by Alexa Egan
Gray hadn’t realized how much he’d lost until he began foraging his mind for lost memories of his brother. His heart still twisted in his chest and occasionally his voice would tremble over a recollection, but each instance grew easier, and Ollie’s face grew bright and clear again where it had once been no more than a dark shadow Gray shied away from.
“Who’s Ollie?” David asked with a curious tone in his voice.
Gray downed his wine in one gulp, the sandwich caught in his throat. “He was my brother.”
David speared another olive. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
Meeryn went blankly still as Gray poured another glass from the bottle on the table.
“I mean, I knew you had a brother, but I never knew he had a name. That is, I knew he had a name, just that you and he . . .” David flashed desperate eyes toward Meeryn in a silent plea for help.
Gray rolled his glass around, watching the amber liquid spin. “I don’t speak about him much.”
“Try at all,” David retorted.
Gray shot him an irritated gaze. “He’s been gone a long time. There didn’t seem to be a point.”
Meeryn’s gaze clouded, and he noticed that her own wine seemed to be disappearing as swiftly as his. “Do you remember the time he ran off to Plymouth on your grandfather’s best hunter and came back with seventy-five pounds he’d won off three sailors in a game of dice?”
Gray felt his mouth twitch upward despite the hard knot in his gut. “Grandfather couldn’t decide whether to be angry at his theft or proud of his winnings.”
Meeryn laughed. Did anyone else hear how forced it sounded? “What about when he was almost taken up by the press gang in Polperro and had to dress up like a woman to escape?”
Gray laughed. “Mother scolded him for his irresponsibility. Father scolded him for his ugly choice of bonnet.”
The stories flowed with the wine and the food, each one more outrageous than the last. David offered a few choice tales from his own sordid past, while Gray reluctantly added a wartime escapade with a donkey, a chicken, and a bag of peppermints. The camaraderie disguised the dread of what was to come. It did not ease it. All three knew they sought to outrun a coming storm. All three knew it would swallow them anyway. There was no outrunning it. Only outlasting it.
David wiped away a tear after Gray’s hilarious retelling of Ollie’s being sent down from university for setting fire to a dean. “He sounds like my kind of man.”
“He was arrogant, prideful, sarcastic, clever,” Meeryn interrupted, “and just when you thought he was the most conceited, pigheaded, self-important know-it-all, he could turn around and do something incredibly compassionate or kind and you’d forget all that and want to follow him about like a puppy and hope he noticed you.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” David said with a sideways glance toward Gray.
She put her glass down, and this time her smile held real amusement as she studied him like a pinned bug before announcing, “A little, perhaps.”
Gray’s spine locked, his shoulders bracing in an instinctual defense. “I’m nothing like Ollie.”
She leaned across the table, a hand barely touching his. Just a skim of her fingers, but enough to make his chest tighten. She caught and held his gaze. “No, my heart, you’re not like Ollie in any way that matters.”
“I think that was supposed to be a compliment,” he said, trying to laugh off the vising squeeze on his lungs with a jest.
She didn’t take the bait. Instead her hand slid into his and held on. “You spent a lifetime trying to emulate a ghost, Gray. You never realized you’d stepped out of his shadow long ago.”
15
Mac arrived with a shake of his greatcoat and a shovel of wet hair off his face. An afternoon storm slanted rain over the rooftops and split the air with window-rattling thunder. The wind pushing east came as a brief respite from the oppressive heat that lay like a dome over the city. If fortune held, the wind would die with nightfall and fog would collect along the city’s streets, giving them the advantage of cover should they need it.
“Report?” Gray asked.
“Things are quiet. None’s seen hide nor hair of any of Dromon’s Ossine. If they’re hunting, they’re well hidden.”
Gray locked the front door behind him. “Oh, they’re hunting. I’ve no doubt about that. Pryor can’t allow me to win free of the curse. Not now, with the leadership of the clans in play. He needs me out of the way once and for all.”
“But will he really come himself to see it’s done?”
“He understands the significance of the Gylferion. His shaman’s training will have ensured it. Not only might they hold the key to the curse, they are priceless and powerful artifacts in their own right. Can you imagine the accomplishment it would be for him to return them to the clans after so many centuries? He would be hailed as a hero; a champion of the Imnada.”
“Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.” Mac shuddered.
“So we stop him. And we bring the Gylferion home, curse lifted and lives returned to us.”
“You make it sound so easy. Defeat the Ossine, kill Dromon, break a Fey-blood spell, reclaim your throne. Have I left anything out?” Mac shot a pointed look toward Meeryn descending the stairs, a smile of welcome on her face.
Gray frowned and swallowed back his reply. He dare not look ten steps ahead to a future as distant as the moon from the earth. He must stick to the task at hand. Work through the immediate problem of surviving the next twenty-four hours. Fretting over his feelings for Meeryn like an adolescent schoolboy would only get him killed—and her as well.
“No,” was his curt reply.
Mac’s face tightened while Meeryn’s fell, but at least he’d be offered no more leading questions. Time—if he was fortunate—to mend his fences with Meeryn. And if not, better she hate him than mourn for him.
“Good afternoon, Captain Flannery,” Meeryn said, passing Gray in an affronted swish of skirts.
Mac offered Meeryn a gentlemanly nod. “Miss Munro. I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in all this.”
She paused on the bottom riser, head lifted, eyes solemn. “I’m not. I’ve asked myself for the last two months why I was chosen by Jai Idrish to serve as N’thuil. Perhaps this is the crystal’s answer.”
“To save the clans from Sir Dromon?”
“No, I’m not a warrior. I know that now. But if I can help to lift the curse, then Gray, with your help, can save the clans from Sir Dromon.”
Vanished was the hoydenish freckled girl Gray remembered. In her place stood a competent, strong, and very determined woman. Where once there had been frenzied enthusiasm now there was bold and fiery passion, and the reckless bravado of childhood had firmed to an unhesitating courage.
Would she be the same woman if she’d married Ollie, as Grandfather had intended? Or even if she had married Gray and taken up the destiny others had laid for her? He didn’t think so. She was a result of choices made and roads taken, not just by her but by others around her. He wouldn’t regret the lost years behind them. But he’d damn well fight to keep from losing any more.
She turned her attention to Gray, expression cool as a winter ocean. “While you’re meeting with Mac and David, I’m going to double-check the house. Secure the windows. Be sure all the doors are latched and bolted.” The scent of her was cool and salty clean. Her eyes gleamed, dark and mysterious as the depths in which she swam as seal. “You have an odd look on your face. Too much wine with lunch?”
“Waxing philosophical.”
“Always dangerous.”
“In this case . . . long past due,” he replied.
“Well, I hope you came to some profound conclusions.”
“Ask me again in a week, and I may enlighten you.”
“It’s a deal, Your Grace.” Her voice glided molten and smoky smooth along his bones. The sinuous grace of her slender body as she picked her way through the rubble of the entry hall reminded
him of the feline slink of the tiger aspect she’d worn at Marnwood. Proud, bold, and dangerous as hell.
“Uh . . . I’ll . . . ah . . . just join David, shall I?” Mac’s voice sounded from down a long hazy tunnel.
Gray barely noticed his departure. Hell, he’d barely notice a full frontal assault from half a dozen assassin-trained Ossine at this moment. Hands upon his chest, Meeryn leaned up on her toes, her mouth sliding invitingly warm and soft against his. She paused, looking into his eyes, a mischievous glint in her gaze.
“What?” he asked, almost plaintively.
“Waiting for the moment when your good sense reasserts itself.” The light in her face faded. “Or the moment when I gain some.”
“Anything?” he asked.
She pursed her lips. “No, I’m singularly impractical and unapologetic.”
She kissed him again, a slow, deep passionate kiss that left his senses swimming. Cherry wine had nothing on Meeryn for inducing head spins and hallucinations.
He stepped out of her arms before he forgot himself completely and backed her against a convenient wall, skirts around her waist. “If you’re going to be wandering about on your own, take this.” He grabbed his dubious gift from a nearby table and knelt to ruck up her skirts.
“Gray!” She flushed crimson. “Even my impracticality has its limits.”
He skimmed her leg, his cock hard as a hammer. “I’ve embarrassed you? I didn’t know that was possible.”
“That almost sounds like a challenge,” she said, offering him a look that could melt steel.
What would he give for fifteen minutes and an empty house? He forced himself to stop his ascent midway up her thigh, though the wicked and extremely excited parts of him wished to continue the climb. Instead he took deep breaths as he buckled the sheath’s leather strap around her thigh. Slid the dirk into place, its ebony hilt capped with the de Coursys’ double-headed eagle bearing five arrows.
“I know you lost the one Conal gave you. I thought this might take its place.”
Color flooded her cheeks. “It’s not even my birthday. What do you think? Does it match my eyes?” she asked with a flutter of her lashes.
“Not many women can wear a deadly weapon and carry it off with such panache. You’re the one in a million.”
He stood, dropping her skirt in place. Offered her the pistol he wore at his belt. “This, you carry. And blow the head off anything that moves.”
“What if it’s one of you?”
The edge of his mouth quirked in a dark smile. “Then we should have ducked.”
She accepted it with a faint lift of her brows. “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment—I mean, what woman doesn’t like to receive her own private arsenal—but if the Ossine want to get in, they will. I’m not the only one with the ability to shift to any form. And this place is riddled with mouseholes.”
“Humor me,” he said, with one more check of the bolt on the front door before he sent her off with a last kiss, then took a few moments of deep breaths and arctic thoughts to recover.
In the library, Mac and David were waiting for him. David wearing a smirk that always meant trouble; Mac staring at the ceiling as if the answers to life were written among the cornices. Gray chose to ignore them both. He righted an overturned chair. Stooped to pick up a fragment of Wedgwood, a jagged triangle of celadon green with a woman’s arm in white, all that was left of the expensive vase that had formerly sat in one corner. He tossed it back on the floor to be lost among the piles of rubble and refuse. “Pryor’s desperate.”
“Not that you’re not well aware but I think it begs repeating; Dromon’s going to have a bloody army of Ossine with him,” David replied, dropping onto a slightly battered sofa. “Are you prepared for that? For what that might mean?”
“Torture, dismemberment, death, desecration.” Mac ticked them off on his fingers.
“And not that I don’t love a good disemboweling with some broken bones for good measure,” David added, “but I tend to prefer to be on the winning side. We’re not exactly . . . ah . . . equal in numbers. You, me, Mac, and . . .” He waved a hand as if searching for an answer.
“Lucan,” Gray finished for him.
“Four of us against Dromon’s marauding bloodthirsty Ossine. Love those odds. I can see why you don’t gamble.”
Gray took a seat. His normally organized and immaculate desk had been turned inside out. Folios dumped, drawers pulled out and upended in a blizzard of files and scattered pages. Ledgers ripped open then ripped apart. “Can you think of anyone you’d rather have fighting at your side than the Kingkiller?”
“Ten thousand of Wellington’s finest? A hundred of Boney’s best?” David wisecracked. “A few dozen street urchins throwing stones? A nasty puppy with a case of the mange?”
Gray began the long task of salvaging what he could from the mess. “Sorry, none were available. You’ll have to take what you can get.”
“Me and my overactive honorable nobility. It’s never done anything but get me into trouble.”
“Where is Lucan?” Mac asked. He stood at the window facing the street, his feline gaze on the afternoon traffic, his pose one of cautious vigilance. Gray could almost imagine the very tip of the panther shapechanger’s tail twitching in catlike watchfulness.
“He said he’d be here. I don’t question him too closely.”
“Afraid of what you might find out?” David asked.
“Something like that.” A ledger of receipts. A book on alchemy. Correspondence from his tailor.
David sat up. “Not to rain on your brilliant plan, General, but even if somehow we manage to win over a company of zealous enforcers happy to stake us out like yesterday’s laundry, we’re still not free of the curse. You’re still not free of the curse.” Leave it to David to point out the obvious.
“No, not yet.” A book, pages scattered from the broken binding. Another bore a boot print, the words a pulpy mess. A third had been torn to shreds. “But the Gylferion are here. Jai Idrish is here. The two of you are here. It’s only a matter of finding the missing piece that brings it all into focus.”
“Adam’s not missing, Gray. He’s dead. And not even Callista’s gifts of necromancy can pull him free of death for our purpose,” David commented with his usual flippant delivery.
Had Gray not been aggravated, exhausted, uneasy, and slightly feverish, he might have ignored him. But the curse gnawed at the edges of his consciousness like a cancer. He worried for those he’d put in harm’s way and grieved for those he’d put in the ground. Too many lives. Too many souls. Too many ghosts to drag him into despair if he weakened for a moment. He slammed a book onto the desktop with force to rattle and sway the chandelier.
“Do you think I don’t know that Adam’s dead, St. Leger? Do you think somehow I’ve forgotten the day we lowered him into the ground like a grub rather than releasing him to the wind and the flames in the proper way?”
“I think you’ve forgotten that it’s taken you two years just to gather these dented disks.” David’s tone carried a sharp whipcrack, reminding Gray that the laughing scoundrel had a dangerous edge. “You can’t expect to find every answer in an old book or organize your way to victory. Sometimes you just have to improvise and hope events come right in the end.”
“The answer is here. The knowledge is in one of these volumes.” Gray rose from his chair and began pulling books off the broken, battered shelves. Those he recognized as valuable, he placed on a table. Others he dismissed, tossing them aside. The pile grew along with his frustration. “I just have to find—”
“What? A sentence that reads, ‘To break a Fey-blood curse add one onion, dance around the table in your small clothes, and touch your nose with your tongue’?” David shot back.
“Don’t be a blasted idiot.” Gray plucked a book up from the topmost stack he’d made. Leafed through the torn pages for something . . . anything . . .
David’s shadow fell across the page as Gray leaned a
gainst the table. “Are you certain this duel with Sir Dromon you’ve contrived isn’t your way of going out in a blaze of glory rather than a whimper of shriveled weakness?”
Gray opened the next book, scanning the two chapters on Golethmenes. There wasn’t much. The author had only the vaguest theories to espouse. He plucked up a third, but the pages were ripped clean away, leaving nothing but a few ragged threads where the binding had frayed.
“Or your way of exacting the vengeance you were denied when your grandfather died?” David continued.
His question pierced Gray’s concentration like a swordthrust to the gut. He felt the edges of the leather folio bend under the force of his grip. Gray hadn’t killed his grandfather, but he’d imagined his death more times than he could count. “I never wanted vengeance.”
“Bullshit,” David barked. “You’ve always wanted it. You may have prettied it up in a noble cause, but come down to it, this has always been about standing over your enemy and driving a sword into his chest and seeing the life drain away. Smiling when he begged for mercy. Watching him writhe in agony like he watched you.”
“That’s not true.”
He no longer saw the words upon the page or the monk’s elaborate illuminations. His stare turned inward to a scaffold, a crowd of unsmiling faces, and the rank odors of piss and sweat and vomit as his life was taken from him.
He’d had the opportunity. The old man had invited it. Gray had turned away. Was sparing the duke’s life a weakness or a strength? Did it matter? Vengeance might have been his reason for entering into this conspiracy. What drove him now was more than simple retaliation.
“You’re wrong, David,” he repeated. “And this conversation is over.”
“Is that an order, Major?”
“If you want to take it as such,” he snarled through clenched teeth.
“You can deny until you’re blue in the face, but if you do, you’re lying to yourself. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
He locked his gaze on David’s, fists itching to knock the bastard on his ass. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
