“Let me go to him,” the wizard begged. “Let me bring him back to you.” He struggled free, and Brautus allowed it. “He loves you, Isabel,” Orlando said. “Even if he has not said as much, I promise you he does. Let him save Charmot.”
“He has said it,” she answered, the memory threatening to make her cry again. “I want to help him, Orlando.”
“Then believe him,” the wizard persisted. “Allow him to return.”
Behind him, Brautus nodded. She could read his mind; he wanted to trap Simon somehow here at the castle, somewhere open to the sun. But she would not. “All right,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I will let him return.” She looked down at the bottle she still held, so cold it seemed to burn inside her palm. “But if you lie, if you betray me, your treasure is forfeit.”
“I do not lie,” he promised. “Let me go, and I swear I will return to you your protector.” He smiled slightly, a very different smile from the one he’d hidden behind like a mask. “I will bring you your Black Knight.”
“No,” she said, meeting his eyes with her own. “I am going with you.”
“No!” Brautus protested. “Let him bring the vampire back here where we can deal with him together.”
“We cannot deal with him at all,” she answered. “Simon is not coming back through the gates of this castle until I am certain he is what Orlando says he is, a good man under a curse who will protect us, not harm us.” She wouldn’t let Brautus send him away again, wouldn’t give Mother Bess the chance to turn the household against him. If Simon truly was a monster who could not be saved, she would deal with it herself. And if he could be, she would find a way to do that, too.
“And how will you know that?” Brautus said. “If someone must go with the little one, fine, I will go; I will take Kevin and the other men with me—”
“Brautus.” She put a hand on his arm. “If my mother was right, if Simon is the creature we believe him to be, then this quest is mine alone.”
“No one ever said that,” he said, his jaw set hard.
“No one had to say it.” Ten years of confusion and resentment over what her father might have wanted and what she was meant to do with the legacy he had left her was melting away. For better or worse, this was her destiny. “I’m sorry I was born a woman, Brautus. I’m sorry my father is dead. But he is, and I was, and this is my destiny.”
“Isabel, you must trust in me,” Orlando said. “Whatever destiny you think you must serve, you must trust in Simon’s love.”
“I want to trust him,” she answered, meeting Brautus’s eyes. Trust me, she tried to say to him without speaking, and he nodded as if he understood. “But I must also trust myself.”
“So you mean to go alone?” Brautus said. “You think I can allow that?”
“Orlando will be with me,” she answered.
“A wizard roughly the size of an acorn,” the old knight scoffed. “A fine, strong guard indeed.”
“I don’t need a guard.” She thought again of her mother’s tapestry, the maiden charming the wolf. To her knowledge, she had never charmed anyone; how was she meant to be that maiden? But if not her, who else? “What good is a sword against a demon, if he really means me harm?” she said. “If I fail, Charmot is left to you.”
“Don’t say it.” He cradled her cheek in his palm. “Your father would never ask so much of you, my lady. You are a better warrior than he could ever have guessed.”
“No such thing,” she scoffed. “Come, Orlando. We will find my Black Knight together.”
Simon watched the sun crawl in a ragged beam across the cavern floor, his useless breath now coming in panting gasps of fear. For an hour he had watched it, pale at first, then brighter, moving ever closer. In his mind, he could already see himself burning, his flesh exploding into flame, his clothes consumed like parchment in the fire. The girl still lay across his lap, her head against his shoulder; her blood oozed from her wrist onto his stomach, soaking hot and sticky through his shirt; he felt every pulse of her heart. She was dying; even if he did not touch her, she would die. But he would not touch her. One long draught of her innocent blood down his throat, and he would have the strength to break the chains that bound him and escape into the dark. But one draught would never be enough for the hunger that consumed him; he would devour her, an innocent; her death would be his crime, no longer Kivar’s. He would not do it. His maker had set him a test meant to prove he was a monster, not a knight. But Kivar was wrong.
He clenched his fist, and Francis’s ring pressed into his skin, a warning and a comfort. The need for vengeance shuddered through him like another physical pain, but it was wrong as well. Francis was in heaven with God; he had no need for vengeance. If Simon was consumed in grace, he would join him.
“Forgive me, Christ,” he murmured, his voice coming out as an animal’s growl, the name of the Almighty burning his tongue. “Forgive me all my sins.” Paradise would be Ireland, a green land by the sea. “Forgive me all the death I have caused, the pain that has delighted me in the blackness of my sin.” He would be with Francis and his father; he would see his mother’s face again. His eyes burned with tears that would not come; he had no blood left inside him to weep. “Save me by Your grace, and take me home.” The sun was moving closer; he began to feel its warmth on his skin, a shadow of the burning that would come. “Abandon me not to the dark.” Abandon… he was abandoning Isabel. She is strong, Kivar had said. Perhaps I have chosen badly. He would go to her, destroy her, and Simon could not stop him. Simon would be dead, consumed at last by the light. Orlando could not protect her; Brautus could not. The devil would take her.
“No!” He screamed so loudly, the ground shivered around him, dirt raining down on his face, but still he could not pull free of the chains. Still he had no strength.
“My lord?” The girl stirred against him, lifting her head. “My lord, I am frightened.” She clung to him, her heart beating faster, and the hunger twisted inside him, the fangs growing deadly in his mouth.
“It’s all right.” Her throat was now within his easy reach, even with him chained to the wall; all he had to do was bend his head to be free, and still the sun was creeping closer, the fire rising hot inside him. “You have to run away.”
“No,” she said, crying, her face pressed to his shoulder, burning his skin with her tears. “He will find me.”
“No,” Simon promised, trying to soothe her, to keep his voice natural and calm. A child, he kept telling himself, repeating the words in his head to try to drown out the roar of her blood and the beating of her heart. A beast, Kivar had called her, no better than a sheep. But she was not a beast; she was an innocent child. “He will not find you, not in the sunlight. He cannot harm you in the light.”
“He can,” she insisted, clinging even more tightly to him, so tightly he could feel her pounding heart against his chest. “I know he can. I want to stay with you.”
“I said go!” She screamed and fell back as he lunged forward, eyes glowing green and fangs extended, the bolts that held him creaking, ready to give way. “Run,” he ordered even as his body fought to reach her, out of his control “Run, and don’t look back.”