Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  “How did you know I was there?” Gray asked, placing the glasses upon a cabinet. Filling them with whisky.

  “You always were horrible at stealth. You have the tread of an elephant. I heard you halfway down the corridor.” David sucked in a breath and resumed the laborious process of dressing. One leg . . . easy does it. “Stick to aerial surveillance and leave scouting enemy terrain to those familiar with the ground.”

  Now for his boots. When had his legs grown so damned long? His feet seemed bloody miles away. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing for his valet. Wishing for any valet. Wishing for a room that didn’t waver in and out of focus.

  “Do you consider Addershiels in the hands of the enemy?” Gray turned around, a glass in each hand. David noted the bandage wrapped around his palm and his waxy complexion and silently cursed the draught’s sinister destruction.

  “The Duncallans, a Fey, and a dead traitor roam the halls. It’s either enemy territory or a circus freak show, and I learned more than I care to about circuses in the past few weeks.” David accepted the glass, though he did not taste. Somehow, the idea of alcohol at—he checked the clock—two in the afternoon didn’t seem quite as appealing as it once had.

  “An awful lot of people track your scent, St. Leger,” Gray commented, sipping his drink.

  If it had been David, he’d have downed the whole in one throat-burning swallow. Hell, he’d have tipped the bottle to his mouth and washed the world away. Or at one time he would have. Gray had always been a cold fish, passionless and prim as any maiden aunt and more severe than a Puritan. Gray was methodical, practical, and calculating. It drove David mad, but it had probably kept him alive through five years, three countries, and countless battles.

  Not that he’d ever admit that to Gray. The man was as puffed up as a bloody rooster as it was.

  “You can use the title, but that doesn’t make me a soldier. Not anymore.”

  “The Ossine believe otherwise,” Gray said.

  “I wonder why. Maybe it has something to do with a stolen book and a dead Imnada courier, and a plot to suck me in that Machiavelli would have endorsed.”

  “The book came from the Deepings library and my grandfather’s collection. It was Sir Dromon Pryor and the Ossine who stole it first. I merely reclaimed it.”

  “I doubt the semantics will make any difference to Kineally’s family when they discover their kin has been buried with a stake through his heart, but I’ll be sure to use it as my defense when the Ossine come to claim my head.”

  One boot on. He gritted his teeth. One to go.

  “I wouldn’t have risked Kineally or you if it weren’t important.”

  “I don’t want to hear about your insurrection or your new friends, Gray. This madness has cost too many lives already. You claim your efforts are to bring about peace and freedom. All I see is a trail of bodies.”

  “I’m offering the clans hope. We’re dying, David. Not just you and me and Mac, but all of us. Every shapechanger in every holding. How long will our kind last? Our clans are fading, our powers dying out, and the Palings barely hold the world away from our lands anymore. We can’t survive without allies, nor can we last more than a few generations without new blood added to the lines.”

  “I’ve seen plenty of blood. Unfortunately, most of it has been mine. Will it be yours next? Or Mac’s? Perhaps Lord and Lady Duncallan’s? Or will they be the ones wielding the blades alongside that feathered Fey and her trained shifter?”

  “James and Katherine are good friends and loyal to the work of peace, David. James is a scholar of Imnada history and Katherine freed Lucan from a Fey prison. Surely that counts for something in your suspicious mind.”

  “Of course, though I’m not sure whether counting Lucan Kingkiller, the shapechangers’ greatest traitor, among your associates is an advantage. This was the man whose lust and crimes instigated a mass slaughter.”

  “And he was also the commander who brokered a truce during the Viyachne Rebellion that spared thousands of lives. Lucan is as much an outcast as any emnil. And in as much danger. After all, he’s a murderer to the Fey-bloods and a traitor to the Imnada.”

  “Sounds familiar. Is that why you’re so chummy?”

  Success. David straightened from pulling on his second boot, winded, nauseated, and dizzy, but fully dressed.

  “I will use any edge I can to topple Pryor and his faction. Lucan is a weapon that can’t be overlooked. He bears a power unheard-of among the Imnada these days. And his strength and his leadership are still talked of today.”

  “As are his lechery and his treason.”

  “Morgana used him. Her witchery ensorcelled him.”

  “Is that what he told you? I think it’s his witchery that has ensorcelled you. Either that or his crow sidekick has cast a spell on you.”

  “They saved you, David. They protected Miss Hawthorne from Victor Corey’s hired gun and they kept you alive when that bullet shaved a groove down your rib and ended against a lung. You owe them your life.”

  “Then the joke’s on them. My life isn’t worth tuppence.”

  “And Callista? How would she have felt had you died?”

  “Don’t talk to me about Callista. She’s not your concern and you know nothing about it.”

  “I know she cares for you. And I know she fears for your future.”

  “She should fear me.” He sat bent in his chair, elbows upon his knees, hands clasped together as if in prayer.

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just send her to Skye, Gray. If you do nothing else for me ever, send her to Skye and safety. I’ll be your man. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  “Whatever I ask?” Gray’s gaze burned like ice.

  “Anything.”

  “Very well. I’ll send her to her aunt. But you’re mine now, David St. Leger. Welcome to my war.”

  * * *

  No matter how Callista stared at herself in the mirror, there was no transforming her serviceable gown into a ball dress of silver tissue and seed pearls. She tilted her head to the side and squinted. No, that didn’t help, either. She huffed a curl from her face. She’d never cared about her appearance before. It had been Branston who’d chosen her elaborate velvets and expensive silks. He’d told her she must look as wealthy and elegant as her clients if she hoped to persuade them of her skills. But now . . . now she was the guest of a duke’s heir. She ought to at least dress as if she hadn’t fallen off the rat catcher’s wagon.

  And no, it had nothing to do with David. He’d seen her looking her worst. He’d seen her in nothing at all. It was not about impressing him.

  She turned to inspect her back. Sized up the faded grass stain streaking the skirt. Dropped onto a chair.

  So, perhaps it might be a little bit about David.

  Katherine Duncallan was beautiful, with that fiery red hair and those golden eyes. She was graceful and stylish and the perfect baroness, and she made Callista feel a perfect frump.

  She lifted her head at a tap on the door.

  “May I come in, Miss Hawthorne?”

  Speak of the devil.

  “I hope you don’t mind my intruding, but I thought you might need fresh clothes to wear. You didn’t exactly arrive with a coach full of trunks and a lady’s maid in tow.”

  “Did you?”

  Lady Duncallan laid a floaty, tissue-thin gown in crimson and gold on the bed. “One trunk and Nellie, who’s a magician with hair and wrinkles; fabric, not face, I’m afraid. I’m happy to send her to you.”

  “Thank you, my lady. I suppose a borrowed gown from you is better than a cloak of crow feathers from Badb.”

  “You’d look lovely in black, though I would recommend a garment underneath. Only one of the true Fey can carry off nudity without raising eyebrows. And please call me Katherine. When I hear ‘my lady’ I peer round in search of James’s mother, who, thank heavens, is safely rooted in Tunbridge Wells.”

  Her friendly smile reminded Callista of Bia
nca Parrino, and she found herself relaxing despite her discomfiture. She took up the gown, holding it against her as she turned this way and that in front of the cheval mirror, the skirt floating around her ankles, the vibrant colors pulling color into her cheeks and sparkle to her eyes.

  “Mr. St. Leger is very handsome, isn’t he?” Katherine continued. “A bit like one would assume Apollo might look; all golden hair and flashing eyes and a face chiseled from Roman marble. He’s not at all how I imagined he’d be. In London he always seems so charming and shallow. Laughing all the time. Always in the midst of some scandal. All the men want to be him and all the ladies want to bed him.”

  “He uses that golden smile like armor. It keeps people from looking too close and discovering the truth,” Callista said, meeting the other woman’s eyes in the mirror.

  “You discovered it. You learned he’s Imnada.”

  Death, came the thought, quickly suppressed, though she couldn’t erase the memory of the scars on his back or the scars across his palm. Her hand trembled as she dropped the gown back on the bed.

  “Yes, but that’s not the truth he was hiding.”

  * * *

  “. . . silver disk of the Gylferion . . .”

  David caught only every third word of Lord Duncallan’s conversation. Enough to nod appropriately or make suitable noises when it was his turn to speak, but beyond that, his attention remained fixed upon the door and the woman framed there.

  Was this the same woman who battled cutthroats in an alley with a broken plank? Who slammed Beskin to his knees with a bagful of bells? Who sat beside a cook-fire, her face a rosy glow, as she chatted with churls and laughed with charlatans, or shook the dust from her skirts as she gathered kindling or collected water?

  It couldn’t be. This vision carried herself like a queen, and when she moved into the room, her hips swayed and her skin shone as invitingly as any courtesan’s. A complicated knot of dark curls exposed a long, graceful throat, while the cut of her gown revealed the rounded curve of her breasts.

  “. . . four of them placed in the obelisk . . .”

  Then she met his gaze and her eyes contained a mix of shy pleasure and self-deprecating amusement, and the goddess turned back into Callista Hawthorne, the woman he knew. The woman he’d grown to love despite all his efforts to do otherwise.

  “. . . so I leapt on the table and skewered him with my butter knife . . .”

  “You don’t say,” David mumbled, crossing the room toward her as if drawn by an invisible cord.

  He shouldn’t go to her. He should exchange gossip with Lady Duncallan or seek out Gray for another stern lecture. He should shed his skin and become the wolf, hunting along the wide empty coast and in the deep woods beside the brown, muddy river.

  But while his mind screamed at him to run away, his body ached to be near her for as long as he could. To revel in these few precious days before reality kicked him in the gut. And why not? If Gray kept his word, the dream would die its own death. Callista would soon be beyond his reach, forever lost behind Dunsgathaic’s high walls, shrouded in the gray of the bandraoi sisterhood.

  Until then . . .

  His steps came slower than normal, but she waited and her smile widened in welcome as he folded her hand in his.

  “What did you say to Duncallan? He has the oddest grin on his face,” she remarked.

  “Honestly? I have no idea what the man was babbling on about. My attention was focused elsewhere.”

  “Do you like it?” she asked, her cheeks turning pink.

  “I’d have thought my tongue on the floor would be answer enough.”

  “Dress a pig in pearls, she is still a pig.”

  “If you must compare yourself to an animal, rather call yourself the sleek and slender otter or the swan, whose beauty hides a lethal ferocity.”

  “Not the wolf?”

  “Why be the wolf when you can possess one of your very own?”

  “I’ll wager you say that to all the girls.”

  “Yes, but they didn’t get the joke.”

  * * *

  “Who’s there?” David whispered to the darkness. The bedchamber lay wrapped in gloomy shadows, the only light coming from the fire that smoked and guttered; the only sounds, rain smacking the windows, the shush of a curtain caught in a draft, and his heartbeat drumming in his ears. But something had woken him. Some sound that shouldn’t have been. Some wisp of a scent.

  A figure passed in front of the window, midnight blue against the black and stormy night beyond the glass. “It’s me.”

  “Callista?”

  “Were you expecting someone else?” She whispered the words that set flame to wick, the candle sputtering and crackling as it burst to life.

  She still wore the crimson beaded satin, but where before she moved and spoke like a seductress, now she scowled at him and gripped the candlestick as if she might bash him over the head.

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, scratched at his bandages, which itched like the very devil, and tried to decipher what in the hell she was talking about.

  “Or were you going to tell me at all? After all, you’ve got Gray to do your dirty work. You can tease and charm all you like while behind your smile you’re deciding my future for me. First you try to marry me off to Sam Oakham and now you’re shoving me onto the Duncallans as if I were unclaimed luggage. I risked everything to escape people who were trying to live my life for me. I refuse to roll over and let you do the same.”

  He dragged himself out of bed, wincing only once or twice. The cool night air slapped him awake, and he was able to concentrate on the thunderous expression darkening her eyes and tightening her face. Of course, he was also able to focus on the way her gown dipped low and revealed the valley of her breasts, the perfume rising warm and fragrant off her heated skin, and the shapely curve of her hips.

  He padded across the floor, combing a hand through his hair, noting the way her gaze traveled over his naked body before her chin lifted in a show of defiance and she stared only upon his face.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she snapped. “Most men would at least don a dressing gown for propriety’s sake.”

  “You came to my room in the middle of the night. Propriety was left behind long ago,” he said calmly. Taking her hand, he threaded his fingers with hers, feeling the stiffness in her body, the way she held herself rigid and unwilling. “You must have had some reason for coming.”

  “Yes, to pummel you with a heavy object and tell you what a cowardly, backhanded, deceitful creature you are. Wolf? More like a rat.”

  He raised their linked hands for a kiss on her fingers, on the underside of her wrist. “Do you think I want you to leave? To put you on that coach and know I’ll never see you again? But it’s for the best. The Duncallans are highborn Fey-bloods. Your aunt will welcome them—and you—with open arms. Far different if you arrive escorted by an Imnada shapechanger who also happens to be a single gentleman of scandalous repute.”

  Bare inches separated them. Her perfume intoxicated him, her gaze was both endless and clear as a mountain stream. He knew what she wanted. He sensed it in every rise and fall of her chest, every sweep of her lashes across her cheeks, every expression rushing like wind across her face. His body would go up in flames if she kissed him.

  “This is your chance to erase the weeks we spent together. No one need ever know.”

  “I’ll know. Don’t pretty this up by claiming you’re doing it for me. You’re doing it for yourself. You’re running away like you’ve been running since the war ended. Since the curse was cast.”

  Her breath smelled of wine and cinnamon and oranges. Had he called her eyes muddy hazel? They shone with amber and glimmered with jade. Her lips were moist. He smelled desire and heat on her flesh. He closed the inches between them, his mouth hovering above her own as their breath mingled in the prelude to a kiss. Arousal damped his own skin and licked like honey
along his nerves.

  “I’m trying to save your blasted life,” he whispered.

  “You’re trying to control it,” she answered.

  She stepped back, taking him with her. Step by slow step, she backed toward the bed, her gaze still hot, but now it contained as much passion as anger. His brain locked. He knew what he should do and what he wanted to do, but his legs just kept moving in pace with hers, his groin tightening as she pushed him down on the edge of the mattress and stood between his legs, her hands upon his shoulders.

  “This is my life, David St. Leger. And I’m in control.”

  He closed his eyes, but every inch of her was etched upon his brain, the creamy skin, the round perfect breasts, nipples pebble hard, long slender legs, a brush of fine brown hair between them. He opened his eyes and she was there blazing in the crimson and gold of a flame or a comet. He was the moth, the dust pulled along in her wake. He couldn’t break free, but he tried. Really, he tried.

  “Damn it, Callista. You don’t understand.”

  She kissed his chin, the corner of his mouth, his nose. “Then explain it to me. I’m not simple. I walk the tangled paths of death. I think I can fathom the inner workings of the male mind.”

  He rested his hands on her hips. His chest hurt, but it wasn’t the bandages cutting off his breath or the blood flow to his brain. It was Callista, in front of him, within him. Waking and sleeping, she was there, offering him dreams of exquisite pleasure and horrific tragedy. Speaking of tangled. He throbbed with wanting her, every nerve strained and tense.

  “Death. It’s all death. I have a dream over and over. A dream of killing you, Callista. I don’t know how or why, but I know it as well as I know my own name. I refuse to let this dream spill into waking.”

  She pushed him back upon the bed, climbing up beside him, her gown hiking up to reveal the silk of her stockings, the ribbons of her garters red against the white of her thighs. He was erect, his need evident, his surrender inevitable. She smiled, a dimple flashing in her otherwise solemn face.