Karen Duvall - Darkest Knight

“Betray your sisters or your lover. You choose.”

After the warrior she loves saved her from a murderous gargoyle, Chalice watched helplessly as Aydin turned into a gargoyle himself. Now, free from the curse that enslaved her, Chalice pledges to join her sister knights in The Order of the Hatchet—and do whatever it takes to regain Aydin’s humanity…and his love. What she encounters within their hallowed sanctuary is pure intrigue.

Someone—or something—is murdering her sisters in their sleep, provoking fear and suspicion among the order. Meanwhile, Aydin, unable to stay away, starts haunting Chalice’s dreams, urging her onward. Ultimately, Chalice will be faced with an agonizing choice—one that will tear away at her newfound identity and force her to choose between duty and desire….

“Rich with action, romance, and sensory overload, the story goes places I never expected and delighted me every step of the way. Duvall is a writer to watch for!”

—C.E. Murphy, author of Urban Shaman

Praise for

KNIGHT’S CURSE

“Rich with action, romance and sensory overload,

the story goes places I never expected and delighted me

every step of the way. Duvall is a writer to watch for!”

—C.E. Murphy, author of Urban Shaman

“Duvall’s heroine is an endearing mixed bag of coiled emotions, and the other characters are a collection of good and evil

that readers will want to know more about.”

—RT Book Reviews

“This is a spectacular story. The urban fantasy world

that Karen Duvall has created feels genuine and fully realized

and best of all, the places and characters in this book

are just flat out fun to read about.”

—Bonnie Ramthun, author of The White Gates

Darkest Knight

Karen Duvall

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Dear Reader,

I had so much fun writing about Chalice, a modern-day knight, in the first book that I knew her adventures would continue. After all, she has unfinished business to take care of, namely getting Aydin back to his old self again. He changed into a gargoyle to save her life, so she promised to find a way to make him human again. The senseless murder of her sister knights by an unknown attacker is an unexpected foil to her plans, but she won’t let that stop her. Against all odds, she vows to catch the killer as well as restore Aydin to the man he used to be.

Knight’s Curse, the first book in Chalice’s harrowing adventures, is available in print and ebook formats. Please visit my blog, www.karenduvall.blogspot.com, for updates on my future books.

Karen Duvall

This book is dedicated to my five adorable grandchildren:

Kai, Zach, Adam, Andrew and Bella.

My heartfelt thanks go to my amazing literary agent,

Elizabeth Winick Rubenstein, who’s a great listener and extremely supportive. I also appreciate her assistant, Shira Hoffman, who always makes herself available.

I’d also like to thank my editor, Ann Leslie Tuttle, and her helpful assistant, Dana Hamilton.

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers deserves my thanks, as well. I’ve benefited greatly from this professional organization devoted to writers of novel-length commercial fiction.

Contents

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty-one

Chapter twenty-two

Chapter twenty-three

Chapter twenty-four

Chapter twenty-five

Chapter twenty-six

one

“YOU’RE COMING WITH ME, RIGHT?”I ASKED Rafe when he opened the silver veil that separated the physical world from the realm of angels. This misty otherworld was home to Rafael, my guardian angel, but not to me. I think I’d overstayed my welcome.

Rafe towered above me and scowled. “No.”

I leaned forward to peer through the filmy curtain. “I’m not ready to go there alone. It’s too soon.”

“Chalice, it’s been over a month.” Rafe closed his eyes and sighed so deeply I thought he’d collapse a lung if he had one. “But if you prefer to wait a while longer…” He held his palm flat against the transparent veil and the sigil on his hand glowed. The surface began to solidify.

I grabbed his arm. “Wait.”

His sigh came even louder this time. “Make up your mind.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You have no idea how hard this is for me.”

The deep creases in his forehead smoothed as his eyes crinkled with the start of a smile. It made him appear almost human. “I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t.” The memory of my last day of bondage to Shui, a homicidal gargoyle, remained clear in my mind. The gargoyle’s death had freed me of the curse that once threatened to take my humanity and turn me into a winged devil as horrible as Shui. But my freedom had come at a price. In order to save me from my fate, Shui had to be killed by another gargoyle. Aydin, who was also bonded to a gargoyle, had allowed the curse to change him so that he could fight Shui to save my life. But, by doing so, I’d lost the only man I’d ever loved. It was time for me to bring Aydin back, to make him human again. The only way for that to happen lay on the other side of this veil, at the Vyantara fatherhouse. Home of my nightmares, where failing a heist used to mean a beating by my master or a death threat from Shui. Lucky for me the gargoyle died before getting his chance to feast on Chalice tartare.

I sucked in a breath. “I can’t face another gargoyle.”

“Then don’t face it. Just kill it.” Rafe’s hand stayed in place against the veil, but he didn’t reopen it. He waited for my okay.

“Come with me,” I told him, trying to make it sound like an order. He was usually good at following orders.

“You know what would happen if I did?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “My presence would set off every alarm and ward in the house.”

I winced. “That would defeat the purpose of sneaking in, right?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

I heaved in a fortifying breath and blinked. Even after a month, it felt strange not to wear my contact lenses. Or the filters for my ears and nose. I’d worn these protective devices practically all my life. For being half angel, even if that half was the fallen kind, my unusual abilities helped keep me out of trouble. Unfortunately, they helped get me into almost as much. Rafe had been forbidden to meet me until after my curse was broken, so only recently was he able to teach me control over my hypersensitivity through meditation. Now I could turn my powers off and on as easily as a light switch, though I hadn’t practiced under stressful conditions. I was about to test my new skill big-time.

“I’m ready,” I said. “Open the veil.”

“One last thing before you go—”

“No!” I glared at him. He was about to deliver another lecture about staying focused and making safety my first priority. I’d heard it over a dozen times. “Do it now before I lose my nerve.”

“As you wish.”

The veil opened and I stepped through, my booted feet landing on a dark Oriental rug as wide and long as the room I stood in. I glanced behind me. Rafe and the veil were gone.

My heart did a brief tap dance against my ribs before I reminded myself that Vyantara fatherhouses fed on fear. I knew from experience that this building would suck out my energy like a baby sucks milk from a bottle, and I’d end up too weak to do what I’d come for. I had to kill the gargoyle Shojin and take its heart for Aydin. Before he had turned into a gargoyle, Aydin had been bonded to Shojin and now only Shojin could save him. I knew the gargoyle was here because on the last day Aydin and I were together, this is where the Vyantara had said he would be.