Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,18

that hadn’t been there before. “I guess neither my dad nor Uncle Rand belongs in our lives, right?”

Part of me wanted to say, “that’s right” and be done with it. Another part of me wanted to leap to Rand’s defense. It was a ridiculous urge. No one had disappointed me more in the wake of Jolie’s death than Rand Balfour. But maybe the man he used to be deserved some mercy.

“Rand was a different man before Jolie died,” I said. “Emma probably doesn’t remember that. She would’ve been too young, but he wasn’t always a bad father, or a bad man. Losing someone you love changes a person. And some people just end up changed for the worse.”

Rowan leaned back in her chair. Barely moving her head, she glanced over her shoulder. The frog toes in the pot gurgled on the stove.

“I think the frog toes are done.” A strand of black hair broke out of her braid. She swept it back, eyes on the pot. “Can I take them to Mathilda?”

I blinked, a little startled she wasn’t still probing. Maybe she’d heard enough.

“Sure,” I said. “Come right back to the house, though. It’ll be dark soon.”

“I know, Mum.” Rowan offered me a small smile before she left.

Her pigtail braids bounced behind her shoulders as she walked. I followed her path until she disappeared into the tree line. She was a smart girl, intuitive, and strong-willed. I knew she could handle anything the world threw at her, so why did I suddenly feel like I’d given her too much information?

When I was her age, I would’ve killed to know the whole truth about my parents. It would’ve saved me years of confusion. I’d never been one to treat my loved ones with kid gloves, but things change when you have a daughter.

All you want to do is protect her.

I never wanted her to feel the kind of pain I’d felt. And so much of that pain had come from the lies my adopted father, Luce, had told me, but Luce had never loved me. Maybe, if he had, he would’ve sheltered me from the world’s dark corners for as long as possible. Or maybe, he would’ve told me the whole truth.

I longed for the telepathic connection to Jolie I once had. I missed communicating with her in our thoughts. Mostly, I just missed her.

Wish I had that ability with Rowan, I thought.

At that moment, I would’ve given just about anything to know what my daughter was thinking.

FIVE

DUINE

There was an arrogance to Pagan.

Why else would he have situated his hideout here, on the north Atlantic coast of Cornwall, at a place called Tintagel? The name instantly evoked the memory of King Arthur, whose castle of the same name still stood in ruins on a clifftop promontory, projecting into the ocean.

Pagan was consciously connecting himself with England’s legendary king, about whom so many stories had been told that the man himself (if he had ever even existed) was hidden behind the grandeur of the myth. What right had a revolutionary upstart like Pagan to associate himself with Arthur? And why the hell hadn’t I thought of it first?

Well, Pagan was going to pay for his arrogance tonight. If the information extracted from my helpful assassin (now, regrettably deceased) was correct, then Pagan’s army—though he had barely enough men to warrant the word—was camped in the bay between the promontory and the mainland, near Merlin’s cave (there was another name he had appropriated for his own self-aggrandizement).

Pagan’s camp would be protected by wards, and there was no point in pretending Pagan was not a skilled mage, but I had men enough with me to overwhelm that magic. I would lose soldiers tonight, but my army was large enough that I could stomach losses that Pagan could not. Besides, what did a few lives matter? As long as I got my hands on Pagan. By the end of tonight, the Order of the Templar would have lost its figurehead, and without him, the whole cursed organization would fall.

And that was an event I could not wait to witness.

As evening fell, we began our approach. I wished we could cast a spell of concealment, but someone as shrewd as Pagan was bound to have sensitive spells set up to detect magic. Better that we do this the old-fashioned way, by stealth—although it is hard for so many armed men to be stealthy. From my point of view, the advantage of Tintagel was that, as long