Prologue
Deckard Payne, Duke of Warburton, knelt on the cold ground beside the fallen cavalryman.
“I’m not going to survive, am I?” Lieutenant John Crewe’s eyes were the wild, dark green of a forest so thick it lived in perpetual night.
“You’ll survive,” Dex said grimly, ripping a length of cloth from his shirt and pressing it into his friend’s chest wound.
Dark crimson quickly saturated white linen, the lifeblood of yet another young man feeding the Belgian soil. Dex had a sudden, wrenching vision of this field in the future. A thicket of tortured vines springing up from the blood, bearing sorrowful red roses. An accursed place, fed by death.
Dex’s heavy cavalry regiment were armed with longswords and two holster pistols each, but it wasn’t enough against the French lancers. Help had arrived and the enemy was in retreat, but not before more than half of his regiment had been mowed down by the long oak weapon with the cruel iron blade.
Sending men into battle with mismatched weaponry.His fault.
Crewe’s blood soaking his hands.His fault.
“I’ll carry you to the field hospital.” He attempted to slide his arms under Crewe’s shoulders.
“No,” Crewe gasped. “There’s no use carrying me anywhere. I’m dying.”
“I won’t let you die.”
“Warburton.” Crewe’s breathing was shallow and erratic.
Dex gripped his hand. “I’m here.”
“My daughter . . .”
“Yes?”
Crewe had often spoken of his young daughter during the long nights of the military campaign. She was the light of his life. He’d shown Dex a miniature portrait in a gold frame. Pale red curls framing an oval face with a sharply pointed chin. Prominent freckles. Lively, dancing green eyes.
“She’ll be all alone in the world when I die,” he whispered hoarsely. Fierce love lit his face. “I have her letters.” He placed a trembling hand over his breast coat pocket. “Promise me...” His voice faded. He was losing too much blood.
“Anything.”
“Promise me you’ll find Analise. Become her guardian . . . protect her . . . see her future secured.”
Dex removed the bloodied packet of letters from Crewe’s coat and slipped it into an inner pocket. “You have my word.”
“Thank you.” Crewe’s eyes drifted shut. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Warburton,” a voice shouted from behind them. “On guard!”
Dex lifted his head in time to see a lone French lancer galloping toward them. Swearing, he jumped and swiftly dove as far away from Crewe as the long lines of his body would allow, drawing the lancer from the prone figure, then rolled to his feet in an instant. The lancer flew by, thrown off by his feint. For a brief moment, dizziness descended as his blood pounded in his ears.
The world seemed to go hazy, then completely still, and the sights and smells and sounds of battle faded to a faint buzz.Watch yourself, Dex.Don’t let them down.His eyes snapped open, bright daylight flooding his vision, illuminating the clouds of dirt thrown up by the Frenchman’s horse as it wheeled around to find him again. Quickly, Dex’s arm shot up and his fingers, obeying an automatic authority that came from somewhere beyond conscious thought, pulled his pistol’s trigger.
The man jerked backward, a ribbon of scarlet arcing from his shoulder. The lance clattered to the ground, but still the man advanced, drawing his saber and raising it above his plumed helmet. His face was wild. He was upon Dex before he could unsheathe his sword, the useless pistol falling to the ground as the saber point caught his ear and drew a horrible line to his chin, then another one, and another.
The white heat of pain. The sickening sensation of air hitting opened flesh. The man yelling French oaths as he continued to slash at Dex’s face, managing a hideous delicacy with the heavy blade.
Dex wrestled his sword out and blindly brought it upward at an awkward angle, feeling the hilt slam into something solid. The horse reared high above him, and the injured lancer flew backward, still screaming.
Through the blood streaming into his eyes, a pair of massive iron-shod hooves above him... a sudden all-encompassing pain, harder and more explosive than the pain before. Then nothing.
Nothing at all.
They said he’d drifted in and out of consciousness for more than two months, the pain of his injuries rendering him incapable ofcoherent response. Dex remembered floating above himself, looking down at his ungainly body splayed across the small hospital cot, head swathed in bandages.