Knight's Curse by Karen Duvall Read Free Book Online Page B

aloud my mother’s letter, word for word.
    My mother hadn’t written it in cursive. In fact, the characters were printed in Sanskrit that I’d have to translate. There was no salutation, so her note could have been to anyone. My throat swelled with a sadness I couldn’t express in front of Gavin. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I held back a sigh while noting how few words there were on the page. Was this all she had to say to her daughter?
    “Get on with it, Chalice.” Gavin’s lips thinned into that angry line I knew so well. His stiff posture revealed a tension he usually kept hidden. It was rare that I ever had something he wanted this badly.
    I let out a breath and scanned the short message that made no sense. “Find the Fallen and you’ll find your father.” I glanced up to see Gavin’s eyes widen, his lips curling into a bare smile. He was obviously pleased to hear whatever this cryptic note implied.
    “I don’t get it,” I said, disappointed.
    “I’d always suspected, but never knew for sure.” He stood and began to pace. He couldn’t think without moving. “Your father was an angel. That’s why you are the way you are, as well as your mother, and her mother, and all the Hatchet Knights before her. Now we can trace it back to how it first started.”
    My breathing hitched. Though Gavin once told me I was a descendant of the Hatchet Knights, an order of female knights who’d fought in the Crusades nearly a thousand years ago, my heritage was only a point of personal pride. I used to think the knights were extinct and until my experience holding the saint’s hand, having ancestors meant nothing to me. Now I hear I’d been fathered by an angel? I hadn’t given much thought to who my father really was. It could have been the gardener or the milkman for all I cared, but what mattered to me is that he had hurt my mother. Abandoned her. Let her die alone. But a fallen angel? My religious studies at the monastery came flooding back to me. The only Fallen I knew of were… “That’s impossible,” I said, my heart beating in my throat. “The Fallen are demons.”
    There was a bounce to Gavin’s step as he quickened his pace. “Not all of them. Besides, they didn’t start out that way. Committing sin is what makes an angel fall from grace. And it only takes one sin for that to happen. ‘Fornication is a sin against God. Sin is transgression of the law of God.’ Book of John, chapter three, verse four.”
    Brave words from someone who sinned on a daily basis, but to Gavin the Bible was just a reference book, not a religious icon. I shook my head, refusing to believe an angel could mate with a human. Fallen or not, there was no way an angel had anything to do with procreating me; I was about as far from angelic as anyone could get. Despite my denial, my heart raced and my mouth went dry.
    I wouldn’t let my emotions get the best of me in front of Gavin. So I switched my train of thought to something more academic. I knew about angels and demons, demonology having been an important part of my training as a thief. I’d met a few demons, even had one as a teacher, but I hadn’t had the pleasure of an angel’s company. Pixies, faeries, trolls, elves, among other fey folk, were common within the circle of influence I’d been forced into. Other than what I’d read in the Book of Enoch, I questioned the existence of angels because I’d never seen one. And the Fallen? Nothing but a myth. My mother’s message had to be code for something else.
    “There must be more in Felicia’s letter,” Gavin said, stopping midpace to stare at me. “Finish reading.”
    I slumped back on the couch and shook my head. “I swear that’s all it says.”
    He scrutinized me for a second and jerked a nod.
    I checked the letter again, noticing something scribbled at the bottom, but it wasn’t a word. It was a drawing. Gavin noticed the change in my expression because his eyes grew hard. “So there is