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Chapter Fourteen

Isobella swayed on the horse, righted herself, then clamped her hands firmer around Edmond’s torso. They’d been riding for hours, stopping for a hurried bite to eat and a toilet break, but quick to move on. Her muscles were cramping, and the horse’s back had become no more comfortable than a stone bench. Fatigue weighed her down, replacing the shock of the battle—the blood, the violence, the death, her own part in it.

She’d killed three men. Used the only spell that had come to mind. One she’d used all the time at the nursery when grafting plants to a rootstock. Her thought had been only to hold the men in place and keep them from attacking her, but… She grimaced as the memory of the men squeezed to death by her tree roots appeared front and center in her mind. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

Remi had poked at the vines with a stick, fascinated, if a little wary. She hadn’t been able to look at them. Just the thought of what she’d done made Isobella nauseated. She’d never envisioned using her magic for any purpose other than to nurture, but she’d had no choice. The thrum of her power surging through her veins had been overwhelming and frightening. As though she’d added her blood to the spell, but she hadn’t. Was her magic stronger because she was now a werewolf? Isobella didn’t know, but she didn’t like it.

What had Stef and Gabriel been thinking sending her on this mission? She wasn’t cut out for this. For the tenth century. For battles where people lost their limbs, their heads, their lives. She tended plants, for goodness’ sake. Made the non-alcoholic punch and the salad platters for the coven’s solstice celebrations. She couldn’t stand the thought of killing anything. She was a vegetarian. Isobella snorted. Who’d ever heard of a vegetarian werewolf? Maybe she wasn’t cut out for that either.

Had Edmond’s every blow, every thrust not found its mark, had Aubert not come charging down the hill raining death upon all who got in his way, killing three men wouldn’t have been enough to save her. Aubert and Edmond had done that. Saved her. Again. Wasn’t she the one sent here to save them from Faucher? Now they might have started a war the Langeais wolves didn’t want or need. All because of her. They were probably thinking they should’ve left her in the chapel, but…

She glanced over her shoulder at Aubert. For a moment, when the battle was won, and Aubert had dropped his sword, panic in his eyes, frantically running his hands over her, checking for injury, she’d thought of another time, another battle. When Gabriel had been desperate to know Annabelle was okay. Sandwiched between Aubert and Edmond, she’d wondered. Thought of Pierre and Louis, and…

Aubert glanced up, caught her staring at him and snarled. Edmond’s body was stiff with tension.

Read the room, Isobella.

Isobella turned away, leaned her weary head against Edmond’s back and closed her eyes. She was alive, and cancer free. That was more than enough to be grateful for.

* * * *

Isobella startled and jerked her head up, blinking. Night had fallen. The cool air wrapped around her. Dappled moonlight filtered through the canopy of trees, steeping the forest in an eeriness that’d been absent during the day. She yawned and scrubbed her face. She must have fallen asleep, lulled by the steady motion of the horse. She yawned again. It was a miracle she hadn’t fallen— Oh. She was no longer sitting behind Edmond, but snug in his lap, a muscular arm secure around her waist.

And they’d stopped. Aubert and Remi were beside them, their horses reined in. Had they arrived? Isobella scanned their surroundings. They were still deep in the forest, with no sign of the d’Louncrais keep, a village, or anything. She frowned. Why had they stopped?

Edmond turned to his brother. “Do you feel that?”

Aubert frowned. “I feel nothing.”

“Precisely.”

A horse snorted, and flicked its tail. A bird shrieked, the beat of its wings fading as it flapped away. Something was wrong. Edmond was as stiff and unyielding as the trunk of an old oak tree, and Aubert scanned the forest, his eyebrows bunched low over his eyes and his hand on the pommel of his sword.

Edmond shifted the reins to his other hand and reached for his blade. “Wolfsbane.”

A growl rumbled up from Aubert’s chest.

Wolfsbane?

A plant with a pretty purple flower, it was deadly to werewolves. It made them lose control over their ability to shift, forcing the change back and forth between wolf and human until all energy was exhausted and they died. Perhaps she was too inexperienced as a werewolf, because Isobella couldn’t sense any— No, wait. She sniffed. The loamy smell, the pine, the resin from the trees, all the scents she’d come to associate with this forest were muted, and the colors, already washed out by the moonlight, had further faded. Like she was experiencing it through a barrier.

“How long since you first noticed it?” Edmond asked his brother, his words little more than a whisper.

Long enough, if Aubert’s scowl was anything to go by. Could it be a natural occurrence? Isobella eyed the heavy canopy of trees. Wolfsbane needed sun. Isobella tensed, scanning the forest, searching the dark for…what? Faucher? More chevaliers?

A fog rolled in, thick and fast moving and the hair on the back of her neck rose. That wasn’t natural.

Magic.

Movement swirled within the fog, at first indistinct, nothing more than a dark blur. As the fog rolled closer, the dark blur solidified. A rider. A hooded figure on a big black warhorse, his long coat billowing about him as he rode out of the gloom. He was not alone. Chevaliers with blue and white shields materialized behind him. Isobella spun from side to side. The fog was everywhere, and so were the chevaliers. They were surrounded by them.

Their horses stirred beneath them. So many chevaliers. Too many. They’d fought and won against the chevaliers that had attacked them earlier, but there’d been twenty of them at most. There had to be forty, maybe fifty chevaliers, all armed to the teeth and closing in on them.

Hell.

The cloaked figure reined his horse to a halt. “Hello, Isobella.” He tossed his hood back. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Douglas?” Where…? How…?