Page 15 of Heart's Flame

“Yes, of course.” Sabline...the port city of Ferron’s eastern coast. Pressure built in his mind. There was something else...Sabline meant something more to him, but whatever it was remained hidden behind the black veil in his mind.

“Good,” Araminta said, watching him closely. “Take a squad. Leave none alive.”

Icy pricks of dread spread throughout his body, but this was his duty—to protect Ferron.

“I’ll see it done, Mother.”

* * *

It would taketwo days to traverse the road to Sabline from the capital with a full squad of six mages—if they were going all the way to Sabline. They’d made camp outside a small village, and as Captain he could have stayed at the inn instead of on his bedroll around the fire, but he didn’t want to. The only tent they’d set up was occupied by his mother’s personal assistant, Tarra. Vian wasn’t clear on her role in the coming hunt, as she didn’t strike him as trained for battle, but his mother had insisted she be part of his mission.

Vian was restless. They were past the halfway point in the journey and would reach their target by midday tomorrow. If he’d been alone, he would have pushed on into the night and approached the Null’s camp under cover of darkness. Unable to sleep with unease plaguing his every thought, he sat up on his bedroll and climbed to his feet.

The sliver of moon was bright in a cloudless sky, and he wandered away from the other sleeping mages into the trees. A sense of familiarity filled him the farther he walked, but he couldn’t conjure a specific memory of this place. The large stump of an old oak tree came into view.

Approaching it, he rested his palm against the aged wood, imagining all the hundreds of years the tree must have stood tall and proud before meeting its end. Did a storm knock it down? He didn’t think so. The surface was too smooth for it to have been cut with anything other than man-made tools.

A skittering prickle of awareness slid up his spine. He drew his sword a moment before a man stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the tree stump. He was tall and broad shouldered and lean through the hips. The straight line of his nose rested above full lips. He was clean shaven and his pale hair glowed silver in the moonlight.

“Hello, Vian,” the stranger said, voice smooth and strong. He wore a sword at his hip, but didn’t reach for it.

“Who are you?” he asked, even as his blood sang in his veins. This man was something to him. He couldn’t say how or why, but the thumping of his heart and sweat gathering in his palms was all screaming at him to put the sword down.

After clearing his throat, the man said, “My name is Marcellus. I’m your flamma de corde and you are mine.”

Pure shock had him lowering his weapon to his side. “That’s not possible. I don’t know you.” Confusion pulsed within him as fragmented images pushed at the veil in his mind.

“You do, and I know you. Intimately.” Marcellus moved forward around the stump. “I put the bite marks on your chest.” He raised his hand and touched his own chest in two places, mirroring the marks on Vian’s. Marcellus stopped walking and pulled his collar to the side, revealing a darkened bruise in the shape of teeth. “You gave me this that same night.” His eyes raked over Vian’s face. “I gave you those scars, too.”

At Vian’s look of disbelief, Marcellus’s mouth lifted in a small, sad smile.

“We’ve been on a bumpy road you and I, but I have to believe that we’re still standing at the beginning of it. You sacrificed your memories to save Coren, Laiken, and I not two nights ago. Your mother has dug her claws into you again and had her witch poison your mind.” Marcellus’s voice shook with anger and a resounding protective conviction.

Vian was stupefied. He hadn’t felt right or himself since he’d woken, and with no memory to account for the marks on his body or the murky depths of his mind, he wondered if any story would seem plausible. His mother had said it’d been witches. But then, so had Marcellus.

He thought of the woman his mother had sent along on this mission, seemingly without true purpose. He thought of the whole squad of mages sleeping around the fires they’d built. Hadn’t he always hunted alone? More importantly, he thought about the way his fingers itched to reach out and touch the man in front of him, as if the mere act of feeling him skin-to-skin would heal all the things plaguing him.

“Don’t listen to him, Morovian,” Tarra’s voice came out of the darkness behind him.

He turned enough to see her while also keeping Marcellus in his peripheral and readjusted the grip on his sword. Tarra was in her evening clothes, a long slip of white silk that clung to her curves as she moved. Her dark hair was down, falling over her shoulders, and the large ruby gem she favored hung from its chain around her throat.

“It’s her you should ignore, son.” Two more men stepped out of the trees, moving to flank Tarra. They were both solidly built, one with dark skin and a bald head and the other with dark hair cropped close to his head and eyes as black as Vian’s own.

“Who are you?” he asked, turning toward the black-eyed man. Before the other could answer, Vian stilled. He’d just given his back to Marcellus, and yet there was no warning screaming in his head, no sense he’d handed an enemy the upper hand. With a measured breath, he closed his eyes and emptied his mind. He moved to face Marcellus again and knew immediately that he shouldn’t turn his back on the woman behind him.

“I think you know who I am, Vian,” the man said. “My name is Zeph, but you call me Da. And that man”—he pointed to the bald man standing across from him—“is Dem. My mate.”

“Lies!” Tarra spat. The sound of men approaching reached Vian’s ears. “Mages!” she called. “To arms!”

The night lit up as the mages pouring out of the woods behind Tarra called their power forward. They formed a line around her, forcing Zeph and Dem to fall back closer to Vian.

Vian turned to face the mages fully, bringing his sword to the ready and calling on his own power. Marcellus stepped up to his side a moment before a large man in a Ferron Guard uniform settled in at his other.

“Another family member?” he asked, looking the man in the eyes.

The big man chuckled. “In a manner of speaking. We’re friends, at least I hope we still are. I’m Coren.”

A low growl filled the air from Coren’s other side. The werewolf there was skinny, but that wouldn’t stop the monster teeth he had bared from doing some damage.

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