Page 5 of Blood Tribute

She clenched her teeth. Two more nights. Then she could end their agreement with her blade.

“No,” she confessed. “I cannot deny it.”

Then he did the most dangerous thing of all. He smiled. That arrogant tilt of his mouth transformed his deadly expression into something far more devastating.

“Tomorrow night,” he promised, “I’ll show you more. Unless you’re afraid for me to rob you of your assumptions.”

She lifted her chin. “I will meet you here after sunset.”

Assumptions were not all he intended to rob her of, she was sure. But their bargain would end with her maidenhead intact—and his heart on a platter.

TWO

The Circling Vulture

I

Nora stood before the doorat the heart of the fortress. Sunlight speared down from the corridor’s high windows, pinning her to the spot. She could not make herself take another step.

The morning after her tryst with a Hesperine, the last place she wanted to set foot was the shrine. The last person she wanted to see was Sir Virtus.

But she should not have been surprised the Knight Commander had come for a visit today. He always seemed to appear at precisely the moment to catch her in wrongdoing.

She wrenched her thoughts away from the Hesperine and the hours she had lain awake, her body burning with unfulfilled desire. Instead, she envisioned architectural diagrams. Her plans for the fortress expansion were so soothing.

Her calm splintered when she spotted a new crack in the wall between two tapestries. There could be no expansion until she managed the repairs.

The heavy old door groaned open, and she jumped. Sir Virtus stood in the doorway, his gold and white surcoat overbright to her bleary eyes.

“Where is your mind, Honora?” He clucked his tongue, a frown on his patrician face. “Daydreaming about building palaces again?”

She made herself wait before replying, a lesson she had learned the hard way many times. The first words out of her mouth were always the wrong ones. Not that she ever said precisely the right thing.

“Uncle Virtus!” She was proud of the false cheer she managed to muster. “What brings you riding all the way up here? I wasn’t expecting to see you until Autumn Equinox.”

“Come.” He held the door open and motioned her inside.

She broke out in a sweat, but pulled her shawl closer around her arms. If she hesitated, he would think she had something to confess. She forced her feet over the threshold.

The phantom pains flared along her arms, stinging her skin, aching much deeper within. She walked ahead of him so he wouldn’t see her grimace.

The walls lined with relics seemed to shrink in on her, bringing the gleaming silver swords and chalices of holy fire dangerously close. The tomes chained to their stands seemed to judge her.

She carefully ignored the locked, inlaid box where only one of a pair of knightly daggers rested. Above all, she must not give him a reason to open the dagger case.

“Do not feign innocence, Honora.” Sir Virtus’s voice echoed through the shrine chamber.

Could he already know Arceo was missing? If he found out she was hunting a Hesperine on her own, he would take the kill and the glory for himself. And if he found out she had let a Hesperine tarnish her with even one bite, he would subject her to purification.

She shut her eyes upon the shrine of Andragathos at the head of the room. But she could still see the white shield in her mind’s eye. The god’s glyph, emblazoned in golden spell light, seemed to burn through her eyelids.

Sir Virtus’s footfalls halted beside her. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

She resisted the urge to cover her wrist with her hand.

“The news reached my ears,” he said, “as soon as you failed to secure a proposal from your last suitor.”

Slowly, Nora let out the breath she had been holding. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “The Order gave me until Autumn Equinox to find a husband. I have two more days.”

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