Earl of Darkness

by Alix Rickloff

  Carrying it to the hearth, she knelt before the grate. Placed paper at the bottom. Added kindling. A few choice pieces of coal from the bucket.

  This was it, then. She could taste success.

  Again she called forth the mage energy swimming within her blood. A magic passed down from her ancestors in a continuous timeline of Other. Sons and daughters who’d tread the dangerous line between the worlds of Mortal and Fey.

  The kindling caught, snapping sparks up the black chimney.

  Would she ever hold another child of her own and know she had become a link in a chain stretching into the past? Reaching into the future? Or would her father’s Other blood end with her death? No one left to remember.

  The coal caught next. Smoke stinging her nose. Flames licking up over the grate. Reflecting off the gothic irons. Burning high.

  She closed her eyes, seeing William’s blue-tipped features, the tiny clenched fists. His name and his face no longer holding the haze of old memory. But new and clean as if she’d only just stepped away from his cradle.

  Aidan’s gift to her.

  Fed by magic, the inferno raged, the light throwing wicked shadows over the bedchamber walls. Heat burning her cheeks. Watering her eyes.

  The diary seemed to writhe beneath her fingers as if it fought its destruction, a thousand screams beating the insides of her skull. Scraping along her jangled nerves. She tried swallowing, but her mouth had gone dry.

  “Cat?” The sleepy baritone voice startled her to action.

  And before he could stop her, she cast Kilronan’s diary into the heart of the fire.

  Aidan’s knees buckled, a chorus of millions battering his brain, leaving no space to think. Even the act of filling his lungs and pushing blood through the chambers of his heart seemed a monumental effort.

  The screams faded, leaving one lone voice torching the edges of his mind. A voice he knew as well as his own and one he’d last heard blown on the sour edges of a coastal wind. His father’s ghost shattering him piece by damaged piece.

  “Disappointment,” the voice raged. “Failure.”

  The accusations slammed into him with the force of a lifetime’s knowledge behind them.

  “Worthless.”

  “Cat,” he muttered, his throat closing. His fingers curled against the lit fuse making its way to his center along veins dipped in acid. “The diary.”

  He closed his eyes against the gut-churning sickness as the earth gave way, sending him plunging through the darkness. Cat’s screams spiraling after.

  “He wants to see you.”

  Still in her nightclothes, reeking of smoke, and gripping the smoldering diary, Cat rose from her seat to follow Jack.

  He bowed her into Aidan’s chambers, his polished courtier airs carrying decidedly rumpled overtones.

  “Go easy on her, coz,” his parting words before he closed the door, leaving her and Aidan alone.

  He wasn’t in bed. Instead he sat in a cushioned window embrasure, moonlight throwing shadows beneath his dark eyes, glints of glimmering copper into his hair. His expression unreadable.

  “You look just as you did when I first met you,” he said. “Like a cornered animal. All prickles and fangs.”

  No hint of his mood in the tone of his voice. Weary, but nothing more.

  She tried relaxing, but it was as if a steel band pressed her ribs. She couldn’t breathe, waiting for the explosion. “I never meant for you to be hurt. I only wanted—”

  “It didn’t work, did it?”

  The gentleness of the question pained her more than any harsh accusation. Burnt, broken leather and melted binding crackled as her fingers dug into the diary’s velvet wrapping. “You knew it wouldn’t burn?”

  His shoulder dipped in a vague shrug. “More a feeling than a certainty. My father intended this diary to last beyond him. His wards were created to be sure it did just that.”

  “But why did my attempt to destroy it affect you and not me?”

  He stood, reaching a hand out. A hand she chose to ignore. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to box her way free of this stranglehold he had on her.

  Seeing her reluctance, he dropped his hand to his side. Again came the half shrug. A long, unreadable stare into the dark. “I’m bound to that book by blood. By family. By failed hopes and unrealized dreams. It’s a part of me. As I’m a part of it. Father knew I’d find it eventually. And knew once I did I’d have no choice but to translate it.”

  It was her turn to wince. Not a good time to tell him what she’d discovered. But it was now or never. “I can’t read it any more.”

  “But you said—” he put a hand out again. This time she acquiesced. Handed him the book.

  “Something happened when I burned it. The words themselves, they’re like a poison in my head.”

  Laying the diary in his lap, Aidan folded back the velvet. The cover had withered to a bubbled warped mess, the gold leaf of the Douglas family crest burned away. But when he opened the broken binding, the pages remained unaffected by the flames. The writing’s slippery curves and slicing lines as vibrant as if they’d been penned yesterday.

  Immediately, the steel band tightened, cutting off her breath while her head exploded in a sunburst of pain. Shredding her thoughts. Blinding her. A voice snaked up her spine. Coiled into the base of her brain.

  She snatched the diary back. Slammed it closed, ignoring the crumbling sooty mess coming away on her fingers. “I can’t—”

  His features held the same waxen pallor, spasms jerking his shoulders as he fought back sickness. His eyes black with despair. “Did you hear him?”

  “A voice. Nothing more.”

  “It was him. I’ve failed. Again.” He lay back against the embrasure, his fist rolling the knotted muscles of his thigh. His gaze unseeing into the night beyond the window.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Aidan. I burned the book. I ruined your chance to find the tapestry and the stone. Not you.”

  “It makes no difference.” He fell silent, his stare trained on a past invisible to her. “How do I separate the father I loved from the Other I fear? It’s impossible. I try, and it all comes apart in my grasp. Leaves me holding nothing but death.”

  Curses she’d expected. Fury that would pierce with hate-filled scorn. Not the quiet misery of a man brought to despair by a ghost he could never satisfy. How to answer such a tangled question?

  She bit her lip. Fumbled to find the words hidden among the confusion of her thoughts. Tried to offer him back the same precious wisdom he’d given her. “My son signified a loss of everything I’d known. Everything I’d been. But he was also a treasure beyond price. It was up to me to come to grips with the weaving of good and bad.” She paused, but he said nothing. And she blazoned on. “In the same way, your father isn’t wholly the saint or the sinner. It may take years, but you’ll one day look upon him as the real man—warts and all. And be proud of who you are. Where you come from. And know he loved you.”

  As if wrenching himself back to the present, he turned his gold-flecked stare upon her, the depth enough to drown in. His hand found hers. Callused. Strong. Warm. A glimmer of amusement in the curve of his mouth. “Philosophy from a thief?”

  “No,” she answered, a sweet honeyed heat running through her. Hope fluttering like a caged bird in her chest. “Truth from a lover.”

  He rose, drawing her into his arms. Slanted his mouth on hers, threading his fingers through her hair. His actions needful. Desperate. As if her surety might pass to him in the melding of their bodies.

  She clung, loving the taste of him. The feel of his carved, muscled body. The thunderous pounding of his heart matching her own. His chained emotion like a vibration beneath his skin.

  It took all her will to ease out of his reach and away from the need engulfing her.

  He frowned. His gaze troubled, his hands open and reaching. “Why?”

  She gave him a brave smile. “Because you and I are a dream. But it’s time to wake from that
dream. And time for me to surrender the field to Miss Osborne.”

  His brows drew into a heavy frown, the line of his jaw sharp as a blade. “Isn’t that for me to decide?”

  “I lost the right to your love three years ago in a Dublin garret with another man’s name on my lips. Had I known you lay still in my future—” she shrugged. “I’m sorry, Aidan.”

  “And if I choose to overlook it?” His words held an edge of irritation. His eyes flicking to her waist before meeting her stare for stare.

  Hand splayed on the flat of her stomach, she smiled through a haze of tears. “You’d never be allowed to. Not for one minute. Look around you, Aidan. You need a wife who can bring more to the marriage than gossip and sidelong glances. You were right to court Miss Osborne. She’s the woman who can restore your fortune and your home. She’s your future.”

  He reached for her again, but she evaded him with a move that sent her across the room. Safe from his grip. Safe from her indecision.

  “I told you once I wouldn’t let you fall, Cat,” he argued. “Trust me.”

  She opened the door. The cold solidity of the knob like an anchor against the persuasive, silken voice. She wanted to believe. Wanted to imagine a future beyond that of cosseted mistress. Sharing his body. His heart. His life.

  “No, Aidan,” she answered. “In this, you must trust me.”

  The sea shone like rubbed pewter, the line of the horizon indistinguishable from the gray skies above. Clouds flat and wide. A wind carrying the threat of rain to come.

  He’d dreamt again. The Unseelie presence hovering. Building. Gaining strength.

  Waking, he’d felt the frozen burn of his scar licking at his muscles. Throbbing with an ache drilling to the center of his bones. Luring him toward a face-off he knew he’d lose.

  Had he meant what he’d told Cat? Did it matter whether Máelodor gained the diary? Found the sacred objects and brought Arthur back for another go at uniting the Other into a glittering magical army? Or would a world founded in Duinedon blood be a world worth having at all? Would his race have sacrificed their humanity in a vain attempt to grasp at a universe that had never existed except in story? The Lost Days not merely lost, but imagined?

  The playing pieces had been gathered by his father—the Rywlkoth Tapestry, the Sh’vad Tual.

  The game set into motion with the discovery of the diary. Cat’s translations.

  Now he must choose a side.

  He’d come here this morning, bleary and thick. Empty handed. No ropes. No axe. No anchors. No desire to attempt the cliff ascent. Instead, he plucked stones from the rocky strand. Tossed them out across the waves, seeking answers in the infinite ocean’s tides.

  But even that effort had been abandoned by the time Jack found him propped against a fist of slippery rock revealed by the tide’s ebb. Spray silvered his hair. Crusted his cheeks like dried tears.

  His cousin’s shadow stretched across the beach. Scattered the blennies skimming the tide pool’s surface. “Is it true? You plan on handing the diary over to Lazarus?”

  He drummed his fingers against his thigh. “You’ve been speaking with Cat.”

  “She’s worried.”

  “She’s given up the right to worry, hasn’t she?” he snapped.

  Jack sidestepped the loaded comment by ignoring it completely. “If you’re correct about what the diary contains, letting Máelodor gain possession of it would be catastrophic.”

  Aidan rounded on him. “Weren’t you the one harping on Duinedon crimes against Other? Of the mortal world’s mounting mistrust and fear of any who possess Fey blood?”

  Jack offered a shrug in response. “That doesn’t mean I condone war. The Lost Days are just that—lost. We can’t go back. Don’t know if I’d want to. Magic’s well and good, but I don’t know how comfortable I’d be with it around every corner.”

  Aidan fed his remaining stones to the waves. Wiped his hands on his breeches. Stalked the beach, ignoring the painful stretch of knotted muscles as he worked off his mounting frustration. “Then we let the mortal world continue to label us demon spawn? Continue to drive us from our homes? Slaughter us?” He wheeled around. “With none to say enough?”

  It all just rolled off Jack like water from a damned duck. “It didn’t work when your father and his friends tried it. It won’t work now. The Amhas-draoi will put a stop to it just as they did then.” He paused, his usual carefree gaze cutting with knifelike precision. “If you don’t put a stop to it first.”

  A charged hush fell between them. The wind dying as if they stood within the hurricane’s eye. A sense that Jack was not the only one awaiting his decision.

  Voices purred through his consciousness. A twining skein of emotions and opinions. Father’s pride. Mother’s patience. Sabrina’s conciliation. And drowning them out, Brendan’s forceful outrage. He’d surrendered his future to keep the Nine from launching their war. Could Aidan forfeit that sacrifice and hand the diary over without a fight? Render everything he’d done worthless?

  Aidan fumbled in his coat pocket. Came up empty. No cheroot to stave off the nerves jumping beneath his skin. Bereft without the comfort of the habit. “Do you think the Amhas-draoi are right? Do you think Brendan is still alive?”

  Jack cocked his head in thought. “He could always finagle his way out of the tightest corners. A bit of the Fey luck about him perhaps.” He laughed. “I like to think he’s somewhere out there.”

  Aidan paced, reflections of the cloudy sky in every windswept rock pool. Inhaled the mingled aromas of sea and salt and stone and earth.

  Reaching a dripping outcropping of rock, he retraced his steps, his decision made. “Whatever happens, I want Cat gone. Today. Immediately.”

  “You truly mean to let her go?”

  Aidan kept his eyes upon the sea. Off the sympathetic concern he’d find in his cousin’s eyes. “There’s no reason for her to stay, is there?”

  “There’s you.”

  “No, Cat’s correct.” He faced Jack. Just as he’d suspected. Sympathetic concern by the bucket load. It set his teeth on edge. “I need money. Connections. Standing. All the things Miss Osborne can provide.”

  “She’ll make a good wife,” Jack encouraged.

  “Hmph.” The best he could muster.

  “She’s beautiful. Clever. Sweet tempered.”

  “The sale’s been made,” he groused. “You can stop hawking her like an auctioneer at Tattersalls.”

  “You know in your heart there’s no future in Dublin for Cat. Nor anywhere. Not as your wife.” Jack continued to state the obvious. Almost as if he was trying to convince himself as much as Aidan. “They’d shred her for an evening’s entertainment. She’d be made to look ridiculous. Or shunned outright.”

  An argument Aidan had already hashed out within his own mind. Still he raged. It kept him from facing the hole yawning wide as an open grave at his feet. Cat’s departure toeing him ever closer to the crumbling edge. “Can we stop speaking about her? When all this is over—”

  When?

  What was he talking about?

  Try if.

  If he defeated Lazarus. If he still lived. If the world had not toppled into anarchy. An awful lot of ifs between now and a future seeming almost as obscure as that far horizon.

  He tried again. “When all this is over, I’ll pay a groveling call on Sir Humphrey Osborne. No doubt an earl’s suit, even an impoverished earl’s suit, will be looked upon with favor.”

  Jack slanted a skeptical look in his direction. “Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

  Fire ate at his belly. Clawed its way up his throat. “Damn it, Jack. You can take your thrice-damned enthusiasm and—” he breathed slowly. Gained control over the threatening fury. “Enough about my potential nuptials. Will you accompany Cat back to Dublin? See she arrives safely?”

  “You aren’t—”

  “Yes or no,” he snarled. “That’s all I need. Yes or no. Will you see her safe to Dublin?”

&nbs
p; His cousin offered a curt nod. “I’ll see her safe.”

  They gripped hands. Shook on it.

  “Do you think she’ll agree to go?” Jack asked.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Then how do you plan on convincing her?”

  Aidan hated even thinking about it. “Leave that to me.”

  “Fine, but once she’s settled, I’ll be back,” Jack declared.

  He would have laughed at this show of solidarity—so serious, so solemn, so completely un-Jack-like—if he didn’t know his cousin would be dead within seconds of any meeting with the soldier of Domnu.

  “I’ll need more than luck, Jack.”

  “You can’t face Lazarus alone.”

  He stooped to snag a rock from the beach. Tumbled it in his hand. Drew his arm back just as a dolphin’s glistening dorsal cut the waves like a blade. “I won’t be alone.”

  “You’ll summon the Amhas-draoi?”

  With a heave, he chucked the stone as far as it would go. Watched it spin and skip before striking the water and disappearing. “Let’s hope they’re the only force I need to summon.”

  He sat at his desk, withdrawing a sheet of foolscap from the drawer. Dipped his pen in the ink, drops spattering the paper like blood.

  Once he made up his mind, the words had come quickly. A hasty recounting of all that had happened since fleeing Henry Street. All that might happen if Lazarus gained the diary.

  Satisfied, he placed the pen back in its tray. Sanded the letter. Shook it dry. Folded and sealed it, scrawling the direction across the front. Stood to ring for a servant.

  Ten minutes to swallow six years of hate and mistrust.

  But would it be enough? And would it be in time?

  She’d found the burial ground quite by chance. A small square of green amid the sprawling stonework of Belfoyle. Sunken graves bore witness to the earliest Douglas arrivals to this rocky Irish coastline. Most of the stones had been scoured clean over time, a date barely visible here. A name there. She settled herself in front of a rough-cut block of scarred marble, green with moss, chipped at one corner.