Lord of Shadows

by Alix Rickloff

  “Please, sit down.” She gestured to a chair.

  Daigh glanced at it but made no move to accept.

  Her annoyance erupted into full-fledged anger. And she blurted the first thought that popped into her head. “You’re safe from any unwanted overtures. I promise not to push my odious presence on you again.”

  “Your odious . . .” He gave a bark of grim laughter. “Is that what you think?”

  “What else am I supposed to think?”

  “That I’m not a lust-crazed scoundrel who’d ruin your future for my own pleasure?”

  He sank into a chair across from her, and she noted the tired lines dragging at his features, a strain pulling at his body and his emotions. He drew close to breaking.

  He rubbed at his left forearm as if scrubbing away a stain. “Sabrina, I don’t know how or why, but you’re the woman I see when I close my eyes. I know your scent. I recall the sparkle of your smile, the way your body feels as it moves beneath me. And the way mine feels when I take you. Flashes of an impossible life with you fill my head. I can’t stop them. I don’t want to. But it’s just that—impossible. I won’t let you throw yourself away on me. Not when your future still lies before you.”

  She swallowed around the knot choking off her breathing. He dreamt these things. As had she. They were as much a part of her memories now as his. Perhaps that’s why it had been so easy to let her desires overpower her sense. He was no stranger. He’d already been lover, husband, and friend. Impossible, he’d said. And she knew it. But it didn’t make the memories of that life she’d glimpsed any less powerful.

  “He hasn’t come right out and said it, but my brother wants to marry me off.”

  His body barely flinched before he answered smoothly, “You’ll make someone a very lucky man.” A corner of his mouth tipped in a rueful smile. “But it won’t be me.”

  She hardened her heart. “It won’t be anyone. I don’t want to marry. Ever.”

  “That would be a shame. You have much love to offer.”

  She had no answer and couldn’t speak anyway.

  He pulled himself to his feet. “I came to ask one thing, and then I’ll leave.” He paused, his jaw hardening. “Your brother Brendan—have you heard from him since you arrived in Dublin?”

  She caught back a breath. Her hand falling unconsciously over her apron pocket. Did Brendan’s return and Daigh’s arrival fit together somehow? Could her brother be preparing to create his own Domnuathi? No, she wouldn’t believe it. He could never initiate such madness and misery.

  “If I’m going to stop Máelodor and St. John, I need to find him, Sabrina. Soon.”

  “You think he’s part of all this?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s Máelodor I want. I think Brendan can aid me.”

  Seven years and her family still sought to drag her back into its destructive orbit. Suck her into the tragedy and the heartbreak and the agony she thought she’d put behind her when she entered the order.

  Would she ever be free of her father’s sins? Her brother’s crimes? The long shadow that still seemed to hover above them all?

  “Have you had word from him?” Daigh prodded. “Anything.”

  Her hand dug into her pocket. Crushed the note, the edges of the paper biting into her fingers. Brendan was alive. He’d come home. But was he any safer than he’d ever been? The Amhas-draoi still hunted him. So now did Máelodor and Gervase St. John if Daigh spoke truth. Would revealing what she knew help or hinder? Not that she knew much more than she ever had. Except that he’d be back. Hopefully bearing explanations.

  Daigh’s intensity charged the air. Crackled over her skin. Sparked against her mind with dread and anger and fear and shame.

  Should she? Shouldn’t she? She closed her eyes, sending up a prayer for guidance.

  The front door opened and shut.

  “Sabrina, darling! We’re home!”

  The gods—and Aunt Delia—had spoken.

  Lord and Lady Kilronan arrived in the middle of the night. Sabrina had vague recollections of voices and steps in the hall, orders being given, and harried servants to-ing and fro-ing. She’d ignored it all by shoving a pillow over her head and burrowing deeper into her bedclothes.

  This morning she could no longer ignore it. She’d been dressed, styled, and prepared for sacrifice by her lady’s maid, who seemed to think His Lordship’s marriage had been oh-so-romantic. A grand passion just like that Romeo and Juliet couple.

  She decided to forego informing the poor, deluded woman how that relationship had ended, and rose from her dressing table with the grim smile of the condemned.

  Aidan was happy. That was Sabrina’s first startled sense, peeking around the drawing room door. Not beaming and goofy grinning happy, but a quiet satisfaction that eased his usually stern features and softened the intense light in his gold brown eyes.

  He stood braced in front of the hearth, hands clasped behind his back, gaze wandering in horror over the cottage flower wallpaper, the dainty, lace-encrusted furniture, the herd of cherubs whose painted eyes all seemed to focus on a nearby sculpture of Zeus in naked splendor, thunderbolt in hand.

  Despite his otherwise relaxed exterior, Aidan looked as though he’d like to hurl a few thunderbolts of his own. “What was she thinking, Cat? It’s like a damned Paris brothel in here. And what is that horrid smell like overripe fruit?” He sniffed the air by the mantel where purple and blue flames glimmered in the grate. “I knew I should have arranged things myself.”

  From the far corner out of Sabrina’s restricted line of vision came the amused reply, throaty and smooth as velvet before breaking into a girlish giggle. “She does have a certain unique taste.”

  “It’s not funny,” he grumped.

  “You can laugh or you can cry. I choose to laugh. I’ve spilled enough tears for a lifetime.”

  Aidan glanced at his watch. Paced a strip of rug, fumbling with his fob. “Where is she? I sent the maid to wake her over an hour ago.”

  “Stop fretting. She’ll be down soon enough.”

  “I’m not fretting.”

  “You’re nervous as a kitten in a thunderstorm. Relax. She’s your sister. It’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t sound nervous at all.”

  “She’ll accept me or she won’t. I’ve gotten quite good at not caring overmuch.”

  “No, you’ve gotten good at hiding that you do care. Different entirely, a chuisle.”

  Love and intimacy and tenderness weighted his words, and Sabrina felt like an intruder on some private moment.

  Backing away from the door, she cleared her throat. Took a few heavy steps. And glided into the room as if she’d only just arrived.

  Daigh stalked the narrow garret. “I’ve tried. And failed. If you want Douglas, you’ll have to find him yourself.”

  “And you? Given up trying to implicate St. John in this business? Or has Kilronan’s sister changed her views on bedding a corpse,” Roseingrave stormed. “Perhaps she finally found out what you’d done. To her. Her family.”

  His gaze narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  Her look tore through him with spear-point intensity. “You’re Lazarus. No matter how you pretty up the reality, you’re a creature of death. And you deal it as casually as any animal.” She gave a hard, brittle laugh. “Did you and Brendan Douglas share a toast when you told him you’d murdered his cousin?”

  “Damn it—”

  “You killed him. Didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even wait to see if he suffered. Just left him in the road, drowning in his own blood. Did you care? Did you even suffer a pang of remorse?”

  “I never . . .” Or had he?

  A dark road, sloppy with rain. A carriage and a man with a gun. The Great One’s orders, commands Lazarus could not deny.

  The explosion of images rocked him back on his heels.

  Fear. Surprise. And the dead weight of a body toppling silently and softly into the mud. A woman’s scream ripping
across the storm.

  He dropped to the bed, his hands clutching his head. Bile and vomit scouring his throat raw. His body numb and cold with sweat as images flashed like lightning through his brain. A deadly hunt from Dublin through the Slieve Aughty mountains to the barren, coastal cliffs of County Clare. A battle rippling with flame and Unseelie magic. Lord Kilronan’s vicious hate. Lady Kilronan’s pleas for a final mercy. And a diary. A diary he’d captured for Máelodor in his quest to resurrect Arthur for his own violent and twisted ambitions.

  “Live with that, Lazarus,” Roseingrave mocked. “I do.”

  He remembered. Everything. In one cataclysmic flooding of memory, it all came rushing back.

  The presence slipped and slid through his brain, scales flexing, eyes burning, rage scorching its way through his body as if he were being consumed from the inside out. Seeking, hunting, gathering what it could from its growing control. With every beat of Daigh’s heart, Máelodor’s poisonous mage energy intensified. His powers and Daigh’s strength forming one monstrous being. He held it back as best he could, but it was like holding back the tide.

  “You play with a dangerous weapon, amhas-draoi,” he snarled. “What makes you think you won’t end as dead as Jack O’Gara?”

  “I don’t scare easily, Lazarus.”

  He grabbed her arm, pulling her in close enough that she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. She remained unflinching, but he sensed her uncertainty and perhaps even a hint of fear. As it should be.

  “Then you’re a fool,” he said, letting her feel the killing weight of his regained powers.

  She struggled, but he gripped her, his fingers biting into her flesh.

  His mage energy flooded him. Tangled her heart in its serpent grip. Coiled around it. Slowed it beat by beat by beat until she gasped and went limp. Releasing the spell, he dropped her into a chair to recover before spilling his stomach into the slops jar. His legs barely holding him up, his body wracked with uncontrollable spasms as the presence retreated once more.

  “I’ll do what I should have done from the beginning.” A clean shot to the head. A simple kill. Sabrina and her brother would be safe from St. John.

  He no longer needed to worry about finding Máelodor.

  His master would find him. He already had.

  Aidan rested his chin on his hands. Gazed on Sabrina with older-brother exasperation that set her teeth on edge. “This isn’t exactly how I anticipated our first meeting.” He sighed. Shot a despairing glance at the unwelcome addition to this little tête-à-tête, sitting silent and watchful in the corner.

  Sabrina braced herself against the unconscious fall into little-sisterly submissiveness. Felt Lady Kilronan’s scrutiny like a pricking up and down her spine. “Did you think we’d enjoy a nice reminisce over tea and cakes, Aidan? Tease each other over our misspent youth and compare notes of the past seven years?”

  “Aye. Something along those lines.” Aidan smothered a smile behind his hand, but his dancing eyes gave him away as he shared a private joke with his wife.

  For some reason, that just made her dig her heels in further. “You commanded me, Aidan. Like one of your servants or a dog brought to your side with a whistle. Did you ask whether I wished to leave the sisters for Dublin? Did you take into consideration what I might want?”

  “How could you possibly know what you want when all you’ve known for the past seven years is Glenlorgan and the life of a priestess?” His features fell into more serious lines. “You’ve been closeted in that place long enough. You’ve not been home to Belfoyle once since Father and Mother died.”

  “I don’t want to go to Belfoyle. What’s there for me now? It’s a house, Aidan. Not a home. And hasn’t been for the last seven years.”

  “It could be.” He shot another exclusionary glance in Lady Kilronan’s direction. Obviously obtained the silent answer he was looking for since he turned back to Sabrina with new resolve. “This isn’t how I would have broached the subject, but now we’re hip deep in it, I might as well wade further. Cat and I want you to come with us when we return to County Clare, Sabrina. To live. I want you to get to know her. To see her as family. As a sister.”

  That woman? Not bloody likely. She spun around to finally face the nervy hoyden who’d seduced Aidan into marriage. Found herself eye to eye with a young woman perhaps only a year or two older than herself. Slender. Slight. A sheen of jet black hair. Feline green eyes. Not exactly the blowsy hips and bosoms Covent Garden wares Sabrina had scornfully imagined bear-leading Aidan to the altar. But there was a spark of something in the way Lady Kilronan returned the unblinking stare. A maturity to her solemn features. Experience in the tiny lines dimpling the edges of her turned-down lips.

  Rather than an overfriendly smile or oozing goodwill, she regarded Sabrina with the same wary watchfulness she received. Head cocked a bit to the side. A lip chewed between her teeth.

  Nervous. Proud. Hopeful. Sad. Sabrina felt all these things when she looked upon Aidan’s wife. A twining of emotions showing only in the flicker of her eyes and the poised way she rested her hands in her lap.

  No. She didn’t want to like her. Didn’t want to know her. She needed to stand firm. Stand fast. She wasn’t the eager-to-please baby sister any longer, and Aidan—no matter how much he shoved—couldn’t fit her back into that mold.

  “My family are the priestesses of High Danu,” Sabrina bit the words off in staccato syllables. “And my home is Glenlorgan. The sooner you both understand that, the sooner we can end this farce of a family reunion and I can leave.”

  Before her courage faltered or either of them could talk her around, she fled.

  Cat’s sardonic “So, should we take that for a no?” echoing faintly after.

  Sabrina smoothed out the note. Read it once more. Traced the ornate, swoopy handwriting. As flamboyant, showy, and enigmatic as Brendan himself.

  Where had he been all these years? Why hadn’t he tried contacting her before now? Why had he let them all think him dead? And what did it all have to do with Daigh and Máelodor and St. John and her father?

  She’d toyed with the idea of going to Aidan with the note right up until the moment he’d begun harping on Glenlorgan and his grand plans for family reunification. Her intentions had shriveled on the vine. He wouldn’t listen. He’d bull his way past her explanations and her questions, ignoring her. Treating her like a child with a pat on the head and careless condescension.

  So whom did that leave?

  Her fingers brushed over the ink. Held the edges of the card. Brendan had touched this. Brendan, the brother she’d wept over for nights too numerous to count, whose face haunted her dreams for long years after, who’d taken a part of her heart with him when he left.

  Daigh asked about Brendan. Needed his help. And sought to warn him about St. John and Máelodor.

  Perhaps she’d misread the sign from the gods. Perhaps they hadn’t been telling her to keep quiet about Brendan at all. Perhaps they’d been warning her of the life awaiting her if she didn’t speak to Daigh.

  Perhaps she needed to stop relying on the gods. They were singularly unhelpful.

  A milky sky blanched the world to a monotonous gray. Blunting the edges of buildings. Bleaching the men and women passing through the streets. Dulling even the air to a soggy, misty miasma of smoke and rain.

  Hands clenched and heart racing, Sabrina stood across from the Wood Street lodging house. Stared up at the blank windows. What on earth was she doing here? Had she taken leave of her senses? She’d wanted reckless. But this was beyond a fool’s errand.

  The front door opened while Sabrina stood pondering her next move. A woman emerging grim-faced, glaring, and as devoid of color as the faded day. Her face rang familiar. But from where?

  The woman called over her shoulder to someone inside, her words indistinguishable amid the normal morning street hustle. But when she turned back, her eyes fixed on Sabrina like twin daggers.

  Stepping down to the pavem
ent, she crossed to Sabrina’s side of the street. On closer inspection, her brittle demeanor seemed even more fragile. Her movements over-careful as if she were ill or in pain. “Lady Sabrina Douglas, isn’t it?”

  Sabrina met and matched the woman’s arrogant condescension with her own noble bearing, rickety as it was. “You’ve the advantage of me. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

  “Miss Helena Roseingrave. I met Lord and Lady Kilronan in the spring.” Her gaze flickered with some indefinable emotion. “And I hope someday to meet your brother Brendan.”

  Now why did she say that? As if she knew why Sabrina was here? As if she were as involved in this business as the rest. Sabrina’s hackles rose. “In that you may be disappointed. He died a long time ago.”

  Miss Roseingrave’s smile never reached her eyes. “There’s death. And then there’s death. As I’m sure you’re aware, Lady Sabrina. You’re well acquainted with both the permanent and more temporary variations.”

  Sabrina locked her knees to keep them from buckling. Dug her nails into her palms to keep them from this nasty woman’s face. “As intriguing as this conversation is, I’m afraid I haven’t time to prolong it. But if you do unearth my brother, give him my regards, won’t you?” And with that conversation killer, she sauntered away. Head up. Eyes knife-bright and shining with tears.

  Roseingrave’s gaze gleamed with the keenness of a blade. “Right before I execute him for his crimes, I’ll impart your warmest greetings.”

  Sabrina swallowed back the sudden choking dread. Shook off the clammy snaky sweat that clung to her skin. And half ran, half sobbed her way across the street. Up the steps. Pounding the door with the side of her fist. Hugging her body in an attempt to stop the chills Miss Roseingrave’s words had produced.

  Daigh had to be here. He just had to be.

  Sabrina. Here. Now. His descent into hell was complete.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. When he reopened them she’d be gone. Had to be. But she wasn’t. And in fact, she stood within a halo of herself. Two overlapping images crowding his brain.