Not Your Average Love Spell Page 2

  Sydney moved closer to Smythe’s side. “Witches use magic to disturb the dead. I have seen it with my own eyes. When the knights attempted to arrest the witch of Elion, he sent a platoon of shambling dead to murder us.”

  Smythe frowned and didn’t look at her. “They can do more than that. The Hawk helped someone I love.”

  Sydney nodded in sympathy. “They can do good when they want to, but when one goes bad…”

  He grimaced. “The Witch Wars were a long time ago.”

  “Not long enough,” Sydney said as she shook her head. “We have learned from the stories. Witches wield too much power for any one person to possess, and not everyone may learn.” She put a hand to her chest. “Whereas anyone may join the ranks of the knights and learn the secrets of heartfire, and none of us can wreak as much havoc as a witch might.”

  He continued to look away. “She’s a good person.”

  Sydney’s heart went out to him, truly. No doubt the witch had only helped Smythe’s loved one because she needed him, but it would be hard for him to forget such a deed even if he knew the witch had done it to obligate him.

  “And now she’s leaving you and your crew to hang for piracy,” Sydney said.

  He nodded glumly, and she thought he might be coming to his senses. But his face was stony as he met her gaze. “Aye, we are thieves and murderers but not betrayers.”

  With a sigh, Sydney stood. “Well, I suppose I must admire you for that.” And she did, somewhat, but she was also angry and tired, and her roiling stomach wasn’t helping either emotion. She walked away and found a quiet spot on the deck, out of the way of the busy sailors, and watched the horizon, trying to quiet her insides.

  She’d been on this witch’s trail for months now. She’d heard the name of the Hawk before, but it only made her roll her eyes. Witches always had delusions of grandeur, and it was just like one to pick a stylish nickname. She should have been called the Mouse or some other animal that was quick, mildly cunning, and good at avoiding the rat catcher.

  Sydney banged a fist on the ship’s rail. No, what the witch should have done was leave Arnvild for good once she’d gone into hiding. She should have contented herself with haunting some other land rather than trying to force magic on a kingdom that was done with it.

  She should have kept her cursed spells to herself.

  With one blink, Sydney could recall the stench of rotting flesh from the witch of Elion’s soldiers. They’d shambled as if too far in their cups, but their cloudy eyes had been fixed on Sydney and her fellows. They’d reached out with skeletal hands, the skin sloughing off in great strips. The worst part had been the lack of voices. The shamblers made no sound as they tottered forward; they did not scream when stabbed or bludgeoned. They did not stop until they were naught but a pile of bloodless pieces on the ground, and then they twitched, silent but for the rasp their small movements made among the dirt and leaves.

  “Major Blakely?”

  Sydney gasped, her eyes flying open. Her heart pounded, and her mouth filled with bile, but at least it was from the memories and not anything the sea had done to her. With a deep breath, she returned to the present and turned to regard Williamson, captain of the sloop.

  Williamson’s pale brows were drawn down in worry, and her ice-blue gaze roved over Sydney’s face. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course,” Sydney said, forcing a smile.

  “You were gripping the rail so hard your hands were white. If you’ve any seasickness, I have a remedy in my cabin.” Her cheeks went a little pink. “Or…perhaps a distraction?” She licked her lips, and the pinkness spread to her ears, a nice contrast to her dark uniform. “A…a draught, that is. Though there are ways to keep you occupied instead, if you prefer.” Now her eyes went wide. “Books and such. I didn’t mean…me, though I could keep you company.” The blush had reached her neck. “By conversation.” She nearly yelled the last words, then bit her lip as if trying to keep any other speech inside.

  Sydney smiled. She was used to women becoming tongue-tied around her, even sloop captains. An old girlfriend had called it her aura of charisma, but Sydney didn’t know about that. She thought the reaction was adorable, and she’d never been able to resist it. She looked over the captain, who was probably in her early thirties, just a little older than Sydney, and her crisp uniform spoke of a tidy mind. She was petite but quite capable of bellowing her crew into line, and she kept her pale blond hair in a long braid down her back. She shifted under Sydney’s appraisal, but her eyes lit up as if asking a question.

  “I would like to sample this remedy of yours,” Sydney said with a grin. “And you can call me Sydney.”

  “Adele,” the captain said with a returning smile and a renewed blush. “We put the pirate you were questioning down with the others. To clear the deck, if that’s all right.”

  “Perfectly. It’s my mission, but it’s your ship.”

  Adele giggled, then seemed appalled at herself. She pressed a hand to her mouth, then cleared her throat. Sydney wondered how long she’d been nursing a crush. They’d been traveling together for weeks, but Adele had barely spoken to her. Maybe it was only now that the mission was over that she felt she could approach Sydney in a non-professional manner.

  It made her all the more adorable.

  “Let me give you a tour,” Adele said with a wink.

  Sydney followed her and kept herself from pointing out the fact that she already knew the ship well. If Adele didn’t want to say, “Let’s go have sex,” that was her prerogative, but Sydney would have found such artlessness refreshing. Too many people felt inhibited from saying what was on their minds. In the end, Sydney supposed it didn’t matter. This encounter would be like so many others, fleeting. Women loved her, enjoyed her company, and she enjoyed theirs, but they always seemed to want her more as a story than a longtime companion. Even those she called girlfriend were relationships that had spanned months, not years.

  The ship rocked slightly, pulling Sydney out of another reverie. Adele turned toward her crew, eyes wide with alarm, telling Sydney that this rocking wasn’t a normal movement on the waves. When the motion came again, more forceful this time, Sydney staggered, and several sailors did the same, one falling from a mast to get tangled in the rigging.

  “What in the name of the seven bells was that?” Adele bellowed, marching toward the center of the deck. “Someone get Nelson down from there.” She moved among the sailors, barking questions, but no one seemed to know what had happened. Sydney rushed to the side and looked over, but they raced along as before, unbothered by any sea monsters or freak stretches of coral in the middle of the deep.

  She heard one of the sailors call that they should check the bilge.

  The prisoners were down there.

  Sydney rushed for the hatch. If the rocking motion meant they were taking on water, the prisoners would be the first to drown. She had to get them up on the deck, sickened by the idea of them screaming and dying while chained. True, most of them were headed for the gallows, but some could be innocent, and they needed a trial before being condemned. A few sailors ran after her as she raced through the crew’s section and down another trapdoor into the very bottom of the sloop.

  She stopped, the darkness surrounding her along with an eerie quiet. No sounds of rushing water, no clanking of chains or coughs or murmurs. Maybe the witch had exacted vengeance and turned the pirates into lifeless monsters that somehow still walked, and they were even now rising and making their soundless way toward her in the dark.

  A sailor behind her lit a lamp, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw no shambling horde. Then her mouth fell open as she realized the reason for the silence.

  The bilge was empty.

  She took the lamp and held it high, but there was nowhere to hide. The sailors spread out and searched the ship to no avail. The larger ship that had belonged to the pirates also stood empty of prisoners. None of them could have made it overboard without first climbing to the decks and being seen.

  They’d disappeared.

  Sydney returned to the bilge and stared at where the pirates had been shackled to one another. She’d begun to wonder if she and the crew had hallucinated the pirates from the beginning, when something small glimmered from the floor, half hidden in shadow. She kneeled and reached for it, pulling forth a long feather. Dark brown, it had lines of tan and white, and she didn’t need a birding guide to know it: the tail feather of a hawk.

  Chapter Two

  Camille decided that the Knights of the Flame were clearly enamored with two things, gilt and overcompensating.

  Okay, maybe that was one thing.

  Their entire headquarters was covered in gold leaf and pompousness. The outside had been impressive enough, with columns and banners and statues of famous knights. The marble foyer with its carved, gilded ceiling had carried a certain majesty.

  But this room. Wow.

  A huge, round table dominated a large meeting room. The furniture bore enough intricate carving to give a duster nightmares. Ditto for the carved chairs with their plush, velvet cushions embroidered with sparkling thread. Rich red and gold banners hung from a high ceiling that shone with so much gold leaf, the light coming through the stained-glass windows turned the room into its own sun.

  Camille couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d walked into a dragon’s den. Sure, it was beautiful with all the hoarded gold and gems, but at the heart of it lurked a dragon. The knights might have been everything beautiful, but they were still dangerous.

  And now they wanted to know the fastest way to move a large amount of people and goods the length of the kingdom of Arnvild. They hadn’t explained why they needed to do such a thing. It was probably some scheme to make their vast wealth even va
ster.

  So, they’d sent for a master researcher from the Grand Library to research solutions to their problem, and Camille had been “volunteered” because of her knowledge about ancient beasts, mythical creatures, and “everything weird.”

  Weird like magic, which the knights would no doubt need to achieve their purpose. Magic, which they loathed. And hunted people for practicing.

  Camille leaned back in her chair and fought not to frown as Supreme Commander Sir Robert, head of the Order of the Flame, reiterated his problem for the third time. The man was as in love with the sound of his own voice as he was with the waxed mustache he kept smoothing.

  “How many troops?” she asked, interrupting. “Because you’ll need—”

  “A thousand,” Sir Robert said with a smile. “And the necessary supplies, mounts, and equipment.”

  “And you want them to arrive when?”

  “No more than two days after they are ready for travel. We must move quickly before—” One of the other knights cleared her throat. Sir Robert smiled languidly. “We must move quickly.”

  Now the knights stared. Camille fought the urge to squirm. It seemed she’d be left to wonder why an army needed to cover a four-week distance in two days. To surprise someone? It didn’t matter. Her childhood love of pixies and unicorns wouldn’t help.

  “Well,” Camille said slowly. “You’ll need ma—”

  “If you’ve no more questions,” Sir Robert said as he rose, prompting her to follow suit.

  Camille opened her mouth to ask if she was either dreaming or part of a terrible joke. It was all she could do not to storm out. Someone who decried magic and hunted its practitioners didn’t deserve help, but she’d get fired if she said so.

  “We’ll assign a knight to you,” Sir Robert said, “for any other questions you may have about weights or measurements, that sort of thing.”

  Camille put her hands on her hips, about to protest that she did not need some great armored oaf lumbering behind her, when one of the knights lingering on the edge of the room caught her eye and smiled.

  Camille’s protests blew away in the face of bright blue eyes and blond hair that acted as a halo around a perfect tanned face with a delicate, pointed chin. The knight wore a tabard with a golden sunburst over a shirt of light mail and a tunic, but Camille could tell by the way she moved that she had the lean muscles of a panther. Her stride was powerful yet sensuous, and when she extended a calloused hand and said, “Sydney Blakely, at your service,” Camille could only babble.

  “Yes, uh, good, um, thank you.” She took the hand and was rewarded by a killer smile that outshone the thread of gold on Sydney’s tabard. “I’m…Camille. I…” Shit, what did she do for a living? “I’m…library. Yes, I work for the library.” Mortification clogged her throat but helped clear her brain. Or was that from all the blood rushing to her cheeks? “Master researcher,” she blurted. “That’s…me. I’ve…had a lot of school.”

  She wanted to die. Why hadn’t she learned how to do that at will? She’d never had this much trouble around women before. Even beautiful ones.

  Sydney’s brows raised. “Lucky for us, then.” She glanced down.

  Camille followed her gaze to see her hand still shaking Sydney’s as if it had a mind of its own. She snatched her hand back and tried to laugh off her nerves, but the sound came out somewhere between a shout and a donkey’s bray.

  And it had a snort at the end. Death couldn’t come soon enough.

  Camille turned and headed for the exit, wanting to run, but Sydney followed, and Camille nearly stumbled. Should they walk together, or was the knight more of an escort, or—

  Sydney caught up quickly, her long legs stretching under tight trousers. “I’ve always wanted to see the library.”

  “Why?” Camille cleared her throat, trying to keep from snapping, but embarrassment always made her touchy. “I mean, are you not from Kingston?”

  “Sheffordshire. I only came to Kingston to join the knights, and then there wasn’t time for much except training.” She smiled again, and Camille forced herself not to stare at those shapely lips.

  This was a knight, she told herself. She didn’t like knights because of their swagger and small-mindedness and chirpy attitudes in the face of their own shortcomings. They thought every problem could be settled with a sword or a pretty speech, and Camille had no time for them. And it wasn’t as if Sydney was that sexy. If Camille wanted a partner, she had plenty of options. Maybe she’d stop by and see Anastasia in the records room. She was always up for a—

  They stepped outside, and Sydney ran a hand through her chin-length hair, making it glint in the light. She turned her face upward as if to welcome the sun, stretching her long neck and exposing adorable, bite-worthy ears.

  “Lunch?” Camille asked, more than a little breathless.

  Sydney’s returning smile had a hint of lasciviousness that made Camille’s core tighten like a purse string. “Absolutely.”

  * * *

  Sydney would have never guessed that her afternoon would go quite as this one had. She’d neither dreaded nor looked forward to serving as liaison to a master researcher. After her adventure at sea, her failure to track down the Hawk, and her loss of her prisoners, she was looking forward to doing nothing but answering questions about her order’s needs or expounding upon the strides they made to transform the world into something better. And she’d heard that the library was beautiful inside. Anyone who worked there would surely be excited at the possibility of expanding her knowledge.

  And maybe this assignment would keep her mind off the catastrophe she’d made of her mission. Sir Robert had agreed that she couldn’t have done anything more to keep her prisoners. Magic was too unpredictable, and the Hawk was clearly more powerful than they’d anticipated.

  All the more reason why she had to be caught.

  Sir Robert had seemed thoughtful when Sydney told him how the witch had whisked the pirates away. Maybe he’d thought it sounded like a fine solution to his current troop-moving problem. Then he’d sighed, and she knew he’d come back to his senses. Magic was never the answer. It was too much power for anyone to wield.

  When Sydney had first seen Camille, she’d begun to enjoy her new assignment even more. Shorter than Sydney by a head, Camille had a curvy, hourglass shape, and her dark blue dress clung to her hips and breasts. The hem fluttered when she walked, as if beckoning Sydney to follow. Her dark, tightly curled hair stretched across her shoulders, though she kept the sides pulled back from her dark, expressive face. Her eyes sparkled with intelligence, and Sydney could have gotten lost in their rich brown color.

  Sydney had discarded her best pickup lines in the face of such beauty; no words were good enough, though she would have loved to get to know her better. When Camille stuttered and ducked her head, clearly embarrassed, Sydney wanted to sweep her off her feet and kiss her senseless, just as when every other woman became tongue-tied around her. When Camille asked her to lunch, Sydney knew by the glint in her eye that she had more than food in mind.

  Ah, well, so much for conversation. Sydney knew she’d enjoy the encounter very much, but she’d been hoping Camille would at least want to talk first. Instead, Camille had led her through the library’s foyer, her shoes clicking swiftly over the marble floor. She’d thrown off a few comments about the history of the place or the number of books, but when Sydney started toward the acres of shelves and volumes, Camille tugged at her sleeve.

  “There’s…something else I’d like to show you.” The slight catch in her voice was still there, but Camille’s gaze said she knew what she was about, and she wasn’t embarrassed anymore. It was as close as any woman had come to saying what she really wanted from Sydney in a long time.

  Camille had stepped close to her and breathed deep, and Sydney’s insides had ignited with need. “If this isn’t all right,” Camille whispered, “you have only to say.”

  It might have been foolish to respond with, “Anything you wish is all right with me,” but Sydney said it anyway. Her training sergeant would have said she was setting herself up to be ambushed and kidnapped, but Camille only smiled and led her to a small doorway off the side of the foyer. It was a quick trip down a flight of stone stairs and into the dimness of the library basement.