Heir of Danger

by Alix Rickloff

  “Fate decrees our path and our end.”

  The voice. Those words. Both in his ears and in his mind as if spoken and thought simultaneously. The memories and the pain flooded back. A shame. He liked not knowing and not feeling a lot better.

  “And this is the fate of the heir of Kilronan.”

  Not him. Aidan. It was his brother who had been fated to die here. As one of thousands. It had been Brendan’s intervention that had kept that from occurring. His fate had thus been to change fate. He would have argued that point, but he’d no energy to talk.

  A man’s face loomed over him, a face carved in solemn lines. His hair shone as red as Elisabeth’s, and his eyes glimmered like pools of silver light. “I would bear him company as he passes. As I would any warrior of my circle who fought so bravely.”

  Elisabeth held one hand while Arthur took the other. Even numb as he was, Brendan felt the warmth of the king’s touch flood through him. The pressure of his grip digging Brendan’s ring painfully into the side of his finger.

  Ring? He’d no ring. Yet, there it was, in place of Daz’s bit of dirty string. A narrow twisting band of pearl and silver. It shone against his waxen skin. Glowed in the milky dancing light of the cavern.

  His vision narrowed as darkness rushed toward him. Voices rose and fell. Questioning. Quick. Sharp. He couldn’t hear what they said, but he understood the surprise and the confusion underlying the speech.

  And then there was another.

  Someone he felt he knew. Familiar. Beautiful and sensual and smoky-smooth. A narrow face. Long, shimmering corn-silk hair. A gown of purest white. Eyes vast and endless as stars. He knew her. Somehow in some part of him, she was extremely important.

  A hand cupped his face, the fingers cool against his skin. “He will come to Ynys Avalenn as my guest and my charge.”

  “Are you certain, Sedani?” Scathach sounded troubled by this decision.

  “He bears my gift and my blood. I will honor the pledge I made. I can do no less.”

  Arms lifted him. Hands gentled him.

  “Wait!” Something was placed round his neck. Lips touched his in a kiss of farewell. “You promised you’d not leave me again. I’m going to hold you to that.”

  Light filled him, banishing the shadows crowding his vision.

  “I love you, Brendan” wrapped him in a peace he never thought to feel again. The sound of bells became the rush of water became silence. He drew a final breath of soft earthy air as the portal closed behind him.

  The world he left already no more than a hazy memory.

  “It was the only way. He would have died had he stayed behind,” Killer said as the last of the gray-gowned attendants faded into the cavern walls. One minute there was a coterie of beautiful crowned women and the air was alive with liquid silver and the dance of a million flickering stars; the next, there were no figures and the rock hardened dull and gray and empty.

  “My brain knows. My heart isn’t convinced,” Elisabeth replied, hugging her arms to her body to ease the tight, breath-stealing pain beneath her ribs.

  Arthur shifted awkwardly, as if he wanted to offer reassurance of some kind while Killer loomed protectively, his presence—strange as it was—comforting.

  “I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye,” she said weakly.

  “You spoke it in your heart.”

  She gave Killer a curious glance, eliciting a self-conscious dropping of his head. “I’m able to read minds—a telepath of sorts. Sometimes I can act as a conduit between two others, but only if the two sending are strong. Your thought was sent as clearly as if you’d spoken it. I simply . . . helped it along.”

  Instantly she felt herself redden. “You can hear everything I’m thinking?”

  “No,” he hastened to assure her. “Only when I concentrate and only then if the thought is clearly pathed.”

  Her stomach unclenched. Imagining Killer seeing her thoughts as he’d seen every other part of her would have tipped her over the edge. She was barely hanging on now.

  She placed her hand upon the cold marble of Arthur’s sarcophagus, tracing the sword as it entered the chunk of rock. It helped to feel the solidity of it when everything else about this place and her life remained pure fantasy. “Do you know how often I heard the story of Sir Archibald Douglas and his faery lover? I can’t wait to see the look on Aidan’s face when I tell him I’ve met her in person.” She giggled, slightly hysterical.

  “Sedani’s honor will compel her to do all she can for one of her line, no matter the generations between.” Arthur’s gaze followed the track of her hand, though whether his mind was on her or the oddity of staring at his own tomb was impossible to tell. Those strange silver eyes gave nothing away.

  “And Scathach? She didn’t approve of Brendan accompanying her to Ynys Avalenn.”

  It was Killer who answered this time. “Scathach may have her reservations, but she knows what is owed to Douglas. The Amhas-draoi have been shamed. Máelodor came too close to succeeding in opening the gates to the abyss. Had the Dark Court been freed to hunt on the mortal plane, it would have been disastrous not only for your world but the Fey as well.”

  That future didn’t bear thinking of, so she didn’t. Instead, Elisabeth turned her attention to Arthur. “Will you return as well? Or are you”—she scanned the cavern with dismay—“trapped in our world?”

  When Arthur smiled, it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. He seemed to beat with a light all his own. A majestic charisma that made one want to be near him just to bask in that aura. It was clear how such a man could grow to be a legend. And how the legend could forever inspire. Immediately the shoulder-crushing weight of her grief lifted. She wouldn’t say she was happy, but she wasn’t as close to smashing her fists against the stone in desolation either.

  “I’m not trapped,” he answered, “but the Sh’vad Tual did work its magic. The portal was opened and I was summoned, if not in the way the mage intended.”

  Killer put a hand upon her shoulder, his voice growly and rugged as a dog’s bark. “We must go.”

  Understanding, which she’d held back through stubborn will, hit her all at once as if the cavern’s walls had just collapsed on her. “Brendan’s really not coming back, is he?”

  Killer and Arthur exchanged wary male-to-male glances, but it was the shape-changer who was brave enough to answer. “It is”—his brow furrowed as if searching for the right word—“doubtful.”

  Arthur added, “Mortals taken into Ynys Avalenn soon forget their former lives. How they came to be in the summer kingdom. Even their names. They know only what the Fey wish them to know.”

  “You didn’t forget,” she charged.

  “No, but Scathach spoke truth. I am a man more of magic than earth. Different from most mortals.”

  “You and Killer here should have a lot in common, then.”

  She knew immediately she’d put her foot in it, though neither said anything and the moment passed.

  Killer’s arm slipped round her shoulders as he guided her out of the cavern. Around downed limbs and toppled trees. Over rocks that looked as though they’d been uprooted and flung across the grove. And here and there, though she hadn’t noticed them before, strange piles of gelatinous black ooze that shone greasy in the fading light of dusk. To the east, mountainous chains of storm clouds fragmented, spitting lightning as they broke apart.

  Only after they’d walked for a little while did she rouse herself enough to notice Arthur had vanished.

  She was alone with Killer.

  Brendan was gone. He had left her. Again. And this time he would not—could not—come back.

  twenty-seven

  The group of them crowded into Helena’s parlor. It still bore awkward signs of intrusion. Cushions had been hastily stitched, though the sofa bore a tear no amount of needlework could fix. A long, ugly scratch marred the piano’s top, as if someone had taken out his frustration upon the instrument. The rest of the house was in m
uch the same state, though a setting to rights still continued, the servants unusually quiet as they hastened about their work.

  Her mind sluggish and numb, Elisabeth stared into the fire until her eyes watered. She’d felt this way since returning here to Duke Street. Arriving on the doorstep like lost baggage, silent, expressionless, and empty.

  Thank heavens for Killer or she’d not even have made it as far as the tiny Cornish village they’d stumbled into that long-ago afternoon, the inhabitants abuzz with talk of strange violent storms, skies gone red, then black. Of strange creatures in the winds, the ring of sword upon shield, and ghostly battle cries. It had been his quiet authority that had secured them lodging, food, passage onward toward the coast, where they could take ship for Ireland.

  She’d been too numb at the time, but now she wondered how he’d managed. A half-naked man and a stunned and bedraggled woman arriving from out of nowhere. They were lucky they hadn’t been arrested, or worse.

  He’d left her on the dawn of their arrival in Dublin. She’d awakened her last morning shipboard to an empty bunk and a curious captain. What could she say: My companion has turned himself into a bird and flown away?

  She kept to a stubborn silence then and all through the days that followed when all were wise enough not to ask. A word and she might shatter. A touch might crumble her to dust. She remained too raw. Every nerve screaming. Every night’s dreams holding a diamond-clear image of Brendan’s body beneath a bloody sky.

  It had taken Aidan’s arrival to unlock her voice. His familiar features, his embrace firm and warm and smelling of cheroot smoke and brandy and soap and leather that released the knot choking off her breath.

  The dam broken, she spilled all in a rush of grief and pain and fear, her face tight with tears that never fell. As if crying might seal the truth in stone and wash away all remaining hope. Only one secret was not hers to tell—that of the existence of Killer and the Imnada.

  To any who pressed, the credit went to Rogan, who’d seen the light too late and died saving her. Madame Arana studied her long and hard, but Elisabeth held to her story and no more was said. Small questions swallowed in the greater crush of Máelodor’s annihilation and Brendan’s passing into the summer kingdom.

  Mr. Ahern perked up as if awaiting his moment. “String. Ring. Ring. String. Rhymes, you see. That was my idea. Hide old Archibald’s ring. Keep it safe.” He pushed his spectacles onto his forehead, his rheumy, bloodshot eyes bright as a child’s. “I’m glad it helped. Have to say, I wasn’t certain it would.” Elisabeth shot a guarded glance at the older gentleman seated on a salvaged wing chair, his fingers busy turning a broken shard of Wedgwood over and over. “Rings are tricky. Read of a ring wrought by the Fey once. Poor devil put it on, immediately burst into flame. Another changed the fellow that wore it into a tree. Got felled in a storm the following year and used for firewood, unlucky sap.” He pulled a piece of twine from his pocket. Laid it on the table in front of him beside a cherry pit, a small gray pebble, a playing card.

  Madame Arana paused in threading a needle to lay her ever-present embroidery down in her lap, the lines of her aged face deeper, the turn of her mouth sharper. “Come, Mr. Ahern. Let’s go see about tea, shall we?”

  He beamed at her. “Do you have some of those little yellow biscuits? I love little yellow biscuits.”

  “I’m sure we can find some,” Madame Arana answered, the pair shuffling out of the room arm in arm.

  “Should we set a place for Brendan? He should be home soon,” Mr. Ahern’s words floated back to them.

  Jack cringed while Aidan closed his eyes, muttering something under his breath Elisabeth very much doubted was “Sweet, adorable old coot.”

  “It’s my fault,” Jack said. “If I’d stayed with Brendan instead of going with Helena . . .”

  Elisabeth couldn’t help but steal surreptitious looks at Brendan’s cousin, his burnished blond hair and piercing blue eyes, the sleek courtier’s flawlessness from the elegant cut of his coat to the polished shine of his boots. If she wasn’t mistaken, Jack O’Gara was supposed to be inhabiting a family mausoleum in Wicklow, the victim of a highway robbery last year. Not swigging claret and shooting sidelong, wary glances back at her.

  As she watched, he tossed back another gobletful as if it were water. Poured another from the rapidly dwindling decanter. Was that his third or fourth?

  “Slow down or we’ll be mopping you up off the floor,” Aidan scolded, unable to take his eyes off his cousin. “I see death hasn’t done much to change your habits.”

  Jack paled as he bowed his head. “We went over this, Aidan. I wanted to go to you immediately. Brendan wouldn’t allow it. Said he didn’t want to put you in danger.”

  “And you listened to him? That’s the first time you’ve ever done as you’re told.”

  Jack flinched again. Downed another drink.

  Aidan dragged on his cheroot. Slumped into a chair, his face drawn as if he’d not slept in days, his hands jumpy as he stubbed out the butt. She knew just how he felt. The muscles strung rack-tight, the jittery, scratchy-eyed, stomach-rolling exhaustion when sleep was the last thing you wanted to do.

  “I want to go home, Aidan. Will you take me?”

  He turned to her as if he’d forgotten she remained in the room, his gaze flicking down to the wedding band gleaming on her finger. “Of course. Cat will be delighted to have you.”

  “No, not Belfoyle. My home. Dun Eyre. I need to leave. Now.”

  “But surely, your things, you’ll want to—”

  “Now. I can’t stay here another minute.” Her throat burned with unshed tears. “Please.”

  “Go, Aidan,” Jack said. “I’ll explain things.”

  Aidan clapped a hand upon his cousin’s shoulder, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Ever hopeful you can charm the uncharmable Miss Roseingrave?”

  Jack waggled his eyebrows. “Let’s say returning from the dead has its advantages.”

  The door was shut upon the Duke Street town house, leaving Elisabeth and Aidan standing beneath a high blue spring sky. A letter carrier ambled up the street with a bag upon his shoulder. Two ladies gossiped as they strolled. A hackney drew up, a man in starched shirt points and a tall beaver hat emerging with a glancing nod in their direction. The world turning in the usual way as if nothing had happened.

  None knew how close they’d come to a devastating otherworldly war. None knew what they owed one man who’d traded his life so that they might continue to live in ignorance.

  “Look at me, Elisabeth.” No reassuring smile graced the Earl of Kilronan’s face. Instead his brows drew low, a savage darkness invading his gaze. “My brother’s risen from the ashes once. If he’s able, he’ll find a way back.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Don’t you?”

  She smiled through watery eyes. “I wish I could.”

  Dun Eyre

  Eighteen Months Later

  Elisabeth rested her hands upon the keys of the pianoforte. Ventured a few unlikely notes. She’d unearthed the sheet music from a drawer where it had lain dusty and forgotten. Her proficiency at the instrument yielded nothing like the flood of long-buried emotion Brendan’s skill could evoke. Music had flowed from his fingers until listeners felt it in their bones and their blood, a brilliant ferocious gift. It picked them up and carried them with it. Lit him up inside like a lamp, shone from his eyes.

  Her chords flowed one after the other. The tune identifiable, but there was no magic. No beauty. No brutal magnificence to stir her soul. It was just music.

  She lifted her hands from the keys, leaving Aunt Pheeney’s words dangling overloud in the sudden silence. “. . . too thin and too quiet. It’s unhealthy.”

  Not the first time she’d interrupted her aunts discussing her as if she weren’t there or as if grief made one deaf as a post. She’d not cared at first, but after months of sneaking glances and gallons of warm milk, their concern began to grate. Couldn’t
they see she was perfectly, absolutely fine? So she didn’t choose to leave Dun Eyre as often as she used to. She enjoyed the sense of peace she felt in simply being home. Taking long rambling walks through the park. Riding across the high fields. Spending hours with Mr. Adams going over the accounts. Reviewing articles. Visiting with the tenants.

  She’d even begun organizing her grandmother’s old greenhouses, spending long hours with seedlings and cuttings, peppering the gardeners with questions on soil improvement and irrigation, and reading Repton’s views on landscape design late into the night.

  She found she enjoyed the peace and satisfaction of dirty nails and muddy skirts and a face even more freckled from sun. And if it tired her enough to bring sleep at night, all the better, though she wouldn’t tell Aunt Fitz or Aunt Pheeney. They already treated her as if she were a convalescing invalid—or a prime candidate for the asylum.

  “You should have asked her first,” Aunt Fitz muttered.

  “She’d never have agreed if I’d asked,” Aunt Pheeney’s stage whisper carried the length of the salon.

  “Still, you might have—”

  “You know, I can hear the two of you,” Elisabeth called out.

  Aunt Pheeney fluttered up from her sofa, a puzzled look dancing over her round features. “What’s that, dear? Did you say something?”

  Elisabeth rose from the pianoforte to join her aunts by the fire. “I said the two of you are about as subtle as a herd of stampeding oxen.”

  She ignored Aunt Pheeney’s hand pressed in motherly fashion against her forehead, the offer of a shawl against the December chill, the suggestion of an extra pillow behind her, “as that chair has always been uncomfortable.”

  Aunt Fitz merely regarded her steadily from half-lidded eyes before picking up a letter from a tray by her chair. “There’s something for you just come from Belfoyle.”

  Aunt Pheeney snatched it from her sister, handing it to Elisabeth with a suspiciously satisfied smile. “Open it. It might be important.”