Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  The tree-lined brick path stretched out before her, but this time the statues depicted writhing limbs and arched backs, erect members and open mouths; each pose more erotic than the last.

  Callista looked away, ice melting off her flaming face, even as she felt a throbbing between her legs and a tingling in her breasts. She gripped her bell tighter in the bone-chilling cold, but she would not go back through the door. Instead, she headed for the house on the hill and the dimly lit windows that seemed always out of reach.

  Inhaling a breath of icy air, she stepped off the path and struck out across the lawn. The grass crunched like glass beneath her feet and a snow-scented wind buffeted her, tearing at her robe, freezing the very breath in her lungs. The path had gotten her nowhere, the house had remained always in the distance.

  Not tonight.

  The way grew more perilous, but Callista pressed on. The steep, rocky hill cut her hands and feet to ribbons, seeping the gray earth with black blood. Bent and crooked trees sprouted from crevices in the rock, their leaves rattling like bones. Now and then she caught sight of a spirit among the colorless landscape, but when she turned her head, the spark would flit out of sight and she was left once more alone. She paused on a narrow lip of rock, her hand ready to sketch the symbol that would bring Blade to her hand, but the sounds faded and she could not linger long lest the cold sap her strength before she accomplished the task she’d come for.

  It might have been miles she walked as her feet burned, then throbbed, then went numb and ice crusted her robe and hair. It might have been weeks or years she traveled, no way to know within this starless landscape, but suddenly the hill broadened into a wide, sloping lawn. The house loomed gray and silent before her.

  Windows stared like empty eyes and a doorway gaped like a wound. She climbed the steps and crossed the threshold into a dim entryway. Candles burned pale blue in sconces and on tabletops while blue flames danced in a marble hearth. As she passed from room to room, upstairs and down, she recognized the arched doorways, the antlered stair, the oriel window above the landing, from her mother’s descriptions. Killedge Hall, the seat of the Armstrong family.

  She called Summoner to her, the blood from her injured hands leaking onto the carved faces like tears. The world was silent but for her own heavy breathing. With a swing, she rang the bell, the chime vibrating along her bones, pushing against her lungs, heating her blood. She whispered the words of the spell as she traced the symbols that would call the spirit to her.

  A gossamer mist rose up before her, thin as vapor, and slid toward the doorway to the empty garden. Callista rang Summoner once more and painted more symbols in the air, binding the spirit. It struggled, the mist darkening and twisting like smoke in a drafty chimney, but Callista had been trained well, if not thoroughly, and the bell’s chime held it fast.

  “What do you want with me?” The voice shimmered high and frightened as a figure took shape within the mist: a round face with a permanently soft and vulnerable expression, a body that in youth had been willowy but with age had grown gaunt and then skeletal, and arms that Callista ached to have embrace her.

  “I wish to see what you see . . . Mother.”

  The spirit’s expression never changed, never warmed, but she nodded before sliding into Callista’s skin and taking her over. She blinked, seeing the house, not as it was in death, but as it had been in life; golden stone in a long summer-afternoon light, a green lawn, and a sparkling stream. A girl raced before her; hair in pigtails, hand fisted on a kite string. A shout came from her lips. “Wait, Dee! My kite’s caught in the bush!”

  The girl kept running and laughing, her scarlet kite fluttering above her.

  “Aunt Deirdre,” Callista whispered.

  The image gave way to another. It was night now and the house rose dark upon its hill. A carriage stood on the lane by the spinney; a tall, thin man with eyes sharp and clear blue as marbles smiled and took her shaking hand as he helped her into a carriage. He called her a name and kissed her lips as the house grew smaller behind them.

  Faster the images appeared and vanished.

  An ugly boy, his face ruddy, his lip jutting out in a pout, a swaddled bundle, a room drafty and cold with mold crawling like seaweed across the ceiling. A creaking bed where she and the man laughed and made love, a windswept cemetery by the sea. Stooped and ill and bent over, she wept, a letter falling unheeded in her lap.

  “This is the past,” Callista said. “I wish to see the future. What happens to me? Is there hope for David? I wish to see what you see.”

  The spirit seemed to harden within her. Callista couldn’t breathe, her throat tightened as if she would choke and the air turned gray and murky, but the images continued.

  A dead man with a blade in his throat; David, bent and shaking as he slid a silver blade across his palm; a wolf running across an empty hilltop as a crow dove like a shadow before it; Corey’s scarred face flushed and twisted with excitement; a crowd of gray figures beneath an enormous stone wall; a woman kneeling; a knife falling; and the twisting unending paths of death stretching on forever.

  It took all Callista’s effort to lift her arm and ring the notes that would sever the bond and release the spirit. Her mother’s form hovered before her, ghostly and pale, her expression sorrowful.

  “But what of David? You didn’t show me his future.”

  “I see nothing beyond death,” came the spirit’s voice, whispery as the rush of leaves or the slide of a snake along the ground.

  Callista knew she shouldn’t. Knew the pain it would cause. But she couldn’t stop the words from coming or her voice from breaking as she asked, “Mother?”

  Her mother’s spirit seemed to shine brighter, her form almost solid as she opened her arms and took her daughter to her heart. For the first time ever in all her journeys within this frozen merciless realm, Callista was warm and she was happy.

  * * *

  David watched as she took her first quick breath and the sheen of ice cracked upon her cheeks to melt and slide onto her robe like tears. As she focused her empty gaze upon the candle’s flame, the pinprick orange gleam reflected in her dilated pupils. As she lifted her blue-nailed hand from the largest of the bells, the ring banging like the clash of swords in his aching head.

  She turned her heartbroken gaze to him.

  “Now you understand why you have to leave with the Duncallans. Why you can’t stay here with me,” he said, though this was a rare moment when he took no joy in being right.

  “I won’t believe it. There is no one future, David. Life is too messy. Humans are too unpredictable. I saw one, but there are hundreds, thousands, an infinite number of ways in which this fate can be changed.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Even if my dream is false, there’s nothing for us. That’s the true curse. The draught is killing me. That is my future. That is my fate. And you can’t change that.”

  She seemed to sag as if the air and her hopes had finally been extinguished.

  “I don’t fear my death, Callista. There are worse things than dying. I know. I’ve survived them.” He leaned across the table, cupped her chin, looked into her eyes, and cast her a scapegrace grin. “Nancy Oakham’s cooking, for a start. That woman could ruin boiled water.”

  And with the quick eruption of her teary laughter, his heart turned over, and he finally knew what love was.

  Then he showed her.

  17

  She’d been gone a mere two days. Forty-eight quick hours and already he missed her.

  “She’s probably in Glasgow by now. Do you think Duncallan took rooms in the Black Bull or the Star Inn?”

  “I think you need to stop staring at that bloody guidebook as if it were the holy grail and start listening to me.”

  David looked up from his edition of Cary’s New Itinerary, but his finger held the page. The two of them were closeted in Gray’s study.

  “That’s better,” Gray said. “Now, according to Mac, Beskin’s not been seen in L
ondon for the past two weeks. There was a report of a man matching his description in the area around Jedburgh, but nothing since.”

  “That’s only about fifty miles from here. Do you think he suspects your involvement?”

  “I’d be surprised if he didn’t.”

  David knew he not only looked confused, he was confused.

  “Pryor’s not stupid,” Gray pointed out. “He knows I’m involved. Hell, he probably knows I’m leading the charge, but he can’t touch me. He can’t lay a damn finger on me.”

  David was struck anew at the ice in Gray’s gaze and the steel in his smile. He’d arrived in Portugal a coddled prince. Battle and betrayal had since honed him like a sword, polished but lethal.

  “Counting on your grandfather to keep you safe? He didn’t show you any favoritism before. Why would he stop Pryor and the Ossine now if they chose to make an example of the exiled heir to the clans?”

  “Grandfather won’t stop him, though I wonder if his intervention would matter,” Gray answered. “As duke, he may be the hereditary leader of the clans, but it’s Pryor who calls the shots these days. No, it’s something else keeping Pryor from sending his legions of enforcers after me.”

  “There’s a gentleman to see you, Gray. He’s waiting in the hall.”

  Gray motioned with a hand. “And there is my best weapon against Pryor.”

  The Kingkiller stood at the door, his face grim. Or grimmer than normal. Which was hard to achieve. David wondered if the man ever smiled. Had it been David released from prison after a thousand years and more, he’d be dancing a damn jig.

  “Lucan is your protection?” David asked. “How the hell did you meet up with him anyway? How does one approach a legendary Imnada traitor and ask if he’d like to betray his people a second time?”

  “He approached me, actually. This past winter. I was . . . wary at first.”

  David gave a snort of suppressed humorless laughter. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.

  “But I soon came to the conclusion that our alliance could be mutually beneficial. Lucan is a powerful ally. A seasoned leader of men and a skilled strategist whose powers the Imnada haven’t seen in generations. Pryor knows he’s returned. He knows and he’s scared shitless. He dare not touch me until he’s sure he has a plan to handle Lucan.”

  “And what does the Kingkiller get from this devil’s bargain?”

  “A chance to redeem myself.” The answer came from Lucan himself, who remained at rest within the doorway—or as at rest as he probably ever managed. His body seemed coiled to spring, his face hard as granite but for a tic in his chiseled jaw.

  “Fine. So we skulk and we plot while men and women die.”

  “I don’t have time to wait, David. Mac doesn’t. You don’t.” Gray leveled a cold blue stare in his direction.

  “De Coursy?” Lucan interrupted. “There is a man to see you.”

  David opened his palm to the crisscross of scars, old and new. “The power of the draught wanes.”

  “Like the power of the clans,” Gray said. “But just as I plan to bring the Imnada back, so, too, am I determined to break the curse . . . once and for all.”

  “Break the curse?” David forgot himself enough to let the guidebook fall from his fingers onto the floor with a thump.

  Gray smiled. “I haven’t been hiding away like a hermit because I fear the Ossine or Fey-blood rumors.”

  “No? Maybe you should.”

  “I’ve discovered a clue. A hint. It’s a long shot. I give us less than a one-in-ten-thousand chance, but it’s more hope than we’ve had since Gilles d’Espe laid his black spell upon us.”

  “Lord Halvossa.” Lucan’s voice punched the air like the fall of the lash, his simultaneous mental shout almost making David stagger to his knees. “Come. Now.”

  Lucan’s dark empty eyes were aglow with a pale light, with power, and with something else shimmering off him in waves. Something feral and dangerous and wild. David saw now why Pryor might tread carefully around this man. He carried the blood of the ancients in his veins. Hell, he was an ancient. The Mother only knew what he could do.

  “Royne from the mill caught an intruder slipping over the wall below the stream. He carried a paper bearing St. Leger’s likeness, a blade of silver, and a flask of”—his face wrinkled in disgust—“blood.”

  * * *

  The prisoner lay bound on the stone cellar floor. A gash on his scalp bled into his hair and streaked his badly bruised face. Royne had not been a gentle jailer. Magic tingled along David’s bones as he circled the interloper, but it was weak, barely a ripple along his spine. The man might not even realize he carried the blood of the Fey.

  Gray had questioned him and come away with answers, but none that satisfied David. The prince held to his honor. David did not.

  The prisoner opened his eyes, his mouth curled into a broken-toothed snarl. “Dirty shifter. I can smell your kind like vomit and shit and maggoty flesh.”

  So, he was either aware of his Fey blood or had been indoctrinated by their hate. Either way, he was dangerous.

  David knelt by the man, his eyes barely flicking over the knife and the broadsheet before coming to rest upon the flask. The pungent scent of blood filled David’s nostrils. He picked the flask up and tipped it to his lips for a taste. “You said your name was Edrik.”

  “Some call me that,” the man said, suspicion and fear battling his gutsy bravado.

  “Should we punch a knife into your gut, Edrik? Offer you a sip or two and see what happens?” David asked.

  Edrik’s eyes widened and he struggled against his bonds.

  “Not so sure of the power of the afailth luinan? Afraid Corey might be chasing a fantasy that doesn’t exist?” He licked the blood from his lips, the heavy taste lingering on his tongue. “Sheep.” He gave a bark of angry laughter. “Did you really think Corey would be fooled by such a fraud?”

  “I’d have my money and be gone afore he found out.”

  “More likely he’d test it on you before he paid you a penny.”

  Edrik shuddered. “I survived ten years in Newgate and know a thing or two. He’d not find me easy.”

  “He’d find you as easily as you found me.” David paced the cold cell. “How did you track me here?”

  “There are stories about this place. Whispers. A man like me hears things and understands where other folk might not.”

  “If you’re so bloody clever, why the sheep’s blood? My veins are full of the real stuff.” He toed the cord on the floor with the tip of his boot. “All you had to do was bind me with this silver and I’d have been powerless.”

  “That blood was just in case. Once I had you, I’d not need it. Corey’d have paid me what he owed. Fifty pounds.”

  “Fifty pounds for you. Untold wealth for him. Hardly fair.”

  “It’s fair enough for me. I don’t need more than my share.”

  “An honest murderer. A rare thing. So, catch me, bind me, and off to London to claim your prize.”

  Knowledge flickered in the man’s eyes. David’s breath stilled, his hand tightening. “Not London? The king of the stews has left his throne empty? Where is he, then? Where would you and I be headed had you managed to capture the wolf in your net?”

  Edrik shut his mouth.

  “No? Loyal to Victor Corey or still believe you can escape and take your chances?” David picked up the silver dagger. Immediately, he sensed the poison sapping into his skin. His flesh crawled and a chill shuddered through him. But he clamped his hand tighter and, like a painter with a brush, drew the blade across Edrik’s arm.

  The man struggled, his mouth clamped against a scream.

  “You’re in the bowels of the shapechangers’ stronghold,” David snarled. “None will care or come to your aid. Shout all you want.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “No, just curious.” David drew another line curved parallel to the first.

  It took another sting of the blade to loosen
the man’s tongue and a last deep gash to make sense of his babblings. “Skye,” he gasped. “Corey’s on Skye.”

  Mother of All! Callista was riding into a trap.

  David rose to his feet, shaky and sickened, dropped the bloody blade, his heart like ice, leaving the bastard where he lay, with the crescent mark of the Imnada carved deep into his bloated flesh.

  * * *

  The coach rattled over the narrow track, the horses straining at the harness as the mountains rose steeply on either side, covered in gray-green stands of pine and birch, the highest peaks shrouded in mist and low-hanging clouds. They had hoped to make Fort William by nightfall, but delays upon the road had slowed their progress. The sun sank red and bloody behind them, the landscape barren of life except for a few remote homesteads nestled within the glens, smoke curling white into the fading sky.

  Still, if the weather stayed dry and the tracks passable, they would be crossing over to the island in a day, perhaps two.

  She should be relieved. Ecstatic. Awash with anticipation and excitement. She would finally be beyond Corey’s grasp. She would finally meet her aunt, the only real family she had left. She would gain a new life with the priestesses where her gifts were more than a circus act.

  She would never see David again.

  At one time, the prospect would have been easy. He was arrogant, stubborn, vain, and reckless. He hopped from bed to bed and woman to woman with the ease of a born scoundrel. He was an Imnada, the sworn enemy of her people. And yet none of that mattered when she measured his would-be faults against his honor, his loyalty, and his courage. When she watched him fight to chain the rage that burned white-hot behind his gray eyes. When she felt him shudder in her arms as the weight of the Fey-blood’s curse crushed him and despair was a breath away.

  No, she reminded herself. Skye was her destination. She owed it to her mother to try to mend the rift between sisters. She owed it to herself to understand the family she belonged to, even if they never acknowledged her. David was her past. He’d said so himself. He’d sent her away. Had he wanted her, truly wanted her, he would have begged her to stay. He would have given her that much of himself, surely. So, perhaps he did not care as much as she hoped.