Dangerous As Sin

by Alix Rickloff

  He turned, his raven hair tossing in anger, his silver eyes flashing a warning. He bore the same crystalline elegance of all true Fey, a brittle surface beauty that hid the cruel arrogance marking all their race. “You risk much to approach me as equal, Other.”

  The insult tore through Morgan’s lingering hesitations. She faced him, calling on her own high blood to match him spark for spark. “I approach you as one of Scathach’s own. You owe me respect if nothing else.”

  His gaze registered shock, but his manner remained as superior as ever. “Amhas-draoi? ’Twas your order’s failures that have reduced us to hunting the Duinedon lands in search of the sword.”

  “A sword Andraste lost. Not us.”

  His mouth twisted into a sneer of contempt. “Lost? Stolen, you mean. And by one of yours. Your task is over, Amhas-draoi. Leave this to us. We will find the sword. And the Other responsible for its theft.”

  “I’ll get you your sword. And, Doran. I only need a few days more.”

  “There are no more days to give. Andraste senses Neuvarvaan’s power building. The Other wielding it does not understand the Morkoth forces at work. They will consume him in the end, but by then it will be too late. He will have unleashed an evil not easily checked or turned back.”

  She wanted to argue. To fight their arrival tooth and nail. But already she sensed the stares of nearby strollers. The cocked brows and mumbled whispers. To them, she spoke to naught but wind and sky. They couldn’t see the Fey hovering like spirits. Moving with impunity through their world. Not yet. But if Doran weren’t stopped soon, they would. And by then, the collision between Fey and Duinedon would be irreversible. The harm almost as great as an army of Undying under the command of a madman.

  No. Right now, they saw nothing. Only a madwoman. And mayhap, she was.

  She’d actually been contemplating walking away from the Amhas-draoi. Straight into Cam’s open arms. But there’d be no arms. No world where she or any Other might live with any sense of freedom if she didn’t hold firm now.

  The Fey sought to pull away from her and join the others already heading into the street, but she jerked him back. Caught and held his swirling iridescent gaze, though it cost her a headache to do so. “The Duinedon colonel and I will find the sword. I swear on my life. Tell your mistress that.”

  He bowed, but didn’t look convinced.

  Despite her firm words, neither was she.

  “You’re still studying Lord Delvish’s book?”

  Morgan wheeled around, her heart in her throat, shocked she’d allowed anyone to sneak up on her. Even Cam, though she’d come to acknowledge that in ways unmagical his talents rivaled her own.

  He put up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m unarmed, I swear.”

  He leaned against the door, but it was obvious he worked at this pose of nonchalance. A boiling storm gathered at the darkest edges of his gaze, and his jaw jumped with suppressed anger.

  Rubbing her temples, Morgan put aside Uncle Owen’s book. She’d been reading for hours. Puzzling out the arcane language, the faded diagrams, the riddles within stories within puzzles that marked so many of the old texts. The basic idea seemed simple enough. It was the execution that brought on the headache.

  “It doesn’t look as if your uncle accepted your regrets.”

  “I’ll be spending a few hours at the Abercrombies’.” When she opened her mouth to argue, his gaze warned her she spoke at her own risk. “I don’t want to. I have to. There’s a difference. We’ll adjust, Morgan.”

  “Adjust? The board’s set. The pieces are moving, and you’re going to step away for a night of hobnobbing with the best and brightest? It’s not a matter of adjusting. It’s insanity.”

  Cam’s face went hard as stone, his hands tightening to instant fists. But whatever he thought to say, he bit back. Instead, he crossed to the hearth, slowly uncurling his palms to warm them over the fire.

  “I’ve seen them, Cam. The true Fey are crossing over. And their numbers will only grow as Andraste’s patience wanes until there won’t be any stopping them. No barriers the Amhas-draoi erect will hold them back.”

  He spun to face her. “You’ve seen them? Where? Why didn’t you warn me?” His questions came like bullets.

  “In Green Park. Others moving east on the streets toward the river. More fanning north toward Regent’s Park. For now groups of twos and threes. But it’s only beginning.”

  He rubbed his chin, his gaze trained inward as if he was considering. “It complicates things, but there’s no help for it. I have to go tomorrow night.”

  She waited for his reasoning. Even a halfhearted excuse. His uncle’s tyranny. His aunt’s pleading. His sister playing the guilt card. What had caused him to reverse course? To decide that a night out in the company of his old London friends was more important than ending the looming threat of Doran and his mastery of Neuvarvaan’s black magics? Or worse in her mind, a dropping of the walls as the true Fey sought to succeed where she and Cam failed?

  The silence grew, the air charged with suppressed emotion and anger.

  She broke first. “Very well. If you go, I go.”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?” She cocked her head, unsure if she’d misunderstood. Hoping she’d misunderstood.

  “No, I said. I go alone.” Misery stamped his features. But a rough-edged misery that didn’t allow for comfort or even question.

  “Well, if we’re supposed to be newly married, won’t it seem a bit strange if you show up without me?” She tried to sound reasonable. Conciliatory. It wouldn’t help to lose her temper. Cam was doing that enough for the both of them.

  “I need to do this alone, Morgan. It’s not about you and me. It’s about my uncle, and he’s warned me that bringing you is not part of the bargain.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “What sort of bargain?”

  He shrugged. “Forget it.”

  “I think I’m entitled to know what your family thinks of me.”

  He braced his hands on the mantel, his gaze focused on the fire as if he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—face her. “Uncle Josh has asked that I come without you.”

  “I see.”

  And she did.

  Like an icy dousing, his words froze straight through to the pathetic part of her that wanted to be part of that glittering world. Yearned for his love. And wasn’t that just more proof of her own pathetic wishy-washiness? She was supposed to be hard as nails. A fighter. An Amhas-draoi. Not some debutante in search of a suitable husband.

  She squared her shoulders, laced her fingers together in her lap. Fought to regain the warrior mantle slipping from her shoulders.

  His scalding gaze met her new cool remoteness. “You think I want to go? Or that I think those things?”

  She kept silent. Afraid she might reveal the truth.

  It only angered him further.

  He grabbed her by the arms, hauling her roughly to her feet, his grip almost painful. What she saw in his face set her back. A glimpse of that part of him he kept chained within. Released only at peril to his sanity. It swam close to the surface. Howled for escape. “Answer me, damn you.”

  She let his rage wash over her. Remained as untouchable as her heart. “You want an answer? I’ll give you one. I thought I could do this, Cam. I thought I could separate myself like an egg. A part of me for Scathach. A part of me for you. But I can’t. I need to commit with all my soul. Be it the Amhas-draoi. Or you. And I chose my path long ago.”

  He stood erect as if he faced an executioner, grim-faced but resigned. As if he’d known this was coming. And wasn’t surprised.

  She hardened herself to the inevitable. “I think it’s as well you seek out your own kind. We’re too different, Cam. And I’m not in the market for a man. Not even one as tempting as you.”

  Her arms remained captured in his grip, his face so close that she need only lean forward to brush her lips against his. His body hummed with slow-fading anger and a tension that hel
d him rigid, his steel-blue gaze impenetrable. “I don’t believe you. I’m this close to you, and I don’t believe you.”

  She frowned, wishing away the heat pooling deep within her. “My body may desire you, but my heart is my own.”

  He released her, almost flinging her away from him as if he couldn’t bear to be near her now. “You can say the words, Morgan. But I know you feel it. It’s more than lust. More than the bump and grind of two people pleasuring each other. I’ve had that. Know what it feels like.” He plowed a hand through his hair. “This is more.” He let out a disgusted breath. Flung himself toward the door. “Forget it. You’ll come to your senses or you won’t. I just hope I’m still around when it happens.”

  “And where would you be? Off with your high-in-the-instep London friends?” God, she sounded petty. Childish, even. What the hell was happening to her? She felt as if the old Morgan were cracking to pieces. Every new Cam-inspired emotion another body blow to the woman she thought she was. The woman she had to be if she was going to succeed before the Fey did.

  He smashed a fist against the jamb. Closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. Letting it out slowly, he fixed her with a grim stare. “According to your uncle, I don’t live to see the end of this battle, Morgan. I become a creature of the sword. An Undying.”

  Like a slap to the face, she came up short. Uncle Owen? “What did he tell you?”

  “He foretold my death—or should I say my rebirth?—as an Undying.”

  Her throat closed, her mouth suddenly parchment dry. “No. It’s a mistake. It can’t be…”

  He shrugged. “I may live forever, Morgan. But I won’t wait forever. Not even for you.”

  Amos bustled in, carrying a second decanter and glasses, his displeasure clear. Seeing him looking round for a place to set down his burden, Cam lifted his head. “You can put it here,” he said, clearing a place on the table by his chair, pushing the books, papers, and a hideous dish of Sevres china to the floor with a crash.

  The dish survived. Too bad.

  It had been one of a set Charlotte had purchased shortly after their wedding during her buy-her-way-to-happiness phase. Expensive, but ultimately harmless. A shame she’d given it up for less benign means of making him pay.

  And now Uncle Josh asked him to set his foot in the trap again. With a woman he’d never met whose only appeal lay in her political affiliations and the funds she had invested on the Change.

  “Thank you, Amos. That’ll be all for tonight.” Amos seemed hesitant to leave him alone, so Cam lowered his best officer’s glower on his hovering servant. “I said, good night.”

  Amos knew when arguing was fruitless, part of the reason he made such a good valet. So giving a curt, wordless nod, he left. Only the firm closing of the door evidence of his disapproval.

  Left alone, Cam poured out a glass of whiskey. Downed it without pause. Refilled the glass, the second one following just as quickly. After the first blast of throat-burning fire, the whiskey’s heat sang through him, relaxing muscles, loosening the taut knot in the pit of his stomach.

  His uncle had him by the balls. Wouldn’t hesitate to twist if he thought it in Cam’s best interest. He hadn’t told Morgan about his uncle’s threat. Or about the woman who awaited his best all-women-love-a-uniform chivalry.

  Why bother?

  She remained determined to keep a distance between them—a distance that seemed laughable when they’d already shared so much. But a distance uncloseable despite his best efforts. He needed to stop tilting at windmills and accept the inevitable. He and Morgan weren’t meant for each other.

  And did it matter now? Lord Delvish had foreseen Cam’s death at Doran’s hands. A living death as a creature that could never die. Could never be killed.

  What Delvish had not foreseen was whether Cam lived on in defeat as one of Doran’s puppets or if the Amhas-draoi was defeated, the price being that Cam remained trapped evermore. An immortal doomed to see those around him perish as he lingered on to the ends of the world.

  Could he watch Morgan age while he remained young? Could he hold her in his arms as she died? As his children died? And his children’s children?

  A thought to drive anyone to drink.

  Cam pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, wishing himself in the flagstoned parlor of his grandfather’s little house in Strathconon. Imagining the tang of a peat fire, his gran-da’s cheerful whistle as he sat blanketed in the Windsor chair by the hearth, his hands working in a flurry of carving.

  As his dream took shape, the reality shifted until past and future melded into a single vision. Gran-da’s eyes warm with affection as he talked to the woman in the chair across from him, her red-gold hair brilliantly lit by the fire’s glow, her head resting on her elbows as she laughed at something the old man had said.

  Their voices rose and fell as they shared stories and exchanged information, Gran-da nodding from time to time as she confirmed what he’d always assumed, but never been able to prove.

  He looked up, his piercing blue eyes excited. “Ye see, lad? It’s just as I told ye. The divide between Fey and Duinedon isn’t a wall of stone and mortar. ’Tis a veil of silk, a swirl of mist, a ripple upon a mountain pool. All it takes is the desire to see past the end of our noses, to believe in a world we can’t ken for certain except in dreams or through sheer good fortune.”

  Cam sighed, his own voice tired, his whole body weary from battling Uncle Josh’s sticky manipulations. Lord Delvish’s Sight. “You’re a result of too much whiskey and not enough sleep.”

  Gran-da chuckled, his knife a blur and flash of silver as he worked, the ghostly apparition of Strathconon’s cozy parlor superimposed over the elegance of the London salon. Almost blotting it out. Even Gran-da seemed more solid. And younger. No longer the feeble old man held by aching joints to the warmth of his hearth. Instead, he bore the booming voice and thick, dark hair Cam remembered from his childhood. “’Tis for certain I’d nae be visiting if ye weren’t in the proper frame of mind, but I’m as real as your love for the lass. And ye do love her, ye know.”

  “Does it matter now? I’ll let her go. It’s that or stand by while Uncle Josh destroys her in his bid to save me.”

  “She doesn’t look like a lass to be frightened by the likes of your uncle.”

  “No, but in this, no amount of Fey blood will help. She’ll be dragged through the mud, her family with her. I won’t let that happen to Morgan or to the Blighs. I’ve only met them briefly, but they deserve better than that.”

  “And ye think your uncle would go through with such a villainous plan? Ruin a young woman simply to aid his nephew?”

  Cam plowed both hands through his hair, hung his head. “I don’t know. But I can’t risk it. You didn’t see him, Gran-da. He looked pretty determined. He just might think he’s doing the right thing. After all, he doesn’t know Morgan. Doesn’t understand.”

  Gran-da sat back, the results of his carving complete. The rough figure of a woman lay in the palm of his hand, a faint smile touching her lips, her hair a graceful curve disappearing into the flow of her gown. Like all his grandfather’s work, the unfinished edges and rough-hewn surfaces contained a simple beauty that never failed to bring a tingle of delight. He placed the tiny statuette on the table beside him. Leaned back into his chair as if the effort had exhausted him. Closing his eyes, he curled his hands around the armrests. Age again lining his craggy face. “There’s only one way to thwart your uncle in his plans. And ’tis simple as working that wood there.”

  Cam raised a doubtful brow. “And what would that be?”

  The warmth of the fire disappeared in a cold draft that whistled down the chimney. The air went dim and smoky, Strathconon’s parlor fading, Gran-da growing faint and wavery.

  Cam squeezed his eyes shut tight, willing the comfort of his grandfather’s presence back. It was his dream. He could make it continue if he chose. But like an outrushing tide, the images thinned until onl
y the scent of his grandfather’s pipe remained. “Wait. You haven’t told me how to stop Uncle Josh.”

  The fire leapt back to life, coal shifting and crackling in the grate. Snatching Cam from his doze even as his grandfather’s booming voice leapt into his mind like the crash of surf. “Give truth to your tale, lad. Marry her.”

  Cam’s eyes flew open. The room dark, save for the flickering hearth and a much-melted candle at his elbow—the decanter half empty, his glass wholly empty. His head pounded with drink and echoed with his grandfather’s words. A crush of longing for the old man hit him with the force of a blow, made him glance with useless hope at the chair beside him.

  It was then his mouth went dry, his whole body trembling with fear, disbelief, and renewed loss. He reached for the wooden carving half expecting it to disappear before his eyes, but it remained as solid as the rest of the room, as real as the churning in his stomach and the cold sweat damping his skin. Rubbing his thumb over the woman’s face, he couldn’t help but smile. The long cheekbones, the arched brows, the smile that could be sly or inviting depending upon her mood. His grandfather had caught them all.

  Pocketing the figure, he looked deep into the fire. Sighed. “If only it were that easy, Gran-da. Why not advise me to shift the heavens? Change fate? Morgan’s right. Our relationship was star-crossed from the beginning. A fool’s hope.”

  Whether the voice in his head was his own or his gran-da’s, he never knew. “Aye, a fool may hope, lad. But his hope is never foolish.”

  Chapter 24

  She watched from the top of the stairs as Amos fussed over the shine of Cam’s gold braid, the placement of his dress sword on his hip, the gloss of his boots. He’d been buffed and polished for the drawing room, yet the smoke and thunder of the battlefield still clung to him, evident in the glacial blue light in his eyes, the precision of his warrior’s movements.

  It had been this way in Edinburgh too. One of the reasons she’d allowed herself to be seduced. She’d recognized the aura of danger surrounding him. And understood it as none of his pretty pastel admirers had. To them, he’d been a hero—dashing, handsome, fascinating. To her, he’d been a man—gorgeous, courageous, and potentially deadly. Though she’d not known exactly how deadly until recently. Or how he struggled with that lethal skill.