by Alexa Egan
“What of his months in the catacombs? Or the questions put to him by Dromon’s enforcers?”
“I wouldn’t dare ask. Would you?”
She didn’t fail to notice the way he rubbed at his bandaged wrist nor the fading marks of his own imprisonment. “No.”
She continued to watch as he worked, head bent over the page, a hand plowed into his thick hair. A hand that last night had touched her in ways she’d never been touched. Conal had been a considerate lover. Like the sea beneath a calm sky and a thousand stars; the slide of easy currents over her skin and the deep’s sweet whispers in her ears. Gray was a lightning-shot, thunder-clouded tempest where one didn’t know down from up and swirling tides and screaming winds threatened to smash her against the rocks or drag her down into the deepest ocean chasms.
Conal had been easy to love.
Loving Gray scared her to death.
“Anything else?” he asked, placing his pencil down, the notes in both English and ancient line and squiggle so much gibberish to her uneducated eyes.
She’d begged Gray to pass on his training in swordfighting and gunplay. Dead languages and ancient scholarship had never been her cup of tea. Another reason her choice for N’thuil made no sense. If Jai Idrish was the sum of Imnada wisdom from the beginning of time, what on earth could she add? How to best grip a dirk in your off hand? How to load and fire a flintlock?
She wished Idrin might speak to her again; reassure her that the crystal had not made a horrible mistake. Then she immediately rescinded the wish. She couldn’t be sure she’d find Idrin at the other end of the sickening tumble into the blinding light at the crystal’s heart. She might end among the stalking oily shadows instead. No way to tell. No way to control it.
She brushed aside her thoughts with a shudder. Met Gray’s clear blue eyes with the fear firmly locked away. “He’s . . . ah . . . very tall.”
He pressed his lips together in an apparent attempt to keep from laughing. “I assume you’re referring to Lucan, not Jamie.”
She took up his pencil, rolling it between her fingers. “I’d heard rumors of his . . . return, of course, but really who expects to bump into the bogeyman in a Devonshire drawing room? It’s disconcerting.”
“How do you think he feels? The world he knew is gone. The world he’s living in reviles him as a traitor and a murderer. Not exactly a fond homecoming.”
“Yet you and he are . . . friends . . . comrades . . . it just seems so . . . that is, Sir Dromon accused you, but I never really believed it.”
“You believed a legend came to life but not that I might put aside a thousand years of prejudice to find out the truth behind the monster. Is that it?”
“His is the hand behind the Fealla Mhòr.”
Gray’s amusement vanished behind a veneer of weary defeat, as if he’d had this same argument more times than he could count. “His is the hand that saved young Jamie Wallace and David St. Leger before him.”
“Two lives against a slaughter of entire villages and holdings?”
“He doesn’t ask for your forgiveness, Meeryn. He doesn’t forgive himself. But he’s no more a monster than we are.”
He took back his pencil with a decisive this-discussion-is-over manner. Began scrubbing through earlier translations and rewriting them with much chewing of the pencil end and hard, painful stares at the page as if forcing the words to come.
“Why didn’t you steal the entire book? Wouldn’t it have been easier than trying to piece together these bits out of context?”
Gray shrugged. “Sir Dromon would have noticed the absence and questioned it. He might look like a clerk in a shop, but he’s still a shaman of the Ossine. He’s spent his entire life studying Imnada wisdom and practicing all our oldest ways. He knows Jai Idrish is in my possession. If he discovers I hold the Gylferion as well, it won’t take him long to put the pieces together and know exactly what I plan.”
“So, what does it say, Professor?”
His gaze flicked to hers and back down. “It’s part of a chart outlining the properties of each disk; bronze, copper, silver, and gold. This bit down here describes the maker of these disks; a Fey by the name of Golethmenes. He forged the Gylferion to bind Lucan within the abyss of between for all eternity. A suitable punishment, it was thought, for the man who betrayed Arthur to his death.”
“But Fey-blood magic doesn’t work on Imnada. It never has.”
“Golethmenes made it work. I’m hoping that between this page and what I have in my own library, I’ll be able to shed some light on how and why it didn’t work when we tried it.”
The fear was back, and this time there was no preventing the shudder. It rolled down her spine into her belly, where it curled ominously. “But your library is in London . . . in a million pieces.”
“A minor complication.”
“And the Fey-bloods on the prowl? The Ossine enforcers searching for you? You’ll be heading straight into their waiting arms if you return to London. An easy target.”
“It can’t be avoided. Marnwood is a short-term refuge at best. I can’t hide away here forever.”
She opened her mouth to protest, swallowed her words at the unwavering glare from across the table.
“Even if I had all the answers in front of me, I’d still need to travel to Town. In another day or two, I’ll be out of the draught. Without it, no amount of struggle will prevent me from shifting at sundown and sunrise. And as the draught wanes in my system, I’ll grow weaker, sicker, less able to defeat Sir Dromon. Time is everything.”
She clamped her hands in her lap, over the hollow frightened place in her gut. Clenched her jaw. Offered him a devil-may-care smile. “When do we leave?”
He laughed. “You’re not coming. You’re safe here at Marnwood and Estelle has said she would be glad of the company while Jack’s away.”
“Lady Delia less so.”
“It will only be for a few days. A week or two at most.”
“You rode away last time and stayed gone for ten years. How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
“I need Jai Idrish.”
She gritted her teeth on her look of complacency. “Of course.”
He reached for her hand with a quick devilish grin. “I need Jai Idrish, Meeryn; I want you.”
* * *
The book she found among Marnwood’s less than stellar collection was thin, smelled more of printer’s ink than old cheese, and . . . glory to the Mother . . . contained illustrations. Not hasty sketches but beautiful renderings done by a fine artist’s hand. Curled into a reading nook set within a window, the light spilled across the pages and what had been a frightening bogeyman’s tale when read in the quiet creepiness of the posting inn became a child’s faery story. Yet, the facts remained sadly and inevitably the same no matter the state of the volume or the state of her mind; Lucan Kingkiller betrayed Arthur, conspired in his murder, and died upon the field of battle at Camlann.
Gray had told her the reasons for his alliance with the Fey-bloods could be found in the books with which he surrounded himself. All she found were tales of destruction, death, and demonization.
“You don’t look hard enough.”
She broke from her page-flipping to find the subject of her scholarship standing at a nearby window, staring out upon the park, hands behind his back—Lucan Kingkiller, the Traitor Lord, scourge of the five clans, himself.
She bit back an oath at being startled from her reading; few people could sneak up on her unawares. But the follow-up epithet over the man’s obvious spying on her thoughts slipped out, a muttered “bloody hellfire.”
It had been said that the ancients possessed the power to read as well as path. If this was an example of its use, she was very relieved it was a skill long lost to them.
He glanced over at her before returning to his study of the parkland beyond the glass. The room seemed suddenly smaller, the silence thicker, her mind afire with questions; the most all-consuming being . . .
“Sounds familiar,” Meeryn grumbled under her breath.
His gaze slid toward her once more, but his expression never wavered. “It wasn’t for Morgana, despite her obvious charms. I did it for the clans.”
She sat up, untucking her legs, the finger smashed in the book going blue with the force of her grip on the binding. Now she was on edge.
Lucan continued as if he didn’t notice her sharp interest or the way she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. But she knew he noticed. He saw everything; one could just tell. “There was peace between our peoples, but we were not at peace. Tensions ran high, and the constant mistrust kept true unity from flowering. We were so much alike, and yet we couldn’t see past our differences. Mordred was a half-breed child of Imnada and Fey-blood. A ruler who might join Other and Imnada at the highest level. Something Arthur with all his talk of harmony could never do. He was too much a creature of the true Fey, and there has never been love between shapechangers and faery folk.”
Hearing the most ancient fables treated like gossip around the village well was disconcerting to say the least. Arthur, Morgana, Mordred . . . Lucan . . . they were characters in a legend, not men and women who felt and acted like the people she knew and loved. The shamans spoke these names with respect, and, in some cases, loathing. Lucan spoke of them as if he were chatting about his neighbors.
“Mordred was a treacherous despot,” she argued. “The stories all say so.”
“He was a spoiled, selfish boy. And as you yourself just pointed out, the Fey-blood stories describing the Imnada as monsters and demons are wrong. Why shouldn’t the stories the shapechangers told of the Fey-bloods be just as inaccurate?”
She didn’t have an immediate answer for that one, though she was sure she’d come up with the perfect rejoinder about an hour from now.
“Mordred won the throne but he lost the kingdom,” Lucan added sadly.
She sat up. “You won him the throne.”
He bowed his head, not in shame, though she noted a tightening of his jaw, but as if he were lost in dark memories. A look she’d seen cross Gray’s face more than once. A pensive, remorseful expression. “I did, and in so doing, I loosed an evil upon the world. My ideas of a greater peace became a nightmare of bloody war.”
“Are you saying Gray is repeating your failure? That the Fey-bloods will never accept us?”
“If I believed that, I would not be aiding him. No, my failure came from arrogance and pride. I believed that I could impose peace between Fey-blood and shapechanger from above. That I, through Mordred, could decree it so and it would happen. De Coursy seeks to channel a groundswell and ride it to a new and real alliance. Look around you at Captain Flannery and his human bride; St. Leger married to a young Fey-blood. Jamie Wallace and the Flannery’s son are half-breeds with powers as great as any marked Imnada of the clans. Lady Estelle and Lady Delia are Fey-bloods, young Kelan and the Doule brothers marked members of their clan and holdings—all of them bound by one cause. That is hope, Lady N’thuil. That is the future.”
“And if the curse takes Gray? Will that future unravel?”
Lucan turned toward her, his gaze solemn. “Gray did not start this movement, but his position as heir to the five clans has forced him to the head of it. Should he die, it is likely our best chance for peace will die with him.”
* * *
Lifting his head from his notes, Gray rubbed the space between his brows, the back of his neck, stretched the kinks until he cracked, but still the tension banded his body; a tightening grip he couldn’t shake. Despite the dwindling afternoon sun, heat smothered the house, the air stifling as a wet blanket, the atmosphere charged like a held breath. For so many people in residence, it was oddly silent. He’d seen no one since Meeryn tried to press lunch on him. Heard no one since Estelle and Delia passed in the corridor, voices raised in argument.
He stood up, the rush of his rising causing blue and silver light to pinwheel across his vision. He staggered, banging his hip against the table, jarring the disks, the silver spinning away to the floor with a thud. Squeezing his eyes shut, he steadied himself until the episode passed, but it was a warning, as if he needed one, that his hours dwindled. Perhaps tonight he’d be safe. Perhaps even tomorrow, but there would be a time . . . very soon . . . when the curse would roar up from the dark horrible corner of his soul and take him over.
A life spent learning control—schooling features, masking hurts, refusing pain—had been obliterated in a cataclysmic hellfire of Fey-blood sorcery. He could no more control the shift than he could stop his lungs from filling or his heart from beating. A prisoner of the very power that made him Imnada.
“Lord Halvossa? Are you all right?”
Gray started to refuse the title as he’d always done, then looked up and saw Jamie Wallace watching him from the doorway. The long mellow afternoon light only managed to make the boy look worse, his face barely more than skin stretched tight over his skull, his body gaunt, shoulders hunched. But his eyes burned with a light that had been absent in the catacombs and his chin bore a new and defiant jut.
Gray squared his shoulders and offered a soldier’s game smile in return. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I was tired of resting, and I . . . I needed to see the sky.” Color pinked Jamie’s emaciated white cheeks. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand more than you know about freedom and the lack of it.” Gray gathered up the disks. Bent to pick up the dropped one, faltering as the curse flickered and died once more at the edges of his vision.
Jamie continued to watch him uneasily. “It’s the curse, isn’t it? You suffer the way Adam did. He said there were four of you.”
Adam Kinloch; the sword stroke severing Gray’s life into a before and after. The hand of hope when hope had all but vanished. Adam had died almost two years ago, cruelly and needlessly at the hands of a murderous Other bent on vengeance, but his discovery had started the three left alive on a quixotic quest that resembled a bad anecdote. A Fey, a shapechanger, and a dead kingslayer steal a girl and a stone. . . .
“I forgot you knew Adam,” Gray said as they walked together through the quiet house.
“He spent a lot of time at my da’s farm. I liked him. He treated me like an adult. He spoke to me about things my da wouldn’t.”
Glass doors led out onto a wide stone terrace where weeds poked through the cracks in the bricks and a rose twined its wild way up over the wall in a profusion of blossoms and droning bees. Jamie lifted his face to the sun and drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. When he turned back to Gray, his face bore less the look of an escaped prisoner and more of the naive adolescent boy he’d been before his captivity.
“Adam spoke to you about the clans?” Gray asked.
“Some. Mostly it was about the war. Stories of bloody battles and midnight raids, and sneaking past pickets, and the pretty Spanish girls in the villages you passed through.” He grinned. “Ma didn’t like those stories.”
“What did he tell you of the curse?”
Jamie swallowed, his face solemn. “Not much. But I saw what it did to him. And I helped him gather what he needed. All of us children did. It was like a great scavenger hunt.” He kicked at the base of the stone baluster, shoulders hunched, eyes down. “Adam told me once that it was all his fault. That he was responsible for the four of you being cast out of the clans.”
Guilt. Responsibility. Those t
wo words drove so much of what one did in life. Shaped so much of what one became. Gray stared out across the overgrown lawns toward the distant belt of trees. Reached out for Meeryn with the slightest of mental touches. He felt her answering path as a breeze on his cheek and was surprised how reassuring her presence was. She’d always been the missing piece. Ten years hadn’t changed that.
“Lord Halvossa? Are you certain you’re feeling well?”
Lord Halvossa—it had been his father’s title and would have been Ollie’s when the time came. But they had died. The earldom had fallen to Gray, who had felt the guilt but refused the responsibility . . . until now.
“I’m sorry, I meant to say Your Grace,” Jamie fumbled. “Kelan told me about . . . that is . . . that your grandfather the Duke . . .”
Gray plucked one of the roses, twirling the stem between his fingers, the scent saturating the drowsy air. “I’ve sent word to your parents. Not where you are, but that you’re alive and safe.”
Jamie’s gaze slid away. “They’ll never forgive me for running off. Da warned me . . . Captain Flannery, too. They said I’d never make it through the Palings in one piece. But . . .” He shook his head. “I thought . . .”
“You wanted to understand where you came from . . . what you were . . .” Gray said, watching a bee hover close to the plucked bloom.
“Father told such stories about the Imnada. On one hand he made the holdings hidden behind the mists sound like this amazing paradise, and on the other he was always carping on about the dangers of surrendering to our animal aspect. We weren’t to speak of the clans, we weren’t to use the power within us, we weren’t to tell anyone, we weren’t to care that he was asking us to be something we weren’t, to cut off the best part of ourselves.”
The bee landed, creeping among the riffled petals in search of food before departing for greener pastures. “You’re unmarked, Jamie. A rogue with neither signum nor clan mark to protect you. Your father knew you’d be hunted down and killed if the Ossine suspected your powers.”
