Earl of Darkness

by Alix Rickloff

  Aidan had fooled her into believing.

  No. Take that back.

  She’d fooled herself. Aidan had never once promised anything more than he’d given. It had been her with the wild fantasies and a body heart-led by images of a life together. She’d known better even as she’d delighted in the amazing flash fire of their joining.

  But to call her Miss Osborne? She tightened her hand around the mug as if it were the lily white neck of that society harpy.

  That was just plain mean.

  Aidan heard her before he saw her. A soft voice, low and sultry as a tropical sea. Words were lost amid the thick soup of his pain, but the voice never faltered. Always there. Like an anchor, holding him fast when the effort of each breath seemed not worth the trouble. Easier to let go. Let the enveloping black swallow him.

  So it was the silence waking him. Making him crack his eyes against the glare. The room tipped and spun. Pinwheels and spots of color burst in front of him, and every sense seemed heightened. The scratch of the sheets. The weight of the blankets. The perfume in the air.

  He glanced around, nausea clawing at his throat even at that little bit of movement.

  Cat sat beside him, her head resting on her crooked arm, her eyes closed. Against the curve of her jaw, her hair was a shimmering raven black. A sweep of long, sooty lashes shadowed her cheeks.

  How had this woman twined herself into his life and his heart? How had he allowed it? Lovers had come and gone with nary a backward glance. None had touched him. None had seen him in anything less than noble invincibility. Detached arrogance perfected over long years of practice. None but Cat. She’d peeked behind the curtain. Witnessed a breakdown of quantum proportions. And hadn’t gone screaming into the night.

  Cold logic tried convincing him that ending things was for the best. He couldn’t marry Cat. It was impossible for a thousand different reasons. He’d be a fool to even contemplate such a move.

  Cat stirred, lips parted on a whisper of breath, the faint scent of lavender hanging in the air.

  He hated cold logic.

  Cat stalked the corridors and chambers like a restless shade until Maude chivied her outside under the threat of bodily harm.

  “Go, child. Get some air and leave me to my work.”

  With no excuses left, she ventured out. Followed a narrow lane up into the hills, through groves of trees where deer froze in nervous groups and she stumbled across a hedgehog, scuttling nose to the ground. The wind blustered and tugged at her skirts. Shook her hair free of its pins. A falcon rode the updrafts, its mournful call only adding to her loneliness.

  The lane wound off to the north, looping across the hills and uplands before being lost in a purple horizon haze. That way lay civilization. Villages and people. Coaching inns and tollgates. She could follow it to Portumna, score a few guineas off some easy mark, and book herself a seat on the mail coach. Be back in Dublin by week’s end at the latest. Lose herself in the Liberties. And this time, remain unfound.

  With that thought half-formed in her mind, she wandered farther and farther from the house. A fast-moving stream curved down to meet the track. Trees and scrub crowded close to its banks. Thick brush sheltering the moorland creatures as they paused to drink.

  Thirsty, she followed suit. Bending to scoop a mouthful to her lips.

  A snap of twig froze her immobile, the icy water sliding forgotten between her fingers. Something else had come to this spot to drink.

  Something large.

  Without moving, she let her eyes slide to the right. Caught a glimpse of a dirt-encrusted hand. Bloody, broken nails. A stained, muddy sleeve. The fingers trailed unmoving within the stream, the current sluicing around them.

  Too frightened to breathe, she rose slowly. Tried backing away without making a sound. Praying the noise of the stream would mask her departure.

  “Water? Please. Thirsty.”

  Too late.

  She closed her eyes.

  She hadn’t heard it. Just the wind. That was all. Walk away.

  Her steps slowed. She stopped, straining to hear the whispered plea again.

  It was a trap. He was probably waiting with sword raised and mage energy enough to fry her brain.

  It came again softly. “Please.” A gentle request, and strangely jarring after Aidan’s bloodcurdling threats.

  She moved to her left, following the stream bank. Pushed through a scraggly thicket of furze, even as she muttered, “You’re a complete fool, Catriona O’Connell, and deserve whatever messy end awaits.”

  Found exactly who she expected. And nothing like she anticipated.

  Flies buzzed around the putrid wound in his thigh. Another gash oozed sticky black blood down his arm. He’d sought to bind them both but had lacked the strength and then the will to do so. After all, this was what he’d been asking for. This was death, wasn’t it?

  Dark against dark. Evil against evil. The Unseelie’s power had overwhelmed his defenses, bringing him as close as he’d been to complete collapse. Close, but not accomplished. How long had he lain here unable to move? Days? Years? Time had ceased to matter. All he knew was that though he suffered, he did not succumb. Though his body festered, still it fought to renew itself. Sinew by sinew. Nerve by nerve.

  Palm clamped over her mouth, face a sickly gray, the woman stood poised to flee. Instead, she shuddered her recovery and bent to the stream edge. Retrieved a large, dripping stone, holding it up in what she must have thought was a threatening manner.

  Seemingly surprised he didn’t erupt from his resting place and throttle her, she stepped back, as alert and quivering as the deer he’d spotted earlier. Raised the rock above her head.

  “Go on.” He sank back against the base of the tree on a sigh. Closed his eyes, awaiting the head-splitting blow.

  Nothing.

  He risked a look. The rock remained cocked and ready, her brows drawn into a deep frown, her lip caught between her teeth.

  He shifted, the flies rising up to swarm about his head, his thigh screaming. “You mayn’t get a better chance, my lady.”

  She braced herself. Raised the rock higher. Swung it down with deadly intent.

  He flinched, but the rock never left her hands. Her frown deepened, guilt and disappointment hardening the soft lines of her face.

  “Weak,” he spat. Angry with her for backing down. At himself for the cringing flash of panic when he thought she’d go through with it. “Like all females.”

  She stiffened, anger flashing in the depths of her green eyes. Tossed the rock aside. “If death is what you long for then life is the true punishment, is it not?”

  Clever, this one. Clever and far too observant.

  “Besides, it looks like death will find you soon enough without my help,” she continued, her gaze fixed firmly upon his face and off the festering wounds, the dark sorceries bound within the Unseelie’s battle spells slowing his healing to agonizing lengths.

  She bent again to the stream, but this time came back with a handful of water which he slurped from her fingers with humiliating eagerness. And again and again until he lay back, his parched throat eased, the muzzy light-headedness receding under the sweet tang of the icy water.

  “I’d thank you, but the victim rarely thanks his tormentor.”

  She clenched her jaw. “Jut so long as you see it for what it is.”

  He stifled a chilly smile. “Merciless as an executioner, my lady.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “You’re Kilronan’s lady, are you not?”

  She leveled him with a lethal gaze but didn’t answer. Instead she studied him as if deciding whether she’d worked enough ill will or whether a few more kindnesses were warranted. The silence hung thick and frozen between them. Even the stream seeming to mute its burbling descent as they stared upon one another in mutual loathing.

  His hand flexed and fisted. “Your man gained a short-lived victory. Once called to this world the Unseelie are not easily banished.” />
  A cloud settled over her features, her shoulders hunched as if suffering under a blow.

  He’d struck close to the mark. Perhaps the creature of the Dark Court had succeeded where Lazarus had not. Perhaps Kilronan was no more, and the diary unguarded and exposed.

  Pain succumbed to exhaustion, and he closed his eyes. Let his body renew itself bit by unnatural bit.

  When he opened them again, she was gone.

  “You’ll carry it always,” Daz intoned in a grave and sorrowful manner.

  Aidan examined the angry, puckered three-inch scar upon his chest. The very spot he’d stabbed the Unseelie.

  He touched it with tentative fingers. Ran his finger up and down the length of it. Pressed the healed flesh. It didn’t hurt. In fact, it tingled with an icy chill.

  He looked up to meet Daz’s solemn gaze reflected in the long mirror.

  “You will always bear a piece of the creature within you,” Daz explained. “A splinter of the demon Fey to plague you ever more. A reminder of how close you came to being devoured by your own idiotic summoning.”

  His stern master mage expression quirked into the rolled eyes and shaking head of scolding teacher, and he clout Aidan upon the shoulder with enough force to drop him to the edge of the bed. “What were you thinking, boy?” he scolded. “You know better than to play about with magic of that sort. It’s evil. An outrage to call on the Dark Court.”

  Aidan slid a shirt over his head. Inhaled slowly until the dizziness passed. “I was hardly playing about. It was that or allow Lazarus to steal the diary for Brendan.”

  There, he’d said it. What he’d been thinking ever since Daz had revealed the depths of his family’s treachery and his brother’s cold-blooded ambition. It hurt still. A pain he knew he would carry as surely as he carried the scar of the Unseelie.

  How had they held so much back from him? It was like discovering the two people he loved most were complete strangers.

  “You mentioned Brendan once before.” Daz stared at him as if he’d grown three heads. After the attack, not completely out of the range of possibility. “Why would your brother be after the diary?”

  “Brendan must need it to find the tapestry. To bring Arthur back.”

  “Why on earth would Brendan want to do that?”

  Daz’s recovered sanity must be slipping.

  “You said it yourself. The Nine sought to resurrect Arthur. To start the wars that would lead to a new order, this time with Other dominant over Duinedon. And we know it’s possible. The creature Lazarus is proof of that.”

  The old man scratched at his unwashed hair. “It couldn’t be Brendan.”

  His protests merely fanned the dull press of betrayal. “Don’t try to protect him. I know you loved him. I loved him too. And in the end, he was rotten to the damned core.”

  Daz scowled, his ruddy complexion reddening to a deeper shade of purple. “You’re talking madness.”

  “The Amhas-draoi were right,” he shot back. “They tried to warn me. Even Jack sought to put me on my guard. But I was blinded by a love as faulty as my memories of him.”

  “It wasn’t Brendan.”

  “Stop trying to keep the truth from me.”

  Voices rose in volume.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly. Brendan was a bloody criminal. A madman.”

  By now they each shouted to be heard.

  Daz grabbed Aidan by the shoulders. Wheeled him about so they faced each other squarely. “Listen to me, Aidan. It was Brendan who betrayed them to the Amhas-draoi. All of them. Even your father.” Purple faded to ghastly gray. “Brendan betrayed them and was, in his turn, betrayed.”

  Aidan gaped stupidly. “What are you saying?”

  Daz’s grip tightened on Aidan’s shoulders until he wondered if he were the only thing holding the old man upright. His fingers convulsed, grief softening his face, dimming his eyes. “It was Brendan who set the Amhas-draoi onto the Nine. Who condemned your father and the others to death. Arthur had been his idea, but he knew it would fail. And knew even in its failure it would cost the lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of innocents. He’d had too much of the blood. Of the killing. Of the soul-crushing guilt.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  He released Aidan with a painful wrench before falling into a chair. Shading his eyes with a trembling hand. “Because I agreed with him. We both cracked beneath our burdens. Brendan chose an honorable way out. He sacrificed everything to try and right what he’d wronged.”

  “And you, Daz?”

  “I chose the coward’s way.”

  “You said Brendan was betrayed. What happened?”

  Daz looked up, the ghosts of those days clear in the bloodshot gaze. “He chose to confess all to the Amhas-draoi. He wanted to go himself, but the others—perhaps suspecting something—kept him close. He couldn’t get away long enough to deliver his information. So he sent it to me. Asked me to go in his stead.”

  “And did you?”

  “Aye. I fell upon Scathach’s mercy. Told her everything I knew and more.”

  “And?” Aidan felt he knew where this tale was going. Knew it and dreaded it.

  “And afraid for my life amidst the raised swords of the brotherhood, claimed the information as my own. They spared me.”

  “But executed the Nine.” Aidan’s voice held a steely note not lost on Daz.

  “Brendan escaped,” he whispered. “He survives. You said it yourself.”

  “As a hunted man.”

  “Yet while there’s life, there’s hope.” The eagerness of someone grasping at straws in the wind.

  Aidan swallowed the urge to strike the earnest expression from the old man’s face. He’d put him through hell. Had smashed every image and corrupted every memory Aidan held of his brother. And now the truth came out. A truth almost as gut wrenching as the falsehood.

  Brendan betrayed. Brendan hunted. Brendan an innocent victim of Amhas-draoi zeal.

  He fisted his hands at his sides to keep them from snaking around Daz’s neck. The icy tingle deep in his chest spread to become a tightness in his brain. A violent anger seething just below the surface. “Do you know what you’ve done? They seek him even now. They think he’s behind this creature Lazarus. That he’s trying to restart the Nine and its network of the disaffected,” he snarled between gritted teeth. “If they find him before we do, they’ll kill him first and ask questions later.”

  Daz crumpled, his body folding in upon itself with guilty sorrow. “My fault. All of it my fault. The Nine are no more. The Nine are gone.”

  Damn. He’d pushed him too far and lost him. “Daz!”

  No use. From crumpled to rocking, accompanied by a steady, keening murmur. “The Nine are gone. No more. All of it over. All of it destroyed. The King will never return.”

  Aidan paced the room, tapping his thigh nervously. Wheels grinding. “If Brendan betrayed the Nine, it couldn’t be him seeking the diary.”

  No answer from Daz. Not that he’d expected one. The wheels kept turning as he talked it through. “Someone else must be after it. Someone else who knows what secrets it’s keeping. And someone with the ability to decipher it.”

  It was there. At the edge of his mind. An impression. A glimpse of the answer.

  “The High King’s glorious return is for naught.” Daz kept up his rocking and muttering. “The blood was too much. Always the blood. The death.”

  Aidan ignored Daz. The solution was there somewhere. Locked in a fuzzy corner of his mind. “Someone with the ability to decipher Father’s language.” Frustration. Irritation. It was there if only he were clearheaded enough to remember.

  Daz pressed his hands to his ears. “Brendan knew. Brendan tried. Keep them safe, he said. And so I did. Safe until he returns for them.”

  That was it. A letter. A farewell. Written in the same headache-inducing language as the diary.

  Of course. The answer hit him l
ike a lightning strike.

  “Máelodor.”

  Cat stared out onto a night black with her own fear. Aware that somewhere beyond the pools of washed-out light cast by the house’s windows stalked a hunter. Though perhaps “limped” might be more accurate. She closed her eyes, but Lazarus’s face, grim and implacable as any effigy, remained burned into her brain.

  She should have struck. Should have at least tried to finish him off. He was defenseless. Vulnerable. An easy target. For heaven’s sake, he’d lain there and begged for it. And what had she done? Nothing. And worse than nothing, she’d actually given him water. Why not just pat him on the head like a good little nightmare creature and be done with it?

  Fool and ten times a fool.

  “Cat?”

  The easy baritone slid along her raw nerves like the screech of nails over a slate. Whipped her around in a heart-stopping lurch.

  “I called your name three times,” he said. “You were miles away.”

  What would Aidan say if he found out she’d seen Lazarus and let him escape? He’d think she was mad, and with good cause. She could try to explain the creature’s desire for death, and how her actions were more torture than relief, but she doubted Aidan would believe it. She didn’t really believe it herself. For even in that black, hell-smoldering gaze, she could have sworn she saw for the heart’s beat of a moment real desperation. A desire for life as great as her own. Just not the life he had.

  And how insane did that sound?

  She bought time with a wan smile and an adjustment of her shawl across her shoulders. Hated the way her stomach swooped and plunged and her skin went all tight and prickly. But at least the vision of a midnight black killer dissolved beneath the reality of the sleek and panther-muscled former lover.

  Aidan cocked his head, concern in his eyes. “We’re safe. He can’t harm us ever again. We’re finished with him.”