by Alexa Egan
“What have I done?” She dropped the knife, seized by a horrible despair, sweat washing cold over her back, up her legs, making her knees buckle until she fell to the earth, tossing the knife away as if it burned her.
“You saved the last son of Idrin and the last hope for your people.”
She came from out of nowhere, a girl of no more than eighteen or nineteen years, yet her gaze held timeless wisdom. She seemed to float across the grass, her cloak of crow feathers barely covering the milky shine of her skin, her lustrous dark curls framing a narrow elfin face. The sizzling sting of Fey magic pulsed the very air and made breathing difficult.
“You were at Deepings—the crow on Gray’s ledge, the one watching me atop the battlements,” Meeryn said.
“I am called Badb; a Fey of the Summer Kingdom once upon a time, though now I walk with duller company in a world infected by ordinary. Are you ordinary, Lady N’thuil?”
“I’m not a murderess, if that’s what you mean. I don’t kill people.”
“What of the Fey-born at the inn? Or does he not count among your casualties?”
“He was . . . that is . . .”
“He was the enemy.” The girl bent her gaze to the dead man at her feet, gave it a shove with one delicate slender foot. “As was this one.”
“No,” Meeryn answered sharply. “He was of the clans. An avaklos, yes, but he acted out of loyalty to the Imnada.”
“He threatened de Coursy. That made him an enemy.” The girl tossed her head, her cap of curls catching the dim moonlight, eyes fathomless. “Sir Dromon has been clever. He spread the word that our young heir murdered the Duke of Morieux. In this way the Arch Ossine wishes to salt the battlefield with fresh soldiers to his cause.”
Meeryn shook her head, unable to erase the memory of her hand pushing the blade deep, the tear of tendon and muscle as it passed through him, the scrape of the blade against a vertebra or rib. His fading sobs as he bled out into the grass. This was not the thrill of her duel with Gray. There was no wild excitement as her blood sang in her veins, no leap of her heart as she scored a hit or parried a thrust. This was gruesome and ugly in its brutish savagery. She wiped her sleeve over her face, swallowed the bile and the disgust.
The Fey girl stepped closer, her cloak a ruffle of black on black shadows, her small white teeth bared. “You begged for this skill, Lady N’thuil. Did you think there would be no price to pay? That the ability to take a life was an idle pastime like sewing a seam or painting a watercolor? Your people stand at the brink of a war that will desecrate them, beyond anything your enemies might do to you. Gray is the link that will marry past to future—if he survives.”
“If Sir Dromon’s lies have spread throughout the clans, nowhere will be safe.”
“There remain a few refuges. He flies to one now, a friend who will shelter him.”
“Where has he gone?”
Badb smiled enigmatically. “The eagle will fly to see his swan.”
10
MARNWOOD, DEVONSHIRE
Lips, warm, soft, and teasingly skillful, roused him from a nightmare of howling storms and billowing black seas. A gaze, golden as the sunrise, lit with pleasure as he opened his eyes, blinking up at his visitor in shock. And a stench like maggoty rancid meat mixed with Limburger cheese nearly had him retching in a corner.
“Wake up, sleepyhead.” Her smile held bold amusement and more than a little mischief as she wafted the draught beneath his nose. “You’ve nearly slept the day away.”
His heart lurched in his chest while his stomach turned ominously. Not the woman he’d been expecting. Not even close. He pushed himself up on the pillows, muscles groaning with stiffness, and his head foggy with more than exhaustion. “Where’s Meeryn?”
He glanced around at the sparse whitewashed chamber as if she might be hiding behind a piece of furniture, except that there was no furniture, other than a bed, a chair, a battered washstand. A servant’s garret rather than the royal suite. Rain drummed against the window, throwing blurry patterns across the walls. No surprise. It had been raining almost nonstop since they left the coast.
A hand on her hip, Lady Delia faced him down. “I should be insulted that the first sentence out of your mouth is a question about another woman.” She huffed dramatically. “But if you must know, your exalted N’thuil is perfectly safe. Arrived in company this morning with everyone’s favorite overbearing faery . . . and two dead bodies. Ugh!” She shuddered.
“Two dead . . .? Do you mean . . .”
“Don’t ask. If it were me, I’d have left them to rot, but Miss Munro seems to think they deserve better.” She placed the cup on the washstand. Drew a silver-bladed knife from a pocket in her apron and laid it beside the cup. “You’re fortunate we had the needed supplies in stores. All but for . . . you know.” She wrinkled her nose.
“All too well.” Gritting his teeth, he drew back the quilt, sat up, and put his feet on the floor. The room wobbled, and blue and silver flames licked at the edges of his vision. His skin crawled as if stretched too tight over his bones and the beast sank its razor beak into his brain, talons raking his lungs until it hurt to breathe. It was later in the afternoon than he thought.
“There was barely enough for a day’s dose . . . perhaps two if you’re cautious,” Lady Delia explained.
“That will see me through until I return to London.”
“Is that your plan? I thought resurrection lay in Cornwall.”
“I brought it with me.”
He stood, pausing as the room settled, then padded across the floor to the washstand. Delia followed his every move with arched brows and an appraising stare as if comparing the lover he’d been with the wreck of a man he’d become. Not that he cared overmuch what she saw or what she surmised. Their time together had been brief, both of them fully aware it was an arrangement built on expediency and loneliness. A way to forget for a few hours. A way to remember without weeping.
He took up the knife with a quick hiss of indrawn breath. Spread his left palm, drawing the blade across in a quick parting slice. Blood welled behind the cut. A tip of his hand and the drops slid into the cup of gelatinous phlegm. He tried not to think too hard as he swirled the elixir, put the cup to his lips, and downed it in one swallow. The draught, along with his stomach lining, sought to claw its way back up his throat. He shoved it down with a few swallows. Rested head bowed until the worst passed and the agony of the curse subsided.
“Better?” Delia asked.
“Than what?”
She laughed. “Fair point. But you’re breathing, standing, and more or less coherent, so I’ll term the whole a success.”
He took up a towel, closed his hand to a fist around it until the bleeding stopped. Returned to his bed where fresh clothes had been laid for him. A little large and not the first stare of fashion, but clean.
As he dressed, she continued to regard him with a sly curve to her mouth that never boded well. “A little bird tells me you’ve inherited a dukedom.”
“By English law, I’m a duke. By Imnada law, I’m as outcast as ever.”
“Yes, the tale going round is that you’re guilty of patricide. Or in your case grand patricide.” She waved away the accusation as if it were a pesky fly not worthy of her attention. “Sir Dromon’s a boob. Anyone who knows you knows such a story is laughable.”
“That’s just it. They don’t know me. I left at twenty-one for the army and returned to a sentencing and exile. I’m a stranger to most of them. Sir Dromon could tell them I ate babies for breakfast and puppies for lunch and they’d believe him. The men who attacked us certainly did.”
He pulled a shirt over his head, recalling Meeryn’s accusations at the cottage. Her words had struck a little too close to home. Had he compensated for past weaknesses by armoring himself in callous indifference and calling it strength? Had he lost the use of his heart when he’d lost his clan mark? And was that what this recent horrible pain was in the left side of his chest? Had it
come to life again upon the auspicious arrival of a little brown mouse?
“It’s not the first time you’ve been struck with a complication in your plans,” Delia countered.
A case in point standing right in front of him, Lady Delia was the definition of complication and synonymous with trouble. Always had been. She was the unexploded shell, the burning fuse. One wrong move, and who knew what chaos would follow. It’s what made her so dangerous to enemies and friends alike.
“What happened to Calais?” he asked stupidly, drawing on a pair of breeches one slow leg at a time.
Lady Delia laughed. “Nothing, as far as I know. Why?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be there?”
“I was. Unfortunately, just before I embarked, I discovered certain people might be waiting for me; people I’d rather avoid. With London lost to me and the ports guarded, I had one remaining choice—dismal in the extreme, but I soldier on as cheerfully as I can.”
“Where is Estelle?”
“My tiresome crank of a sister was not happy to see me, but she couldn’t very well kick me out of my own home, much as she’d have liked to. Our uncle left the house to both of us; the sly, conniving bastard.”
“Let me guess, Ramsay convinced her you should stay.”
“Actually, that luscious slice of man cake is away from Marnwood at the moment. No idea when he’ll return. Probably why Estelle reluctantly agreed. If her husband had been here, I’d have been shown the door and given a boot besides.”
“She doesn’t trust you.”
“I said she was tiresome. I never said she was stupid.” Delia took a slow seductive turn about the room, letting her figure speak for itself, now and then casting him sidelong glances from lowered lashes. Her hand caressed the curve of the washbasin, slid provocatively along the chair rail, trailed with delicious eroticism along the headboard of the bed.
Had she always been so obvious, or was he seeing her differently now that he was comparing her to another woman; just as fierce and equally as bold? But Meeryn would never play for his attention. She was as bluntly candid as Delia was cleverly subtle. She offered him painful honesty but expected no less from him in return. And perhaps that in part was what held him back; for real honesty brought with it an agony as excruciating as the pain the curse delivered.
“Doule is dead, as is his brother,” he said, ignoring her invitation. “The Ossine discovered them.”
Delia’s face dimmed. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“This fight is tearing the clans apart. Brother against brother. Father against son. I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it. Am I doing this for them . . . or me?”
She brushed the hair from his forehead, a slight frown marring her otherwise serene features. “You’re tired. Rest. Regroup. Enjoy Estelle’s dubious hospitality. You’ll see things better in the morning.”
They both heard the footsteps at the same moment. Their heads swiveled to the door in unison, their bodies tensed with the same anticipation. Delia was quicker. She leaned forward, offering him full view of both perfect breasts. Tipped his chin up and kissed him just as the door opened.
Meeryn stood on the threshold, mouth agape, gaze moving from shock to smolder in the blink of an eye.
Delia broke away with a cat-in-the-cream smile. “Did you need something, my dear?”
The heat off Meeryn’s body was enough to char bones to ashes, but her expression, once mastered, was bland as milk. “Nothing at all,” she answered in a voice calm as the eye of a hurricane.
Gray closed his eyes on a defeated sigh. Shit.
* * *
They had placed the makeshift pyre far from the house in an old wooded copse where weather-worn trees twisted in the wind and the rocks pushed grasping fingers up toward a gray sky. The road wound far to the east, crossing the new bridge outside the village. Foot travelers never came this way. The wood was said to be haunted by the spirit of a dead child, though the only hostile ghoul stalking this afternoon was Badb, who sat atop a nearby tree preening her feathers and croaking criticisms like a persnickety schoolmarm.
Meeryn ignored the crow’s ugly chatter and concentrated on the two bodies laid out before her. She had no names to offer the ancestors. But she’d gathered up the few personal items she’d found in their pockets, and these she’d wrapped in scraps of silk and placed beside them.
Meeryn was no Ossine. What she did, she did from memory. She prayed that the Mother Goddess would understand if she made a small error or forgot bits of the funeral chant. First she traced the runes at head and foot, the sign of the Mother, the sign of Morderoth’s empty sky. Then, dipping her finger in a bowl of wood burnt down to ash, she drew the death sign on each forehead, the spirit sign on each chest, and the sign of the Gateway on each palm.
Finally, calling on the ancestors to open the door between this world and the distant paradise where the souls of the dead avaklos would join their clan and kin forever after, she shoved the burning torch into the dry tinder stacked and arranged around the bodies. Flames licked up through the rickety platform and smoke curled like wraiths over the dead men.
This was the second time in a few days that she’d had to speed the dead through the Gateway, the second time in a few days she’d had to watch flames reach for the sky, spirits rising with the thick choking black smoke. She prayed there would be no need for a third.
Badb flapped her great black wings, croaking her dismay.
“If all you’re going to do is squawk, do it elsewhere. I’m not interested.”
Badb gave one final harrumphing caw and took off from her perch to circle the smoke as it wafted up to be lost within the low clouds.
“I think you offended her.”
“I wasn’t talking to her.”
Gray approached to stand beside her, but she kept her eyes on the burning pyre, resin snapping, heat burning her face, sweat trickling down her rigid spine.
“I came to join you as witness to their passing.”
“Then more witnessing and less chattering.” She gripped her skirts, the fabric anchoring her in the present lest her memory wander back to the sickening give of flesh, the smell of blood and piss and loosened bowels, the rattle of the man’s dying breath.
“You did what you had to do, Meeryn. You took a life to save a life.”
“So I was told, but does that make it right?” she asked.
“It might help you sleep.”
“How do you know I’m not sleeping?”
“Because I still remember the first man I killed.”
“But the avaklos wasn’t my first. There was the man at the inn . . .”
“A kill from a distance is not the same. I don’t know why, but when you’re close enough to smell your enemy’s fear and feel his dying shudder, it becomes part of you. He’s no longer an anonymous stranger. He’s real. His death is your death.”
She looked at him for the first time since he’d come. His face held a grim resignation, illness, injury, grief, and determination branded onto his features as once his clan mark had branded his back. “You said the more you kill, the easier it gets. That you learn not to care. That it’s all about survival. That’s what you said. But is that true? Or do you try to convince yourself of your indifference in order to feel better? Or to feel nothing at all?”
“I kill because I’ve been left with no choice. If I stay my hand, I run the risk of having another lifted against someone I care about. Someone I love.”
She’d accused him of disregarding the men who followed him, but perhaps the truth was that he cared too much . . . that he’d always cared too much. His grandfather had thought his compassion a weakness. Meeryn believed it just might be Gray’s greatest strength. If he let it be.
“You were prepared to murder those Ossine in the catacombs. Without hesitation. Without remorse.”
“Without hesitation, yes. But always with remorse,” he replied.
By now the pyre was engulfed, the bodies lost to the roaring confl
agration, sparks floating and rising in the air, dancing on the steady breeze. Spirits called to a home lost at the beginning of time.
He drew an uneven breath, and she tensed, knowing what was coming. “Lady Delia enjoys tossing oil on a fire to see what happens.”
Her eyes stung and watered from the intense heat. They most certainly did not ache with unshed tears for the sneaking rat bastard beside her. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Things burn. People get hurt. That’s what happens.”
“Or people finally start to see what’s been staring them in the face all along.”
He clasped her tear-streaked hand, and together they said farewell to warriors fallen in a war that had grown more violent and far more personal than Meeryn had ever imagined.
* * *
Marnwood’s drawing room was lovely, with pale green walls, white trim, rich elegant furniture and priceless works of art. A far cry from the rest of the house, which gave the impression of being one strong wind from collapse. All right, perhaps she exaggerated, but there was definitely a sense that money was scarce and the household diminished.
Their hostess, Lady Estelle Ramsay, ran the place with few servants and a forthright capability that brooked no nonsense. To look at her slender body and gentle face, one would never imagine she could harbor such pragmatic industriousness, but in the two days Meeryn had been in residence, she’d found Lady Estelle nailing down a loose floorboard in the dining room, bringing in the wash, and weeding the kitchen garden. Not exactly the duties of a gently bred earl’s daughter, but she undertook them without complaint and with a proficiency gained over many years.
This was someone who knew what she wanted and went after it without worrying over repercussions. Apparently a trait she shared with her sister Lady Delia Swann, though this seemed to be all the sisters shared.
Estelle was tall and possessed an unfashionable athleticism, while Delia was petite and bore an ethereal vagueness. Estelle’s white-blond hair and freckled cheeks gave her the appearance of a hoydenish farm girl; Delia’s hair was golden as ripened barley and her pert face and creamy complexion gave her a sweet kittenish quality. And while Estelle was safely and happily married, Delia was little better than a demi-rep, her string of lovers as long as Meeryn’s arm. One would have been hard put to realize they were related, much less twins. Until they opened their mouths, that is. Then the constant bickering and inside sniping gave them away.