Dark Secrets (14 page)

Still, I wouldn’t sleep until we were well away from Reseda and somewhere without accursed lightning boxes. A small town where we could start again.

We reached the outskirts of Reseda, where roads became dirt and the houses well-spaced with farms, before the buggy clicked and stopped. I glanced at Anisa, and she looked at me. Her hands were clenched in her lap, as if she were too afraid to move. If I hadn’t have reached her, would she have fled without me?

I took my hand off the tiller and jumped down to crank the engine. As I did I watched the road, looking for puffs of dust that would announce another buggy. But the road was clear. It was just her and I. I looked up at her and smiled. It felt forced, like it would break at any moment. She didn’t return it, just watched me as I climbed back into the buggy and eased it forward again, picking up pace as we went. Was she having doubts? If she was, I didn’t know how to ease them. I’d all but killed a man and those memories weren’t going to fade as fast as bruises.

With the buggy rolling again and the fields sliding past in a blur, Anisa finally spoke. “Lords, what have we done?”

I swallowed the dust lining my throat. I didn’t know. But we couldn’t go back. “The right thing, I hope.”

“I broke my wedding vows.” I barely heard her over the whirring of the buggy.

I looked sideways at her. Technically she hadn’t, yet, as we hadn’t done anything. But I knew what she meant. She’d left her husband with the intention of taking up with another man. “I’m sure the Lords will forgive you more readily than they will forgive him for abusing you and their law.”
Or
me
.

She fell silent again, and so did I. In those quiet moments, when I relived what I’d done again and again, hearing the echo of the snap of his mind, I swore a silent promise that I wouldn’t use magic to interfere with someone’s mind again—for any reason. Yes, I’d have to use magic or I’d bleed from my ear and eyes, but I’d find a way. It was that or take up drinking, but I didn’t want to waste my second chance at the bottom of a bottle. Besides I’d grown accustomed to quality liquor and my funds wouldn’t stretch that far anymore.

The engine of the buggy whirred and the sky became blue as the sun reached higher.

Anisa would check behind us occasionally. After a while her body lost the rigid set of fear. Her cheeks got back some color.

“Would you have gone without me?”

She glanced at the tips of her shoes peeking from beneath her skirt. “Yes. I wouldn’t have let your sacrifice be in vain.”

I didn’t know if that was the answer I’d hoped to hear or not. “Good thing I made it.”

“Only by twenty.” She gave me a half smile that lasted only a heartbeat. “Is he…?”

“He’s alive.” She drew in a sharp breath and I glanced at her. “He won’t be hurting anyone for a while.” I couldn’t say if he’d recover or if he would spend the rest of his life locked away. Maybe it would have been kinder to kill him. Either way I would live with what I’d done forever.

“Thank you. It can’t have been easy.” Anisa’s hand landed on my leg as softly as a butterfly, and she turned to face me. It was the first time she’d touched me since I’d met her at the buggy. I wanted to cover her hand with mine but hesitated. After what I’d done I wasn’t sure I should be touching anyone.

I gave a single nod. Maybe I’d tell her another time about the darkness and the brutality I found in there. How a man like that had convinced so many people he was a decent man capable of upholding the law, I’d never know. But then, most folk didn’t see what I saw.

Her fingers moved and I knew without looking at her she was thinking. I remembered the way her fingers had once walked across my skin before she’d ask some complicated question. Some things didn’t change. “Why did you do it? You could’ve pretended to never see me and gone on with your life.”

I sighed. I was sure no Lord would look kindly on a man who turned a blind eye to a woman in danger. “I couldn’t do that. I knew too much about him.” I took my eyes off the road for a heartbeat. “I’d spent six years imagining what it would be like to see you again. I couldn’t walk away without knowing if you were happy. If you had been…” If she’d have married anyone other than Brixen I still would have sought her out in the market just to be sure. I shrugged and let it go. I didn’t have to wonder and imagine anymore. She was sitting next to me. “Would you have sought me out once you heard my name being mentioned?”

“Yes. I needed to know why you never wrote.” Her thumb moved against my thigh. More certain this time.

I covered her hand with mine, needing to feel her skin against mine. “And now you know. Ex-whore Rogue Arcane with little to no prospects. You could’ve turned me in.” I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles.

“Why would I? No good would come from it.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. “I meant it, Haidyn. Whatever Lord you serve, I will follow.”

I slid my arm around her waist and drew her closer. She molded against me, the heat of her body invading mine, her hand on the back of my hip. I didn’t know what I wanted to do; I hadn’t let myself think that far ahead. I couldn’t follow the Arcane Lord I was born to serve unless I joined the Free Arcane Association. While not exactly a trade, it was better than what I had. Was it what I wanted? “Even if I joined the FAA?”

“Even then. They want magic to be affordable. I can support that, even if I don’t like how they are going about it.”

I nodded, my lips in a thin line. I didn’t like the way they worked either. Union and FAA were almost equally as bad. Besides, I didn’t want to get caught in a battle and risk losing what I’d just found. I kissed the sun-warmed top of her head. “I don’t think I can join them. I can’t sell myself any longer.”

She turned her head, her lips meeting mine in a slow and sensuous kiss that made me want to promise her everything and anything if she’d keep going. The buggy’s path wobbled, snapping my attention back to the road. My heart beat loud in my ears.

“Just promise me you won’t leave again.” Her hand covered mine on the tiller.

“I swear by the Hunter…” I almost made the marriage declaration there and then, but she was still married to Brixen, “…to stand by you.”

“I swear by the Hunter…” she used the Lord I was swearing, not her father’s, “…to stand by you. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

“I like the sound of that.”

Could we really pick up where we’d left off and pretend nothing had happened? Probably not. But we could start again, smarter and stronger than we’d been six years ago.

The buggy rolled on. After a little more silence I realized I had no idea where I was going. When we reached a crossroads I’d have to decide.
We’d
have to decide. “We need to make plans. We can’t go home.”

“I know.” She nodded. “You used to talk of seeing the ocean. After you left I used to imagine you’d come back dressed in black and take me to Kamala or some other city by the sea.”

Kamala was out of the question; the Arcane Union ran most of the trade out of there. “Maybe not a city, but we could head to the coast.” My father had often spoken of his grandfather, who used to work on the ships that crossed the ocean for trade. Maybe I could pick up work. Whatever coin we had between us wouldn’t last for long. I’d have to turn hand to honest labor.

She smiled up at me. “Anywhere with you, Haidyn.”

Epilogue

The ocean is far bigger than I’d ever imagined. It stretches endlessly to the sky. The town we’d settled in clung to a cliff. Down the stairs cut into the side of the rock face is the harbor, where fishermen and small traders come and go.

Despite the fading brand, I had no trouble finding hire on a fishing boat. Turns out, a man is more use than a boy, and I have a knack for knowing what the captain wants done and where the fish will be. I can sense them massing to feed and mate. Their emotions, while different, are no less powerful when there are thousands of them.

Through the fish I’ve learned how to balance the magic so it doesn’t swallow me or kill me. At first, letting my mind slip into the ocean and sense what was there was just a way to bleed off some of the magic and dull the noise in my mind. Working with my hands gave me the opportunity I needed to learn to keep other people’s thoughts out. I can still sense people’s emotions and read their thoughts—that will never leave me—but if I dig deeper or try to change a person’s thoughts, it means opening the door to my mind. I opened that door wide my first night on the streets of Reseda and then never had a chance to close it. Now I have no desire to open it. I have no need to.

My days are filled with sky and sun. At first my skin burned, but it’s now golden and freckled, like the rest of the men. My hair is cut short and practical. While my hands are roughened and my nails broken, I sleep easy and for the first time in years feel free to breathe. And I have my apprenticeship papers. Receiving them and swearing to the Hunter was an honor I thought I’d never get.

A few of the other men have asked about my past, but I’m vague. A misspent youth, saved by the love of a woman. All true of course, yet I see no point in sharing details that could find their way to the wrong people. Anisa helps with the mending of the nets and sails. And at night she’s there, waiting for me. I understand why people long for the touch of another and physical pleasure. There is a joy of being that close to someone that nothing else matches. The only thing better is waking up and seeing her sleeping next to me.

Occasionally I still glance over my shoulder when I hear the latest gossip brought to town. There is a new Lawman in Reseda after the last one went mad. There are whispers that the FAA secretly now controls the town, and it’s not the only one. But for every pro-Rogue rumor, there’s another supporting the Union.

I listen and say nothing. I want no part in the war that is brewing.

My life is simple, my mind clear of everything but my love for Anisa and hers for me.

* * * * *

Not ready to leave Shona Husk’s Western-style fantasy world? Then check out her first book,
Dark
Vow
,
available now!

Dark Vow

Jaines Cord plans to kill the man who murdered her husband, even though killing a Bounty Hunter is said to be impossible. One bullet took away her livelihood, her home and her love. One bullet made by her. Fired from the gun she completed for the Arcane Bounty Hunter.

Obsidian wears the scars of disobeying the powerful Arcane Union. He barely escaped with his life and now lives quietly, in a town the lawmen forgot. When Jaines arrives asking too many questions, he’s faced with a decision. Help her or run…again. Obsidian knows that if he flees he’ll always be looking over his shoulder. His name is one of the first on the Bounty Hunter’s death list.

Yet when Obsidian is offered an opportunity to stop the stone taking over his body in exchange for retrieving the gun, he asks Jaines for her help. Now Jaines must choose: a dead man’s vengeance or a living man’s hope?

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About the Author

A civil designer by day and an author by night, Shona Husk lives in Western Australia at the edge of the Indian Ocean. Blessed with a lively imagination, she spent most of her childhood making up stories. As an adult she discovered romance novels and hasn’t looked back. Drawing on history and myth, she writes about heroes who are armed and dangerous but have a heart of gold—sometimes literally.

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