White Heart of Justice

Book 3: A Noon Onyx Novel

by Jill Archer

Genres: Urban Fantasy; Action & Adventure; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

Since Lucifer claimed victory at Armageddon, demons, angels, and humans have coexisted in uneasy harmony. Those with waning magic are trained to maintain peace and order. But hostilities are never far from erupting…

After years of denying her abilities, Noon Onyx, the first woman in history to wield waning magic, has embraced her power. She’s won the right to compete in the prestigious Laurel Crown Race—an event that will not only earn her the respect of her peers but also, if she wins, the right to control her future.
                          
However, Noon’s task is nearly impossible: retrieve the White Heart of Justice, a mythical sword that disappeared hundreds of years ago. The sword is rumored to be hidden in a dangerous region of Halja that she is unlikely to return from. But Noon’s life isn’t the only thing hanging in the balance. The sword holds an awesome power that, in the wrong hands, could reboot the apocalypse—and Noon is the only one who can prevent Armageddon from starting again…

Release date: May 27, 2014

Publisher: Ace

Print pages: 304

Sample

Acknowledgments

Prologue

I can’t be with you anymore. That’s what she’d said. Six words that had become sixty then six hundred then six thousand . . . sixty thousand . . . six million . . . reverberating in his head, bouncing around inside his brain, driving him absolutely mad. There were no other words. No other memories. Only that last one of her. Standing at the edge of the oozy stew of the destroyed keep’s moat, flanked by two Angels, one preternaturally beautiful, the other full of purpose. The same purpose he’d had until those six words stripped him of it.

Flying out, he’d barely cleared the wreckage of the keep. His heart beat against the walls of his massive chest, and his monstrous wings beat against the infinite, empty sky, but the beats were slow and grew slower still. Slower. Until finally . . .

Stop.

He made it across the river and then dropped like a ten-ton stone, crashing into the brush, breaking tree limbs and a wing. He lay there amongst the blackening scrub refusing to shift back into human form.

Man’s thoughts were unwelcome.

In time, the rogares came. Water wraiths. He killed them all. And then sickened by the smell of blood and meat he couldn’t—wouldn’t—consume, he left his nesting place. By then, the wing had healed, but unnaturally, so that flying straight was impossible. For days, he traveled in circles, never getting far. It wasn’t just the wing. The yearning to return to her was nearly unbearable. The emptiness inside of him an abyss.

Was she still in the Shallows? If he could just . . .

But then he remembered the Angels. And the look on her face when she’d said the six words. And the feelings in her signature. She’d need more than mere weeks for them to abate. She might need months. Hopefully, not years. Years meant nothing to him, but they did to her. And then the reminder that her time was more precious than his drove his yearning to a new level of ferocity. Ruthlessly, he tamped it down. He realized then that it might be best to return to man’s thoughts. After all, she was a woman.

And he wanted her back.

I

T’was so, he stroke me with a slender dart,

Tis cruell love turmoyles my captive hart.

—OVID, AMORES 1.2, as translated by Christopher Marlowe

Chapter 1

Glashia calls Noon the ballista.” Waldron Seknecus’ low voice rumbled through the Gridiron, a deep, cavernous underground space used by the upper years at St. Lucifer’s for sparring. “Because of how she fights now. Watch.”

He was speaking to three other spectators: my father, Karanos Onyx, executive of the Demon Council and the man who would ultimately employ all of the magic users who trained here at St. Luck’s; Friedrich Vanderlin, an Archangel who was the dean of Guardians over at the Joshua School, the Angel academy we shared a campus with; and a woman who looked unsettlingly familiar to me, though I couldn’t remember when we’d met or who she was. I cleared my mind and concentrated on my opponent, Ludovicus Mischmetal, who preferred the moniker “Vicious” for short. He was a second year Maegester-in-Training at Euryale University. We were competing against one another in the New Babylon MIT rank matches, which St. Luck’s was hosting this year.

All second-year MITs were required to compete. The top-ranked MITs from each school would then be eligible to compete in the Laurel Crown Race. The object of the race was to bring back an assigned target. Targets were either rogare demons or priceless artifacts that needed to be recovered. Participation in the Laurel Crown Race was voluntary, but the MIT who returned to New Babylon with his (or in my case, her) target before any of the others, won the coveted Laurel Crown. Winning the Laurel Crown often set a future Maegester up for life because winners could choose where they wanted to spend their fourth-semester residency. And ofttimes, those residencies turned into permanent positions. Everyone else would receive offers, but it would be the Council that decided which of those residency positions they accepted.

Last semester, we’d been given our first field assignment. It was an assignment that had been full of rogare demon attacks and other lethal situations. That assignment had lasted a mere three months and I’d barely survived it. My residency would last for twice as long, so I was well aware of how important the residency venue would be. Winning the right to choose where I spent next semester, not to mention who I would be working for, would go far in preserving not just my happiness, but also my life. The Maegester who was judging the match, a middle-aged man with thinning, ginger-colored hair and a near-permanent frown, called out for us to begin.

I’d watched Vicious spar with other MITs. He was smart.His infliction of pain would be very calculated, very precise.There was nothing personal about his desire to beat me. He just wanted to win the match so that he could retain his current Primoris ranking at Euryale and compete for the Laurel Crown. Of course, I was similarly motivated.

Vicious gave me a curt bow, his long, black, razor-cut bangs briefly falling forward before he shook them back and used his waning magic to fire up a weapon, a flaming broadsword. It hissed and spit with fury in the damp air of the Gridiron as Vicious raised it toward me in an opening invitation to spar.

As a sparring partner, Vicious looked fairly intimidating. His front teeth were shiny, silver, and sharply pointed (likely, his real ones had been knocked out in fights) and he was much larger than me. He wore the usual black leather training pants and vest, but he’d elected to go shirtless underneath the vest. I guessed it was an intentional show of muscle, literally. He flexed his forearms and grinned at me, his message clear: I might be a woman playing a man’s game, but he wasn’t going to spare me any blows.

That suited me fine. Sparing me blows wouldn’t win me the match.

I unhooked the cloak I’d worn to keep warm until the match started and let it drop to the floor. I faced Vicious in similar black leather training pants, but I wore a black leather bustier instead of a vest. Since my hair had been singed to shoulder length, my demon mark—that splotchy, dark, discolored spot of skin above my heart—was now prominently displayed. Like Vicious’ muscle flexing, my decision to bare my mark was calculated. Last year at this time only my parents had ever seen the mark. Now I exposed it intentionally. It never failed. Even though my opponents knew I had waning magic, the sight of a demon mark on a woman’s bosom always gave them pause. And a single second was all it took for the judge to award a point to me for their hesitation. Of course, most of them realized their mistake soon after and then redoubled their efforts and aggression toward me, but no matter. As expected, Vicious’ gaze swept to my left breast and his eyes widened. Score: Onyx, one. He narrowed his eyes and advanced, clenching the end of his broadsword. The judge wouldn’t take away points, but Vicious wasn’t going to win any by gripping his weapon so tightly. It was made of fire and magic and points were awarded to students who exhibited magic mastery by wielding their weapons effortlessly, with finesse and style.

I fired up my own weapon, a poleax. Shaping the weapon with magic took less than a second, but really it had taken over a year. When I first came to St. Luck’s I’d been conflicted, inexperienced, and—let’s face it—completely inept. But over the last twelve months I’d gone from the girl who had never met a demon before, didn’t know how to fight or use her magic, to a woman who had battled countless rogare demons, meted out punishment to a select few, and even executed one in cold blood. That had been exceedingly difficult, but I hadn’t shied away from what had to be done. The demon had killed innocent Hyrkes—humans with no magic—and would have continued doing so if I hadn’t executed him. So when I coolly shaped a fiery poleax out of thin air and twirled it around in my hand as if it were no more than a kid’s baton, it looked impressively easy only because for so long it hadn’t been.

I kept my eyes averted from my weapon. In the dark underground space of the Gridiron, fire was blinding. Surrounding me were three stories of blackness, interspersed with an occasional stone column. Two thousand years ago, St. Lucifer’s used to be a fort. Not many of the original buildings remained, but this lower level had survived. The Gridiron that we fought in now had likely been used for the same purpose for millennia—training Maegesters to fight. It looked like a miniature coliseum, one that had been buried by time. The light from our weapons flickered against the stone columns and our breath puffed out in small gray bursts as Vicious and I circled each other.

Our signatures—the magical aura that waning magic users have and can sense in one another—flared with expectation. It was a battle response I was used to.

I waited for Vicious to make the first move. I almost always let my opponent make the first move. I knew from my training that smaller fighters could sometimes make up for their lack of size through speed, but I’d been born touched by Luck’s heavy hand. I didn’t need speed; I had strength—the strength of my magic.

Vicious made the first move, but instead of stepping toward me or slashing at my neck as I’d anticipated, he waved his sword in front of my face. Instinctively my gaze locked on it for the briefest moment, but a second was all it took. Blinded to anything but Vicious’ magic, I was unaware of where his left hand was until I felt the ringing slap of his palm on my right cheek. My head snapped toward my shoulder. That side of my face now stung as if a hundred hornets had landed there. But anger quickly displaced pain. He’d slapped me. Not punched me, as he would have done with every other opponent he’d been paired with, but slapped me, like the girl he obviously thought I still was. My signature flared. Damn, I’d misjudged Vicious. I’d thought he wouldn’t spare me any blows but he had. And now he was likely at least two points ahead because he’d managed to briefly blind and stun me. Livid, I threw a spray of blistery waning magic at his face. He easily deflected it and laughed, the low rumble infinitely irritating due to the almost never-ending echo down here.

“I heard you’re St. Luck’s Primoris,” Vicious said. “You know you wouldn’t have advanced this far with your ranking if Ari Carmine were still a student here. Pity he disappeared during your last assignment.”

Vicious’ emphasis on the word disappeared was because he, and mostly everyone else, thought that Ari had been killed during our last assignment, and Vicious, like many of the other MITs, had heard that Ari and I were close. He just didn’t know how close. His words were an attempt to unsettle me emotionally. Unfortunately, his wide unaimed verbal shot was working. Score: Vicious, three; Onyx, one.

Everything Vicious said was true. I probably couldn’t have beaten Ari in a sparring match, and he had disappeared during our last assignment. But what Vicious didn’t know was that Ari hadn’t disappeared because he was dead; he’d disappeared because he’d been hiding a bigger secret than I’d been when we’d first enrolled at St. Luck’s. Ari didn’t just have a drop of demon blood like the rest of us future Maegesters, he had an entire body full of it. He’d been a demon masquerading as a human with waning magic. Lamentably, Ari Carmine had also been my lover—and the man I’d loved with all my demon-marked heart. So even the mention of his name still hurt . . . and infuriated me.

I gritted my teeth and hurled the poleax directly at Vicious’ head. Onyx, two. I knew Vicious’ reflexes were good enough to avoid a direct hit. Sure enough, he dodged the shot by lunging to his right and falling to the floor while swinging his broadsword in an arc toward my middle as he fell. By the time he landed, the sword would have slashed through both my ankles—Vicious, four—if I hadn’t leapt to avoid the amputating burn. My poleax exploded in a shower of sparks as it collided with one of the columns on the far side of the room and Vicious let go of his sword. It lay harmlessly spitting on the Gridiron’s stone floor until it went out, plunging us into darkness.

Both Vicious and I, and every other Maegester in this room, could easily have lit a fire to restore our sight. But no one did. Vicious and I didn’t need light to “see” one another. We could sense each other through our signatures. Vicious’ signature felt like some sort of rock aggregate. There were some hard bits like nickel and then there was a whole lot of what felt like sand and grit to me. Dense filler. Formidable, but something I could probably withstand, even if he came at me directly from the front. I stood still, waiting. Vicious could feel me too, but signatures just gave us a sense of where the other was, like heat coming from a fire pit.

Vicious threw a volley of fireballs toward me. One after the other their fiery blasts lit up the room in increasingly shallow arcs, culminating in two final, furious, straight shots directed right at my head and chest. I blocked them all almost without thinking and redirected them into the darkness beyond the stone pillars surrounding us. After that, Vicious charged. It was inevitable. They all did. It was what we were here for after all. He rushed toward me, the fiery broadsword reformed. This time I fired up a similar weapon and we began the match in earnest, circling each other, dodging, lunging, thrusting, pivoting, feigning near misses so that the next moves would be direct hits. In a matter of minutes we were both winded, injured, and burned. Vicious had dislocated my kneecap and given me a black eye, and my sword had cut a two-inch gash on his forehead, a ten-inch slash down his inner thigh, and a slight nick on his neck. If I’d pressed harder with my blade or if I hadn’t allowed my magic to cauterize the cuts, it was possible that Vicious would be dead by now. He knew it and I could feel in his signature that it pissed him off. Probable score: Vicious, seven; Onyx, ten. The match was far from over.

“Let’s have a go without fire, Onyx,” he said.

I barked out a laugh. “Why would I agree to that? I’m winning.”

Without warning, Vicious punched me. I should have seen it coming, what with his request to do away with our magic and start scrapping like beasts. Problem was I’d expected it earlier and my reflexes were a fraction too slow. His fist connected with my mouth, knocked my head backward, leaving a sharp, searing pain in my upper lip that quickly morphed into a mind-numbing ache. I tasted blood and spit something hard onto the stone floor of the Gridiron.

My tooth. No wonder Vicious wanted to “have a go without fire.” He knocked my tooth out and he hadn’t even used his magic to do it. My signature heated up. Had this been last year, I would have started getting scared. Scared that I couldn’t control my magic. Scared that my fire might burn something unintended. Scared I’d be bullied, lose, hurt someone . . . or worse. No more. Now my rising temper only meant this match would soon be over.

I looked up at Vicious and grinned at him. In my current condition, my smile was likely the ghastliest and bloodiest it had ever been. Vicious shook his head in mock sympathy and tsked.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know a good Hyrke dentist I can recommend.” He clicked a nail against his sharp, silvery teeth and formed a new weapon, a huge glowing fireball. He held it delicately with his right hand and deftly tossed it in the air, catching it easily. He then wound up as if to pitch it. As he stepped forward, his left hand moved toward my cheek. This time I was ready. I caught it before it could connect. Drawing inspiration from his horrible moniker, I viciously wrenched his wrist, twisting it in an intentionally unnatural angle. I put all of my weight and magic into the move and jerked until I felt a sickening crunch. At the same time I blocked his fireball with a waning magic ball of my own, but mine wasn’t fiery—it was dark. My dark magic blast hit Vicious, knocking him off his feet and into the air. He collided with the nearest stone pillar and slid to the floor, barely conscious.

I walked over to him. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. That I hoped I hadn’t broken his wrist and that I always tried to win the matches with a minimum amount of magic.

But this was the Gridiron. Apologies were unnecessary and unwanted.

So all I said was, “Don’t worry, I know a good Mederi.”

Vicious looked up at me from the floor. His voice was slurred and thick. “You should have been a Mederi, Onyx. You’re an abomination. A woman with waning magic?” He made a sound of disgust as he tried to get up. I didn’t offer to help. “At least my injuries can be healed by a Mederi.” He made a sound that was part laugh, part cough and hauled himself to his feet. “No Mederi can grow your tooth back,” he said, pointing at my now-battered face.

I raised my eyebrows. “Huh,” I said, my swollen lips likely producing an ugly grimace. “Well, you’ve obviously never met my brother, Nightshade.”

I gave the judge a perfunctory bow, picked up my tooth and cloak, put the former in my pocket and the latter around my shoulders, and limped over to the stone bench where Seknecus and the others sat.

Seknecus’ signature was as hard as ever. But not in a harsh, hostile kind of way. Rather, to me, it felt strong and supportive. Karanos’ signature was well cloaked and his face was expressionless. Friedrich looked pleased, although I couldn’t figure out why. He and I didn’t get along. Last semester I’d lost control of my magic and had accidentally destroyed an irreplaceable statue of Justica, the Demon Patron of Judgment, Punishment, and Mercy, which had been in the Joshua School’s possession for centuries. (I’d also told Friedrich and the Joshua School to shove it, that I didn’t need or want a Guardian Angel, thank you very much, so we were still battling over whether I should be allowed one now that I wanted one and, if so, who it should be.)

“How did everyone else do today?” I mumbled, not out of meekness but because it was hard to enunciate with a fat lip. Seknecus knew what I was really asking. Was I still ranked Primoris? Would I be competing in the Laurel Crown Race?

So far, I’d beaten all but one of the MITs I’d sparred with. The matches hadn’t been easy, especially the ones with the other MITs from St. Luck’s. Sasha (a distant cousin of mine who had only contempt for me) had burned off the end of my hair. Brunus (a cruel, repulsive MIT whose signature always reminded me of rotten cabbage) had broken my nose. Unfortunately it hadn’t stopped me from experiencing the noxious stink of his signature during the rest of our match. Tosca I could have easily killed—if I had the stomach for it, which I didn’t. But I’d become very adept at hiding my revulsion to violence. In the Gridiron, posturing and presentation were part of the ranking system. If you looked weak, the judge assumed you were weak.

Brunus was the one MIT out of all of the second year MITs in New Babylon who had bested me. This year, his hatred of me had only increased. His naked animosity toward me had propelled him into a fighting form he might never have achieved otherwise. He’d been so aggressive and brutal during the rank matches leading up to ours that he’d actually killed one of his opponents, an MIT from Gremory Tower—Martius Einion, the only child of a poor, elderly Host couple who lived on the outskirts of Etincelle. Then, after trying and failing no less than seven times during our rank match to kill me, he’d passionately (and madly) declared that he’d rather die than watch me win the Laurel Crown. It was revolting to know that he had scored enough points throughout his matches to possibly overtake me today.

“Congratulations, Onyx. Brunus lost his match. You’re still St. Luck’s second year Primoris. If you elect to compete, you’ll be starting with the rest of the racers a week from today.”

I nodded, hiding my relief and satisfaction, and glanced at the rest of my audience. Karanos was contemplating Vicious with narrowed eyes. He was likely still assessing Vicious’ capabilities and trying to figure out where to best place him.

Friedrich’s head was bent close to the vaguely familiar woman. They finished speaking and met my gaze. Friedrich positively beamed. Had he forgiven me for destroying Justica’s statue already? Since destroying it, I’d tried to meet with him at least half a dozen times to discuss how I could make amends, but each time I was told, “When suitable reparations have been determined, you will be notified.”

The woman simply stared. It was unnerving—and not just because most stares are. It was unnerving because her taupe-eyed contemplative stare was one I’d been subjected to many times before. My Guardian Angel from last semester, Raphael Sinclair, had the same eyes. Suddenly I knew who she was and where I’d seen her before.

This was Rafe’s mother, Valda Sinclair.

She rose from the bench and walked over to me. Even after having sent a man who was nearly twice my size crashing into a stone pillar not two minutes prior, my instinct was to stay alert. I suddenly felt as if the match wasn’t over.

Karanos’ gaze shifted to Valda and he frowned.

“I want to ask her a question, Karanos,” she said dismissively, which spoke volumes about her position in the Divinity. “If you win the Laurel Crown Race, where do you want to serve your residency?”

I paused. Not because I was thinking about my answer. I knew exactly where I’d choose to work next semester if I won. For years, all I’d wanted was to become a Mederi—a woman whose magic was waxing instead of waning; a woman who could grow and heal with her magic instead of burn and destroy. But I’d learned to accept my waning magic. And while I didn’t love it, I was proud of my achievements and I no longer longed to be something I wasn’t. I had a new dream. One that was much more compatible with my waning magic than my last dream, but one which was not typically held by Laureates—Laurel Crown winners. I fought not to clear my throat. Glashia’s Artifice class had taught me better than that. Laureates didn’t worry what anyone else thought of their ambitions. They pursued their goals without reservation.

“I want to serve as a sentry on board the Alliance,” I said.

Valda’s eyebrows arched. Seknecus and Friedrich looked up. Even my father turned toward me. For once, he wasn’t expressionless. In fact, a number of emotions played across his face: surprise, disappointment, and then derision . . . or possibly bemusement. The Alliance was my roommate Ivy’s family flagship. It was a big double-decked vessel that took supplies, equipment, and passengers up and down the Lethe to the various outposts. Currently, the ship’s captain was making do with cannons and worn-out spells as a defense. I knew for a fact from speaking with Ivy that he could benefit from having a Maegester on board. Problem was Maegesters, especially Laureates, didn’t work for Hyrkes. They worked for demons.

“You want to win the Laurel Crown so you can work for a Hyrke riverboat captain?” Friedrich asked, clearly perplexed.

“That’s right,” I said, keeping my chin up and meeting their stares.

Karanos harrumphed (another remarkable show of emotion) and pulled two sealed envelopes out of his pocket. He handed them to me.

“Your residency offers. Neither is conditioned upon your winning the Laurel Crown. So, if you don’t win, or choose not to race, you’ll likely be placed in one of these positions.”

I looked down at the envelopes. One was the color of clotted cream with crisp corners and a leaden seal bearing the image of a gaol. The other was a dirtier, more tattered version of the first with a crimson seal bearing the image of a waterfall.

The one with the gaol seal looked like it might be from the Office of the New Babylon Gaol. Its demon patron was Adikia. In Halja, once sinners were tried and convicted, they no longer had any rights. They were either executed or sent to gaol to serve out their sentences under the patronage of Adikia, who was also known as the Patron Demon of Abuse, Injustice, and Oppression. I repressed a shudder. And who knew where the envelope with the waterfall seal was from? Likely some outpost lord who thought a female Maegester might make a good sheriff.

“And if you do win,” Karanos continued dryly, “you might change your mind and accept one of these offers voluntarily.” He cleared his throat. For once, what Karanos thought was abundantly clear. He found the idea of a Laureate working for a Hyrke riverboat captain wasteful and self-indulgent.

It smarted just a bit that there were only two envelopes. I couldn’t help remembering that last year’s Laureate had received over twenty offers from various patrons.

All the more reason to win the race. Because if I didn’t, the Demon Council would be able to place me in either of these residencies whether I wanted to go or not.

Or somewhere even worse.

Chapter 2

Climbing up out of the bowels of Rickard Building where the Gridiron and our other dungeon-like training areas were took time. The only exits were high, twisty, ancient iron staircases, anchored solely at the top and bottom, which circled in tight, dark loops for four stories or more. I alternately limped and hopped, step by step, clutching the railing with my right hand while holding a lit fireball in my left. By the time I made it to the top, I was sweating and exhausted. I immediately doused the fireball and headed straight for the outer door with one goal in mind: find Raphael Sinclair. Angels weren’t quite as good at healing as Mederies were, but Rafe would easily be able to heal all of my injuries except the lost tooth.

I shoved the heavy steel door of Rickard open and let it bang against the building’s stone wall as I stepped gratefully into the clear, crisp evening air of Timothy’s Square. I stood there for a moment, panting and surveying the square, looking for Rafe.

St. Luck’s shared a campus with the Joshua School, an Angel academy. Timothy’s Square was in the center of both schools and was often the site of various outdoor social events. Tonight was Friday and it was the Festival of Frivolity. To one side of the square was a giant bonfire, all glowing red and crackling. A group of students stood around it, drinking, talking, eating, and laughing. Ashes from the fire rose into the air like reverse confetti combining with the myriad stars splashed across the dark, indigo sky.

In the center of the square was a gathering of booths, tents, and kiosks—a collection of vendors granted a temporary license to sell their wares, confections, and libations for the next twenty-four hours. And on the other side of them were the snow demons. They weren’t real—although plenty of demons in Halja were. They were made out of snow; they weren’t patrons of snow. There were dozens of them. Immediately, I recognized several: Lilith (Luck’s mate—even carved out of snow she appeared fiery and defiant as she charged two-thousand-year-old enemies astride a huge barghest brandishing a sabre made out of ice); Estes (Patron Demon of the Lethe, the mighty river that cut Halja west to east, depicted as a giant merman complete with a trident as large as Luck’s lance must have been); Ionys (Patron Demon of Wine, carrying no less than half a dozen liquid peace offerings in his clawed hands); and Cliodna (Patron Demon of Waves and Waterbirds, portrayed as a long