by Alexa Egan
A fold in the hillside led her into a hidden meadow. Mist moved like water over the ground, but here and there, sheltered from the wind, star-shaped leaves grew in a burst of bright green from a craggy rockface and small purple flowers littered the long grass.
He stood at the far end of the meadow. A figure as gray and wraithlike as the mist-shrouded hillside. Only his gaze burned hot and startling in a face carved in harsh lines and grim angles. No longer the Adonis, he still paralyzed with a stomach-plunging intensity. A bolt of lightning. A sword cleaving the heart. “I don’t blame you for wanting to get away from them,” he said. “They make a sickening couple.”
“They love one another. There’s nothing appalling about that.”
Heat crawled up her throat and into her cheeks, and she shivered imagining David’s hands upon her body, his fingers combing out the heavy curling fall of her hair. Desire flooded her with a new and different ache, a throbbing between her legs, a tingling in her breasts. Their eyes met, and she knew he knew what she was thinking . . . and feeling. His mind was open to her touch, as her thoughts were clear for him to read. “Are you a ghost?”
He laughed. “What does your power tell you?”
“That you’re real . . . you’re alive.”
“And mostly in one piece.”
“What have you done, David?” she asked.
He approached, his body leaving a trail within the dew-silvered grasses. “The blood I offered you connects us. I’m part of you . . . as you’re a part of me.”
As if he’d a map to her soul, she felt him inside her, a presence filling the hollow place in her heart. “You can’t . . . I mean, you said you couldn’t read my mind.”
I still can’t, Callista. Or not entirely. Thoughts sharp and loud, these I catch snatches of now and then. He switched to speaking out loud. “But no, you’re safe from that trespass.”
“Then what do you mean, ‘we’re connected’?”
“Honestly?” He gave a brittle laugh. “I have no idea. But Gram’s stories always spoke of the bond between those who’d shared the afailth luinan. Souls connected. Destinies intertwined. It’s the most powerful magic the Imnada possess and is not given lightly.”
“Yet you left me.”
“I fled Dunsgathaic. Your aunt saw me offer you the life from my veins. She would not have been satisfied until she drained me of every last drop.”
“Aunt Deirdre is not Victor Corey.”
“She may not have sold me off a vial at a time, but her brand of sucking me dry would have amounted to the same thing. The Imnada are under siege. I would not be the fuse to bring the walls tumbling down around them.”
“Even after they tortured and banished you?”
“Once I would have said good riddance and run the other way. But someone I know told me to stop running and face my demons. The Imnada are still my people. I won’t turn on them when they need me most.”
“I’m returning to London,” she said. “My aunt and I have come to an understanding of sorts, but the priestesses are not where I belong.”
“Where do you belong, Callista?” he asked.
“I thought I knew. But that was a mirage, wasn’t it? This is good-bye.”
“What if I told you I never want to say good-bye? That I would hold you forever if I could—if you would only say yes? What then?”
Her mind grappled with this odd new awareness of him. The slow draw of his lungs as he breathed. The scent of him, musky and sharp and intensely masculine, the hard angles and planes of his face, and the jump of need that matched her own. She felt it sizzle the air between them. “I would take you for as long as the gods would give us.”
“For a lifetime?”
Her eyes widened, her heart crashing against her chest. “Would, could, might, if . . . what are you trying to ask me, David?” she snapped.
He laughed, grabbing her around the waist, his grip nearly crushing her lungs. “The curse is broken. Your aunt saved my life in more ways than one, though I doubt she meant to, the old besom.”
Callista lifted her face to the sky, where a bird floated high on an updraft. A small dark shape against the backdrop of wind-chased clouds. “I asked again and again. The answer was there all along.”
His eyes glowed silver. “Marry me, my beautiful? I can’t guarantee what the future will bring nor that the days ahead won’t be dangerous. I only know that I love you and can’t live without you. Not for a week nor the next fifty years.”
She drew him down to her, hungry for his kisses, his touch, the hard vitality of his body against hers. “I will have you, Mr. St. Leger. Till death do us part.”
Glossary of the Imnada
Afailth luinan. Also known as the blood cure. According to ancient legend, Imnada blood possesses great healing powers. It’s said that a drop can heal most injuries or illness, though few believe the old stories anymore.
Berenth. The night of the last quarter moon. This begins the period when the Imnada’s powers to shift at will begin to ebb and it becomes both more difficult and more dangerous.
Bloodline scrolls. The written history and genealogies created and maintained by the Ossine. These records are used to select mates for the Imnada from the five clans.
Clan mark. The crescent symbol tattooed on the upper backs of the male members of the Imnada, signifying their full acceptance into the clan upon their majority. Both males and females are also marked mentally with a signum identifying their clan affiliation and holding.
Dunsgathaic. A mighty fortress located on the Isle of Skye in Scotland that encompasses both the military headquarters of the brotherhood of Amhas-draoi and a convent of Sisters of High Danu.
Emnil. An exile who has been formally sentenced by the Gather and had his clan mark and signum removed and his name erased from the Ossine’s bloodline scrolls. An emnil is considered dead to the clan and his life forfeit if he attempts any contact with a clan member or a return to clan lands.
Enforcer. The warrior arm of the Ossine whose job it is to track down and eliminate any potential threat to the Imnada.
Fealla Mhòr. The Great Betrayal: the betrayal and murder of the last king of Other, Arthur, by the Imnada warlord Lucan. This event triggered a vengeful purge of the Imnada by the Fey-bloods, who had always mistrusted and feared the shapechangers.
Fey-bloods. (Slang.) Also known as the Other. Men and women who possess the blood and magical powers of the Fey.
Gateway. The door between Earth and the galaxy where the Imnada first originated.
Gather. The ruling council of the Imnada, consisting of seven members: the clan leader from each of the five clans, the head of the Ossine, and the Duke of Morieux, who is hereditary leader over the five clans.
Idrin the Traveler. Among the first Imnada to come through the Gateway and settle on Earth. He is considered the father of their race and from his seed the five clans sprang.
Imnada. A race of shapechangers and telepaths divided into five clans overseen by the ruling Gather. They wield no magical powers, though they are sensitive to its presence and can identify those who possess magic. At first they existed peacefully with the magical race of Other but when the Imnada betrayed King Arthur to his death, they were hunted down in the wars and uprisings that followed. In the ensuing centuries, those who survived grew reclusive and fiercely suspicious of all outsiders to the point that most believe the Imnada no longer exist.
Krythos. Also known as a far-seeing disk. A notched glass disk about two and a half inches in diameter. It is used to augment and amplify the Imnada’s natural telepathic abilities over long distances.
Lucan. Leader of the clans during King Arthur’s reign. He conspired with Morgana, the king’s half sister, to place her son Mordred upon the throne. His betrayal led to Arthur’s murder. He was captured by the Fey for his treachery and imprisoned within the Bear’s Stone for all eternity.
Morderoth. The night of the new moon, when the shift is impossible for the Imnada.
/> Mother Goddess. The moon from which the Imnada derive their magical powers.
Ossine. Shamans and spiritual advisers to the clans, they tend to be the strongest and most powerful of the Imnada. They maintain the bloodline scrolls used for selecting each Imnada mating pair and protect the Imnada from out-clan interference with their armed militia of enforcers.
Other. See Fey-blood.
Out-clan. Someone who is not a member of the five clans.
Palings. Magical mists conjured and maintained by the Ossine of each clan. They are used as a natural force field, disguising and shunting people away from the hidden holdings. In recent years, these warded fields have weakened as the clans’ powers have weakened.
Pathing. Speaking mind to mind. Imnada can use this telepathy to speak to one another over short distances or when they are in their animal aspect. For longer distances, they use the amplifying power of the krythos to connect with each other mentally.
Realing. A magical servant bound to a specific person or place.
Rogue. An unmarked shapechanger without clan or hold affiliation.
Signum. The mental imprint set on every shapechanger’s mind at birth by the Ossine. It identifies clan affiliation and rank. Those cast out of the clans have their signa stripped, denoting their outlaw status.
Silmith. The night of the full moon, when the shift comes easiest and the powers of the Imnada are at their height.
Sisters of High Danu. An order of Other priestesses, also known as bandraoi, devoted to a contemplative life in service to the gods.
Warriors of Scathach (Amhas-draoi). An Other brotherhood of warrior mages who serve as guardians between the Fey and human worlds.
Ynys Avalenn. Also known as the Summer Kingdom, this is the realm of the Fey.
Youngling. A child of the Imnada who has not yet reached maturity or been marked.
Keep reading for an excerpt from
WARRIOR’S CURSE
Book Three in the Imnada Brotherhood Series
by Alexa Egan
Available May 2014 from Pocket Books
Turn the page for
a preview of Warrior’s Curse . . .
Prologue
SUMMER 1815
DEEPINGS, CORNWALL—THE PRIMARY SEAT OF THE DUKE OF MORIEUX
No matter what, they would not see him weep.
Instead Gray bit his lower lip until blood dripped hot down his chin to mix with the streaks already smearing his bruised and battered chest. He twisted against the silver fetters clamped around his wrists and ankles, his torn flesh mottled a sickly shade of green from the metal’s poisonous touch, but the struggle only served to sap him of the little strength he had left.
“Just get it over with,” he shouted, despising the weakness cracking his voice and the tremors shaking his knees.
The old man merely stared with milky pale eyes at his only surviving grandson. An air of disappointment carved long lines in the Duke’s solemn aged face. His heir had let him down—again.
Gray’s gaze widened to take in the Gather elders ringing the Duke like hounds round a carcass. The ruddy-faced corpulence of Lord Carteret down from his lonesome Highland holding. Owen Glynjohns from Wales, with his bold good looks and bard’s clever tongue. The Skaarsgard, who’d traveled from the ocean-sprayed Orkney cliffs where the seals basking upon those rocky shores and the rugged fishermen plying their coracles on the cold northern seas considered each other kin. Each of the men looked on impassively, their duty done if not enjoyed.
The fourth elder watched the proceedings with a face pale as bone and eyes hollow with mute rage, his hands clamped against the arms of his chair like claws. No doubt Sir Desmond Flannery was imagining his own son’s sentence, due to be carried out on the morrow. Mac would never snivel or flinch in fear. He was the consummate soldier, unlike Gray, his supposed senior officer.
Sir Desmond leaned forward, his mouth twisted in disgust. “Enough dallying. Let’s have it done then. The sun’ll be down in another wee bit and he’ll”—he seemed to choke on his words—“he’ll shift. The chains aren’t intended to hold a bird on the wing.”
The elder was right. Already Gray felt the queasy slide of Fey blood magic stealing over him, flames burning blue and silver at the edges of his vision. The sun would set soon, and the dying sorcerer’s curse would take him over, twisting his unwilling body from man to beast for the hours of night. His eyes flashed wildly toward his grandfather before darting away again, his bowels churning ominously.
“Of course.” A nondescript little gentleman with a clerk’s fastidiousness stepped forward in response. The Arch Ossine—Sir Dromon Pryor—had eyes that saw everything and a mouth trained for truth-twisting. “Mr. Copper. Whenever you’re ready.”
Gray tried meeting Pryor’s triumphant stare but faltered when the enforcer stepped to the scaffold, a red-hot iron brand held in one brutish fist.
A restless audience whispered, feet shuffling against the benches, but no one called out or came to his defense. They knew the laws that had governed their existence for a hundred hundred generations. Understood the weak and the sick and those no longer able to serve the bloodlines must be excised like a cancer for fear the whole pack would be brought low. Lowest peasant or heir to the Morieux himself made no difference when it came to keeping the five clans of Imnada safe.
Gray found himself scanning the crowd for one particular face—though he knew she wouldn’t be there. The Duke had sent her north months ago. Still, Gray found himself repeating her name in his head like a mantra, a way to hold himself together in these final horrific moments.
What would she have done had she been here to witness his sentence? Would she have turned her back like the rest of them? Or would she have leapt to his defense as she had so many times over the years? He’d never know, and for that he was almost glad.
The brand’s heat could be felt from three feet away. Gray clamped his jaw lest he embarrass himself with last-minute pleas for mercy. Still, two broken rasping words leaked from his bloody mouth as he stood bowed and shaking beneath the weight of his fear.
“Grandfather. Please.”
The Duke’s chin lifted from the sagging folds of his neck while his hands fluttered for a moment as if he might speak. Then Sir Dromon leaned close to the aging leader of the five clans of Imnada, whispering his poison like silver into the old man’s ear. The Duke nodded. His hands relaxed into his lap. His mouth pursed and his eyes hardened once more, pale and uncaring as stones in a pool.
The enforcer laid the brand to Gray’s back, singeing away the skin to the muscles and tendons below. The charred stench of roasting flesh filled his nose. The screams ripped from his body tore up his throat and bounced off the stone circle of the Deepings Hall, echoing back to him in waves of anguish. His knees buckled as he arched away from the pain, every nerve aflame, every drop of blood in his veins on fire, his very soul being cleaved from his body.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he escaped to the darkest corner of his mind as a hunted creature burrows away from even the hope of light, but the desolate keening sounds of his disgrace followed him even there as his clan mark was burned away in a stripping of everything he was or would ever hope to be. He retched until his ribs cracked and piss leaked into his boots.
But not one tear fell.
They never saw him weep.
She never saw him weep.
1
LONDON, AUGUST 1817
The bells were ringing nine in the morning when Major Gray de Coursy stepped from the hackney at Tower Hill. Despite the hour, fog cloaked the streets in a thick, choking darkness. It swirled in the alleys and gathered in the parks, bringing with it the stench of dead fish, river mud, and chimney soot. Lanterns threw dim greasy pools of light over the cobbles while footsteps and voices echoed eerily in the green-gray miasma. A link boy offered Gray his services but was waved away. His keen vision cut the gloom like a knife, and he wanted no witnesses to his final destination.
He pass
ed through a narrow, dingy lane, coming out near the disused water stairs south of the Tower and St. Katherine’s, stopping finally in front of a door set deep into a stone wall—part of an ancient chapterhouse, though the wall and yard beyond were all that remained. He knocked once, then twice more.
A key turned. A bolt slid clear and the door swung open on the hunched figure of a man. “She awaits you, my lord.”
“It’s simply Major de Coursy, Breg. Lord Halvossa was my father’s title and would have been my brother’s after. Never mine.”
“Yes, my lord . . . er . . . Major, sir. As you say.” The porter bowed him in, throwing the bolt behind him. “I offered her breakfast but she refused.”
“You did as you should.” Gray approached a low columned outbuilding, Breg following. At the entrance, the old man paused, shuffling foot to foot.
“Out with it,” Gray said sternly.
The porter licked his lips and gave a quick breath as if steeling himself. “It’s an enforcer, my lord. Prowling the streets near Cheapside last night.”
“How could you tell it was an Ossine?”
Breg huffed. “I may be rogue and cast from my holding, but I can still sense a member of the five clans right enough. And I know a shaman when I cast my peepers on one. They’re different, ain’t they?”
“What was he doing?”
“Asking questions, my lord. I was afraid to get too close. Didn’t want him catching wind of me following. No clan member would sob to hear old Breg had ended as food for the grubs with a stake through his heart, that’s for sure.”
Gray’s mouth curved in a faint smile. “This clan member would. If you see him again, send word. But don’t go sniffing around on your own. I can’t afford to lose you.”
“They’re growing bolder, ain’t they, my lord . . . Major, sir? I heard tell of a rogue clansman near Clapham disappeared and turned up dead. Another one up north off Islington Road by the Quaker workhouse. It’s not safe to be unmarked no more.”
