Lord of Shadows

by Alix Rickloff

  “I’ll get Sister Ainnir.”

  He scrubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “You’ll get no one. You’ll tell no one. Do you hear me?”

  Despite his humiliation and fear, his tone still carried the bite of command.

  She nodded slowly as she groped for the door handle. “You won’t harm me, Daigh. I know that for truth. No matter what Ard-siúr says.”

  So, she’d been warned away from him? Sorrow touched the frozen place in him, and he almost wished he never remembered. That his past could be shed like an outgrown skin. He could become someone new. Someone honorable. Someone worthy of Sabrina’s trust.

  Sabrina stumbled into night’s damp, bone-chilling fog. Steadied herself against a column as she inhaled long, dragging gulps, letting the cold air settle thoughts ricocheting from heart-thundering desire to jagged alarm, hitting every emotion in between.

  Her head swam, making her woozy and sick. Just as it had done moments earlier when she’d bent to the water pitcher and experienced diamond-clear images of her and Daigh together—she squirmed—doing things she had never done. Not with Daigh. Not with any man. It had been so real. An instant in time but she’d reveled in his hands upon her skin, welcomed the light of desire in his eyes, heard the gasp of her own breath as he entered her.

  Had he hypnotized her? Cast some spell of seduction? Did that explain the strange flashes and queer feelings he generated? Or was she merely fishing for excuses to justify her own hoydenish behavior? She’d almost let him kiss her. Wanted him to kiss her. Badly.

  Thoughts whirled and spun in an endless tangled loop. Her stomach lurched as her vision clouded and burst with odd spearing lights and colors. Black. Gold. Red. Purple.

  The fog thickened, muffling sound, erasing everything around her, including the column she leaned against. She clung to it, trying not to faint, hoping the air would clear her head, but the sweet tang of wet leaves and wood smoke filled her nose.

  As the fog dissipated, she stood in a clearing, arms wrapped about a huge moss-covered tree trunk, branches lifting away into the sky to mix with branches from hundreds and thousands of other trees as massive as this oak. A path wound off to her left, and she heard water passing over stones, the jingle of harness from a tethered horse. A man emerged into the dappled light. Daigh. Though he carried himself with an easy stride, unlike his usual tension-filled prowling.

  She stepped forward into his embrace, his arms encircling her. His breath warm against her cheek. And it happened. The kiss she’d been waiting for. Her stomach leapt into her throat. He bent and . . .

  A blast of air stung her face. An icy rain chilled her skin. She stood alone. In the dark. The courtyard, rather than the primeval forest, rising around her. The fog had thinned to streamers of heavy mist, leaving her shivering and afraid, yet aching with a unexpected yearning to return to that forest glen.

  Was Daigh conjuring these visions? Was she?

  She looked to the lighted windows of Ard-siúr’s office. Nearly called out for help. She needed Sister Ainnir. Ard-siúr. Someone older and wiser and more experienced. But Daigh had begged her silence. Done more than beg. He’d demanded it. And no wonder. They already questioned his continued stay among them. Any more bizarre behavior and he’d be sent away.

  She should heed Ard-siúr’s warning. That was the sensible thing to do. The safe thing to do.

  She frowned, decision hardening to cool purpose.

  But it was not the right thing to do.

  Her body stiffened as if meeting an invisible challenge. She wouldn’t betray Daigh. Not yet. Not now. Not until she understood what the devil was happening.

  A blanket drawn up over his shuddering shoulders. Words washing over his consciousness like a soothing draught. Clear. Melodious. Octaves purring up and down in a mantra, easing the tight bands across his back, the aching bowels where not even water rested easily.

  He’d not scared her away. She’d returned. Gazed upon him with an incandescent smile that warmed a heart long frosted over. Challenged the darkness invading his soul to sit beside him. Whisper to him. Used her magic to lull him into a sleep untroubled by nightmares.

  A glimpse of thick, unbroken forest speared by shafts of golden light. Gilding her hair. Sparkling in her blue eyes. Light hands cooling the raging fever heat of his body. He used these to fight the presence balanced startled and uncertain at the edge of his awareness.

  “Sabrina.” He threaded his fingers with hers. Gripped her hand as if she might vanish with his other dreams.

  She answered, but his name upon her lips tangled in the meeting rush of sleep. He heard nothing more.

  “Come, Sister Clea. It’s long past the time when you should be asleep.”

  Sabrina took the frail woman’s shoulders. Tried guiding her back to the bed at the end of the row while projecting the warmth of a soft bed. The snuggly security of heavy quilts. The delight at being safe and protected while outside the weather howled.

  “I’ve got to find Paul,” Sister Clea whined. “Where’s Paul? Mother said he’d be home by the end of the summer.” She dug in her heels. Tried twisting out of Sabrina’s grasp. “I want Paul. He promised to be back by my birthday.”

  “Shhh. You’ll wake the others.” Shuttered lamps at each end of the room sent long shafts of wavery light across the floor. Picked out the few filled beds. Blankets heaped against damp from the rain tapping at the windows.

  Sister Clea kept up her insistence. “But he said he’d be back. Said to meet him at the wharf, and he’d bring me a gift.”

  An unbidden image of Brendan, grim-faced and pale, assuring Sabrina he’d return in a month at the latest pushed its way into her sleep-deprived mind. He’d ridden out that same afternoon. The pain of his departure swallowed all too soon in the monumental agony of her father’s murder. Her mother’s death. If only she’d known it would be the last time she’d see her brother, she would have parted with him differently. No sulking. No cold shoulder. No standing like a statue in the circle of his farewell embrace. Those last horrible moments still haunted her.

  “I’m sure Paul will be home soon,” Sabrina comforted.

  But he wouldn’t.

  Her brother would never return to the sister who still mourned him.

  “I want Paul. He said he’d come. It’s my birthday, and he promised me.” Sister Clea writhed in Sabrina’s arms, her voice growing frantic, her actions frenzied. Not even the strength in Sabrina’s empathic link enough to calm the confused old woman.

  “I’m home, lass. Just as I promised.”

  A shadow stretched over Sabrina’s shoulder. Flickered in the uneven light like a risen spirit.

  Her heart slammed into her throat, and she wheeled around to find herself face to chest with Daigh. Untucked shirt. Bare feet. A day’s growth of stubble darking his chin. Disconcerting in the extreme, but not, thankfully, the seaweed-soaked corpse she’d half expected.

  “Paul?” Sister Clea’s reedy voice piped with sudden excitement, her wild gyrations subsiding as she peered with rheumy eyes at his shadow-hidden features. “Is that you?” One birdlike hand reached up. Her lips curved in a toothless smile. “It is you. I knew you’d come.” She sighed, leaning into his arm. Letting him guide her back to bed. “I’ve been waiting so, so long, Paul. It was naughty of you to stay away.”

  “I tried coming home to you, lass, but . . .” His gaze passed over the hunched old woman to settle on Sabrina. “In the end, it was impossible.”

  A prickly buzz shimmied up her spine like the perfect struck note of a tuning fork. The air shifting and shimmering with a million darting lights.

  “But now I’m back . . .” Daigh’s voice came deep and echoing as if spoken through water. “For you.”

  “You’ll stay this time?” Sister Clea asked, her girlish joy infectious. “For good?”

  He offered a slow, solemn nod, though whether directed at Clea or Sabrina she couldn’t be certain.

  The air turned hot and thick a
nd humid despite the November rain outside. Sabrina tried catching her breath, but her lungs felt squashy. Vertigo had the room tipping and falling, dinner rising into her throat. Lamplight shivered and streaked. Before she could call out, the room fell away, and she stood within the circle of Daigh’s embrace. Tears hot upon her cheeks. His heart beating steady beneath her ear.

  He stepped out of her arms. Gave her an awkward grin. One last kiss. “I’ll be back, cariad. I promise. Your worries are for nothing.”

  Her skin prickled over muscles that suddenly seemed made of water. A familiar voice called to her. And the room collapsed into a pair of mesmerizing, forever eyes.

  “Better?”

  From flat on her back, Sabrina blinked up into Daigh’s worried face. Presented an embarrassed smile as answer.

  “I’ll take that as yes.”

  She struggled to sit, though it took a great deal more effort than she’d imagined it would. She cradled her wobbly head in her hands. “How long?”

  “A minute or two. Your face went blank just before you collapsed.”

  Taking the cup he held out to her, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. Swished the water around in her mouth, hoping to alleviate the fuzziness of her tongue as if she’d swallowed a ball of yarn. Her head throbbed all the way down to her toes, her vision splashed with color and light, and an ache in her heart as if she’d been stabbed.

  “Sister Clea?” She peered through the blinding star-bursts, the room still rolling uncomfortably.

  “Asleep. Put to bed with a drink of water and a peck on the forehead like a good brother ought.” He took back the cup. Refilled it. Set it on a nearby table. Such homey actions seemed at odds from a man who’d scythed his way through a gang of thieves like death himself.

  “It was kind of you to pretend for her.”

  “I didn’t do it for her.”

  “Oh,” she breathed, a trembling beginning low in her stomach that had nothing of sickness about it.

  Massaging her temples, she closed her eyes. Reclaimed a tenuous grip. When she reopened them, her sight at least seemed less volatile. The rest of her remained frustratingly unstable as if the quivery, fluttery butterflies had overtaken every part of her body.

  What had she seen in those last seconds? Another unexplained imagining? Had it been a piece of Daigh’s life superimposed on her mind? Had she somehow tapped more than emotion? Called forth an actual memory? Perhaps these visions weren’t purposeful at all on Daigh’s part. No spell, but merely her mind’s momentary faltering. A breach through which Daigh’s past rushed in.

  She nervously gnawed the edge of one fingernail. Rubbed at her forehead as if she might bring back the already fading vision. Her stomach danced a queasy jig that had her reaching again for the water. She let the cool tang ease her parched throat. “I don’t usually faint like that. It must have been something I ate or perhaps the late hour—”

  He shrugged deeper into the shadows. “You don’t have to explain, Sabrina.”

  “I just didn’t want you to think that—”

  “You might be less than strong? I don’t. You’ve a streak in you that would put many a battle-hardened warrior to shame.”

  “A warrior like you?”

  A muscle jumped in that iron jaw of his, his body drawing into itself until barely a breath stirred him. “I can’t deny it. Not after . . .” He gave a queer shrug as if trying to shake free of this newfound knowledge of himself. An apologetic dip of his head.

  A mannerism she recognized. She’d seen it only moments earlier.

  In her mind.

  The two of them. A tearful parting. And that same sheepish awkwardness.

  “I lied to you, Daigh.”

  He cocked a brow in question.

  “I didn’t swoon because of what I ate. It was because of what I saw. A vision, but with more substance. More like a memory. Your memory. But I was there with you. How could that be?”

  “I know no more than you.” He folded his arms across his chest with studied composure, but his eagerness knifed the air. Prickled against her brain like static electricity. “Go on.”

  “The vision—it was you I saw,” she blurted, the ache in her heart returned and spreading. Her throat sore and scratchy. Eyes hot with unshed tears. “You promised me you’d be back.”

  Stark misery stamped his features. As if every word she spoke bore the agony of a hammer blow. He took her by the elbows. Dragged her roughly to her feet so they stood inches apart. His gaze boring a hole through her. “Back from where? What did you see? Tell me everything.”

  “You told me I worried over nothing. You promised you’d return.”

  His pupils dilated as his grip crushed. Chest heaving. Voice ragged. “I didn’t return. Couldn’t.”

  “Why not?” The air felt charged with invisible eavesdroppers. The room’s meager light holding them in a circle of solitude. A time out of time. “Why didn’t you keep your promise?”

  His eyes seemed to reflect back at her with a bonfire glow as he struggled to answer. “I tried. But on the road”—he took a deep shaky breath—“there was an ambush. Too many of them.” He shuddered, his face a sickly gray. “I remember blood. And the mud as I fell.”

  The long stare shrank to the space separating them as if he suddenly realized he held her. The questions she’d asked. The answers he’d given.

  She tipped her head back, heart racing, shivers jolting along her nerves. The fireworks returned. Flares of light and heat arcing between them. Mage energy dancing across the surface of her skin. Raw. Wild. Nothing like the gentle, meditative flow emitted by the priestesses. This held a snarling, rabid rage. Chained, but always hunting. Always seeking escape.

  She drowned in the untamed energy. Felt herself swamped within Daigh’s powers.

  “You,” he murmured. “I was right. You were there. I remember.”

  “No,” she countered, hands splayed against his immovable chest as if to push him away. But pushing him away was the last thing she wanted. She wanted him closer. Like a moth drawn to a flame, she felt an inescapable pull. A deadly attraction.

  Crushing his mouth to hers, he backed against the wall, his body solid against hers. Only his heart’s wild beating an indication he felt the same tumult of emotion.

  She reached under his shirt. Skimmed the line of his torso. The ridges of scars rough beneath her fingers.

  He groaned, his tongue teasing her lips apart. Sliding within. Dropping the bottom out of her world with the way it probed and retreated. A soldier seeking an enemy’s weakness.

  She opened to him. Couldn’t help it. Her mind had divorced itself from her body. Thought seemed irrelevant. She was all about the senses. His skin’s blazing heat. The warm wine taste on his tongue. A clean soap and man scent tickling her nose. His harsh, quick inhalations in response to her every caress.

  He pulled free her kerchief. Loosed her hair from its confining combs so that it spilled across her shoulders. Threaded his hands through it, sending a shiver racing through her as he backed her toward the bed.

  She dropped heavily onto the mattress, and he knelt at her feet like a knight from a tale, his eyes locked with hers, his intentions burning in the darkest reaches of his sin-black gaze. Turning her to jelly.

  A door opened at the far end of the room, sending a chilly draft whistling through the room. The candle guttered and went out. The moment broken.

  Daigh rose from his knees, scrubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes. Lines bit into the corners of his mouth. The lamplight creating frightening ghostly hollows in his face.

  “It was you in my dream. I’m not mistaken,” he hissed accusingly. “Why do you pretend as if you don’t know who I am?”

  She glanced toward the door, but whoever had interrupted them had turned left toward the stairs.

  “Answer me, Sabrina.” He stepped menacingly forward, his brows drawn into a scowl, his jaw set.

  How did one go from blazing hot to arctic cold within a
heartbeat? She hugged her body, drawing her knees up. “I’m not pretending. I swear. I don’t know why you remember me. I don’t know you. I never saw you before two weeks ago. Honestly.”

  He flexed his hands. Stiff-legged and shoulders set as if meeting his fate head-on. “But you and I . . . and the promise. That was real. How can I remember something that didn’t happen?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ll only figure out the answer together. Of that, I’m sure.”

  He seemed to consider this, his face losing some of its horrible ferocity. “Why take such a risk for a man you don’t know?”

  “It has as much to do with me as you.” She rubbed a hand over her forehead as if wiping away the heartbreaking image of their final parting. “I’m the one having visions of the two of us that never happened.”

  Daigh speared her with a grim stare. “Oh, they’re real, Sabrina. I remember.”

  She swallowed back a whimper of panic. Because she knew he told the truth. Because she remembered too.

  Daigh opened his eyes on a whisper of breeze through his room. A shift in air pressure. A sound that should be silence. Rising, he dragged a shirt over his head. Pulled his boots on. Lifted the latch on his door, cracking it slowly.

  The passage was empty, but for the tangle of overlapping shadows. Silent but for a steady drip of water.

  Not Sabrina.

  She’d fled him hours earlier. The anguish in her eyes cutting into the icy fist of his heart. He’d let her go despite his questions. And his need. But he refused to ignore either for long. Not when she traversed the mysterious junction of past and present. His key to understanding both.

  The same instinct that pulled him alert and out of bed had him padding silently down the passage and into the main ward of the hospital. Sister Clea remained asleep. Nothing and no one out of place.

  Outside, rain pricked his exposed skin like claws. Peering into the night, he scanned the courtyard. The locked gate. Shuttered barns and storehouses. Dark windows of the buildings opposite.