by Alexa Egan
“Who needs oysters when a storm is brewing?” he offered, only half in jest.
“Something like that.”
He cupped her cheek, caressed the line of her jaw. A strong face, a keen look in the eye. No, Jai Idrish had not been careless with its choice. She neither flinched nor stepped closer at his skimming touch. Instead she held his gaze, her expression altogether too perceptive.
“Meeryn, I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“You behave as if I’m looking for a ring and a rose-covered cottage for two.” She gave a quick scoffing laugh. “I’m not. And had I wanted you to stop last night, Gray, you would have. I may be a powerless N’thuil, but I’m not a helpless woman.”
“No, but you were never that, were you?” he replied quietly.
“My lord? His Grace is ready to see you, but you mustn’t stay long. Sir Dromon advises against any strain . . . his heart is very weak . . .”
Gray could have kissed his grandfather’s valet for interrupting this less than graceful attempt at rationalization, especially since he had no idea what he might say. How do you explain to someone that they made you too vulnerable, knew you too well? That your past together made a future together impossible?
She grabbed his arm, fear back in her eyes. “Gray, you have to listen to me. You have to leave before it’s too late.”
“Stay or go, I’m just as dead unless I can break the curse. And my best chance to do that is here at Deepings.”
“You’re mad.”
“No, just very desperate.”
Feeling Meeryn’s gaze boring into his back, Gray followed the valet, hating the all-too-familiar sweaty palms and dry throat that accompanied every encounter with his grandfather. He was no longer an intimidated adolescent. He refused to cringe as he did then.
“I’ll be right outside should you need anything, my lord,” the servant added with a scraping obsequiousness belied by the hostile gleam in his eyes.
Listening to every word exchanged, more like. Not that it mattered to Gray. There was nothing he intended to say that would warrant more than a contemptible snigger from Pryor. With the dawn, Gray’s rage had crept back into the corners where it remained locked away, a fuse he refused to light for fear it would consume him. The duke couldn’t help him now—as he hadn’t helped him then.
Once again, Gray was very much on his own.
His first impression as he stepped across the threshold into his grandfather’s bedchamber was that he’d been thrust into a furnace. Despite the sultry summer weather, fires blazed in the enormous hearth, braziers had been set on either side of his bed, and the handle of a warming pan stuck lopsided from underneath a mountain of blankets and quilts and pillows. Within this heated nest, a face peered out at the world. As a younger man he’d been ruggedly handsome with eyes like chips of stone; now the Duke of Morieux’s face had grown flaccid and soft, almost doughy, as if his personality had been sucked away by the illness killing him. His hair had thinned to a few white wisps across a forehead mottled with age spots and moles, and his fingers gripping the bedclothes were knobbed and gnarled, trembling slightly.
“I didn’t believe it when I heard you’d come back.” His voice, though raspy, possessed the same irascible bluster it always had. Oddly, Gray was relieved to see that not everything had changed. “I didn’t think you’d have the guts.”
“I came to make peace, Grandfather. With Sir Dromon . . . with you . . . with myself, I suppose.”
“That’s Meeryn’s doing. Bah!” he spat. “She always has been a willful chit of a girl. This N’thuil business has only gone to her head. A good girl for all that, though. She’d have made a grand duchess.” He coughed into his handkerchief, blood spotting the linen, his face purpling with effort, tears welling in his milky eyes. “The scrolls agreed, but it was all for naught. All to dust.”
“Plans change, Grandfather. It’s up to us to change with them.”
His Grace struggled to sit up, his expression fierce, his breathing labored. “A lot of pretty talk is all that is. But if it helps you to sleep at night with a clear conscience, so be it.”
“Do you refer to the Fey-blood’s curse and the taint to my line”—he drew a steady breath—“or is it older and more painful crimes I’m still being punished for?”
His grandfather eyed him with a hard stare. “You blame me for what the Ossine did to you. Blame me for your exile. Probably want to kill me.”
Gray clenched his teeth and said nothing.
“No need to deny it . . . I see it in your face.” He drew back the covers, pulled open his nightshirt. His ribs stood out against the sunken cave of his chest. “Go on, if you dare . . . you’ll be doing us both a favor.”
Gray swallowed, but there was no moisture in his mouth, and his throat seemed to close around an immovable stone he couldn’t choke down. He curled his fingers into his palms and rested them loosely upon his thighs.
“Knew you couldn’t. You’re weak . . . no use to me . . . no use to the clans,” his grandfather continued. “And the rest of them dead. No bodies to burn. No rites to mark their passing but my own weeping. I’ve none left but the girl.”
He broke down, his face crumpling into ugly sobs, which turned to coughing once again as he struggled to inhale. Gray had to turn away, but not before he pulled the blankets close around the old man’s shoulders, wiped the tears from his cheeks, and kissed the duke upon his forehead.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Grandfather,” he said softly. “Where you’ve always been wrong.”
He rose to leave when His Grace grabbed his hand, gaze fierce and red with tears. “Meeryn’s all I have left, Gray. Don’t hurt her as you’ve hurt me.” And just as suddenly as he’d taken his hand, he released it and closed his eyes.
Gray turned away when a harsh rattling indrawn breath swung him back around. The duke’s face had gone from chalk white to deathly blue, his lips purple, his eyes bulging as he struggled for air. He slumped against his pillows, his hands clawing at his throat.
“Grandfather!” Gray bent over him, pulling him upright, banging him on his back to loosen the phlegm.
The door slammed open, the duke’s valet, a footman, and the butler Pym rushing to his grandfather’s side.
“Hold him!”
“He’s murdering His Grace!”
“He’s gone mad!”
Gray froze as Thorsh and another flat-nosed enforcer stepped into the room. Flat-Nose dropped Gray to his knees with a fist to the gut, while Thorsh stood grim-faced over him, a silver-bladed knife cold against his throat. The touch of the metal against his skin plucked his nerves raw and crawled like ants into his brain.
“Come to finish what you started?” Gray hissed through a jaw clamped against the rage torching his insides.
Thorsh bent close to whisper in his ear. “All in good time, my lord. But not before we pull every last name from your black traitor’s heart.”
Gray drew a calming breath . . . and sprang. His hand curled over Thorsh’s, dragging the blade from his neck as he slammed a fist into his nose, cartilage and bone grinding to pulp under the force of his blow. Blood spraying from his broken face, Thorsh screamed and dropped his weapon, which Gray scooped up, crouched and waiting. Flat-Nose drew his pistol, but Gray was too quick. One shot went wide, the other skimmed his cheek as he lunged to his left. If he could make it to the window, they were four floors up, there would be time . . . he could shift before he hit the ground . . . he knew he could . . .
Seeing what Gray planned, Thorsh threw himself at Gray’s feet. Gray tripped as he yanked off his jacket, his waistcoat, his shirt, but he made it to the ledge, threw open the casement, drawing on the Mother’s power, unchaining his aspect, sending it roaring through his veins as he assumed the form of eagle.
He lunged for the freedom of the air, spread his arms. His head exploded with a skull-crushing pain that sent pinwheels and starbursts blasting across his vision. He dropped like a stone, the earth rushing
up to meet him. All went black.
* * *
A bell tolled slow and sonorous, marking out the years of the Duke’s life. Meeryn felt the vibrations in her chest as she flung her cloak on the bed with a muttered oath. Vented the rest of her frustration with a kick to her heavy valise, a footstool, and the wall. The last left her with sore toes and scuffed half boots, but at least she no longer felt as if she were about to spontaneously explode into a million tiny pieces.
The old Duke of Morieux had died this afternoon.
The new Duke of Morieux would die a week from today.
Sir Dromon had been inconsolable in his grief, feverish in his triumph, and adamant in his refusal to allow the N’thuil to speak to the condemned prisoner.
She didn’t believe for a minute the allegations against Gray. This was a trap laid and baited by the Arch Ossine, and, naive girl that she was, she’d lured Gray toward the guns like the best of beaters. Damn it, she wouldn’t let him die. She wouldn’t let the clans destroy themselves in a war of brother on brother.
Already she felt an uneasy tension tightening faces and fists. Men with shuttered gazes whispering in corners. Women with anxious expressions watching from doorways. A few had even come to her as N’thuil, seeking answers, begging intercession with the Mother. She’d sent them away with nothing but platitudes and empty promises. They’d murmured their thanks and departed, but disappointment and frustration darkened their expressions. How did they think she felt? She’d come so close . . . she’d unlocked the vast immensity of Jai Idrish. Of course, it had been for less time than it took to draw an unsteady breath and even that had nearly been enough to peel her mind from her body and drown her in darkness, but surely a little more practice . . . she swallowed . . . a lot more practice and she could finally bring the crystal to wakefulness.
She could break the curse.
She could save Gray.
First, she just needed to . . . well . . . save Gray.
She stared up at the sky from her window as if the Mother Goddess herself might write a solution upon the clouds. She gripped the casement, eyes burning, power pulsing beneath her skin. As N’thuil, her power was limited. But as Imnada, she possessed the cleverness of the wolf and the strength of the panther, the agility of the lynx and the independence of the eagle.
She laughed.
And yet it just might be the meekness of the mouse that would win the day.
She ripped free of her gown, buttons flying to all corners. Stepped out of her petticoats and unlaced her stays. Stockings and slippers, gone. Naked, she wrapped the magic around her, weaving it to her specifications. The soul of the shifter welled up through her like a creeping tide, submerging her in the warp and weft of muscle and bone, tissue and tendon.
The world grew around her as the power of the moon took hold, and soon she was looking up at the windows stretching endlessly toward a distant ceiling. Her claws sank into a carpet lush as a manicured lawn, a dropped thimble high as her shoulder.
Whiskers twitching, she headed for a crack in the corner trim. From there, she traveled down through salons and drawing rooms, galleries and antechambers, past kitchens and basements and the lowest root cellars. Here, catacombs ran deep beneath the castle. Dank, rancid, and smoky from the light off a few greasy torches, they were the last resting place for prisoners of the Imnada. Bereft of the moon’s light, they lived in cramped foul cells with only the drip of water and the scurry of rats to keep them company.
She would find Gray among the dismal refuse housed in these ancient tunnels. And, once having found him, she would free him. She would become an outlaw to her people—a rebel.
Is this what the duke had foreseen in his final hours?
Is this what Jai Idrish had chosen her to do?
Was Gray leading her toward destruction? Or the clans to deliverance?
One way to find out and no margin for mistakes. No coming home if she failed.
8
Cruder men would have killed him, but Pryor’s enforcers had been masters at their craft. No part of Gray’s body had been spared. Not an inch of him didn’t ache. And each breath he drew was a victory. But he still lived . . . which scared him completely shitless.
It only meant that Sir Dromon had more painful plans for him in store.
He lay where he’d fallen, cataloging each bruise and break, from the bloody gash in his forehead to his swollen and puffy face to his cracked ribs and snapped wrist. Nothing fatal except his masculine pride. Could he count that as a positive? Or was that stretching the hopeful optimism, even for him? He’d forgotten about the lower roof below his grandfather’s rooms. Had he plunged four stories, he’d be dead and his problems over. Instead he’d plunged one and been ignominiously hauled down here to await his fate.
Muscles screamed in protest as he rose in careful increments to his knees . . . then his feet. Bursts of blinding pain shot straight to his brain with every shuffling step, but he slowly made a meticulous hand-over-hand inspection of his cell, hampered only by the chain anchoring him to the wall, the silver manacle clamped around his good wrist sapping the little strength left to him.
“Hello?” a thin, tired voice called out. “Is someone there?”
Taking the weight from the wrenched tendons in his right leg, Gray rested against the door, lifting his face to the metal grate, where a salty breeze alleviated the stomach-knotting reek of sweat, mildew, and shit. “A fellow prisoner. Who are you?”
He was met with a silence lasting long enough that he worried he’d begun hallucinating.
“We’re alone. The Ossine have gone. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
More silence, but this time he sensed the held breath and the tensed body. This was no hallucination. The Ossine held another down here.
“My name is Gray . . . Gray de Coursy,” he volunteered, hoping to ease the stranger’s fears. “What’s yours?”
The breath was expelled with the barest gasp. “Lord Halvossa?”
Not a boy’s adolescent timbre, but not yet a man’s deeper tones. Somewhere in between . . . eighteen? Nineteen? What could the Ossine want with a youngling barely come into his power? He reached out with his mind, hoping a hint of clan signum or rank might offer a clue. What he found—added to what he didn’t find—was more than enough to satisfy his curiosity. The power of the clans was evident in the shape and weight of his consciousness, the animal’s primal instinct entwined with the polished surface of the human. But beyond that, Gray sensed nothing. No clan mark or signum. The boy was rogue.
None within the clans to speak for him. No one without who would know what had happened to him once he’d been lost within the confusion of Palings mist.
“So now you know who I am. Care to return the favor?” Gray asked.
Another long cautious silence before Gray heard a faint rustle of straw and a clink of chains on chains. “My name is Jamie.”
“How long have you been held down here, Jamie?”
“What . . . what month is it, my lord?”
“August.”
The following wait seemed to last forever, a whispered rush of words beneath the boy’s breath. Did he pray? Did he count? “Are you certain?”
“How long, Jamie?”
“Six months, my lord. I’ve not seen the sky in six months.” And then he wept.
* * *
Where were the blasted keys? Meeryn gave a rodent huff of exasperation as she scurried back along the top of the cabinet. Surely they’d be locked away in here. This was the only spot fit for storage of anything in this horrid place. She rummaged once more through the bits of leftover chain links, snaps with broken ends, a coil of knotted rope, a bent ankle cuff in iron and two in silver. She made sure to avoid these, though just being this close to the poisonous metal made her head spin and her stomach rise into her throat. No sign of keys.
She squeezed between two loose dove joints and dropped into the bottom of the cabinet onto a pile of smelly laundry; a ripped shirt, another w
ith a frightening rust-colored stain across the back spreading outward from a burnt edged tear, three mismatched socks, one shoe with half a buckle. No breeches and no keys.
She pushed through a nibbled hole obviously made by some earlier mousy visitor and found . . . success—of a sort. Pegs and pegs of keys, but which one belonged to which cell? She’d have to try them all. Laborious but not impossible. Retracing her path, she emerged at the top of the dusty cabinet and peered over the edge. The small guardroom was as horrible and depressing as the rest of the catacombs, the only advantage over the prisoner cells that she could see being the tentative flicker of an oil lamp set on a table beside a chessboard, the pieces ready for a fresh match. Of Ossine, she saw no sign but for a tin cup of cider and a button. The place appeared deserted.
Suspicious, but she’d not look a gift horse in the mouth. Who knew when they might return? Racing down the side of the cabinet, she leapt for a chair back, scurried across the table, and dropped to the floor. Drew once more on the moon’s power and her own inner magic to shed one skin for another—mouse for human.
She sighed and stretched her arms over her head, loosening the coiled knot of nervous twitchy muscles. Mouse was one of her more useful aspects, but she hated the accompanying rodent jitters. Opening the cabinet’s upper doors, she snatched up the stained shirt with a wrinkle of her nose and slid it over her head to fall almost to her knees. Next, she unlatched the bottom doors, running a hand back and forth over the pegs before grabbing as many as she could drop into her outspread shirt.
Set and still blessing her good luck, Meeryn hurried out of the guardroom. The tunnels stretched away into the dark, a gutter running down the center aisle filled with something green and smelly that oozed between the toes.
“Gray,” she whispered to the dripping silence.
Nothing, though she felt as if dead things watched her from the crooks and crannies and breathing seemed loud in the deafening quiet of this forgotten place.