Warrior's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  He placed his candle on a cabinet, took a seat, and pulled his krythos from his coat pocket. Balancing the far-seeing disk on the palm of his hand, he spoke the words that unlocked its powers. The notched glass disk glowed softly, a crackle of energy washing over his hand and up his arm into his brain as he reached out with his mind, using the disk to amplify his telepathy over miles of countryside. The pathing unrolled in his head like a diffuse ribbon of sound and light, but strength and concentration and years of training focused the power of the krythos like a spear point: a blade aimed from this tiny corner of England straight to the heart of London and a town house on elegant Audley Street.

  Have you convinced him? Is he coming home?

  The answer erupted in his mind with the blunt strength of an oxen’s kick. No finesse. No subtlety. Brute power. Wild power. Not yet but soon. I’ve guaranteed his safety as N’thuil.

  The woman grew insufferable in her supposed authority. Did she really believe the title of N’thuil meant anything in these days? Jai Idrish was a useless relic. Its Voice a charlatan who served at his whim. He gritted his teeth. Whatever you need to do, my lady. The future of the clans depends upon your success.

  I understand.

  Doubtful. But that was all to the better. Perhaps if he played his cards carefully, he might kill two birds with the same stone; or, more specifically, one accursed eagle and a rather annoying little sparrow.

  2

  “Conal?” Meeryn murmured, dazed and half-asleep.

  The sound came again, a gasp broken off, a moan caught behind clenched teeth. Meeryn’s eyes snapped open on a room heavy with shadows, but this was not Deepings, and her lover was long dead. His was not the cry that woke her.

  It must be Gray.

  She rose, grabbing up her borrowed dressing gown, the scents of sandalwood and brandy caught in the folds. A masculine, virile smell to remind her—as if she needed it—that the Gray she’d barged in on last night was not the scrawny, thin-skinned, bookworm she’d known so well. This man was harder, angrier, unpredictable.

  She opened the door of her bedchamber, listening for any sign of approaching servants, but the only sound was the low drone of a city on the verge of waking. A roar like the surf pressing against her eardrums. Just when she decided she’d imagined it, the cry came again, but this time the groan ended in a violent smash of glass and a heavy thud.

  She hurried down the corridor, only to hesitate in front of Gray’s closed door. What if it was naught more than a nightmare? She’d feel an idiot barging into his room for a bad dream. And what if he assumed she’d come for some other reason? That she desired . . . wanted . . . yearned for . . . the thought was completely mortifying.

  A thump and muffled oath drained the last of her uncertainty away. She lifted the latch. “Hello?”

  The stench nearly buckled her knees. A horrible odor of sickness overlaid by a vinegary sulphur smell that burned her eyes and stung her nose until it ran. Curtains had been pulled across the windows and no candle or fire leavened the gloom, but her heightened animal eyesight pierced the dark easily. A humped pile of blankets and pillows lay beside the bed. A chair rested on its side. But it was the hunched figure of a man in the corner that sent her hurrying across the room, glass crunching beneath her bare feet.

  “Gray?” She knelt at his side, a hand on his shoulder, searching for blood or a wound. “What’s happened? Did you fall? What’s wrong?”

  “Curse . . .” he whispered through chattering teeth, his body shuddering, sweat pouring off him in waves. “Left it too long . . .” His eyes burned like blue flames, his face drawn with pain and sickness. “Can’t see . . .”

  She clasped his hand, blood slicking her palm. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Draught on my desk . . . medicine . . . bring it to me.” He curled into a tighter ball, shoulders braced for pain, jaw clamped. “Need it . . . now . . .”

  She rose, scanning the room. There on the desk, just as he instructed; a glass vial full of a green greasy brew. She poured it into a cup, wrinkling her nose at the thick rotten-egg smell. “What is this godawful stuff?”

  “Sanity,” he said, reaching for it. “Survival.”

  She closed his fingers around the cup. “Drink it.”

  “Need the blood . . .” With an effort that left him breathless and retching, he struggled upright. Held his palm above the cup as three drops of blood slid into the viscous potion. Immediately, the slimy, slick burn of Fey-blood magic hardened like knives against her mind.

  Meeryn felt her stomach rise into her throat just watching him. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  He swirled it around before gulping it down in one swig. “Swallow . . . or die . . .” he murmured, closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall with a sigh.

  Minutes passed as she watched the sky brighten behind the curtain and the shadows retreat to pools in the corners. Gray’s face lost the stretched chalky pallor of the deathly ill, his shoulders relaxed, his hands uncurled to lie flat upon his knees, his shaking stopped.

  “It grows worse every day,” he said quietly.

  “What does? What was that you took?”

  “The draught keeps the curse in check, but the trade-off is my life. The potion is eating it away.”

  “Then stop, for heaven’s sake.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t. To go without for more than a few days is to end as you saw me. Slipping toward a horrible and painful death. I need to stay alive a little longer. I haven’t finished my work . . . things I must do for the good of the clans. Then I can let go. Gladly let go.”

  “The Fey-bloods did this to you, didn’t they? I can feel their foul stench all over this. Those soul-feeding, back-stabbing, treacherous—”

  “Meeryn.” His voice, quiet but firm, pulled her up short. When had he learned that little trick? “The Fey offered the four of us hope. They’d no idea of the consequences. It’s their magic reacting with our bodies. We warp the energy, taint it. They would heal us if they could, but there’s nothing to be done.”

  “I don’t believe it. They must have known. It was a trick.”

  “Poison four outcast Imnada? To what purpose?”

  “You’re the heir to the five clans. They must have known. This was their way of ridding themselves of an enemy leader.”

  “I’m heir to nothing. Not since the Ossine stripped me of my mark and cast me out. The Fey gain nothing with my death. The Imnada, on the other hand, would be more than happy to have me gone.”

  “Is there nothing you can do?”

  “I may have found an answer. I just need time.” He closed his eyes. “A commodity fast running out. A few months—give or take—is all I have.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, frightened at the resignation in his voice. “We’ll figure it out. You and me together. Just like when we were little.”

  He reached up to push her hair off her face and trace the line of her cheek. His hand was cold and moist to the touch with illness, but his eyes were as brilliant as blue ice. “I’ve missed you, Meeryn.”

  Her heart tumbled in her chest. “Fine way of showing it. I came back from the islands all those years ago to find you gone off to the army and nothing but one miserable note shoved under my door as farewell. Do you know how that felt?” She snapped her jaw shut on words she’d never expected to speak aloud. Glanced away on an awkward silence.

  “I’m sorry. I knew I should have waited, but . . .” He dipped a shoulder in dismissal and whatever he’d been about to say was left unspoken. “Grandfather was so proud. You’d have thought I’d taken on Napoleon single-handed. After Waterloo and those final days, it was horrid to see him look at me . . . through me . . . as if I was nothing . . . as if I no longer existed.”

  “I know that look.”

  “Do you? What on earth could the duke’s favorite have done to warrant such harshness? The man thought the sun rose and set in you.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. Just remembe
r that being a favorite only means you have farther to fall.” She crossed to the window, pushing back the curtains to look down upon the street. “I’ve missed you too, Gray. For years, Deepings has been a ghost of its former self, but since your exile, it’s become a tomb. A tomb for the living.”

  “Grandfather’s really dying?”

  “A breath of air could blow his soul through the Gateway. It might be your last chance to make peace with him . . . and with yourself.” She turned to see Gray pull himself to his feet and take a few shaky steps toward his bed. Tremors quivered his body, every muscle taut with lingering pain. He leaned against the post, dark head bowed.

  “What would I say to him?” he asked.

  “Tell him you love him,” she answered.

  “And if that’s a lie?”

  “He’s only a few weeks left. He’ll never know.”

  He lifted his head, eyes cold as steel in a bleak and brutal face. “I’ll know.”

  * * *

  Gray rubbed at his bandaged hand in an attempt to alleviate the infuriating itch of healing across his scarred palm. It helped, but not much, and he finally jammed his hand into a pocket, hoping out of sight would mean out of mind. Glancing up, he was just in time to catch David St. Leger holding the one and only copy in existence of Cathal Du’s States of Mirage by a dog-eared corner. “Bloody hell, David. That book’s a priceless historical artifact. Don’t dangle it like something the dog hawked up.”

  David dropped the book in a flutter of dusty pages. “Calm down. It’s fine. If it’s lasted a thousand years, I don’t think one dangling will do it any harm.”

  Gray rubbed his temples. “Can you restrain him, Mac? My brain feels mushy as an egg; the last thing I need this morning is David’s brand of humor.”

  Mac Flannery looked up from the sheaf of pages in his hand long enough to cock a dubious eyebrow in question. “What would you have me do? Tie him to a chair and gag him?”

  “If need be,” Gray barked, immediately regretting it as pain radiated from his tender skull all the way down into his toes.

  “Why did you even bother asking me here if all you’re going to do is threaten and insult?” David crossed his arms as he settled deeper into his chair and put his boots up on the tea table.

  “I ask myself that very question.” Gray had an almost overwhelming urge to wipe off the offending look with his fists. Hardly the first time he’d wanted to pummel David senseless. Doubtless it wouldn’t be the last. But it was clear by the annoying smirk that St. Leger goaded him. Gray refused to give him the satisfaction. It would only encourage him.

  “I think command has gone to your head.” David eyed him over his steepled fingers. “You’re not that much older than I am, yet you treat me like an addled child.”

  “That’s because you act like an addled child more often than not.”

  David breezed past this criticism unabated. “What of Mac? You don’t treat him with such a lack of respect.”

  Gray’s headache was now oozing down his spine into his boots. Even his eyebrows hurt. “I doubt Mac acted like a child even when he was one.”

  “Good point,” David muttered.

  “Here, St. Leger.” Mac poured him a tall glass of whisky. “Sip it very very slowly.”

  For five years, Adam Kinloch, David St. Leger, Mac Flannery, and Gray had served together as military scouts. From Lisbon, through Spain, over the Pyrenees into France, they’d prowled, slunk, stalked, and soared, gathering intelligence where no mere mortals could. Until the chaotic days before Waterloo, when a Fey-blood had cursed them with his dying breath.

  Exile caused their friendship to unravel. Adam’s murder brought them together again. And now treason bound them fast in a dangerous alliance.

  Mac’s strict sense of honor, devotion to duty, and raw courage made him a valuable asset to the rebel’s cause. But David possessed more cunning, street smarts, and savage battle prowess than any man Gray had ever known. He trusted the two of them with his life. He loved them like brothers. Even when, in the case of David, he wanted to bash him over the head.

  “Where’s your bride, St. Leger? Maybe she can control you.”

  “Callista likes to try.” David tossed back his whisky and held out the glass for another. “If I know my wife, she’s babbling nonsense at Mac’s son and wishing for one of her own.” He shuddered. “Frightening thought.”

  Mac’s wife, Bianca, had recently given birth, the boy barely over a month old. Gray had watched Mac with Declan; seen a father’s pride warring with the pain of knowing he’d not live to see his son grow to manhood.

  “I believe Bianca and the other ladies headed out into the garden,” Mac volunteered. “Your . . . house guest . . . was quite taken with Declan.”

  “Her name is Meeryn.” He paused. “Meeryn Munro.”

  “I still can’t believe she asked you to return to Deepings.”

  “Pryor seeks to parlay.”

  “You believe that?” David was on his third whisky by now, loosening years of bitter resentment and a simmering anger that was never far from the surface.

  Gray managed to topple into a chair before he doubled over and collapsed. It would do his dignity no good to retch all over the floor or faint dead away. “I have no reason to doubt her, but Pryor’s request comes at the perfect time and gives me the perfect entrée into the holding.”

  “To do what exactly?” David asked cautiously.

  Pause for dramatic effect, then . . . “Lift the Fey-blood curse once and for all.”

  Mac’s eyes seemed to take on a hungry desperate gleam. “How?”

  “With these.” He spread four disks out on the table: silver, gold, copper, bronze.

  “The Keys of Gylferion—you found them all.”

  Four disks forged by the Fey to imprison the traitorous warlord Lucan after the Battle of Camlann and Arthur’s fall. Scattered and lost for centuries, only to be brought together again on a snowy mountaintop in Wales three years ago when the Imnada warlord was inadvertently released from his eternal torment. Then scattered again, this time deliberately, in a last attempt to keep them from the hands of the Imnada’s enemies. Gray had moved heaven and earth to discover their whereabouts. Offered any price. Committed any crime.

  His determination had paid off in these bits of dented, discolored metal laid before them.

  “Lady Delia brought me the last one a few days ago,” he said.

  “How did she lay hands on it?” Mac asked. “It was supposedly locked up tighter than the crown jewels in an Amhas-draoi vault.”

  “Knowing Lady Delia, she seduced it away from its owner,” David said caustically. “That woman could make a dead man stiff, and she damn well knows it. I’ve seen her reduce the most hard-bitten misogynist to a dancing puppet on a string.”

  “You speak from experience?” Mac asked, barely hiding his smirk.

  David held up his hands palm out as if fending off an attacker. “Not me. I’m all about self-preservation. You won’t see me placing my head in the lioness’s mouth.”

  “Lady Delia risked her life to bring me the last disk,” Gray said quietly. “A bit more respect should be owing.”

  “What was her price?” David folded his arms across his chest matter-of-factly, eyebrows raised in wary cynicism. “Lady Delia doesn’t do anything out of the goodness of her heart. She’s all about the advantage, the going rate.”

  “She needed to escape the country. I agreed to assist her.”

  “Finally diddled the wrong man, did she?”

  Gray clamped his jaw so hard he thought his teeth would crack. Yes, she had. And paid for it a hundred times over. He owed her any price she named.

  “Lady Delia’s a loose cannon, Gray,” Mac said with a grim twist to his mouth. “Always has been. Her name is at the edge of every Fey-blood conspiracy, her face hovering just beyond the reach of our informants.”

  “She may not hold to any particular cause, but she’s loyal . . . to me.”

 
; Mac and David exchanged looks that spoke paragraphs, but it was David—naturally—who took the bull by the horns. “Care to enlighten two old friends as to the origin of this constancy?”

  “No,” Gray replied coolly, hoping they would take the hint. He’d not the stamina to fight off their gadflying much longer.

  “Your discretion does you credit. I just hope you’re not placing trust in the wrong woman.”

  Gray accepted Mac’s warning, but it was far too late for half measures and faint hearts. His association with Lady Delia was necessary. He’d not second-guess himself now.

  “If you have the disks, why travel to Deepings?” Mac asked, injecting reason back into the conversation.

  “The Fey-blood sorcerer D’espe meant to kill us outright for the Charleroi massacre. Instead our Imnada blood twisted his magic into a corrosive twining of disparate powers that became the curse we suffer. Only by bringing those two forces back together can we unravel the separate threads until they fall away, leaving us free. The Keys of Gylferion, wrought to imprison Lucan in the Unseelie between, are the same twist of Fey and Imnada powers. Bring them together, strike a spark, and the curse will explode.”

  “And the spark lies in Deepings?” David asked.

  “Jai Idrish.” Mac’s eyes widened in sudden understanding.

  Gray nodded. “Just so. Jai Idrish is the only thing that even comes close to possessing as much innate power as the true Fey. If I can harness the forces locked within the crystal, I should be able to not only separate but completely sever the knotted threads of Fey and Imnada magic binding us to the curse.”

  “Right, so two years hunting down this knowledge, and the moment you discover this gem of a revelation, the new N’thuil shows up on your doorstep in the middle of the night inviting you to Deepings. What a bleeding coincidence!”

  “Do I sense sarcasm, St. Leger?”

  “I hope you sense a damned trap.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Think? Hell, I fucking know it’s one.”