominique’s words, Sera looked to Baldwin, who nodded effusively in response to her unspoken question. “He was speaking directly to you.”

“Hmph. I had no intention of lording over Lisieux.” She toed a stray piece of bark into the fire. “Why do you always side with San Juste?”

He shrugged. “He is different from most. Not your normal boisterous, demanding male.”

She lifted a brow at Baldwin’s stunning insight.

“And he has an eye for you.”

“Ridiculous.”

“As you wish,” came Baldwin’s reply, smothered by the wrap of his cape as he settled himself back into a cocoon. “He is good for the both of us, Sera. I pray you grant him the chance to prove it.”

“I have denied him nothing,” she said, and allowed her body to fall back against the elm trunk. A heavy sigh spumed a thick puff of frost before her face.

When I love, I love deeply. I do not take the act of carnal relations lightly.

“Indeed,” Sera whispered. “What fortune a woman should reap, to be loved by Dominique San Juste.”

SIX

So it had arrived. Dawn.

Dominique stood alone at the edge of the forest, his face turned to absorb the amber rays of sun as they widened and stretched the horizon in a dance of majesty. An incredible sight to behold. One he’d not missed for as long as he could recall.

Always the rising sun called to him. Much the way the moon beckoned he worship her luminescent glow.

But the sun’s lure was not a favorable calling. For with the dawn came the darkness. At this time of day the evil thoughts, that dark roil of something else, burned deep within Dominique’s being.

They did not want you. You are evil, not right!

Seraphim’s voice wavered in the depths of his mind, blending with the other dark whispers. Faeries are evil, malicious creatures…

Curse them all!

He clenched his fists as tight as his jaw, then stretched out his fingers in alternate moves. Like a beast preparing for the lunge, working its talons in anticipation of the kill.

“What is this?” he asked now in a low hiss. As he would always ask.

An answer did not come. As it never did.

And so he replied to the silence. “Is this what it is that made them reject me? This anger within? The unexplainable darkness? Has it to do with my appearance, my dark hair and eyes? Or is it the evil that clutches my heart with every sunrise?”

Yes, the evil. It had been this very darkness that had possessed him yesterday morn, and had spurred him to challenge Seraphim. A necessary challenge, yes. But one he would not have issued to a woman had he not been cajoled by the dawn.

He was different because of his connection to the dawn. But why?

For decades Dominique had questioned his inner cache of unconscious memories, hoping to recall a preternatural image of his birth mother’s face. Had she looked upon him, for one sweet moment, with love in her heart?

The image was impossible to fathom, to put into any real form. He’d been rejected and traded for something else. A more desirable—yet lesser—being.

Changeling was the word he’d learned to hate. Something…not right. Different. Unwanted. Cast out of Faery with no hope of re-entrance. He knew it was there—Faery. The Other Realm shimmered and moved all about him. Always so unreachable. All attempts to connect, to become, had been fruitless.

Dominique’s wool cloak fluttered out from his body, flowing like a shadow dancing upon the slight morning breeze. The muscles between his shoulder blades tightened and flexed.

He would never possess the freedom to just be. But he prayed that with the answer to his greatest desire he could finally learn to accept. And with acceptance would come a certain freedom from the darkness.

In the distance, the sing of steel reverberating through the crisp morning air coaxed Dominique’s thoughts from the past and all he could not become because of its elusivity.

Pulling his cloak securely about his shoulders and slipping off a glove to push stray hairs away from his face, he blew out a heavy exhale. Again the song of steel slicing winter air sounded. Drawn by curiosity, Dominique trod across the field of thick snow, crusted with an ice-crystal top layer. He landed a rise on the ground where Seraphim worked her blade with surprising skill.

Here in the long-stretching shadows of the forest the sword she wielded caught no sunlight to gleam or sparkle. But the motion of sharp, swift steel, and alluring female curves worked an orchestration of power, fire and beauty. What this woman lacked in physical strength was made up for with stealthiness. Feline prowess moved long legs—bent at the knee, her feet planted—to direct the sword’s path. Chain mail and armor shrouded any feminine charm she might possess. But the notion that there, beneath the silver mesh, lay temptation, planted itself in Dominique’s mind and clung like a burr to wool.

This warrior, this self-proclaimed Amazon, was not a woman to be wasted on such feebleness as the ill-fated Henri de Lisieux. Seraphim d’Ange was fire, and feral wickedness, and bright pride.

Fierce concentration kept her attention from his approach, until he was within distance to challenge. Her figure drew a graceful line through the icy air.

A few more steps, close enough to wound with a swift lunge…

“You’re up rather early, San Juste.” She expelled a controlled breath and swung her blade around to face him. The tip of her sword skimmed one of the hematite stones sewn onto his cloak. “I could have your head if I wish.” A lift of her dark brow spoke defiance.

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