Her Reaper's Arms, Charlotte Boyett-Compo [world best books to read .TXT] 📗

her Dóigra,

thinking of the one that had been taken from Asteria Kleite, the Amazeen who had

accompanied Penthe to Terra to retrieve Coure.

Asteria and Penthe had been more than partners. They had been lovers for over

eight years and Penthe intensely mourned her loss. The rabid rogue who had brought

Asteria down had savagely bitten her, tearing Asteria apart. The balgair had died for his

sins but Penthe had been so devastated at Asteria’s death, she had not thought to

retrieve Asteria’s weapon and had been careless in not making sure Roy English could

not rise from his rabid state to kill more women. When she had gone back to the shack

where Asteria had met her end, dreading to see once again the atrocities English had

committed, Penthe had found it burned to the ground, the Dóigra destroyed along with

the deplorable contents of the shack. A scan of the area had brought Coure’s scent. She

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knew he had finished what she should have seen ended and that irritated her beyond

acceptance.

It was just one more thing for which Coure would be made to answer when Penthe

had him in her clutches.

* * * * *

Leaving Lawler behind, Bevyn drummed his heels against Préachán’s flanks,

urging the steed into an easy gallop. He rode with his right hand on the reins, his left

braced on his thigh, his uneasy thoughts drifting back to the Blackwind. He knew he’d

have to go after the Amazeen, take her down, but for now there was nothing he wanted

more than to find his woman and hold her, lose himself in her sweet scent.

The memory of what he had found in the shack had come back to haunt him and

was sitting heavily on his soul. He knew it always would for such things were an

abomination—once seen, never forgotten. He suspected the Triune Goddess had

clouded his mind for a few hours of brief relief but now the sights were sitting in his

mind’s eye like a canker. That too would be Her doing.

“Lord Kheelan?” he asked, reaching out to the High Lord.

“We are here,” the Shadowlord replied.

“Were there any survivors of the crash?”

There was a long pause. “No, Lord Bevyn. Unfortunately not.”

“How many men died?”

“Fifteen.”

Bevyn closed his eyes. He wanted to ask how many had been married, how many

had fathered children, but a part of him didn’t want the burden of the knowledge

weighing down on his shoulders.

There were no more words from the Citadel. He knew the Shadowlords would be

discussing him still again and another tick would go on the healer’s chart—one more

thing about which to counsel Coure when he came to the bastion.

He reached up to take off his hat, armed the sweat from his brow and then pulled

the hat back on low over his forehead to shield his eyes from the sinking sun. Once

more his head was throbbing with pain. He needed the cool strength of his woman.

His woman, he thought as Préachán dug its hooves into a hill and climbed

effortlessly. It felt good to know there was someone so special waiting for him, someone

who wanted him, who loved him. Her bright smile, her open arms were like a beacon

toward which he traveled.

Another smiling face flashed across his memory and he frowned.

“Kennocha,” he whispered fiercely.

Her false smile and clinging arms were a curse from which he had fled, only to find

himself caught in an unbreakable trap.

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The past rose up before him to blot out the last of the sun’s dying rays, casting him

into a bleak landscape he had never wanted to travel again…

“You will go to Rathlin,” Archdeacon Janus had decreed. “There you will assume

the position as junior prelate for that district.”

There had been much talk of Rathlin at the monastery and the talk had not been

good. Over the years, the keep there had gone through priests like a sharp blade

through hot butter. Those assigned had simply vanished, never to be heard from again.

Where they had gone was the stuff of wild speculation—much of it centered on the

mistress of Rathlin, the Countess Kennocha Tramont.

“They say she is a witch,” the brothers whispered among themselves.

“The count holds his lady-wife hostage at Rathlin,” Archdeacon Janus had

explained to Bevyn. “They say he captured her in battle and keeps her chained on the

third floor of the keep.”

“Is that not wrong, Your Grace?” Bevyn had asked.

“What a man does with his lawful wife is no concern of the Brotherhood,” the

archdeacon had replied. “Our only mission is to tend his mortal soul. If he is true to the

Teaching—and Count Culbert is—that is all that matters in this life. What do we care

what he does with his woman?”

Completely unaware of what a man and woman did within the confines of their

marriage, Bevyn had pushed aside any worries he might have pertaining to Count

Tramont’s lady-wife. It was the man and his knights whose souls would be the thrust of

Bevyn’s interest and attending.

But upon arriving at Rathlin Keep, Bevyn had found great turmoil and strife.

Tramont was at war with a neighboring duchy and the lord of the keep had been sorely

wounded in the fray, lying on his death bed with wounds too numerous to heal. His

body as white as the sheet upon which he lay, he had weakly grasped the front of

Bevyn’s robe and drawn the young man nose to nose with him.

“She set this ill-begotten war into motion,” the dying man whispered, his voice

hoarse, blood gurgling in his throat. “She is the cause of it.”

Culbert Tramont had taken one last wheezing breath and had lain still, his eyes

wide, mouth ajar, drawing flies to the mortal cuts and holes that peppered his corpse.

Every knight sworn to Rathlin had been slain in the battle, their squires as well.

Only the foot soldiers who had turned and fled the melee escaped the hacking deaths

that had turned the fields around Rathlin crimson.

With no captain of the guard left to countermand the order, the countess had

demanded she be set free from the imprisonment her husband had forced upon her.

The household staff had