a flinch to his smooth features, the brown eyes held a frustrating clutch on naiveté. The Oracle knew everything. He’d given Dominique the layout of Abaddon’s castle, provided him with the information that he would meet the black knight en route to Creil, had even relayed details from both battles that saw the first two de Mortes fall. Why hadn’t he informed him of this important fact?
“A woman!” Dominique jabbed the trunk of a twisted elm with his boot, not hesitant at letting the Oracle see his disappointment.
“Can you keep her safe?”
“Against Abaddon, Sammael, and Lucifer?” Dominique shrugged a fall of snow from his shoulders then lifted his chin in challenge. “Sounds like a battle already won. And not by the black knight.”
“You must believe in yourself, Dominique San Juste,” the Oracle said in his whispery adolescent timbre. “You are of the earth; Seraphim is of fire. I chose you, knowing you would be a formidable match—as well a complement—to the d’Ange woman’s fire.”
“D’Ange,” Dominique muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. “An angel riding a quest against the darkest demons in France—wait! You said you did not know she was a woman. And yet—you just said you chose me to match her fire.” He raised an accusing finger on the glimmering figment. “You lie to me to serve your own selfish needs? What is the truth of my mission? Who are you, and why did you come to me?”
“You ask far too many questions, and already know the answers.”
“And you are a double-talking nuisance.”
“Have I yet steered you wrongly?”
The Oracle had first appeared to him three years ago. Dominique had been contemplating joining the English on the raid against Rouen, where Jeanne d’Arc would finally fall. No—contemplation had been all of a moment at sight of a purse gleaming with coin. He’d avoided siding with the English for years. But the coin…oh, that bright and sparkling coin.
The Oracle had appeared, insisting he go home. His mother needed him. Dominique had arrived only to hear his father’s dying words. “I have loved you so, son.”
Son. A word wrought of pure, priceless gold to Dominique’s troubled soul. Far more valuable than any English coin could offer. Yet beneath the gild lay a bronze core.
“Tell me, do you know why she quests so?”
The Oracle shrugged. Actually shrugged, which seemed to Dominique a very odd movement from one so otherworldly. “You have not asked her?”
“The woman is not one for conversation.”
“She fears adversity.”
“I am not the enemy.”
“Make her believe it and together the two of you shall triumph. She fears the same thing you fear, releasing the anger and following her heart.”
“I have no anger,” Dominique said, his jaw tightening.
“Really? Why then this mission? Perhaps it is not necessary to provide the answer you seek?”
“I am not angry about my past—only—all right! So I am angry.” He kicked at the snow, his frustration erupting in a powder of cold crystals. “It was not fair to be abandoned. To be left to my own devices in a world so unaccepting and…. and wrong.”
“You made it your own world, did you not?”
Dominique huffed. Another kick buried the toe of his boot.
“Come, Dominique, you tread too deeply in anger over such an insignificant portion of your life.”
His parentage insignificant?
Before Dominique could protest the Oracle’s suggestion, the waif of flowing robes and wide brown eyes was gone. Gone in a glimmer, a fizzle of twinkling lights and sweet scent.
“I hate it when he does that. Why can’t I do that?”
But the Oracle’s words lingered in his mind like heavy flakes of falling snow. Falling, but never landing on the ground…such an insignificant portion of your life.
No, ’twas not insignificant to his heart. To finally put to rest the decades-old question of who his real mother and father were was no little thing. He would have the answer, one way or another.
Pounding his boot heel against the elm trunk behind him, Dominique noticed the iridescent dust still coruscated from his person. He had to cast a glamour soon or risk exposing himself to Sera and Baldwin. A secret unnecessary to reveal; his mission did not rely on either of them knowing his truth.
Of course, he did not know their truths either. So many secrets. The squire—or was he a monk? And Seraphim d’Ange, the women who hid beneath a mask of male dress and bravery.
Well…he understood the need to hide. And for that reason he would not question.
Dominique pulled his cloak snug around his shoulders and flexed the muscles in his back. He’d hidden his true identity for so long he’d become accustomed to the aching need for release that always tingled between his shoulder blades. But not on this quest. He wanted the woman and her squire to accept him as an equal, not an anomaly.
Sera heard Dominique’s footsteps crunch over the hard snow behind her. Settled in for the night, she shrugged her hood down to her shoulders, allowing the heat of the blazing fire to simmer over her face and neck.
“We thought you’d been stolen away by the fair folk,” Baldwin offered from his tight little cocoon of wool cape as the mercenary landed camp.
“He thought as much,” Sera corrected. “I do not speak of such nonsense.”
“The nonsense that a man of my skill should allow himself to be stolen away?” Dominique moved close to the fire to draw heat into his chilled bones. “Or the fair folk?”
“The damn faeries,” she muttered.
“You—” Sera marveled at the muscle that tensed in Dominique’s jaw “—consider them nonsense?”
“You know naught of what you question, San Juste.”
“Ah, I see. A nonbeliever. So you believe only in what you can see?”
“Aye, but—”
“You cannot see the wind, yet it is so powerful as to fell trees.”
She regarded him with a wry smirk. No need to explain that she did believe, or to reveal her hatred for the hideous creatures. He was most likely a believer in the whimsical and magical ways of the fair folk, could have no idea of the true evil they wrought.
Dominique nodded, the movement of his hood clacking the hematite stones against one another in a canorous ring. “I shall grant you that, for the sake of peace.”
“I shall take it without your leave. Did you scan the perimeter?”
“We will be safe here in the forest for the night.”
“Your
