“No reason. Just wondering.”

“Stop being an ass and just tell me.”

“It’s nothing. Go fight.”

“Fine. I’m not going to waste my time playing your little games, Amichai.”

She took several test swings with each sword before turning back to him and asking, “Does this have anything to do with my horse?”

“Dagger? Dagger will be fine.”

“Not Dagger. And you know I don’t mean Dagger.”

“You’re calling that abomination your horse?”

“You’re calling her an abomination?”

“It is an abomination and that’s why if you don’t make it, I’m putting it down.”

Her back straightened. “You will do no such thing.”

“I’m not leaving that thing to roam the earth half-dead.”

“Of course you won’t. You will take it back to Keeley—”

“I am not taking that thing back to Keeley! And I am not going to have it around your family!”

“Brother Gemma,” a monk called out, “please join us here—”

“In a minute!” she barked.

“I don’t know why you’re getting hysterical.”

“I am not hysterical.” But she spit that out between her teeth.

Moving over to their traveling companions and gesturing to Laila with both swords, Gemma wanted to know, “And you, Laila . . . ? Would you protect Kriegszorn?”

“Oh!” Laila replied, forcing a smile she clearly did not feel. “That’s right. It has a name.”

“None of you would protect Kriegszorn?” she demanded of the whole group. “Keran?”

“The bloody thing has fangs. And it’s rotting. It’s rotting with fangs.”

“All I have to say . . . is that I am very disappointed in all of you. Very. Disa. Pointed.”

Gemma turned to walk away, but Quinn just had to point out, “Aren’t you being just a bit of a hypocrite?”

She spun back around so quickly, their entire group took a step back.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you coming or not?” Sprenger demanded.

“Shut up!” She stepped closer to Quinn. “What did you say?”

“I said, aren’t you being a bit of a hypocrite?”

“About what?”

“About your demon horse.”

“It . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment. “She is not a demon.”

“Fine. Abomination then. You’ve given Keeley such a hard time about her wolves, going on and on about them but now, when that thing is clearly unholy . . . suddenly you have some moral objection to doing what is obviously right, which is chopping it into the tiniest pieces, salting them, and performing whatever banishing spell is necessary to send it back wherever it came from.”

Gemma was silent for so long that Quinn thought she was simply going to walk away. Perhaps never speak to him again. But after several very long seconds of staring at him, she finally said with extreme, absolutely terrifying calm, “I am going to go over there and kill Sprenger. And when I’m done with him, I’m going to come back over here, cut your centaur balls off, and feed them to Kriegszorn.”

There were several more moments of brutal, silent staring until she exploded with, “Is that hypocritical too?”

Laila stepped in front of Quinn to protect him but Gemma had already stomped away.

“Was that the kind of irritation you were talking about?” he asked his sister.

She lovingly patted his back. “One day the elders of our tribes will tell tales of your sacrifice, Brother. And your sad, early death.”

CHAPTER 12

“Are you done chatting with your friends?” Sprenger asked with more sarcasm than Gemma could take at the moment.

So she handled her fury more like a Smythe than a brother of the Order of Righteous Valor, barking, “Oh, shut up!”

“Brother Gemma!” Brother Thomassin scolded from where he stood with the other elders. They were no longer on the raised dais, but grouped with Ragna and the other generals. The highest-ranking monks created a half circle around the Challenge pair.

“Sorry,” Gemma muttered. But she wasn’t. Not really. Because she was thinking.

“You both know the rules of Challenge,” Thomassin reminded them. “And . . . and . . . Brother Gemma . . . are you going to pick a sword?”

“Pardon?”

“One sword. Not two.”

She looked down at the two swords she had in her hands. A long sword and a broad sword. She spun around and stared over at her traveling companions. Actually . . . she was staring at Quinn. He knew it too. He picked up Keran and lifted her so that she blocked his face.

“I don’t appreciate this,” her cousin told the centaur.

“Brother Gemma?” Thomassin pushed.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

Biting her lip, she looked down at the two swords and decided.

“Shona. Gladius.”

Shona reached back, pulled the short sword from the sheath tied to her back, and tossed it to Gemma. She caught it and chucked the other two swords back. Shona caught the broad sword. Laila caught the long sword. And everyone else ducked. It was not pretty.

“Okay. Made my choice,” Gemma said.

“Excellent.”

“Only took you two hours,” Sprenger muttered.

Gemma held the weapon in her hand and it felt right. But still, she felt annoyed. Irritated. She looked at Quinn over her shoulder. He immediately noticed.

“Are you listening to me, Brother Gemma?” Thomassin asked.

“Yes. Of course. Challenge. Rules. Blah blah blah.”

It wasn’t that she wasn’t listening to Brother Thomassin. It was that she was staring at Quinn and thinking about everything he’d said to her in those last ten minutes. He’d managed to irritate her in a way that had her completely livid in seconds. If the two of them were about to fight, it would have been smart.

“Is your disgusting Amichai lover distracting you, Princess?” Sprenger loudly mocked, his group of sycophants laughing along with him.

Gemma focused on Sprenger again, taking a moment to examine him closely. He was taller than her by several inches. Taller than Keeley. Not taller than Quinn or his brother, though. He was also not wider or nearly as fast as Quinn and the other centaurs, but the bastard was quick in battle. She’d seen him fight. She remembered now. He was brutal. Especially when starting out. He moved well too, considering his size. And he knew how to use a sword, his blade picking up momentum and power as he slashed again and again.

So maybe everyone else had been right and she’d been wrong. Maybe Sprenger hadn’t tricked Joshua during the fight. Maybe Joshua had simply lost.

Of course, none of that changed Gemma’s desire to destroy Sprenger; it simply changed her approach to killing him.

Again, she turned and looked directly at Quinn. If he could piss her off that quickly, maybe she could piss off Sprenger that quickly. She just had to find the right thing to set him off.

* * *

“That woman is going to chop my balls off.”

“The way she’s staring at you, Brother . . . it’s possible.”

“You could sound a little more concerned, Laila. She’s planning to geld your brother.”

“I told you to irritate her. Not send her spiraling into a universe of raging insanity. She’s not even paying attention to her opponent! He’s going to cut her head off. How are we supposed to go back to Keeley with just her sister’s head?”

Laila was right. Gemma was so busy glaring at him, she was completely ignoring the man she was actually supposed to be fighting. And the more Quinn watched Sprenger, the more Quinn was convinced that Gemma had underestimated the grand master’s skill level.

Quinn could also see that he and his sister weren’t the only ones beginning to feel this way. Thomassin was watching Gemma with great concern. “Brother Gemma,” he asked, “are you sure about this?”

“She’s sure! Aren’t you, Princess?” Sprenger asked. “Although you must be disappointed, yes? That your fondest dreams won’t come true tonight.”

Gemma blinked and looked at Sprenger over her shoulder. “My fondest dreams?”

“To become grand master of this monastery. To take over all this and finally be in charge of the brotherhood. That is what you want, isn’t it? What you’ve always wanted,” he brazenly taunted. He knew she was angry about something. He was trying to tip her over into careless anger by insulting her honor. And with Quinn already pissing her off, it would probably work.

Fuck. Caid was going to kill Quinn when he came home with just Gemma’s head.

Gemma faced Sprenger and gripped the gladius by the hilt, adjusting it carefully.

She now stared at the grand master the way she’d been staring at Quinn. That terrifying, blank, “I’m-about-to-cut-your-balls-off” stare.

Finally, after a few long seconds, she calmly announced, “I’ve never wanted to be grand master.” She briefly stopped and looked down at the sword in her hand, tightened and released her fingers around the hilt once, twice. Then finished with, “I just couldn’t allow a vile rapist to run the brotherhood I love so much.”

It was as if time itself froze.

Everyone stopped moving. Stopped speaking. Stopped breathing.

Quinn realized in that moment Gemma had said the one thing no one in this monastery had ever spoken out loud before. And by doing so, she’d unleashed something very ugly. Not among the other monks, but within Sprenger himself.

His joking expression faded, his eyes grew wide and black in their anger and slowly swiveled in their sockets until they locked on Gemma. She didn’t seem to notice, busy as she was, still adjusting her hand around the hilt of her sword.

“What . . . what did you say to me?” he barely managed to ask; his voice was a low, panting growl.

“What did I say?” she asked; still so calm. “I called you a vile rapist. Because that is all you are. That is all you have ever been. That is all you shall ever be.” She lifted her gaze to his. “And you shall remain so upon death. Is that clear enough for your understanding? Or is more necessary?”