“I thought I’d find you here.” The familiar voice made Ember’s shriek of horror transform to one of delight. Though his clothing had changed, Alistair Hart had not. His ebony curls still shone in the sun and his eyes still rivaled the spring sky.
She began to lower her sword, but Alistair stepped forward. His blade rasped, pressing into hers and forcing her to push back.
He smiled at her. “Tsk. Don’t lower your defenses, Em. Is that how you’d respond to an ambush?”
“But—” Ember’s brow knit together. She couldn’t believe he was here.
“We’ll have a proper reunion after you’ve shown me that you’ve been practicing,” Alistair said, glancing at the remnants of the poppet. “It’s a bit more of a challenge when your adversary can fight back.”
His blue eyes shone with mirth that made Ember want to laugh, but she gritted her teeth. With a twist of her wrist she knocked Alistair’s sword away and struck. He dodged, deftly wielding his blade to parry her swing. Ember met his blow and pushed their swords up so she could aim a kick at Alistair’s stomach. Catching her sudden movement, Alistair tried to jump back but not quickly enough. He grunted as her heel dug into his gut.
Doubling over, he stumbled away. Ember cried out, dropping her sword.
“Oh, Alistair, I’m sorry.” She ran to him. “I got carried away.”
His shoulders were shaking and she gripped them, leaning down in hopes of peering at his face. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
When he looked up, grinning, she stomped her foot. His body shook not with pain, but with laughter.
“You’re horrid.” Ember’s cheeks were hot with embarrassment. “I thought I’d hurt you.”
“Only my ego, sweet Ember,” Alistair said, still laughing. “Fortunately my stomach can withstand a gentle kick.”
Ember winced at the word gentle. She certainly hadn’t meant to be gentle.
“I’m impressed,” Alistair continued. “You have been practicing.”
Though she wanted to stay cross with him, Ember couldn’t help but smile. “I have . . . If I don’t sneak out to this hollow, I’ll be forced to spin. I hate spinning.”
Her fingers twitched at the thought. She didn’t mind the calluses that made her hands rough from gripping her sword’s hilt, but she resented the blisters that covered her fingers after the tedium of carding wool and pulling thread from a wheel. With a sigh, Ember turned to rescue her blade from the dirt where she’d dropped it, but Alistair took her arm and pulled her back.
“Have you forgotten already?” he asked with an impish smile. “Now that you’ve proven yourself, it’s time to welcome me home.”
Ember laughed and threw herself into his open arms. He crushed her into his chest, so she couldn’t draw a breath, but Ember didn’t care. She had missed Alistair every day since he’d left the marches. He was the only person who would know to look for Ember in the hidden glen. The only person she trusted with her secrets. The one who’d secreted a sword into her possession and helped her learn how to use it. In this last year, his absence had meant she had no sparring partner and no one to reassure her that wishing of a life of adventure wasn’t a silly dream for a girl.
He laughed and spun her around so quickly that her feet swished through the air. “Ah, I’ve missed you, Em.”
Ember wriggled against him until she was able to gulp in air. The question pounding in her veins rushed out. “Have you come to take me away?”
Alistair buried his face in the crown of her hair. “Did you have doubts? I keep my promises.”
“But my father—” Ember tried to pull free, but Alistair’s arms were tight around her body, holding her close.
“There are some powers in this world that even your father must answer to,” Alistair told her. “And I’m here representing one of them.”
Though he seemed reluctant to let her go, Ember managed to wrestle herself out of Alistair’s embrace. “It’s wonderful that they sent you.”
“It was decided that things would be easier if I were to come,” he said. “For all of us.” He reached out, letting his fingers rest on her cheek. “After today things will be better. Forever.”
Ember nodded, though the lingering touch of his hand felt strange. Her mind was working too quickly to give the gesture much thought. Even with Alistair returned, she wouldn’t believe that her father would let her leave his home, be free of his rule, until she was well away from the family estate.
When Alistair had left his own father’s manor—only an hour on foot from Ember’s home—to join Conatus, Ember had been delighted to receive word that he’d been chosen to serve in their elite Guard. He’d always bested his brothers in combat. He’d made his preference known, and not many would give up the comforts of domesticity for a life of war, even the sacred war of the Church. But Alistair was the third son of a noble, which meant his father’s fortunes would pass to his elder brothers. Though he could have sought the hand of an heiress, Alistair claimed he’d prefer living by his sword than winning his fortune through a marriage.
Ember’s situation was the reverse. She was the ideal fiancée for someone in Alistair’s position. He’d even jested that they could marry to please their families. But two things kept Ember from ever considering that course. First, she knew marrying Alistair wouldn’t please her father. He had an eye on husbands who would extend his holdings in France or Scotland. Alistair might be noble in name, but he brought nothing to the table that would gain her father’s favor: no inheritance, no land of his own.
Second, and much more pressing, was the protest of her spirit. She was certain she’d suffocate trapped in a manor as some lord’s wife. Even as a girl she’d longed to escape the monotony of spinning, weaving, and needlework. She’d been plagued by jealousy as Alistair and his brothers learned swordplay and horsemanship while she and Agnes were cooped up in the manor. Alistair had become her closest friend and confidant because of his willingness to thwart convention, stealing away to meet her in the hollow so she could at least have a taste of martial training.
Ember ached for a life where she could live by her sword and her courage. A life unavailable to the daughter of a nobleman. Except for this single possibility. Her father’s debt to Conatus meant that she might be called to serve at Tearmunn. In what capacity she couldn’t know. Even with her obligations to Conatus she might still be destined for a politically expedient union.
Her hopes were futile. Ember knew as much. But over the past year she’d too often allowed herself to imagine otherwise. Alistair’s letters had encouraged her dreaming, hinting that joining the order would forever alter her life’s path.
No work could be greater than the sacred duties of Conatus, he’d written. But what was that work? Despite his reassurances she still found herself doubting that she’d have a place within this strange order. Perhaps she’d been a girl who played with swords and slaughtered straw dolls, but now she was a woman. And women warriors were aberrations, creatures of legend but not the world she inhabited. Though it might be at the ends of the earth, Tearmunn was still of this world, and that meant she had to live as women did. As a wife. As a mother.
But now Alistair had returned, as he’d promised. Her pulse jumped at the thought that her daydreams of another life might be realized. With opposing currents of hope and fear sloshing against each other in her mind, Ember clambered up the grassy bank after Alistair.
Alistair’s horse, a glossy bay mare, was gorging itself on the spring-green shoots that appeared in thick tufts throughout the pasture. The horse blew out in annoyance at having such a lovely meal interrupted when Alistair took up the reins. They started across the green fields toward the tall manor that loomed over the glen. The mare snorted, craning her neck in an attempt to snatch another mouthful of the grass.
“She’s beautiful,” Ember said, looking over the long lines of the mare’s form.
“Her name is Alkippe. The horses at Tearmunn are exceptional,” he told her. “Everythi
ng there is exceptional.”
“And they haven’t made a monk of you?” she asked, easily falling into their old pattern of teasing each other about romance. Alistair had always boasted that one day no woman would resist his knightly charm. Ember had countered that no man could ever have charm enough to make her want to marry.
Expecting Alistair’s laughter, the suddenly harsh cut of his mouth startled her. “Of course not,” he said. “Conatus may be an arm of the church, but we’re not a monastery.”
“I was only making fun,” Ember said. “Your letters spoke of taking vows.”
“The vows are of loyalty.” Alistair’s pace quickened. “Not chastity.”
“But you said as a knight of Conatus you can’t marry,” she argued. “And that you continue the work of the Templars—who were chaste, were they not?”
The words left her mouth and Ember’s heart became tight as a fist when she remembered that the Templars had been disbanded and many tortured and burned because of charges they’d broken their vows.
Alarmed, she murmured, “I shouldn’t have jested about something so serious.”
He grimaced. “You don’t understand the function of the vows. They exist only because of the danger . . . Never mind. You’ll learn the truth of this soon enough yourself. Now our task is to deal with your father.”
Ember fell silent, lost in her own thoughts about the strange world that Alistair had called home for the past year. The world that was intended to be her home too.
“Are you so worried about my prospects for marriage?” Alistair smiled and tried to take her hand.
Ember shied away. She’d missed him, but twining their fingers wasn’t something they had ever been in the habit of doing. He frowned when Ember pulled her hand back, causing a twinge in her chest that made her regret her choice. She quickly took his hand, squeezing, and was pleased when he smiled.
“You know I don’t bother with such things,” she said. “My father and mother have their plans. I have others. We shall see who wins the day.”
Her words carried courage that Ember didn’t feel. In truth she’d fled her house that morning in a desperate attempt to keep her mind occupied, just as she had every morning since her sixteenth birthday passed. Fear that an emissary from Conatus would never arrive, that her hopes wouldn’t be fulfilled, had rendered her sleepless night after night.
“We shall.” Alistair’s tone grew serious. He halted, covering her hand with both of his. “Your arrival at Conatus is considered a harbinger of the order’s future. One way or the other.”
He dropped her hand, but only after briefly raising her fingers to his lips. An unpleasant shiver coursed through Ember. The flood of happiness filling her at Alistair’s return was seeping away, leaving a cold foreboding in its wake. Why was he acting so strange? Touching her too often and in ways that were unbefitting of their friendship.
“How can that be?” Ember asked, hoping to avoid more awkward interactions. If she kept Alistair talking about his life at Tearmunn, perhaps it would make things more comfortable between them.
“You’re the daughter of a noble,” he said.
“You’re of noble birth,” she countered. “Wasn’t your arrival equally auspicious?”
He shook his head. “I went to Tearmunn voluntarily. You are being called because your life is owed to Conatus.”
Ember went quiet. Though she had no memory of it, the story never failed to unsettle her. When her mother’s labor pains began, the birth hadn’t progressed as it should. Death hovered over mother and unborn child. The sudden arrival of an extraordinary healer—a woman trained by Conatus—had offered salvation. But miracles came with a price. And the price named was the infant girl when she reached her sixteenth year.
Growing up with this memory following her like a shadow had been strange. That she was pledged to Conatus hadn’t been hidden from her, but whenever it was mentioned, her mother fretted and her father roared. Even lacking her own memory of the event, Ember felt as though the circumstances of her birth had left her only loosely tethered to this world. That her survival had been a mistake, leaving her with a half-formed and chaotic soul. And that was why she wanted things she wasn’t meant to have and dreamed impossible dreams. Because her very existence was ephemeral. Unintended.
As the manor rose before them, its hulking shape looming over the fields owned by her father and worked by his peasants, Ember’s heart dropped like a stone in a well. Alistair had fallen silent, as lost in his thoughts as she’d been in her own. Ember wondered if her friend’s outward confidence belied his own doubts.
A groomsman intercepted them in the courtyard, taking Alistair’s horse and leading the animal to the stables.
“Your father is in the great hall,” Alistair told her as they passed through the manor’s tall oak doors. “With quite a feast prepared.”
“He was hoping to impress Conatus,” Ember said. “And he’s likely disappointed that he’s spent a fortune only to have young Alistair Hart appear to collect me.”
“Not only me,” he said with a quirk of his lips that might have been a smile or a grimace.
“Someone else is here?” Ember could hear her father’s booming voice as they approached the great hall. He was using the expansive tone Ember knew meant he wanted to convey his importance.
Alistair leaned close, whispering, “Someone more intimidating than young Master Hart. Though I’m loath to admit such a man lives. But in truth, it is someone your father would be less likely to dismiss.”
Curiosity brimming, Ember walked as quickly as she could without running. The hall was bursting with color, scent, and sound. Lord Edmund Morrow sat in a carved wooden chair, taller than its counterparts. A long table was overspread by silver platters laden with roasted pheasant, venison, and suckling pig. Wooden bowls were close to toppling under the weight of sweetbreads, piping hot fish stew, and savory pottage. Servants scurried about the hall, refilling empty glasses with crimson wine and amber cider.
Despite her pattering heart, Ember’s stomach rumbled. This feast was far greater than even the Christmas celebration her father had thrown. Was he so concerned about his reputation with Conatus? After all, hadn’t he spoken of them as a strange, isolated sect that had little to do with the world of court and kings?
Ember’s mother, Lady Ossia Morrow, sat to the left of her husband. She was dressed in one of her finest gowns of ebony silk. Her hair was pulled into an intricate knot and adorned with gems. Ember’s sister, Agnes, sat to her mother’s left. She was also dressed in a favorite gown of rose and cream silks. Her eyes were downcast as she picked through the meats on her plate.
The other guests at the meal were warriors—the men-at-arms who served Lord Morrow. Burly and riled up by an excess of food and drink, they toasted and jostled each other, making the most of this unexpected bounty.
The only person in the room Ember didn’t recognize was the man sitting at her father’s right hand. Unlike the other revelers, the stranger’s demeanor was stiff. Both uneasy and wary. Even though he was seated, Ember could tell he was a great deal taller than her father.
Catching sight of the new arrivals, Ember’s mother extended her hands. “Alistair! You found her.”
Edmund jabbed the tip of his knife at them. “Good lad, Alistair. As for you, errant girl, you might have taken a moment to don appropriate attire for this feast honoring our guests.”
Ember glanced down at her plain and rumpled gown, its hem covered with dirt. “I was walking in the pasture,” she said, cheeks warming with blood.
“Agnes, take your sister and help her make herself presentable,” her father said. He glanced at the tall man on his right.
Agnes began to rise, but the stranger frowned. “There’s no need for your daughter to adorn herself.”
He waved for Agnes to return to her seat, but she hovered, uncertain what to do. When her father’s eyes narrowed, she stood and scurried to Ember’s side.
“You might hail fro
m the wild north, good knight,” Edmund answered him. “But I expect my daughter to act as befits her station, not as some peasant girl who runs around with straw in her hair.”
Ember reached up, gingerly running her hands over her tangled locks. Blushing more deeply, she picked several pieces of straw from her hair. The stranger watched her closely, and Ember thought he might be on the verge of smiling. Her embarrassment melted into irritation. Was seeing her scolded like a child so entertaining to this man?
Still holding her gaze, the knight stood up. He was at least a head taller than her father and even a bit taller than Alistair. Ember glanced at the younger man beside her. Both knights of Conatus had dark hair, but where Alistair had curls as glossy as a raven’s wing, the stranger’s smooth hair was shorn so it fell just below his ears and had a rich color, like a tree’s bark after rain.
She looked away from him only when Agnes took her hand. “Come, sister. I think the green silk gown would be a fine choice.”
“Hold!” The knight’s booming call stopped Ember from following her sister. Before her father could speak again, the stranger said to Ember, “My lady Morrow, I am Barrow Hess. Lord Hart and I have come to escort you to the Conatus keep of Tearmunn in Glen Shiel.”
Ember freed her hand from Agnes’s tight grip and dropped into a curtsy. “I understand, my lord.”
“Are you prepared to leave now?” Barrow asked her. “We’ve already enjoyed too much of your father’s generous hospitality. If you are amenable, we would take food for the journey and leave within the hour.”
Beside Barrow, Ember’s father began to sputter. Her mother gasped in horror. Agnes grasped Ember’s arm, as if that gesture alone would keep her in their father’s house.
Ember looked from her father to the tall knight. “I—”
“What sort of insult is this?” Edmund jumped up, squaring his shoulders. “I prepare a feast for you and you can’t be bothered to share in it.”