by Egan, Alexa
“And when you hear from David? What then?”
“If all goes as planned, I can petition the clans and enlist their help. If the Imnada are in danger, the threat belongs to us all.”
“I thought you were in exile and unable to go home.”
“That’s where Jory comes in.”
She should ask more questions. Force him to tell her his plans. She deserved that much after the chaos her life had become. But did she really want to know? Or would that only pull her in deeper? Entangle her in a world she had not known existed until a few short days ago? Perhaps this was her chance to distance herself from the danger surrounding Mac—the danger that was Mac.
She tossed another pebble down the shaft. “Do you realize how long it’s been since I wasn’t running from dawn to dark with fittings and rehearsals and performances and appearances? I’m not sure I know how to sit and do nothing anymore.”
“It won’t be for long. And if you grow too bored, I’ll wager Marianne could find you plenty to do. There’s never an end to the chores on a farm like this one.”
“Are you well acquainted with farms like this one?”
“Aye. Though a fair bit larger, my father’s place is much the same. I worked alongside him from the time I was old enough to toddle in his wake, knowing someday I would take over as clan chieftain and it would all be mine to protect and care for. Concullum was a trust and an honor.”
“So what happened?”
“I grew up. What had seemed like the entire world to me shrank to the size of a prisoner’s cell. I thought I knew better than my elders, thought I had all the answers.”
She dropped her eyes to her hands threaded in her lap. “That sounds painfully familiar.”
“My mother died. My father and I fought when we weren’t ignoring one another completely. Life just . . . unraveled. And then I left for the army. And by the time I knew what I really wanted, it was too late. It no longer wanted me.”
“That’s what you meant when you said you couldn’t go home.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
He stared off into the middle distance, his eyes trained on an invisible desire beyond the far horizon. The silence brittle as spun glass.
She cleared her throat, squaring her shoulders. Brushing a handful of pebbles into the well, where they fell with a skittering crash. “Not that I’m complaining, but how is hiding among the sheep going to convince people I’m not a murderess?” she asked brazenly. “Or win me back my job?”
He arched a brow as if understanding her attempt to shake him from his gloom. “I don’t know. If nothing else, it will keep you alive long enough for the scribblers and gossips to sharpen their quills on some other poor blighter’s reputation and Society’s attention to turn to a new scandal.” Although it was blackened and swollen, his eye still had the gleam of a scoundrel. “Is it my new rakish good looks that are driving you away?”
She offered him a cool appraisal. “You do look like something the cat threw up. No pun intended.”
He puffed his chest out, tilting his head back to look down at her through hooded eyelids. “I thought it made me look gallant.”
She laughed. “Not even close.”
He placed his hand over hers; his touch was warm and strong and safe. “Trust me, Bianca. You’ll see. It will come out all right.”
She should have ignored the wild excitement flittering up her spine and the curling heat between her legs. She should remove her fingers from his grasp. She should have, but she couldn’t. For a moment the children, the farm, the autumn birdsong, and this man before her combined to tug loose the iron vise of old grief. She caught a glimpse of what might have been had fate offered her a different path with a different man. Now fate turned once more, sending her places she had never dreamed she could go.
“Will it?” she asked, hoping Mac didn’t hear the pleading in her voice.
“Of course. By the time you return to London when this is over, they’ll be doubling your wages and begging you to return to the stage.”
“And you? What happens to you when this is over?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll have a choice, and that’s more than I’ve had in a long time.” His penetrating stare glued her to her seat. Loss, uncertainty, suspicion, and loneliness hovered like ghosts within his gaze. Difficult to notice but easy to recognize. She saw the same within her own mirror every morning. “You’ll have choices, too, Bianca. You’re a beautiful woman. You could have any man you wanted. You don’t need to be alone.”
“Maybe I prefer being alone.” She was drowning in the green of his stare, lost within the heat of his touch.
“And mayhap you were meant for laughter and sunshine and sweetness and joy.”
“I have those things already.”
He lifted her hand, kissing the underside of her wrist, his gaze slicing open her heart with the precision of a scalpel. “Do you?”
“You said you can’t read minds,” she said weakly. “You promised my thoughts were my own.”
“And so they are, mi am’ryath.”
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she never sensed his intentions until his lips pressed gently on her mouth, heat rushing through her like honey. She lifted her hands to his face, feeling the rough stubble of his beard, the tension in his jaw. Only by sheer force of will did she resist the desire, disentangling herself before she surrendered completely. There was nothing special about him. Nothing to make her risk her hard-fought freedom. Nothing to make her risk her wounded heart.
Pulling free, she lurched to her feet. Opened her mouth to explain, but nothing would come. There was no way for her to excuse her behavior or explain her reluctance. He said nothing, nor did he reach for her, but his hurt expression picked at her conscience.
Turning, she fled to the house.
Mac sought her trust. How could he know what an impossible thing he asked? She’d placed her faith in so few for so long. She’d locked her heart away in a box where no one could find it. No one could touch it. And no one could break it.
Ever.
* * *
“Adam did all of this?”
Mac circled the cramped room, his eyes raised to the hundreds of bunches of herbs and flowers hanging from the rafters before dropping to the stoppered jars on a long counter with rows upon row of drawers, their contents neatly labeled in Latin. Finally he perused the beakers and bowls, the pestles and mortars, the coils of copper tubing.
Adam’s house had been ransacked, but this oasis of alchemy remained intact. It waited only for a hand to begin the process. Mac’s hand.
“Aye,” Jory answered. “It started simple enough with a bit of storage and grew from there as he spent more time here. Made it easier for him to work without the worry of nightfall coming on suddenly.”
“Why didn’t you show me this place when I came before?”
“Wasn’t certain it would do any good. Not until I’d had a look at Adam’s journal.”
“And?”
“Between his notes and my own recollections, I’m thinking there’s a chance.”
“You think?”
“Have you tried sorting through that mess? It’s not as if I memorized the bloody process,” Jory fired back. “Adam was the herbalist.”
“I’m sorry.” Mac rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “I’d given up hope of ever breaking the Fey-blood’s spell. Of returning home.”
“Is that what you’re looking for? A way back into the clans?”
Mac absently drew a finger over the dust-covered desk, only to realize as he lifted his hand that he’d written Bianca’s name. Annoyed, he obliterated his folly with a single swipe of his palm. If only he could erase his feelings as easily. With her cold rebuff at the well, she’d made her position known. So why had some part of him hoped? Why had his imagination placed her by his side when common sense warned him off?
It was his own fault for daring to dream of a different ending. Wishing for more. A fool’s wish, for
there was nothing for him there as long as he lay under the curse. And when—not if—he broke the spell over him and reclaimed his rightful place among the Imnada, Bianca would be left behind. He would marry among the clans as tradition demanded. She would return to her life on the stage. He must remember that if he wasn’t to become hopelessly ensnared in a trap of his own making.
“I had a place there,” Mac answered. “A future.”
“Aye, a future mapped out for you from birth by the Gather and the Ossine.”
“I knew what I was when I belonged to the clans. I knew what was expected of me. In time I’d take over the leadership of our clan from my father. I’d marry the woman chosen for me. It was a life I understood.”
“And yet, you ran away from that life and those obligations.”
Brows lowered in warning, Mac turned to Jory with a hard look in his eyes.
The latter remained unfazed. “You left your holding and your clan. Ventured beyond the safety of the Palings. Took a commission in the army. To some Imnada, that’s grounds enough to look on you with suspicion.”
Mac had no countering argument. As he’d sought to explain to Bianca, he’d been young and headstrong when he seized the chance to leave home for life as a soldier. After all, the prized clan traits of loyalty, duty, and honor were equally valued by the military—the reason he’d chosen it for his career over his father’s objections. Only time and distance had served to illuminate his true motivation: it had been an excuse to escape, from both the rugged emptiness of Mayo and the oppressive weight of his father’s grief.
Mac dropped into a chair. “I’m tired of running. What’s it gotten me? I remain as trapped as ever.”
Jory smirked. “What, indeed?”
“If you’re implying Bianca, don’t be ridiculous. She’s out-clan.”
“And she looks at you with the eyes of a smitten woman.”
“If by ‘smitten’ you mean fearful, suspicious, and disgusted, I’d agree.”
“Give her a chance, man. You’re not exactly what she was expecting, are you? You should have seen Annie when I first told her.”
“How the hell did she accept it?” Mac asked.
Jory regarded him with bemusement and reproach. “Simple. She loved me.”
* * *
Night closed thick and silent around the house. There were no lights but for a glimmer from the village seen fleetingly through the tossed branches of the coppice. No sounds but an owl calling from the churchyard, an answering nearby echo from the orchard. So different from the city where even the smallest hours before dawn held the clatter and hum of thousands and where a sea of torches, lamps, and candles created a permanent apricot haze even on the cloudiest nights.
Bianca lay upon her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her head throbbed. Her brain felt as if it had been fried like an egg. Even her hair hurt. Sleep had claimed her for a few hours, but Mac followed her even there. Restless dreams conjured ghosts, bent and strangely skewed, joints at odd angles, limbs furred or feathered, a rush of wings as a gathering darkness spread across her mind.
She tried closing her eyes to relax, but fears old and new continued to shiver along her bones. Memories she’d fought to suppress overwhelmed her shredded defenses. The feel of the tongs in her shaking hands. The shock in the man’s eyes as he toppled. The way he fell, his limbs twisted in death. She’d lived with her guilt until it had become a permanent part of her. A scar polished over but never healed. A cancer on her heart.
Lawrence’s death had been an accident. He’d come at her in a drunken rage, and she’d swung wildly, blindly, never for a moment believing one glancing blow would cause him to fall against an unforgiving brick hearth. A moment in time forever etched on her consciousness. No way to erase it. No way to outrun it. And now another death. Another secret she must bury.
Bianca.
The call cut through her fear like a sword, but she didn’t move, afraid of what going to Mac would do to her already shaky resolve.
Why this crazy infatuation now, after so many years of remaining untouched and unaffected?
I know you can hear me.
Mac was brusque. He was arrogant. He was proud. But one slow quirk of that heart-stopping smile and her best intentions flew out the window. One moment of shared laughter or quiet conversation and she forgot why she was trying to avoid him.
I can’t say I’m sorry for kissing you, because I’m not. But I am sorry I frightened you.
She could ignore him and have his voice bouncing around in her aching head all night, or she could indulge him and get some sleep. Rising from bed, she drew a wrapper around herself before stepping across the passage to his bedchamber. She would stand firm. She would be as frigid as her nickname. She would keep the space of a room between them.
“Mac?” she whispered, lifting her stub of a candle to light her way.
Over here.
Prepared this time, she barely flinched upon finding the panther lying on his side just beneath the open window. He lifted his head, his feral eyes gleaming with the reflected candlelight, though the expression in them was anything but savage. Instead, compassion burned brightly in his feline gaze.
Difficulty sleeping?
“How did you know?” she asked.
I can’t sleep, either. She winced at the voice in her head. Not at the way it blossomed against her mind with the same clarity of the spoken word, but at the weakness threading the deep baritone. I never meant to frighten you.
“It wasn’t fear that drove me away this afternoon. Or rather, it wasn’t fear of you. It was fear of what you make me feel.”
For a terrifying moment, the ice queen melted into a real person.
She grimaced. “Something like that.”
The silence and the dark and the strange flickering shadows wrapped closely about her until she leaned against the bedpost, unable to leave as she’d intended. Her earlier fears and memories crowded around like restless spirits until the question spilled from her lips unbidden. “Do you ever feel the weight of your secret turning you into someone you’re not? Or worse, crushing the life right out of you?”
We have known no other way for uncounted generations. If it’s a burden, it’s one I no longer notice.
“Did Jory feel the burden? Is that what led to his marriage to Marianne? Just the simple joy in not hiding what he was or pretending?”
Mac didn’t answer right away. Instead, the great cat’s eyes focused on her face with a piercing intensity, his body still but for the gentle rise and fall of his ribs. Are you speaking about Jory or about you?
Her throat tightened. Her eyes stung with unshed tears.
What’s wrong, Bianca? Let me help you.
She’d sought to put the horror from her mind, lock it away as she’d always done before, but she was unable to tonight. Instead, old and new mixed and merged into a blur of sickening images. Memories pushed loose from behind the walls she’d built until, without thinking, she dropped to her knees, a hand upon his shoulder, his fur thicker and softer than she had imagined.
Sobs tore at her stomach and hot, salty tears burned her cheeks; she let them come, reveling in the loosening of the hard knot beneath her breast as she allowed Mac to glimpse her dark past.
He curled himself around her, one enormous paw upon her knee, his gentle strength a refuge. None could touch her while he held her thus. None would dare.
Do not weep, mi am’ryath. You did what you must to survive. We’re alike in that regard.
She’d prayed so often for Lawrence’s death, for an end to the torment of his step upon the stair, his hateful words, his heavy fist. But not by her hand. She’d never meant for it to end with violence. She’d only wanted him to stop hurting her. To leave her alone.
Her hands unconsciously curled into Mac’s fur, her tears falling upon his face as grief spiked painful and bitter against her heart. “Can you change back? Can you be . . . be Mac? I need . . . I need arms around me right now. I need to know this wil
l turn out right.”
Gods, Bianca. If I could do this for you, I would in half a heartbeat. But I cannot. This, you see, is my curse.
12
Bianca slept as she lived, curled into a tight, protective ball, hands tucked close to her chest, knees drawn up, a small frown line drawn between the perfect arch of her brows.
A wounded animal remembered its pain. So, too, did a wounded woman. Bianca had been hurt badly. Her marriage, a failure. Her husband, a bully who wielded his power with a brute’s cruelty. He’d deserved any death that found him.
With his skin still tingling from his shift, Mac shut the bedroom window against a cold dawn rain, settling into a chair where he could continue to watch over her as he’d done through the night, first as she’d wept, then as she’d fallen into a restless sleep. The rain tapped against the glass, but the room was snug and warm, and Mac desired nothing more than to remain wrapped in this cocoon as long as he could.
Then, like a swimmer breaking the water’s surface, Bianca gasped, her body stiffening, face white as marble, her half-dreaming, unfocused gaze locked on the window. “I can’t breathe. Oh, God, I can’t get out.” A whimper trembled through her words. Echoes of her panic in the Fey-blood’s cellar.
“Bianca,” he soothed. “You’re dreaming, alanna.”
Beyond calming, she struggled free of the blankets, her breathing coming in staccato blasts like gunfire, eyes blind with horror. “Can’t get out. Can’t breathe.” Half falling from the bed, she lurched for the window, scrabbling with the latch. Ragged sobs dragged free of her throat. “I’ll be good. I didn’t mean to do it. I won’t argue. Please.”
Her pleading turned his stomach. Between one breath and the next, he rose to join her at the window. Reaching around her, he eased her shaking hands from the latch. Slid the window up with a screech of swollen wood. Immediately, a sour wind billowed the curtains, squeezing his lungs with a blast of frosty wind.
