Kivar had stopped circling and shouting to hold his mount perfectly still, facing the castle. He raised the visor on his helmet and smiled, showing his fangs, his eyes glowing green in the dark. “He heard,” Kevin said, panic in his voice. “He heard every word you said.”
“Very likely,” Simon agreed, staring back. He pressed a kiss to Isabel’s brow. “But I am not afraid.”
14
Isabel watched Brautus help Simon into the painted armor of the Black Knight in his tiny cellar room. “I am afraid,” she said, leaning against his bed. “I don’t want you to fight him.”
“You and Brautus will take the others across the lake in boats,” he answered, strapping on the spiked plates that covered his arms. “Even if I fail, Kivar won’t be interested enough in the people of Charmot to make the effort to hunt you down. All he really cares about is the Chalice.”
“You’re not listening.” Brautus’s chain mail hauberk was a bit long for him, hanging almost to his knees, but through the shoulders and arms, it was a good fit. “I said don’t fight him.”
He laid his gauntlets aside. “You know I have to fight him.” He cradled her cheek in his palm, making her look at him. “You made me promise I would, remember?”
“That was Michel, a man.” She pushed his hand away. “Not this demon in a dead man’s body, this thing that can’t be killed.”
“He can be killed, and I will do it.” He made her meet his eyes again. “I am sworn to it.”
“Oh, shut up.” She batted him away again, moving out of his reach. “Ever since I met you, you’ve been telling me what you are sworn to do and not to do, and it’s always exactly the opposite of whatever it is I want.” He looked at Brautus, hoping for guidance, but the knight just shrugged, barely trying to hide his smile. “I know you have to fight him,” she admitted, turning back to him. “But I still don’t want you to do it.”
“I know.” He looked almost exactly the way she had pictured him in her desperate dreams before she had ever seen him, her true Black Knight, a deadly angel loosed from hell to protect Charmot. But he wasn’t that; he was Simon, her beloved, and she’d only just found him. How was she supposed to let him go? “I don’t want to fight him,” he said now.
“Yes, you do,” she cut him off. “You’re fairly itching to go out there and hack him to pieces and take your revenge—”
“And why shouldn’t I be?” he demanded, cutting her off in turn. “I want him gone, destroyed forever. I want to be free of him for good.” He framed her face in his hands, refusing to let her pull free this time. “I want to be what you told your people I was,” he said more gently, gazing into her eyes. “I want to be a man again, your husband. I want to grow old with you, to see our sons grow up in sunlight.”
She didn’t answer for a moment, the willful girl inside her battling the woman. “Or daughters,” she finally retorted. “We could have daughters.”
“Aye,” he admitted with a smile. “We could.” He kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around him, pressing herself against him with all her strength for a moment, memorizing every tiny portion of the way he felt before she let him go, and she could feel him doing the same, running his hands through her hair just before she pulled away. “Go with Brautus,” he said, still holding her hands in his. “I will find you when it’s done.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m staying here with Orlando.”
“Poppet, enough,” Brautus said. “You can’t—”
“I can,” she interrupted. “Orlando and I will wait down here outside the catacombs while Brautus leads the people safety. As soon as you dispatch this Kivar, we’re going to find your Chalice.”
“As simple as that,” Simon said, smiling in spite of himself.
“Why not?” she retorted, smiling back. “I have a map.”
“We’ve no more time to argue,” Brautus said with an air of surrender. “Whatever this Kivar might be, I doubt he’ll wait forever.”
Simon took the devil’s mask helmet and put it on his head. “How do I look?”
“Terrifying,” Isabel answered, trying to sound careless and ironic in spite of the tears in her eyes. She touched the helmet’s leering grin. “So go and frighten him to death.”
Simon hadn’t worn armor in so long, he had almost forgotten how uncomfortable it was. He stopped halfway across the courtyard to fidget, resettling the chain mail shirt on his shoulders, the devil’s-head helmet cocked at an odd angle as he tilted his head from one side to the other, loosening his neck. “You make quite a picture, my lord,” Kevin said, holding Malachi’s reins in one hand and a lethal-looking black lance in the other. “Brautus’s kit fits you well.”
“Well enough.” He swung into the saddle, Malachi planting his feet to hold himself steady, an old hand at such business, and Kevin ha
nded him the lance. “You should hurry,” Simon advised him. “The others have already gone.”
“Tom will watch out for his mother.” He adjusted Simon’s stirrups. “Besides, someone will have to open the gate.”
“That’s true enough.” His voice sounded hollow and hoarse behind the helmet, but at least whoever had designed it had been clever enough to make the “eyes” wider than they looked, the actual openings set behind hooded lids of steel and tilted up at the corners to give him a clear view on either side. “Just keep an eye out and be ready to flee if you have to.”
“Godspeed, my lord.” The groom stepped back and touched his forehead in salute before running to open the gate.
Kivar was ringing the bell again as Simon rode out on the drawbridge at a trot. “Finally,” he laughed, turning his horse to face him. He rode Michel’s horse, the same armored destrier Simon had frightened so badly in the chapel yard after he had slain its master, and its eyes were wild with fear, its muzzle flecked with foam. What dark act of will had Kivar practiced on this creature to make him bear his weight? “I like your costume,” the ancient vampire said. “As depressingly moral as you knights can be, you have a great flair for occasion.” He seated his lance with graceful ease, as if he were born to it. Michel had been a professional fighter; how much of his skill could the demon have stolen? “But then, you are no longer a knight.”