Page 34 of The Warrior Priest (After the Rift #1)

M y tactic to delay death until Rhys arrived wasn’t working. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t buck Giselle off. Although I still clutched a knife, she had two. And they were about to cut my throat.

Until then, I could still use my voice. “I’ll pay you!” Her hesitation encouraged me. “I’ll pay you more than both your clients.”

She snorted. “You can’t afford me.”

“I can steal the money. You know I’m a good thief. My uncle is rich and I know his house well. I’ll get you the fee by the end of the week.”

“Tempting but no.”

“Then it’s not about money, is it?”

“I thought it was, but now…for some reason, your offer is not appealing enough for me to let you go.” She huffed a humorless laugh as if the realization surprised her.

I looked past her shoulder and gasped. “Thank Hailia.”

“You think I’ll fall for that?”

“My keen sense of hearing can pick up sounds well before you. I can determine how many approach when I hear footsteps, or hoofbeats. In this case, there are four horses just beyond the clearing.” Giselle’s eyes hardened.

Her muscles tensed. “You summoned Rhys,” I went on, “but I suspected you were up to something when I received your note, so I summoned his friends before I came here.”

Her gaze flickered as she finally heard the horses. That moment of distraction was enough for me to thrust my knife toward her. She deflected the strike before the blade sank into her shoulder, but I was able to use the distraction to punch her in the side with my left fist.

With the horses drawing closer, she realized she had little time left. She abandoned her plan to kill me and ran for her horse. She rode off in the opposite direction to the four approaching warrior priests.

I stood just as Rhys leapt down from the saddle. “That way!” I shouted, pointing in the direction Giselle had gone.

Vizah, Rufus, and Andreas went after her.

Rhys cupped my face in his hands. “Jac! Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” I shook like a leaf in a breeze, but I wasn’t harmed.

Rhys drew me into a fierce hug, one hand buried in my hair, the other at my back. I almost threw my arms around him but remembered his wounds and instead rested my hands at his waist. I leaned into him and soaked in the comforting rhythm of his heartbeat and familiar scent.

After a moment, he drew in a deep breath and pulled away. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here earlier. Neither your message nor Giselle’s reached us until after training.”

“Your timing was perfect. I’ll have to thank Mistress Blundle.

” I’d given the apothecary a note to deliver to Rufus, Vizah or Andreas at the temple before I left to meet Giselle.

I’d told them not to inform Rhys. I hadn’t wanted him involved at all—his wounds were too fresh.

At that point, I’d simply thought Giselle wanted to kidnap me.

I hadn’t known her true intention or that she’d sent a note to Rhys summoning him here just as she’d summoned me.

“You should have waited for them,” Rhys told me.

“You shouldn’t have come alone. Merdu and Hailia, Jac, when I received Giselle’s note and realized what she intended to do…

” He scrubbed his bearded jaw and looked in the direction his friends had gone through the trees. “I thought we wouldn’t make it.”

“What did Giselle’s message say?” I asked him.

“She demanded money for your release or she’d hand you over to the governor.”

“Ah.”

“Ah?”

“That was a trick to ensure you weren’t prepared for what you saw when you got here. Her real plan wasn’t to kidnap me.”

He touched my chin, forcing my gaze to meet his. “What was her plan?” he asked, voice as dark as a moonless night.

The return of his friends stopped me from answering. “She got away,” Andreas said as he dismounted.

“Are you all right, Jac?” Rufus asked.

“I’m unharmed, thank you.”

“She was trying to kill you, wasn’t she?” Vizah asked, proving he wasn’t a fool.

I nodded. “She planned on blaming my murder on Rhys. That’s why she wanted to lure him here, too.”

Rhys frowned. “No one would believe I’d kill you.”

“She planned to let the constables think you loved me but were tortured by the oath you’d taken.”

None of the men met Rhys’s gaze. “No one would believe it,” Rhys said, somewhat forcefully.

“She was going to leave behind evidence. She had a knife engraved with the symbol of Merdu’s Guards.”

“She wouldn’t have one in her possession,” Vizah said. “Would she?”

Rhys absently scrubbed his chin through his beard then suddenly stopped. “No. No, no, no.”

“What?” Andreas asked.

Rhys tipped his head back and groaned. “Master Tomaj’s knife went missing after his death. It wasn’t on his body.”

“How did Giselle get her hands on it?”

Rhys looked to me. He knew me so well that he could tell when something troubled me. “Jac?”

It was the moment I was dreading. Giselle’s betrayal was upsetting, but the high priest’s betrayal would be a brutal blow for Rhys and his friends. “Giselle said she stole it from the high priest. He’s her client.”

Vizah scoffed. Rufus and Andreas cast grave glances at Rhys.

Rhys took a step back as if he’d been shoved. “Jac, what are you saying?”

“She told me the high priest hired her to kill me.”

“Why?” Rufus asked.

Rhys paled. “The high priest wants to kill you,” he murmured. “Because of me ?”

“He thinks I’m a distraction for you. He thinks I make you want to leave the order.”

He bent forward as if he was going to throw up, but rested his hands on his knees instead. He groaned, a low sound that came from deep within.

I crouched in front of him and cupped his face as he’d done mine moments before. I stroked his beard with my thumbs. “Rhys, you have to tell him he’s wrong. Tell him you have no intention of leaving the order. Reassure him.”

He straightened. “I have told him, numerous times.”

“Then he doesn’t believe you.”

Rufus grunted and crossed his arms. “Clearly.”

“Rhys,” I went on. “Tell him again. Otherwise I have to leave Tilting forever. I can’t stay here.”

“No,” Rhys said heavily. “You cannot.” He strode past me, and gathered his horse’s reins.

“You can’t confront him,” Rufus pointed out. “It’s her word against his.”

“I believe Jac.”

“So do I, but he’ll claim she’s lying. Who will believe a young woman over the high priest, aside from us?”

“I can’t let him get away with it,” Rhys growled.

“There’s more,” I said. “The high priest hired Giselle to kill me, but not to frame you for it, Rhys. He’s unaware of that part of Giselle’s plan. My uncle hired her for that after she told him she was going to assassinate me.”

He frowned. “But he wants you alive.”

“Not anymore. Not since she told him my pendant isn’t a talisman containing the sorcerer’s magic.”

“I could have told him that,” Andreas muttered.

“He wouldn’t believe you,” I said. “But he believed her because she had the proof. In fact, he had the proof in his bookshelves, too, but neither knew it. There’s a text on Zemayan culture that says the sorcerer placed magic into a person a long time ago, not an object.

The person—a woman from a generation of the same family—is the talisman. ”

“What magic?” Vizah asked.

“There’s no such thing as magic,” Rufus snapped at him.

Andreas stepped toward me. “Jac?”

I kept my gaze on Rhys. “The magic takes the form of heightened senses and the ability to recall things perfectly.”

Rhys blinked slowly at me, as if he was disoriented after waking from a vivid dream.

“Senses?” Vizah asked.

“Sight, sound, smell, hearing and touch,” Rufus rattled off. “Jac, there’s no such thing as magic. If someone has heightened senses, it’s just the way they were born.”

I continued to watch Rhys. He stared back at me, but I didn’t think he quite saw me. I suspected he was recalling moments when I’d seen something in the poor light that he couldn’t see or heard something before he did.

He suddenly blinked again, snapping to attention. “It’s you,” he murmured. “ You’re the talisman.”

I nodded. “Giselle realized soon after meeting me. I think it was when I recognized her at a distance from her scent alone.”

Vizah sniffed his armpit. “Not everyone has a scent.”

“I don’t need superior senses to smell yours,” Andreas told him.

Rufus, however, shook his head vigorously. “This is absurd. Jac can’t smell people from a distance. Rhys, you should know better. Magic doesn’t exist. The sorcerer is just a Zemayan myth. There is only one faith, and that’s the one we serve.”

Rhys nodded, but he wasn’t agreeing with Rufus. I doubted he even heard his friend. “You always knew when it was me coming up the stairs.”

“You have a distinctive rhythm,” I said. “Everyone does.”

“That’s why you were so good at spying. You overheard conversations from a distance, which meant you could stay hidden. I thought you got in close and I worried you’d be caught, but you were able to stay far away. Further than I could.”

“She’s small,” Rufus pointed out. “She can hide better than you or I. Or she can read lips.”

“In the dark?” Rhys asked.

I pointed to a large tree in the woods some distance away. “Stand behind that tree and say something.”

One hand on his sword hilt, Rufus strode into the woods and stepped behind the tree. “Vizah has a fungal infection on his big toe,” he said.

I smiled. “Vizah, apparently you need to see Mistress Blundle about the fungus on your toe. I’m sure she’ll have an ointment for it.”

Vizah clamped his hands on his hips. “That’s private business!” he shouted at the tree.

Rufus returned to us. “I only heard Vizah.”

“She told me to see Mistress Blundle for a cure for my toe. It’s not a fungus, it’s just an interesting color.”

Rufus folded his arms over his chest. “So Jac’s senses may be acute, but that doesn’t prove the existence of the sorcerer.”

Andreas clapped his friend on the shoulder. “No one’s asking you to believe it, but you can’t stop others from thinking differently to you.”

Rufus arched his brows at Rhys, challenging.