Page 3

Chapter Three

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T anyl hadn’t changed. Not that I should have expected him to. He was a full-blooded elf, immortal and immune from most diseases. Barring serious injury, he’d live thousands of years or more.

Still, some part of me had expected him to look different. Or maybe I’d just hoped. I wasn’t ready to see the long, golden hair and bright blue eyes. The smooth, firm jaw and sculpted mouth. High forehead. Tapered ears. Hard, direct stare. The suggestion of lean muscle under expensive clothes.

The latter was different. The last time I saw Tanyl, he’d worn nothing but a ragged loincloth.

I banished that vision as a number of emotions played over his features. Shock. Anger. Disbelief. A lick of fear.

And, finally, polite indifference.

He looked at the white and blue flag bundled under my arm. “You’re a long way from home, Father.”

The title struck like an arrow piercing the center of my chest. It stuck there, the shaft quivering as our gazes held.

Father. Hearing it shouldn’t have affected me. I’d heard it often enough over five decades. But when he said it…

It had been so long since he said it.

And people were staring. The weight of their scrutiny landed all at once—an avalanche pressing from every direction. Eyes ran over the blunt curves of my ears and the faint sigils that struggled up my neck, the marks pale cousins of the real thing. Murmurs reached me, the voices pitched low. Probably, the elves thought I couldn’t hear.

“Halfling…”

“Priest…”

“… his mother disgraced herself.”

Going to one knee, I bowed my head and recited the speech I’d rehearsed on the long journey from Mistvale to Storm’s Hollow.

“Perun protect you, Your Grace. I come in peace at the behest of Grand Master Silas of the Citadel. The Rivven have heard your cry for help, and we answer.”

Belatedly, I remembered I was supposed to be a stranger. No one in the Spring Court could know Tanyl and I shared a history. We’d agreed, both of us sunburnt and angry in the shadows of the Citadel.

No one can ever know.

“I’m Sir Briar Finthir,” I said, my own name thick and blocky on my tongue. It didn’t pair well with the speech. Then again, I hadn’t rehearsed it.

Tanyl didn’t respond. The weight of the stares increased. Somewhere behind me, my horse snorted softly. The thunder of the waterfalls filled the air, the sound returned by the tumbling rapids at the island’s base. Weariness tugged at me, and a dull ache throbbed in the small of my back. The journey from Mistvale to Storm’s Hollow took eleven days. I’d done it in eight, switching horses at various temples scattered among Vetra’s villages. When I grew too tired to stay in the saddle, I’d blessed newborn babies and prayed over sick humans in exchange for food and a few hours’ sleep in the corner of homes and stables.

The silence stretched. At last, the weight of the stares grew too heavy, and I looked up.

Tanyl frowned slightly. “Cry for help?”

My knee pressed against the inside of my poleyn, the metal digging into my skin. The leather strap securing the small, rounded piece of armor bit into the tendon behind my knee. Fatigue and irritation battled for supremacy as I nodded. “Grand Master Silas received your Council’s petition.”

Someone gasped. I followed the sound and locked eyes with a tall, slender woman behind Tanyl.

And lightning struck. I blinked, part of me wondering if the grueling journey had finally caught up to me. Because the woman wasn’t real.

She was unreal , with long, pale hair and delicate, beautiful features.

No, that wasn’t right at all. The woman wasn’t simply beautiful. She was the spray of the sea in my face as I stood on the bow of one of the swift clippers the fishermen flew up and down the coast in Mistport.

She was the warmth of a sunbaked brick under my hand—the kind of pleasant heat that made me think that, one day, if I ever got the chance, I’d curl up on those bricks and sleep with the sun painting the insides of my eyelids red.

She was poetry I didn’t understand and could never hope to, my clumsy mind good for things like battle maneuvers and ways to stretch a day’s ration of beans into a week.

She was a flash of light on the river, her eyes a curious mix of blue and green. Aquamarine, they called that color, but the word was too fanciful for everyday use. No one ever really said it. For most people, blue or green sufficed. But it was perfect for her, with her eyes like the sea.

She was the only woman in the courtyard. And she belonged to Tanyl.

Sylvie Vildea. She couldn’t be anyone else. Word traveled slowly from Storm’s Hollow to Mistport, but forty-five years was plenty of time for me to know that Tanyl had wed the Lord of the Silver Sea’s daughter.

Not the daughter he was supposed to wed. The eldest Vildea girl had run off the night before the ceremony, her cold feet carrying her all the way to a minor lordling’s bed. Desperate to salvage his chance to see his house joined with royalty, the late Lord of the Silver Sea had pulled his younger daughter from the Sancta Sestra and offered her as the next best thing.

But she wasn’t the next best. She was everything.

And I was staring like a pledge who got his bell rung in the training ring.

I yanked my gaze from Tanyl’s queen just as he turned toward a group of men standing around the mutilated corpse on its bed of kindling.

“Council?” Tanyl asked, ice in his voice.

One of the men stepped forward. Dark-haired and richly dressed, he wore a sword on his hip. “More Scarrok venture onto land with each passing day, Your Grace. The Rivven have battled the Scarrok for a thousand years. Who better to help us in our time of need?” The man leaned forward, his fingers curling around the hilt of his sword as urgency entered his tone. “We must act.”

“So you acted, Crispin.” Tanyl’s smile sent a chill down my spine. “You and the Council.”

The man lifted his chin. “The Council acted, my king.”

Tanyl’s faint smile turned sharp as a blade.

An elf in priest’s robes stepped forward, his gaze flicking from me to Tanyl. “We must finish the ritual, Your Grace. Every second of delay increases the risk of this poor soul rising.”

The urgency in the priest’s voice seemed to snap Tanyl out of his icy fury. He looked at me, then gestured for me to stand.

“Come, Father, if you’re willing. Perhaps the presence of two priests will please the river god.”

Behind him, the priest pursed his lips, disapproval appearing briefly in his eyes. I sensed it wasn’t for me, but for Tanyl and his irreverence. That hadn’t changed.

“Sir Briar,” I said, ignoring the spike of pain in my back as I got to my feet. When confusion flickered in Tanyl’s eyes, I added, “We prefer being addressed as knights. The Rivven, that is.”

Tanyl stared for a moment. “Of course,” he said finally. Then he swept a hand toward the Scarrok’s victim. “If you would, Sir Briar.”

Eyes marked my steps as I crossed the courtyard. The lords made room for me around the kindling, and I folded my hands as the priest began the Rite of the Fallen from the beginning. His rhythmic voice rose and fell, the cadence like a dark lullaby. The days and nights in the saddle dragged at my limbs and eyelids. I swayed, then caught myself. A furtive glance around showed the lords and knights with lowered heads, their gazes on the bloodied remnants of the knight in the center of the kindling.

The priest droned on. Every few sentences, the observers obediently spoke their responses. I moved my lips, mouthing both sides of the rite. The ache in my back went from the tip of a knife to the blunt, round head of a hammer. Hunger gnawed at my gut. My skin itched under my gambeson, the padded fabric sticking to my shoulder blades.

The salty-sweet scent of riverthistle flooded my lungs, and I jerked hard enough to make my armor rattle. Sylvie had moved beside me.

Had she always been there? No, of course not. I would have noticed.

The hem of her blue gown rested an inch from my boot. The top of her head rose to my jaw. She was tall, even for an elven female. I’d always stood head and shoulders above most men.

“Yea, Perun,” she said, her long lashes dusting her cheeks. If the stories about her were true, she knew both sides of the rite, too. Pledged to the Sancta Sestra as a child, she would have grown up with the sestras as she prepared to take her final vows of silence and celibacy.

Except she hadn’t. She’d married Tanyl. Her breasts were small but high, the swells thrusting against her gown. Pale blue sigils rose from the neckline, the forked lightning entwined with kestrels in flight. A third element—this one a fainter blue—threaded through the symbols of her power.

Perun’s chain. It matched the ones that had circled my wrists and throat since I was eighteen years old. But mine were darker. Unlike her, I’d taken my vows. And then I’d broken them.

Sylvie turned her head. Just a sliver a movement. Blue-green eyes met mine and then slid away.

“Yea, Perun,” the lords and knights murmured.

I looked across the kindling. Tanyl watched me, and for the second time since I entered Storm’s Hollow, lightning struck.

It was just like the first time.

Just like the first time.

My knees loosened. Fifty years vanished in a blink, and I was twenty years old again with the unrelenting sun of Saltvale searing my shoulders. The blaze was nothing compared to the heat in Tanyl’s eyes. The fire in his fingertips. In Saltvale, we were both no one and nothing. He’d left his crown behind when he crossed the Covenant. Nevertheless, he’d commanded me.

Kneel for me, Father.

“Yea, Perun,” the priest said, snapping me from the past.

Across the kindling, Tanyl didn’t break my stare, his lips moving as he offered the response. The ghost of his voice echoed in my head. Past and present overlapped.

Now, open your mouth.

“Yea, Perun, take this man, body and soul.”

My chest tightened, and my heart sped up. Under my gambeson, phantom fingers trailed down my back. Salt and sweat mingled on my tongue. Rough hands turned me, pressed me down. Hot breath seared my nape. The chain binding me to my god pulled taut, the links straining, desperate to break.

The priest raised his voice to a shout. “Yea, Perun!”

The wind picked up, tugging at the hair that fell over Tanyl’s shoulder. His lips moved, and I could feel them on my skin.

“Yea, Perun.”

The wind shifted, the scent of riverthistle chasing the stench of blood from my nostrils. Sylvie’s skirts fluttered closer to the edge of my boot. Her voice floated above the lower pitch of the men’s.

“Yea, Perun.”

Silk rustled as she lifted her arm, touching her fingertips to her forehead and then her lips. My heart sped faster as I removed my gauntlet, almost dropping it in my haste to prevent the leather and steel from getting between my skin and my god.

My god, what had I been thinking, coming to Storm’s Hollow?

The dark-haired lord Tanyl had addressed as Crispin stepped closer to the kindling. As he extended his hands, the others stepped back. His name jarred loose a memory.

Crispin Vildea. He was brother to Sylvie. Their parents were dead, which made him the Lord of the Silver Sea and the second most powerful man in the Spring Court.

He closed his eyes, his palms hovering over what was left of the fallen knight. The lightning around his wrists began to glow.

Something brushed my arm, and I turned to find Sylvie at my elbow. She lowered her hand, but her touch burned through my clothes. Even with that fleeting touch, she’d burned me.

“You’ll want to step back, Father,” she said. A hint of pink entered her cheeks. “I mean, Sir Briar.” She looked at the kindling behind me. “My brother’s magic is strong.”

I was staring again. People were waiting.

“All right,” I mumbled. Somehow, I managed to shuffle backward without knocking into her or falling on my face. Because the ground felt unsteady, as if the river had climbed the cliffs and flowed under my feet.

It was just her , though. And him .

Did she know about me? Had he told her?

No one can ever know.

But she was his wife. Men confessed things to their wives. In bed in the middle of the night, men told their wives things they didn’t dare tell anyone else.

I avoided Tanyl’s gaze as Crispin closed his eyes. Lightning flashed from his fingertips, and white splashed over my vision, bleaching the inside of my skull.

As quickly as it came, it was gone, the kindling and the corpse gone with it. Black dots swam before my eyes as Crispin stepped back and rolled down his sleeves.

Knights and lords bowed to Tanyl and then started toward the castle, casting me curious looks as they went. The priest appeared in front of me.

“We keep the Hours here at Storm’s Hollow,” he said gruffly. “You’re welcome to lead prayers in the main temple, Sir Briar.”

Under no circumstances would I lead prayers in the main temple.

“Thank you, Father,” I said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

He nodded. Then he went to Sylvie and clasped her hands. “I’ll see you at Zadia, child?”

“Of course, Father,” she murmured. “Perun protect you.”

The priest smiled, then lifted his hand and touched his thumb to her forehead. She closed her eyes, and he moved his thumb to her lips, holding it there as she kissed it. “And Perun protect you, daughter,” he said.

“Thank you, Father.”

My cock tightened, blood pumping so hard and fast between my legs that it left me dizzy. I tore my gaze from her pink mouth.

The priest stepped back. “Sleep well, Your Grace.”

“And you, Father,” she said.

The priest left, and the courtyard emptied. Tanyl went to Sylvie and kissed her knuckles, his bright gaze on hers. Something passed between them—a current of silent communication that didn’t need words and most definitely wasn’t for me.

Tanyl straightened, and then husband and wife faced me in the quiet courtyard, their rich clothing glowing in the moonlight. Their eyes glowed too, the magic of Ishulum shining from their irises.

I looked at the ground.

“I’ll have a servant see to your horse,” Tanyl said, his voice jerking my head back up.

I’d forgotten the beast. It could have jumped off the cliffs and perished in the rapids, and I wouldn’t have noticed.

Dangerous. In Spring, as in Vetra, distraction led to death. But the Scarrok weren’t the worst peril in my path.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” I said. And then, for no good reason at all, I offered, “He’s a good horse. A little tender in the mouth, but a solid mount.” Heat scalded my nape, memories rushing me.

Stupid. What a stupid thing to say.

Tanyl’s smile was the polite expression of a king entertaining an uncouth guest—or a slightly amusing child. “The stablemaster will reward his service. Now, I’m sure your journey was tiring.” The smile changed, the edges almost as sharp as they’d been when he spoke to Crispin. “Come inside and refresh yourself, and you can tell me more about this plea my Council sent to your Grand Master.”