Heir of Danger

by Alix Rickloff

  The thread of fear running beneath the words did more than the hand on her shoulder to drag her up and out of the quilts. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, a tremor shaking her hands. The danger had finally caught them up.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Rogan has come with news. The Amhas-draoi found Douglas.”

  Elisabeth forced a calm she did not feel. “Is he . . .” The words caught like glass in her throat.

  “He is alive, but hurt. Helena tells me to let you sleep, mais vous êtes son épouse—you are his wife. It is for you to be there as well.” Madame Arana dragged her out of the quilts. “Come. We leave soon. Dress and be downstairs in ten minutes.”

  And then she was gone, leaving Elisabeth shaking with cold and dread and a knowledge she wished she could wipe clear from her mind. She sat on the edge of the bed, hands braced on either side of her, staring at her toes.

  She closed her eyes. The vision she’d seen in the mirror rising in her mind’s eye as the gorge rose in her throat. Madame Arana’s admonition scraping across her heart. Her own denials pounding in her head.

  Had she meant what she’d said when she’d tried to convince him of his redemption? Or had she merely been hoping to convince herself?

  A thought occurred to her there in the dark with the memories thick as wraiths around her. Would this attack convince Brendan that Helena’s plan was futile? Would he decide survival meant losing himself again? Living amid strangers in a foreign land? A man with no past. And no future.

  Could she let him go without a fight?

  Again?

  With shaking fingers, she buttoned herself into her gown. With a heart pounding unsteadily in her chest, she dressed her hair. And in nine minutes fifty-nine seconds, she was downstairs, ready to go.

  eighteen

  He tried opening his eyes, but they seemed weighted shut, just as his arms and legs barely held the strength to move and every breath came as a struggle. Piecing together the scraps of memory, he recalled a filth-strewn alley, pain enough to fell an elephant, and a man strangely familiar to him warning him to be silent as he shoved Brendan beneath a tarpaulin.

  So where the blazes was he now?

  Scratchy, smelly wool beneath his cheek. A steady drip of water from somewhere nearby. The sour odors of stale alcohol and old sex.

  “Shhh, rest easy.” A cool hand on his forehead. A woman’s voice, but not one he recognized.

  He tried turning his head toward the voice, sending a sizzling twist of pain shooting down his neck into his spine, squeezing his ribs as if they might snap. He moaned and retched, the hand falling away with a tiny cry of surprise.

  The curved edge of a glass was pressed to his lips, liquid running down his throat. Thick and sweet, though a medicinal bitterness lingered. A taste he recognized, though it had been long years.

  “To help you sleep,” the voice comforted.

  He struggled to open his eyes, to warn her about what she’d done, to heave up the viscous poison seeping into his system. Yet even as he tried to open his mouth, his weighted body seemed to cave in on itself, his breathing deepened, his guts twisted, and he knew nothing more.

  “What happened?” The first words out of Helena’s mouth upon pushing open the door of the dingy dram shop. “You were supposed to be following him.”

  Rogan rose from a chair, pipe clenched between his teeth, his gaze flicking over Elisabeth. “Should she be here?”

  Helena’s dark eyes flashed. “My grandmother thought it best for her to be at her new husband’s deathbed.”

  Elisabeth caught back a gasp, her hand tightening on Madame Arana’s.

  Rogan shot her a comforting shake of his head. “Here, now, it’s not as bad as that. Lyddy’s in with him. He’s sleeping.”

  “What happened, Rogan?” Helena asked.

  He rubbed a tired hand over his face. “Douglas slipped his leash. I spent a half day crisscrossing this blasted city before I picked up his trail. He’d hidden his magic well. There was barely a trace to follow. I finally found him near Meath market covered in blood and out of his head with battle magic. Said he’d been set on by an Amhas-draoi but managed to knife him before he escaped.”

  “Devil take it!” Helena muttered. “All I need is Douglas killing one of the brotherhood for this whole scheme to unravel.”

  “Let me see him,” Elisabeth interrupted, lifting her chin, squaring her shoulders.

  Rogan hesitated.

  “Now, please,” Elisabeth asserted with chilly authority.

  “Aye, of course. He’s upstairs.”

  Rogan led the way, pushing through a curtain at the back of the room, the rest of them following. Down a narrow passage, out a back door, up a rickety flight of stairs.

  “How did he get away?” Helena demanded.

  “He wasn’t up to much talking, but I caught the word ‘chase’ and what I thought sounded like ‘naked man,’ at which point he passed out.”

  “Did you say ‘naked man’?”

  “Could have been ‘baked ham,’ or mayhap ‘wicked plan.’” Rogan scratched his head as Helena sighed.

  “You did well,” Madame Arana said, a gentle hand upon the harper’s shoulder.

  He shook his head. “If I’d found him before the brotherhood, we’d have saved ourselves a peck of trouble.”

  He tapped at a door that opened on a tiny young woman, her eyes darting from face to face, her hands wrenched into her apron.

  “I’ve brought the help I promised, Lyddy.” Rogan motioned to Elisabeth. “And the man’s wife.”

  Relief visible in her face, the woman opened the door, ushering them into a shabby little room. The only light coming from a tallow candle upon a battered table. Beside it, a plate held a gristly piece of fat swimming in grease and some burnt potatoes. “I tried feeding him, but he wouldn’t take nothing, so I gave him a sleeping draught. It seemed to help for a bit, but now he’s moaning and thrashing as if he’s got the devil after him.”

  Brendan lay restless upon a straw-filled mattress, a grimy blanket over him. Sweat plastered his hair to his head, his shirt to his chest where he labored to breathe as if he were running. He was awake, his staring bloodshot eyes locked on some invisible scene, neck muscles taut as he hissed, “Freddie, damn it, just do as they ask.”

  Freddie?

  A memory nagged at the back of Elisabeth’s brain as a shiver of apprehension licked over her skin. “It wasn’t laudanum, was it?”

  “Aye, it was. I’d a little from an apothecary what . . .” Lyddy’s words trailed off as she noted Elisabeth’s troubled expression. “Was that not right to do?”

  “Laudanum makes him ill,” Elisabeth explained, crossing to crouch beside Brendan, a hand upon his forehead.

  Lyddy’s brows snapped low, her chin jutting forward in a belligerent frown, hand on one hip. “Well, how was I to know? Rogan shows up with a man half dead and says nurse him. I did what I could. I did my best. What do I look like? A surgeon?”

  Helena studied her with a bloodless twitch of her lips. “I don’t think anyone would mistake you for that.”

  Not to be outdone, Lyddy eyed Helena with a sharp, catty gaze. “At least I’ve got me a man. From what I’ve heard, you’ve naught but cobwebs between your legs since that fellow of yours up and died.”

  Helena stiffened, a strange expression passing over her features, steel entering her gaze. “Charming young lady, Rogan. Wherever did you find such a pleasing creature?”

  “Lyddy, I’ll be having words with you.” Rogan grabbed her by the arm. “Now.”

  He hustled her out, justifications trailing behind her. “She’s no right to talk to me that way. I done the best I could. Who does she think—” A door slammed below.

  Madame Arana bent beside Elisabeth.

  “Can you do anything?” Elisabeth asked, taking Brendan’s hand in her own.

  Madame Arana placed a freckled hand upon his chest. Closed her eyes, her seamed and wrinkled face alive with c
oncentration. “If it is battle magic, there are ways. But if his sickness originates with the drug, it is best to let it run its course.”

  Brendan’s eyes locked on Elisabeth’s, the gold of his irises a dull muddy bronze. “Not such a good bargain after all.” His laughter came tinged with bitterness. “Should have married your sheepdog.”

  Freddie’s eyes haunted Brendan. Disbelief to shock to terror to sightless in death. He relived the sequence of expressions in an infinite loop. Freddie’s murder playing again and again in his fevered mind.

  The confrontation turning ugly. The men in Brendan’s company growing first impatient, then violent. Threats. Ultimatums. And the murders one by one of Freddie’s family before his horrified eyes. His death coming when it finally did, almost a mercy. A heedless ride away from the scene, fire raging at Brendan’s back. Eyes red with smoke and weeping, hands gripping the reins slick with a cold sweat, sickness chattering his teeth, souring his stomach.

  Freddie had trusted him. Father had trusted him. Elisabeth had trusted him.

  Two out of three dead. His fault. All of it was his fault.

  He heaved his guts up, throat raw, muscles jumping.

  Calm words soothed the howling cries of the dead. Hands gentled him. He rolled onto his side, squeezing his eyes shut, praying for relief. He didn’t want to relive it. Not again. Not the imagined murder of his father. Not the real memory of Freddie’s butchering.

  Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? What did he have to do to send them away? To live without them in his head?

  As if to taunt him, a new face swarmed up out of his nightmares. A monster of fangs and talons. A creature born of smoke and brimstone and keen with malice. It hovered above him. Waiting. Watching. Knowing its time drew close.

  Its mouth opened on a bloody maw, its tongue thick and forked and slithering with snaky words. “Ana N’thashyl gorloa agasesh gelweth. A’sk beuewik perthyana, Erelth.”

  Agony drove the breath from Brendan’s lungs, seared the blood in his veins. He jerked awake. The Unseelie vanished. Freddie gone.

  But as if his old friend had pulled him aside and whispered the answer in his ear, Brendan knew what he had to do to end the nightmares. To end the threat.

  Máelodor must die.

  And Brendan was the only one who could do it.

  Elisabeth kept vigil from a chair by the door. She’d propped it open, hoping to air out the musty room, though nothing seemed to dispel the heavy, fetid atmosphere. Smoke from cook fires mixed with the stench of latrines and animal dung from the nearby alley floated in on a sour breeze. Shouts and cries and rude laughter rose from the close-winding maze of nearby streets. A beggar snored in the shade of a torn tarpaulin. A hollow-eyed woman picked through a refuse heap beside her child while chickens pecked among the dirt at their feet.

  Elisabeth wrapped her shawl closer around her, turning her face away from the distressing sights beyond her door to the man sleeping beside her. An arm lay outside the blanket, the shoulder pink and shiny with recent scarring, the curve of the crescent-and-arrow tattoo, a dark ribbon against the gray pallor of his skin.

  He rested peacefully this morning. Earlier he’d called out to the mysterious Freddie. At first begging him to surrender. Later, pleading for his forgiveness. A hazy memory nagged at the edge of her mind, but as his outbursts grew less frequent and then stopped altogether, her thoughts turned to more immediate concerns.

  Would the Amhas-draoi still be searching for him? Would they track him here? Was their refuge fast becoming their trap? What if Máelodor’s men took this moment to attack?

  Elisabeth forced her mind off problems for which she had no solutions. Instead she watched as Brendan fought a sickness Madame Arana said was cured only by time. Another facet to a man she once thought she knew.

  Only now was she finally coming to realize that man had never existed. He’d been a mirage. Smoke and mirrors. A Fey-glittery delusion she’d clung to long after she should have known better.

  But what about the Brendan who fought tooth and nail to make up for his crimes? Who risked his very life to undo the horror he’d unleashed as part of the Nine? Who wept for a lost family and a home he feared he’d never see again?

  No fantasies shaped her knowledge of this man. She saw him for what he was. Desperate. Lonely and alone. And as real as the warm muscled flesh beneath her fingers, the wicked gleam in his eyes, the spicy foreign scent of him that clung to her hair and her clothes and her skin as he pleasured her senseless.

  Daylight faded, leaving the room gray and cold and colorless. His hand flattened out upon the blankets. His breath became a sigh, his eyes fluttered open. Dazed at first before sharpening hard as diamonds.

  Throwing himself up against the wall, he let the sheet slither to his waist. His gaze sliced over the room as if searching for something, landing on Elisabeth, confusion slowly replacing his wild-eyed trapped look. He settled back, wary but calmer. “Where am I?” His voice came cool and brittle as glass.

  “In rooms above a tavern off Bridgefoot Street.”

  Understanding dawned as his gaze cleared. “How long?”

  “Three days.”

  “Shit,” he muttered, kicking free of his blankets as he tried to rise. “A damned sitting duck.” His glance slanted toward her, the cautious light still blazing in his eyes as he swayed dizzily. “I’m surprised to see you here. Come to finally make good on your threat? Poison in my soup, I believe it was.”

  She flinched, remembering that long-ago confrontation. It seemed like another Elisabeth Fitzgerald who’d sparred with him over his shocking return to Dun Eyre. She’d changed. Become a different person since then. Or perhaps she’d simply reverted to the woman she’d been before he vanished, taking her dreams with him.

  “If murder’s your goal, you’ll have to take a number,” he grumbled. “The line of people who want my head on a pike is growing longer by the bloody hour.”

  Could any man drive her more insane? Elisabeth returned his glare, the urge to throw her arms around him warring with an equally strong urge to beat him over the head. “That’s gratitude for you. If you must know, I’ve spent the last days making sure you didn’t turn up your toes. Fat lot of thanks I get.”

  His eyes widened as he staggered against a wall, throwing out a hand to steady himself. Shook his head as if trying to clear it. “We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

  “I had a right to know, Brendan.”

  He grimaced. “And now you do. Happy?”

  “Ecstatic,” she shot back. Men!

  He dragged a hand through his shaggy hair as he padded over to the table and the pitcher set there. He lifted an eyebrow in question. She answered with a nod.

  With a weary sigh, he upended the pitcher over his head, gasping as the water spilled out over him. He heaved a sigh, slapping the hair off his face. “Much better. I feel almost human,” he said with a wry twist of his lips

  She swallowed around her caught breath, trying not to stare at his muscled chest or the way the water tracked over the sculpted elegance of his face, slid down over the ridges of his stomach into the waistband of his breeches. He certainly didn’t look like any convalescent she’d ever seen.

  His eyes flicked toward her, a strange glimmer in their depths as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “You were here throughout?”

  She blushed an uncomfortable scarlet, hating herself for doing so. What on earth did she have to blush about? They were married. They’d seen every embarrassing inch of each other. So why, then, did she feel as if a new and impenetrable wall had risen between them? “Since Rogan came to Duke Street with word of the attack.”

  Sagging onto the pallet, he dropped his head in his hands. “Gods, that must have been pleasant.”

  “I can think of more suitable adjectives.”

  He lifted his eyes, his expression unyielding. “As can I. Let’s try ‘foolhardy’ for starters. ‘Cork-brained.’ ‘Utterly and completely out of your
pretty little head.’ If they’d found me here—” His jaw jumped, his mouth set in a grim line. “How could Helena let you stay, knowing the danger?”

  Elisabeth folded her arms across her chest. “Helena doesn’t let me do anything, and I don’t have to ask her permission. I stayed with you because I wanted to and because you’re my husband.”

  He gave a disgusted snort. “You know, I almost thought we could—” He shook his head. “Too late now for that.”

  Too late for what? She wanted to shake him by the shoulders and force him to explain himself. But the space between them seemed strewn with obstacles. Until Brendan stepped out from the shadow of his past, there could be no future for them. Not for all her wishing.

  He opened his eyes, casting a rueful look up at her. “Have you ever wished you could turn back time? Wake up one morning and know you’ve your whole life ahead of you, clear of any mistakes?”

  Was she one of his mistakes? She didn’t ask. The answer would be too demoralizing. Instead she said, “You were barely more than a boy, Brendan. Your father never should have brought you into his schemes.”

  “Don’t make excuses for me, Elisabeth. They were my schemes. The Nine never would have grown so powerful without my wholehearted involvement.”

  “So what changed?”

  “Freddie Atwood.”

  She sucked in a quick, sharp breath. Of course, the nagging question tickling the back of her mind. “What has Freddie to do with any of this?” She asked the question, yet a spreading ill feeling told her she already knew the answer.

  “He was Other. Did you know? His whole family possessed Fey blood, but in Freddie it flowered to a strength that brought him to our attention.”

  She hadn’t known, but then, why would she have? Freddie Atwood had simply been one of the neighborhood boys: a bruising rider, a good-natured partner at dances, a laughing, jolly fellow with a twinkle in his blue eyes. Never a hint there was more to him than that.

  “I recruited him into the network. And for a time, he and I worked well together, but he soured on the group. Decided to get out.” Brendan paused, his body rigid, his breathing coming faster, his gaze focused on his linked hands.