The Templar's Curse by Sarwat Chadda (classic books to read TXT) 📕

“I can’t leave the order. It’s against the rules.”

“Come on. Who cares about the rules? You’re a girl. Rule already broken. Me and Bors are gay and a couple, that’s another two broken. No one cares, not anymore. You just get up, say your prayers and grab a sword. Those are the only rules that really matter. You spoken to your dad about this?”

“What’s the point? I know what he’d say. Templar for life. He’s the Master, Mo.”

“He’s your dad. Staying’s not good for you. And it’s not good for Ivan either.”

Billi shook her head. “Oh, God, Mo. Is this the Gay Best Friend conversation? When you force me to open up and pour out all my repressed feelings, all my relationship fears and anxieties? Should we go clothes shopping together?”

“You are an idiot, Billi SanGreal. You’re going to die sad and lonely.”

“I’m gonna die surrounded by the corpses of my enemies after a glorious and bloody last stand.”

“So, you know how to fight,” said Mo, puckering his lips and batting his lashes. “But do you know how to luurve?”

Billi gently pushed him away with her forefinger. “Does this sort of thing work on Bors? Somehow, I still find it hard, the two of you being together. I mean, Bors?”

“Love is blind, Billi. What can I say?” said Mo. “The eye’s looking better. Should fade away in a couple more days.”

Billi checked her eye. It was less puffy than earlier. “Tell your boyfriend not to be so rough next time.”

“Rough is the only way Bors knows how to be.”

“And that is way too much information,” said Billi, raising her hand. “This would be a lot easier if I had some girlfriends. Y’know, like a normal person.”

“What’s normal, Billi? I’ve given up trying. You know what the other knights are like. There’s one girl in the order and that’s already one too many. Gwaine’s the worst but the others feel the same way, just for different reasons. Old fashioned chivalry, I suppose. You’re the innocent damsel that should be protected from danger, not out there every night chewing its arm off. And what have you got left to prove, anyway? You’ve done your bit. Why not do something new? You got an ‘A’ for Latin, didn’t you? Go study that for a few years, have house parties. Go to the ball, arm-in-arm with your prince.”

“Me? In a ballgown? Can you imagine? Where would I hide the sword?”

But he had a point. Billi didn’t fit. She hadn’t at the start and now, almost three years later, was still that awkward space in the room. The other knights didn’t know how to relate to her. She wasn’t a brother-in-arms, she wasn’t ‘one of the lads’. She was an intruder into their male world, and it had nothing to do with how good she was as a knight, how well she fought, the blood she spilt and the lives she saved. She simply wasn't one of ‘them’.

Could she leave? Did she want to? She didn’t know. She really didn’t.

And what about Ivan?

Why was life so complicated? She’d have thought she’d sorted out all the big stuff by now. Instead, it was just piling higher and higher. Adulting was no fun at all.

She should call Ivan. Don’t go to bed angry, that was Rule No.1 in relationships. But the phone she drew out wasn’t hers, it was the iPhone she’d stolen off Lawrence. “Mo, you still know how to unlock these?”

Mo loosened his collar. “I don’t pinch mobiles anymore, Billi. All that thieving’s far behind me. I swear.”

Mo had been an illegal refugee when they’d first found him. Living on the streets after having smuggled himself over, all the way from Ethiopia when he’d been fourteen. He’d got by in all sorts of ways, most unpleasant and mostly not talked about. People dreamed of London, they had the same dreams as Dick Whittington, that the city’s streets were paved with gold. They just didn’t realise the gutters were lined with razors. If you were weak, without means of protection, London would slice you to shreds, nice and slow.

Billi handed him the phone. “Unlock this for me.”

“Fingerprint?”

“That a problem?”

He shook his head as he tucked it away. “You’ll have it by tomorrow.”

***

“Dad? You in?” Billi stood in the hallway and kicked off her boots.

“The kitchen.”

She found him, shirt off, bloody towels scattered on the floor and first-aid kit unrolled on the table as he tried to sew up his own arm under the light of a desk lamp. The kitchen, despite the window being wide open, stank of antiseptic.

“You’re making a mess of that.” Billi rolled up her sleeves and started washing her hands. “What happened?”

“The usual. It gets tougher every year. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

“That makes me feel so much better. All the brand-new scars I’ve got to look forward to.”

Arthur gestured to the medieval mail shirt slung over the chair. “Bloody ghul bit straight through it. It was almost funny, his fangs sunk into my forearm, me trying to shake him off.”

“So what did you do?”

Arthur pushed the sewing kit across the table as she sat down. “Grabbed him by the hair and bashed his head against the wall until it broke. What is it about vampires and their long hair?”

“It’s a goth thing.” Billi mopped up the blood and wiped the wound with antiseptic, making sure there were no bits of fang left in the flesh. “You, Dad, are a psychopath.”

He grinned, and winced as she pulled out the thread he’d half-sewn along the wound down his forearm. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

“Did you make that up yourself or hear it from Carados?”

“Guess it applies to most of us Templars.”

She started at the bottom and began working her way up. Blood oozed from the wound as she sealed it. “Not me.”

“Especially you. I think—Ow! Not so deep!” He snapped. “You did that on purpose.”

Billi pulled the needle out. “Oops. My bad.”

It didn’t take long; she’d had