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,