Warrior's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  “You’ve cut yourself.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed her cheek. She winced and tried to step away but he followed. “Hold still. You’re smearing it all over your face.”

  Through the throbbing in her cheek, the throbbing in her head, and the throbbing between her legs, a dim thought surfaced. “Did it work? Did we break the curse?”

  His gaze slid past hers to rest for a moment on Jai Idrish. Then his shoulder dipped in a shrug of surrender, his face hard with despair. “No.”

  * * *

  He stood at his window, staring out across the courtyard to the lights of the main house. Counted three from the left and four up from the ground floor. There would be his grandfather’s apartments. The arched window to the left of the ivy creeping over the stone balcony would be his bedchamber. He would be sleeping now. They would all be sleeping now. All but Gray.

  He slept little. A few hours here or there. Brandy helped, but his personality didn’t allow him to imbibe to unconsciousness. Not even tonight, when drinking himself senseless would have been more than justified. Instead he fingered the four disks, shuffling them and reshuffling them in infinite designs that meant nothing while his mind spun endlessly in pointless circles.

  Bits of tin . . . a blacksmith’s forgeries . . .

  Failure had always lurked in the back of his mind. He wasn’t so naive that he didn’t understand the odds against his success, nor so deaf that he didn’t hear the persistent whispers hinting at his demise by the end of the year. Why, then, did he feel powerless and broken, unable to settle on contingencies, incapable of planning for what came next?

  His hand hovered above the silver disk of Krylesos Pryth.

  Perhaps therein lay his answer.

  He had planned. For a moment, he’d glimpsed a future beyond the curse; a life unchained from the Fey-blood’s black magic. A startled revelation lifting him high only to drop him to the ground as reality smashed him flat.

  Meeryn’s kiss . . . Meeryn’s touch . . . the scent of her in his nose . . . the taste of her on his tongue . . . the memory of her urgent moans in his ears . . .

  He had failed. The curse remained. There would be no chance for more than these few precious hours, this short gift of days, fraught as they were with danger.

  Gray stripped down until the breeze puckered the skin across his bare back, though it did little to cool the simmering rage twisting his innards and reddening his vision. He felt the first stirrings of the shift, his body hungering to hurt someone as he was hurt, to experience the sweet release of a predator’s quick deadly strike, and feel life bleed out between his fingers. An ignoble sentiment, but the totality of all he’d lost tonight shredded his honor with a flogging’s agony.

  The power of the Imnada took him over. Wind swept over his wings. His razored beak opened on a cry of fury and anguish both. He lifted off to circle the skies above Deepings, where an old man slept, a cunning man plotted, and an extraordinary woman dreamed.

  He’d returned home prepared to face his ghosts.

  He just hadn’t realized he might still be in love with one.

  7

  Meeryn spent the following morning searching for Gray. Not because she thought he might do something foolish, but . . . well, all right, maybe because she thought he might do something foolish. Her last sight of him before he disappeared from the tower had not inspired confidence. His pallor was bleached as bone, deep grooves cut into his face, eyes hard as stones and drained of every emotion but fury. She’d tried to console him, but he’d returned a brusque, twisted smile that sent fear slithering into the pit of her stomach. What would his fury drive him to do? How desperate had he become? And if he decided death was all that was left for him, would he decide to take his grandfather down with him as Sir Dromon speculated?

  She refused to believe it. Gray might not be the boy of her childhood memories, but he was no murderer. Still, she couldn’t shake the idea that he was fast reaching some final point of no return; a crossed line from which there was no withdrawing.

  She looked for Gray in the guest hall, wandering the chilly, carpeted corridors and poking her head into the empty, disused rooms. It had been years since Deepings had needed to open this part of the house to support the train of functionaries and servants accompanying the Gather elders. It showed in the Holland-covered furniture, stacks of packing crates and straw-stuffed barrels, and the sour air of neglect hanging in the dusty air. In her search, she came across a pair of maidservants hoisting away an empty bath and a basket of dripping towels, a footman with a newly cleaned suit of clothes, and an Ossine enforcer, known by the red-tasseled cord hanging from his stitched leather scabbard. His gaze slid from her face to the floor as he rounded the corner outside Gray’s rooms and slipped out a side door to the yard beyond. It wasn’t until he was gone that she realized he was the young man from the attack on the road outside the holding.

  Fear fluttering her insides, she hurried the rest of the way to Gray’s rooms, but there was no one within. The place was empty but for an enormous black crow resting on a windowsill, its eyes sharp, its long beak sharper. “Do you know where he’s gone?” she asked.

  The crow preened its glossy feathers and took off with a squawk.

  “Now I’ve really lost my head, if I’ve sunk to talking to myself,” Meeryn muttered.

  She looked for Gray on the battlements, where the wind tore her breath away and whipped her skirts against her legs. The sea stretched out to the west like pewter satin, a ship sailed hull-up, north toward the Bristol inlet. To the south and east lay the estate’s wide landscaped parkland, meadowed hills spotted with small farmsteads, and creek-fed valleys where the trees rose old and close from a carpet of moss and fern. She couldn’t see the swirling ebb and flow of the Palings from here, but she knew they were out there just beyond the edge of her vision. Since she was chosen, she’d been able to sense them even if she couldn’t see them, and she knew their strength failed week by week, year by year. How long would their waning power protect the clans? How long until the Fey-bloods crossed holding lands unchecked by the warded mists?

  Questions she’d been asked over and over in the two months she’d been N’thuil. Questions for which she’d had no answer.

  Last night, for the first time since she’d come to her senses with her hands upon the crystal and the angry eyes of the Arch Ossine upon her, she’d felt the sphere rouse from its slumber. She’d sensed a presence beyond her own, a great eye opening, a powerful mind ticking over. Had Gray been the cause? Had Jai Idrish stirred to welcome home the last son of Idrin? Had her ascension to N’thuil been a small part of its greater plan, and did that plan include Gray? If so, then why hadn’t it lifted the curse laid upon him? Was it because it chose not to? Or because it couldn’t?

  A crow lit on the balustrade beside her, regarding Meeryn with cocked head and outspread feathers. The same crow, she was sure of it. Not Imnada. She felt no hint of shifter magic. Instead the tingly rush of Fey power buzzed and burned over her skin and twisted her guts to knots. On any other morning, she’d have raised the alarm and summoned Sir Dromon’s enforcers to deal with an intruder so close to the center of Imnada power. But her questions raised too many doubts. Gray’s crash back into her life churned up too many uncertainties.

  “You must be worried about him, too,” she ventured.

  The crow hopped a few paces toward her, pecking at the stones.

  “I let him down, didn’t I? I let them all down,” Meeryn said, scanning the woods and fields as if seeing them for the first time. “Jai Idrish isn’t sleeping. It’s dying . . . like Gray is dying. Like the Imnada are dying.”

  The crow squawked as it took off from the balustrade in a flutter of wings to soar out over the ocean, a black speck against the silver green of the sea.

  Finally, Meeryn looked for Gray in the library amid stacks of old parchments and musty leather-bound volumes, glossy rosewood étagères and glass-fronted cabinets containing pottery from G
reece, glassware from Rome, and statuary from Mesopotamia and the Far East. A map desk held unrolled charts of the continents, the oceans, and the heavens, held down by bits of rock, a paperweight, a box of old coins. A narrow door in the east wall led into a smaller room, a darker room, a room kept locked and only one man possessed the key. A room lined with shelves upon which rested the entire Imnada race written out by thousands of different hands over thousands of years, lines connecting the past to the future and each clan member to the next in an elaborate web.

  Each separate clan had its own Ossine shaman who maintained their scrolls, marking each birth, death, and marriage. But the Arch Ossine collected and maintained all of them. His was the final word in all unions between the greater houses and his influence was felt down to the least of the traveling shamans with their bags of medicinal herbs and their supply of cookfire stories.

  This afternoon the door stood open, a light flickering in the room housing the bloodline scrolls. Voices rose and fell in a quiet murmur of conspiracy, shadows slanting long and jagged across the carpeted library floor.

  “. . . all in readiness? No slip-ups . . . end this now . . .”

  “Aye . . . over before nightfall . . . as you ordered, sir . . .”

  The high tenor she recognized as the Arch Ossine, but it was the deeper, gruffer voice that sent a shiver of cold memory splashing over her shoulders—the enforcer Thorsh.

  She backed away a silent footstep at a time, freezing when the door swung farther open and a figure emerged with a rustle of dry paper and a fastidious cough into his handkerchief. “Lady N’thuil? Are you in need of assistance?” Sir Dromon asked.

  “I’m looking for Major de Coursy. He’s not been seen since last night.”

  “No? I do hope nothing’s happened to him. It would be quite an embarrassment after I specifically invited him here under a flag of truce.”

  Suspicion chilled her skin. “What could happen to him here among his own people?”

  “But are they his own people? There are those who don’t agree with my negotiations, nor do they trust the Major is here for the purpose of peace. Some might take matters into their own hands and damn the consequences.”

  “You mean like Mr. Thorsh here?”

  The enforcer stepped from the room behind the Arch Ossine, his eyes alight with malicious pleasure, an ivory toothpick tight between his browned teeth. “Good afternoon, Lady N’thuil. Hope you bear no hard feelings about the other day. I knew the man wouldn’t really shoot you, though. Knew it was all a bluff.”

  “Did you?” she answered coldly. “Forgive my skepticism.”

  He laughed, rolling his toothpick around his mouth.

  “What is Mr. Thorsh doing here? The man nearly killed the duke’s heir and myself,” she said sharply to Sir Dromon.

  “He saved you from the duke’s heir, you mean,” Pryor simpered. “Had it not been for his quick thinking, de Coursy would have shot you in cold blood.”

  “And if not for Thorsh’s brazen attack on the coachman, de Coursy would have had no cause to threaten anyone. You assured me he would be punished for his actions.”

  “You sound more and more like one of de Coursy’s sympathizers. Should I be concerned, Lady N’thuil?”

  Should she?

  She had always known Sir Dromon for a man of skilled oratory and subtle machinations. It’s what had made him so invaluable during the duke’s illness as tensions rose among the clans and whispers of Fey-blood brutality were first heard. But who had started those whispers? Who had encouraged those tensions? Old uncertainties blended with new fears, and she took a step back as if distancing herself from the Arch Ossine and his plans.

  “Perhaps I was wrong to use one so . . . ah . . . close to our idealistic young heir to convince him of my good intentions,” he continued. “As a woman, you’re too easily swayed by a handsome face and a charmer’s tongue.”

  Thorsh stepped forward with a greasy smile and a gaze that made her want to go to her chambers and scrub. “ ’Specially when he’s probably putting that tongue in her—”

  Sir Dromon held up a hand. “Thank you, Mr. Thorsh. We don’t need to belabor the analysis.”

  “I’m willing to concede that de Coursy might have a point,” she argued. “Neither my femininity nor his face has anything to do with the facts of the matter.”

  She’d given up any pretense of being the eager, questioning student as soon as Dromon insinuated that her support might be rooted in desire. She might desire Gray—all right, fine—the word “might” didn’t enter into it. She longed for Gray with a wanton hunger that startled her down to her toes and made her want to slide her hands then her lips over every inch of his warrior’s body. But that had nothing to do with her quickly mounting doubts about Sir Dromon’s sincerity or the clans’ continuing seclusion.

  “And what would those facts be, my lady?” the Arch Ossine asked, a new harshness in his tone. He’d obviously given up the pretense of playing obliging, indulgent schoolmaster as well.

  At least they knew where each stood now.

  She folded her arms over her chest. “That no matter how many people we kill, there’s no way to erase the Fey-bloods knowledge of us. The Imnada must deal with the world as it is, not how we wish it to be, and with our numbers dwindling and the Palings weakening in strength, perhaps it’s time to look for a new path.”

  “Fine words, if misguided. But you’re young, Lady N’thuil. Unrealistic. Forgive me if I say, even a little naive.” His pale eyes narrowed, his face splotchy with checked emotion. “If we’re weak it’s because men like de Coursy corrupt us from within. They spread their lies where the feeble-minded sup them up with spoons. Mr. Thorsh has just told me of a groom caught sending messages to his brother in aid of the rebels. Luckily, the damage was limited and the threat eliminated.”

  She gasped. “You’ve killed him without a trial or any hearing before the Gather? Was His Grace told?”

  “He is feverish and shouldn’t be troubled. It’s up to me to hold the line against the Fey-bloods; a sacred trust I take on willingly. And sometimes we must do things against our principles for the sake of our security. If you question my methods, perhaps it’s because secretly you side with the Imnada’s enemies.” He stepped close, his lips curled in an ugly sneer. “Perhaps the rot has traveled closer to the core than I could ever imagine.”

  “You overstep your bounds, sir,” she answered with a tone that could cut steel.

  A glint of dark emotion burned in his eyes, and for the first time she was witness as his fastidious demeanor slipped to reveal a frightening mania. “As do you, my lady.”

  Her suspicions blossomed into certainty. Sir Dromon may speak of peace and reconciliation, but his words were as false as his simpering clerkish façade. He wore the mantle of Imnada defender, but he just might be their greatest threat.

  * * *

  A footman woke Gray as dawn broke over the sea. His grandfather had agreed to see him. He should make himself ready for an audience as soon as he could dress and appear in His Grace’s chambers.

  Now it was after ten and he’d been kicking his heels for hours, awaiting his summons like a bloody village tradesman. He paced the small salon for the hundredth time, coming to rest in front of the family portrait holding pride of place over the mantel. Father standing proud in front of Deepings’ main gates. Mother seated, her smile almost angelic as she gazed out at the world. Leaning against her chair stood his elder brother, Oliver, tall and golden with eyes blue as sapphires. In her lap lay Gray swaddled in the bonnet and gown of a newborn. The idyll had not lasted. Gray was the only one left.

  “There you are. I’ve been searching everywhere.” Meeryn burst into the room, skirts whipped about her legs, face alive with relief. No hint of discomfiture in her manner. No trace of awkwardness as she took his hand.

  He wished he could say the same. This was Meeryn, pigtails and pinafores. Shared laughter and shared confidences. She’d saved him from drowning,
then she’d saved him from himself when relief from his grief and guilt had lain one deep cut of the knife away. There was nowhere to hide with her, no corner of his soul she’d not touched . . . a horrifying thought.

  “I was told Grandfather agreed to see me. I’m beginning to think it’s merely a ploy to humiliate me one final time. Do you suppose he’ll order me to recite the five statutes of Gunthar the Just or prove my mastery with smallsword and rapier?”

  “If your little demonstration on the road is any indication, His Grace should be more than satisfied in your battle prowess, but you can’t stay to show him. You need to leave Deepings.”

  “Aren’t you the one who twisted my arm to get me to come?”

  “Yes, and now I’m the one shoving you back out the door before it’s too late. Pryor isn’t interested in peace or talking or bringing an end to the bloodletting.”

  “Of course he isn’t. It’s easier to control through fear, and what do the clans fear more than a war with the Fey-bloods?”

  She frowned. “You knew all this and you came anyway.”

  He glanced once more at the portrait, a family at the edge of a precipice. They just didn’t know it yet. “You know why I came, Meeryn.”

  “I feel like such a gullible fool.”

  “You believed Sir Dromon. You’re not the only one sucked in by his pose of selfless devotion to his people. He’s perfected it over a lifetime.”

  “Or did I want to believe him because it gave me a reason to go to London and find you?”

  Awkward had become untenable. “Meeryn . . . about last night . . . we—”

  “Don’t,” she interrupted.

  “Don’t what?”

  She flung up her arms in a tired gesture of surrender. “Don’t say what you’re trying desperately not to say.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That last night was a horrible mistake brought on by overwrought emotions and an atmosphere crackling with raw energy. That lightning does funny things to a person. That it gets under the skin and makes you feel alive and wild and a little reckless.”