The Lone Warrior

Table of Contents

 

 

“One of those amazing books that comes along very rarely. Ms. Rossetti has crafted a unique world and culture, and filled it with complex, wonderful characters that draw you in and won’t let you go. This is complex world-building and enthralling storytelling at its best.”

—
Manic Readers

 

“Imaginative . . . Filled with eroticism and likable characters. This is an author worth watching.”

—
Night Owl Romance

 

“This standout novel pulls readers into a steamy romance with a fun plot . . . On a romantic level the chemistry between the easily likable main characters is sizzling and realistic. Rossetti paints a vivid picture that truly allows readers to escape.”

—
Romantic Times

 

“This is one book, and series, I recommend wholeheartedly to anyone who wants a little fantasy and magic woven into their romance.”

—
The Romance Studio

 

“Sparkles with excitement! An inventive tale of magic and erotic adventure.”

—Shana Abé,
New York Times
bestselling author

 

“Should appeal to fans of Storm Constantine and Laurell K. Hamilton.”

—
Library Journal

 

“I was so captivated . . . I couldn’t put it down.
The Flame and the Shadow
is darkly intense, warmly romantic, and blazingly erotic.”

—
Publishers Weekly
’s WW Ladies Book Club Blurbs

 

“Rossetti’s first installment of the Four-Sided Pentacle series is exciting and full of passion and intrigue. I will be anxiously awaiting the second book.”

—
ParaNormal Romance

 

“Rossetti creates such lovably flawed characters in Cenda and Gray that it is hard not to laugh (and cry) at their expense.
The Flame and the Shadow
is exceedingly hot! Explicitly hot!”

—
Romance Reader at Heart
(Top Pick)

 

“Denise Rossetti creates an erotic, mystical, futuristic world full of excitement and intrigue, promising even more adventure in the next book in this thrilling series. This is a great read!”

—
Fresh Fiction

 

“The erotica is in high supply and the sexual tension is repeatedly built up and released only to be built again. If you enjoy reading about sensual sex, and like the sex to be flaming hot and steamy, this erotic romance in an unearthly universe will seductively draw you in.”

—
SFRevu

 

“Readers will delight in the author’s rich imagination as they are caught up between the dilemmas of the main characters, the fight for power between the magic-wielding Pures and Technomages, and a thorough fall into love.”

—
Love Romances and More

 

“Denise Rossetti is a stunning new voice in futuristic romance. She hits the scene with a thrilling view into a magical world . . . I’ve not read anything in romance like it.”

THE FLAME AND THE SHADOW
THIEF OF LIGHT
THE LONE WARRIOR

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2011 by Denise Rossetti.

 

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violationof the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
BERKLEY
^®
SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / May 2011

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Rossetti, Denise.

The lone warrior / Denise Rossetti.—Berkley Sensation trade pbk. ed.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-51483-2

1. Female assassins—Fiction. 2. Demonology—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3618.O8484L66 2011

813’.6—dc22

2010054170

 

 

LONEFELL KEEP, BEYOND THE CRESSY PLAINS PALIMPSEST

 

She was dead, gone from him forever. And all for the life of a puny girl child.

“Show me,” said the baron of Lonefell Keep.

Shaking with terror, the midwife placed a small warm bundle in his arms. Reflexively, he tightened his grip and the babe squirmed, mewling. The baron stared down at the skin of her cheek, palest ivory and roses, and examined the slender fingers and long bones. Then he looked for an endless time at the body of the tiny, olive-skinned woman lying twisted among the bloodied sheets. She had been his cousin, and there was a strong resemblance between them.

Finally, he lifted his gaze to the window. Outside, in the barrack square, his sergeant of the guard drilled Lonefell’s soldiers. The man had journeyed an unimaginable distance from the far north to join the baron’s service. A light breeze fondled his long braids, so fair as to be almost white. Sunlight caressed broad shoulders and long, straight limbs.

A film of ice formed over the baron’s heart, for he had been foolish enough to love his pretty young wife.

He thrust the child at the trembling midwife and ripped open the door. His captain stood outside, awaiting his lord’s pleasure. With a jerk of his chin, the baron drew the man to him. “Kill the northern barbarian!”

When the man’s face went slack with shock, he snarled, “
Now
!”

He strode away without a backward look, dismissing the child from his mind and his life.

After a week, the midwife, nonplussed, named the babe Mehcredi, for that had been her sister’s name. Then she handed the infant over to a passing maidservant and departed. The squalling bundle passed from one exasperated maid to another until one more ruthless than the others set the child aside in a distant storeroom. She considered it a politic move, for after all, hadn’t the baron made his disinterest clear? In any case, the life of a single girl child was a cheap and easy thing.

Mehcredi would have died, save for the merest chance. A few days later, the keep’s laundress was brought to bed of a stillborn son. That in itself was not such an unusual occurrence, but the loss affected the woman strangely. She fell into a deep melancholy, complicated by milk fever. By the time her best friend bethought herself of the abandoned babe, the child was almost too weak to suck.

But suck she did, with an avid desperation, and the washerwoman recovered. But the melancholy lingered like an evil spell. Mehcredi had reached the toddling stage when the woman drowned herself in one of the deep stone tubs in the laundry, her hair floating like weeds among the baron’s sheets.

The child grew wild and dirty, scavenging like a little animal, her fingers always clawed, ready to snatch, her strange, light eyes stretched wide. As the seasons passed, she shot up like a sturdy sapling, pale as a snow birch seeking the sun. No one spoke to her, save in passing. No one touched her, save for an absentminded buffet if she were underfoot.

Only fat old Cook noticed the girl, for he loved to see a body eat and Mehcredi inhaled anything he gave her, in any amount, at any time. She haunted the cavernous kitchen, for there it was warm and she could fill the emptiness inside her. But all she did was grow—and grow and grow—her long limbs straight and true, her shoulders square and well set.

The laughter of the castle children excited her almost unbearably, but they interacted according to unwritten rules she had no hope of understanding. On the rare occasions she was permitted to join in, something always went wrong, though she was never able to pin down what it was. Baffled, angry and hurt, she’d stand like a lump while the little ones pointed and complained and the older children jeered.