Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  “The blood, David,” Adam called out. “It’s in the blood.”

  David screamed out a final desperate sending into the abyss.

  21

  He woke to the hard scowl and white lips of Ard-siur bending over him, her gray gown billowing like the wings of a giant bird. Above, the sky shone hard and blue. Beneath, the stones of the parapet dug into his back and shoulders. The pain in his hand blazed a path all the way to his brain, and he bit back a groan. “Where . . .” His breath came in spasms, every swallow felt as if he’d inhaled glass, and he shuddered with a bone-deep chill. “Am I dead?”

  “Do you feel dead?”

  His head throbbed until he thought his brain might leak from his ears and even blinking hurt. “I feel like shit.”

  She winced, her eyes gleaming gold before shrugging away from him.

  With a quick steadying breath, he rolled up onto his knees, the world tipping and spinning like the deck of a ship. In between the bursting fireworks shattering his vision, he made out Badb’s feathered shape, a kneeling figure that might or might not be Lord Duncallan, the table, the spilled bells. “Where’s Callista?”

  The Fey knelt by his side, her cap of black curls tousled in the wind, her cloak billowing loose to reveal her pearly skin. “You succeeded, child of the wolf. You sealed the door.”

  “Damn it, what’s happened to her?”

  Badb’s gaze flickered, her lips pursing slightly.

  “My niece chose death. She is a true daughter of Arawn now.” The head of the bandraoi stepped aside, her skirts revealing Callista’s still form laid upon a blanket. Her dark hair glimmered in the afternoon sun, but her face was white as chalk, white as the snows of Annwn.

  No mark of his knife marred her throat. No blood stained the white of her muslin gown. She could be asleep, her hands placed upon her breast as if already prepared for her coffin. A death of earth and dust. No journey beyond the stars and through the Gateway.

  “I killed her.” David scrambled to her side, touching her, brushing her hair from her face. Waiting for the moment she opened her eyes, stuck out her tongue, and told him it was all a prank. All a dream.

  But the dream had been real. His dream had unfolded as he’d seen it a million times. He’d failed.

  “You were merely the weapon Callista turned upon herself. It was her choice,” Badb said.

  “Damn it, there was no choice about it. You forced her to close the door. You forced me to be her killer.” He rubbed his sticky hands over his face, blood tasting of iron and salt on his lips. It mingled with the tears burning against his cheeks. He fisted his good hand against the rage. Opened it slowly, his gaze locked upon the silver scars interlacing his palm, the blood slicking his wrist. An idea formed in his weary head. A chance. A hope. All he had left.

  He grabbed up a fallen knife, clumsy with only four fingers, but still adept enough to slide it over his opposite wrist. His blood oozed from the narrow gash. He placed his wrist against Callista’s blue lips, letting his heart push the blood a drop at a time into her mouth. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .

  “Come on, Callista. Open your damn eyes. Take a breath. Something.”

  “What are you doing?” The Ard-siur rushed to pull him away, her words snapping against his brain, her fingers wrenching his shoulder, but Lord Duncallan stopped her with a gentle word and a stern grip. “He offers her the afailth luinan. His blood for her life.”

  “Death cannot be undone,” the old woman argued. “Arawn will not be cheated.”

  Lord Duncallan pulled her away, his words calm but allowing no resistance.“The Imnada owe no allegiance to the lord of the dead, and the ways of the shapechangers are not our ways. I’ve seen it work and felt its power. Let him be.”

  Ten . . . eleven . . . twelve . . .

  David seemed to float above his body, his vision fading in and out as his injuries made themselves felt in every muscle.

  Twenty . . . twenty-one . . .

  Did her chest rise? Did her cheeks pink? He bent to lay his head upon her chest, and felt the curve of an arm come round to hold him close. A breath warm against his cheek. “David?” she murmured.

  He gathered her up against him, her hair spilling over his arms, his kisses brushing her temple, her forehead, her cheek, her neck. “Callista. Edern, my beautiful Fey princess. Orneai aimara.”

  * * *

  “. . . reconsidered my initial and perhaps hasty assessment. I will allow you to stay on, but you can expect no special treatment due to our . . . familial connection. You will be taken in as the lowest novice and worked harder than you’ve ever worked before, but perhaps, if you have a tenth of your mother’s promise . . . there might just be . . . hope for you as a necromancer.”

  It must have been like chewing worms to speak those words. Callista wanted to laugh at the pained expression chasing its way over her aunt’s dour face. She wanted to, but her throat hurt and her chest felt prickly, as if bees had taken up residence under her ribs. Instead she closed her hands around the book she’d been reading and smiled her thanks.

  “You can’t know how much it means to me to hear you say that. But why? After all you said, why go into death after us? You could have simply let the door remain shut. It would have been simple.”

  Her aunt pulled the packet of letters from her pocket, the frayed blue ribbon replaced with a purple satin bow. She put them on the bed beside Callista. “No matter your unfortunate paternity, you and I share blood and birthright. I couldn’t make up for the years I lost with my sister. I needed to try to make amends with her daughter.”

  How many momentous decisions in life hinge on a single moment in a single day?

  Had her aunt spoken those words just one day earlier, all would have ended differently. Now Callista swallowed around a knot in her throat, dreading what she had to say. Her heart’s desire lay spread before her, but despite her aunt’s softening, Callista knew this was no longer the right path for her. “I appreciate your offer, Aunt Deirdre. But”—her aunt frowned—“I can’t accept. You were right. I don’t belong here. In my mind, I turned Dunsgathaic into the home I never had and you into the mother I lost. I thought I could make a place for myself here, but I can’t. The home and family I truly want is still out there waiting for me.” She glanced to the window, where sunset painted the sky red and gold, pink and orange, while the sea rippled dark as ink.

  “If you speak of St. Leger, he’s gone.” Aunt Deirdre’s hand clamped round the bedpost, her large knobby fingers white.

  “Gone?”

  “He disappeared last night. None know how, but the castle has been searched with no sign of him, and Lord Duncallan refuses to answer any questions. A disappointment, as I would have liked to interrogate the shifter further, but it is not to be helped.”

  Callista frowned, the bees settling to her stomach with a dull thud. “He can’t have left. We . . . he called me Edern.”

  Aunt Deirdre sniffed, her gaze falling to the book. “The Fey-born princess married off to the monster to save the kingdom. A sentimental if affecting tale.”

  Callista’s cheeks flushed hot even as the rest of her shivered with cold. “Rinaci Hammerclaw won Edern’s heart. He loved her.”

  “As long as Mr. St. Leger’s alive, you’ll be wed to this ridiculous dream.”

  “No, the dream is past. We fought it and we won. I just didn’t realize that winning the battle would be losing the war.”

  “So you will stay here with us. I will inform Sister Hosta, our mistress of novices, of your decision and—”

  “I won’t wall myself away, Aunt. I won’t exchange one prison for another.”

  Aunt Deirdre’s expression hardened as she straightened her gown with a twitch of a sleeve. A brush of the collar. “You say the shifter is doomed to die? Perhaps I should have left him in death. Perhaps that would have been the mercy . . . for both of you.”

  * * *

  From her high window, Callista took a last look at the s
wiftly churning clouds, the flocks of feeding sea-birds, and far sails upon the sea beyond Dunsgathaic’s walls, but it was Rinaci Hammerclaw and Idrin the Traveler, Helene of the Rhaynor and Brune the Hairy, she saw out her bedchamber window. Lords and ladies, heroes and villains, daring battles and tragic romances. She knew all about those. She ran a hand over the book as if she might step within the pages before shoving it in her satchel beside her bells. The letters Aunt Deirdre had kept.

  She turned her mind from thoughts of David. A week had passed with no sign of him beyond a hastily scribbled note, the handwriting sloppy, ink splattering the page. She tried not to imagine him fumbling with the pen, awkward with his mangled hand. Struggled to forget the deep slash on his cheek, the broken bloody nose, and the smashed and splintered wrist. Instead, she focused on the words he’d whispered, the way he’d held her, the depth of his fog-shrouded gaze. It was all she had left of him.

  “Ahhh, The Collected Tales of Moriaen Golden Tongue, a classic.” Lord Duncallan joined her at the window, ready for travel in a long coat, a stylish hat covering his dark hair.

  “I’d never heard of the book until I found it among Gray’s shelves. Now I’m hooked on stories about Swen of the Silver Ship and Morag the Rat Tail. How could the Other have discarded so much of a past rife with such majesty and magic? How could they have destroyed the Imnada in retribution for one man’s crime?”

  “There are a thousand more stories that never made it into the books, an oral tradition passed down from generation to generation but never written. Stories of brutality and fear and starvation and death. The Fealla Mhòr is the most frightening of these. It’s spoken of as one might speak of the end of the world.”

  “It was the end of the world for them, though, wasn’t it? Of all they’d known and everything they’d been.”

  Duncallan’s gaze grew distant, almost forbidding. “It was. Villages razed, populations slaughtered. Any who bore a drop of shifter blood singled out for execution. ‘We shall not suffer a demon to live among us any longer. They are deceitful, wicked, evil creatures.’ Said as the Other were tearing babes from their mothers’ arms, hacking the heads off young men, and butchering whole families together.”

  “After such savagery, how can you ever hope to bring about a peace between the races? Even after so long, the hate is still there on both sides.” She closed her eyes against a sharp, painful breath.

  “We’ll never know unless we make the attempt,” Duncallan responded. “If you’re ready to go, the coach is waiting. It’s a long journey to London.”

  “Are you certain this is a good idea? The Earl and Countess of Deane won’t even know we’re coming until we arrive on their doorstep, and I’ve learned to my cost, it’s not wise to turn up unannounced.”

  He smiled. “Deane House has more rooms than I could count on hands and feet together and most of them depressingly empty since Seb’s wedding to Sarah.”

  “I read about it in the papers. I saw Sarah Haye perform once in Bath as Lady Arabella. She was brilliant.”

  “Unfortunately not all her acting skill can mask her lowborn background. Society does not like an upstart. Sarah has few friends. You’ll do each other a world of good. And it will only be until you’re back on your feet.”

  “She’s friends with Bianca Parrino . . . I mean, Bianca Flannery, isn’t she?”

  His gaze grew bleak. “Yes, the captain’s wife and the countess are close. Sarah will be able to offer Bianca comfort when . . . when it’s needed . . . but you’ll understand her pain better than any.”

  Oh, she understood pain all right. It lived cold and hard in her chest. It woke her at night with wet cheeks and scratchy eyes and turned every dawn into a sentence to be served. She might have comforted herself with the knowledge that even if he was not with her, he was still out there somewhere. But even that solace was denied her. David was doomed. The curse ate him alive. There would come a day that she would look up at the moon and know he was gone forever.

  She swung her satchel onto her shoulder, took one last look at the cozy tower chamber, and closed the door of Dunsgathaic behind her.

  * * *

  “Sir? Can I bring you a bit of supper? I’ve some mutton left from this morning and a bit of ham.” A knock and a rustle of heavy skirts on the other side of the door. An eye pressed to a crack in the slats. He sensed Mrs. MacDonald watching him. She’d spent nearly every moment since he’d arrived at this sad excuse for a roadside inn attempting to wheedle information from him with simpering smiles and sweet words. Unfortunately, she only managed to give him the shivers.

  “I’m not hungry, Mrs. MacDonald.”

  “Have it your way, young man.”

  He heard her muttering all the way down the creaking stairs. A few choice phrases about queerish rattle-pated gentlemen and moon madness.

  She was half right.

  He glanced out the window at the gathering dusk. The sun dropped beneath the horizon to the west while Piryeth’s maiden moon, a yellow waxing crescent, scraped the trees in fast pursuit. He watched and waited for the blue and silver flames to engulf him, for the curse to tear at his muscles and warp the blood in his veins. The faint lines crisscrossing his palms seemed to shine in the weak light while the scar on his wrist burned as it did every night. He rubbed a hand over the healing gash, knowing the pain would always be with him, the connection he shared with Callista. A bond of love . . . and now blood.

  He’d hated leaving her, but he couldn’t remain within the walls of Dunsgathaic. Not once the bandraoi learned of the power of the afailth luinan. He would not exchange Corey’s brutal captivity for the pampered ease of a softer confinement by the bandraoi as they picked him apart with needle precision until the secrets of the Imnada were laid bare upon their cutting board.

  He told himself it was for the best. Callista had gained the family she’d always wanted and the life of a priestess, where her Fey-born powers could be honed for the good of her race, rather than the enhancement of her coin purse. She would forget him in time. He only hoped she could forgive him.

  He glanced once more to the window to see that night had truly fallen, not even a glimmer of orange to brighten the purple, star-shot sky. Stared down at the table, flinching only slightly at the stump on his right hand. The maiming played havoc with his handwriting and his table manners would need some adjusting, but it wasn’t the loss of a finger or the aches in his wrist or even the piratical scar down his cheek that gripped him immobile in his chair. It was the untouched cup of rancid Fey-born brew infused with his blood. A potent blend of Imnada power and Other magic; two forces wholly opposed and always at war. No wonder the draught killed him and saved him at the same time.

  He’d not taken it in two weeks. By now he should be retching his guts up, his entire body one exposed nerve as the curse tore through him like shrapnel. Sunset. Sunrise. The days marked off by the forced shift as his body morphed from man to wolf against his will while he screamed.

  Two weeks. Nothing. He remained healthy. He remained in control.

  He remained completely and incurably confused.

  He ran a hand through his hair. Rubbed at the back of his neck. “I don’t understand.”

  “You died.”

  He peered over his shoulder at Badb, who’d materialized in the cheerless garret, her shift of feathers rustling as she crossed the floor, her naked body lithe as a willow.

  “The MacDonalds should get a cat,” he groused.

  She laughed, her snapping black eyes alive with mischief. “You seek answers. I bring them. You died, St. Leger. You went into death. And death took you.”

  “Then spat me out again, no thanks to Deirdre Armstrong.” He rose to pour himself a glass of wine. Only one. The rage had left him. And for some reason, loss left no room for drink.

  Badb crossed to his side to lay a hand on his arm. “The necromancer pulled you free from the paths. You should be grateful. The door to death—”

  “Only opens from the o
utside, I know. But what’s that to do with the draught and the curse and why I feel . . . good.”

  She frowned, tossing her cap of curls. “So dense, you are. The answer stares you in the face. You died, and so, too, did the curse. It ended with your death as the spell was originally wrought. Though I doubt that the Other who cast it intended such a flouting of his purpose.”

  “So, that’s it? The spell is broken just like that? No more draught? No more shift? No more . . .” Wine forgotten, he dropped into a chair, staring unseeing in a haze of amazement.

  “You are not dying, shapechanger. You are reborn. New. Cleansed of the curse. Free of its taint.”

  He held up his mangled hand. “Yet still missing a finger.”

  “I see your dubious idea of wit remains intact as well.”

  “So, if Mac . . . if Gray . . .”

  “No, shapechanger. This was your path. Theirs still remain for them to follow.”

  The curse had been broken, his death sentence lifted. Too late for him to make amends? To create a future with the woman he loved? He dared not go himself to find out.

  “Can you deliver a letter for me?”

  * * *

  Fog hung in ghostly streamers across the valley, the long narrow loch gleaming like polished steel beneath the gray sky. Even the distant hills took on a soft blue and purple patina in the damp air. From here, she could look south and east across the endless mountains or turn her face to the north for a last glimpse of the sea and the rocky shores of Skye far to the west. She stood upon the brink; both paths still within reach. No decision unchangeable . . . yet.

  Below her, the coach waited, the Duncallans lounging upon a blanket with a basket luncheon. As Callista watched, Katherine leaned over to kiss her husband. His arm wrapped round her waist. A quiet breathless giggle carried on the breeze to where Callista walked alone.

  She swallowed the hard ache in her throat and scrambled farther up the slope, out of view of her companions. She didn’t need a reminder of what she had almost had. What might have been hers but for a Fey-blood’s black spell.