Mortal Heart (His Fair Assassin 3)

“And do you feel the chill and despair of the Underworld, demoiselle?”

I glance around at the hellequin whose stories I have just heard. “Of a sort,” I say quietly.

“What?” he scoffs. “No words of demon spawn, of ambassadors of Satan himself? No stories of our cavorting across the countryside leaving sin and destruction in our wake?”

I know he intends his sharp manner to drive a wedge between us, to push me away. But there is pain hiding behind his bitterness. It is hidden, deeply hidden, perhaps even from him, but it is there. I know because Sybella tried to keep us away in precisely the same manner when she first came to the convent. The comparison gives me pause. Is that why he feels familiar to me? “No, for I do not follow the new church, but keep to the old ways instead.”

“What manner of maid is raised so steeped in the old faith that she is unafraid to ride with the hellequin’s hunt?”

“Who says I am unafraid?” I counter.

“I saw you with my men. You shared your food with them, but more than that, you saw their humanity and offered them compassion. There was no fear.”

My gaze drifts to the hellequin around us. “Some of them frighten me,” I murmur. “Miserere, Sauvage, that hooded fellow.”

“So how did you come to be raised in such a way that you can so easily overcome your own fears?”

I open my mouth to answer his question, then pause, all of my senses sharpening, just as they do when I step into the training yard with Sister Thomine. When he came upon me that first night, he said he knew the manner of my upbringing and owed a debt to those who raised me. But now he is acting as if he does not know the nature of my upbringing.

Or else he is trying to catch me in a lie.

While it had seemed possible that the hunt could actually be pursuing me, I did not give too much credence to the thought. But now, now I must consider that possibility once more. “I am from an old family, one of the oldest in Brittany,” I tell him. “A remote branch that keeps to the westernmost regions, where many still honor the old ways. My family is one of those, that is all.”

“But it is not.” His words cause my heart to stutter with concern. “You easily accept what some believe exists only in myth and legend. You are not only respectful of Mortain, but worshipful. Dedicated in a way that few are. Especially as the new church encroaches ever more on the old faith.”

He is right—even those who respect the old ways are not so enamored of Mortain. I must answer him but also steer him away from any hint that I am one of Mortain’s own handmaidens. “My mother’s sister was an initiate at the convent of Saint Mortain and she has written to us often over the years, her words glorifying the work that they do there. Because of that, the members of my family more than most, have a deep connection to Him.” I glance up at him to see if this will satisfy his curiosity.

His gaze grows heavy with intensity, as if he is trying to call forth all my secrets. “And you have never questioned your faith? Never doubted or turned your back on Him?”

It is not his question that gives me pause but the dark undercurrent in his words, which suggests something that I cannot fully discern. Anguish? Anger? “No,” I say simply. “I have not.” It is not a lie that I tell him, for it is only my faith in the abbess that has wavered.

We ride on, and the silence between us grows thick and weighted. Afraid he will ask more questions, I decide to ask some of my own. “Explain to me the nature of the hellequin and their duties so I may better understand them?”

He huffs out a breath of irritation. “I am no tutor.”

“I have heard it said that because of the hellequin’s own dark histories, they are easily corrupted by others’ will, especially those that call them back to the darkness of their own past.” I keep my voice low and fill it with all the sympathy I truly feel. “That once they stray, they are twice damned and thrust well beyond any chance of redemption or any afterlife at all.”

“That is at the heart of it.” He rolls his shoulders, as if he would shrug off the weight of this burden. It is a surprisingly human gesture. “We are broken and damned, the midden heap of Mortain’s grace and mercy. We are tasked with collecting the souls of the wicked so they may be brought to their final judgment and wreak no more havoc upon the living.” He pauses a moment before adding, “And we also collect the lost—those who cannot find their own way to the Underworld or simply refuse to leave the world of the living.”

“So not only a hunt,” I murmur. “But also a rescue mission.”

His lips twist in scorn. “Do not decorate it with flowers and hang a ribbon on it, demoiselle. We are not noble or gallant men. We have sworn ourselves to this service, but the honor that binds us to it is a tenuous thing at best.”

“Says the evil hellequin who saved me from his own men.” I watch him closely to see if he has any reaction to being reminded of the deal he made with me.

He stares at me for a long moment, but there is no flash of remorse or recognition or, indeed, anything at all.

“How are you chosen?” I ask, unwilling to endure the silence any longer.

“We volunteer. It is one last chance to atone for the darkest of our sins.” He looks up and squints through the trees as if he has spotted something fascinating up there. “We must move among the temptations of our mortal flesh each and every day. And each and every day, we must say yes to our continued penance, even as new temptations greet us with each setting sun. We must choose, not once, but again and again, in each hour that passes, to walk this path.” He turns to look at me and I am struck by the brief glimpse of hunger I see in his gaze. “And there are many temptations.”

Me, I realize dizzily. He considers me a temptation. And yet, he offered to hide me among his own men.

Or did he? What if, in truth, he suspects who I am and wishes to keep me close until he can find out for certain?

A short while later, the hounds begin to bay, and a ripple of excitement runs through the hellequin, as palpable as the night breeze on my face. Dark, feral grins break out as they kick their horses to a gallop. Their mounts seem to draw on some otherworldly reserves, and they surge forward, giant hooves pounding the earth beneath their feet until it sounds like a hailstorm.

Fortuna follows. Indeed, it is as if the wildness and ferocity of the other horses is some scent or eldritch sickness that she herself has caught. As I lift my face to the dark night, I wonder if I too might catch it.

The hounds bay again, this time sending a cascade of goose flesh down my arms. In front of me, the hunt splits into two, like water before a rock, spreading out, then encircling something. No—someone, I realize, as one of the riders shifts his position. Actually, several someones.

We have stopped in a small clearing surrounded by gnarled trees bent by the wind, their weighty branches drooping to the ground like long green beards. Now that the riders have stopped moving, my eyes are drawn to the three men inside the circle. Or rather, not men but something more otherworldly than that, for they do not seem solid or truly mortal—their edges are blurred somewhat and all the color leached from them, like a gown left to dry in the sun too long.

These cornered men show no defiance, only fear. Now that the men are surrounded and have no means of escape, the hellequin draw in close. But, much to my surprise, the hellequin are almost gentle with them, not so much pursuing them as herding them, urging them forward with their horses.

We continue on, but much more slowly, so that the men on foot may keep up.

It does not take long for us to reach a cromlech. It is not the same one we slept in last night, but another, even larger one, and I cannot help but wonder just how many there are. Balthazaar dismounts near the entrance, as do Malestroit and Begard. Once we are inside, the hellequin gently herd the souls to the threshold to the Underworld. The souls stand rigid and terrified. It is Malestroit who speaks first. “You do not wish to linger here on earth past your season.”

The souls try to scramble bac

k from the gaping darkness that seems to reach for them, but the hellequin press too close. “We’re not going through there,” one of them says. “We know what awaits.”

“Do you?” Balthazaar asks gently.

“Hellfire and damnation. Demons gnawing on our flesh for centuries” is the soul’s answer.

Begard steps forward, his cheerful face creased with earnestness. “No. It will not be like that. Let me show you.”

The soul looks from Begard to Balthazaar. “And if I refuse?”

“Then we will let you go, and you will be free to wander, lost and alone. And after you have wandered some more, we will find you and bring you back to this place, where once again you will be given a choice.”

“Here. I will go first,” Begard says, and he steps through the doorway, the darkness in the opening so absolute that it appears to consume him.