Why did he remember her this way? Was he going mad? Was he already there?
“If my aunt finds you here . . .” Her gaze darted toward the door.
He shoved his thoughts away. They brought him nowhere. Whatever past he recalled, it was one he could never recover. Whatever woman he remembered was naught but dust. “She won’t. If you disarm, we can talk. Then I’ll leave. No one will know I was here.”
She eyed the statue uncertainly. Placed it on a nearby table, though within reach.
He dragged himself upright, the room staying comfortingly in one place. He touched his scalp. No bleeding and barely a bump. This hadn’t been the wisest of plans. But it had gotten him inside. And with Sabrina. Alone.
He ground his jaw. Refused to let his mad sexual fantasies get in the way. He needed information. That was all. Nothing else.
He inhaled a shaky breath.
“I didn’t hurt you too badly, did I?” Eying him contritely, she fiddled with the tie of her robe.
“Nothing permanent.” He grimaced.
“Of course.” Her voice sharpened. “Then you can explain why you broke into my bedchamber.”
Pacing a few steps, he leaned against the mantel. Stared into the slumbering fire. “Tell me about Brendan.” She gave a little gasp. He whirled to face her. “Then I’ll tell you what I can.”
Her gaze narrowed at his choice of phrase, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she dropped into a chair. Her profile etched in soft charcoal lines. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Everything.”
She shook her head as if it pained her. “He disappeared seven years ago just before my father’s murder. But—”
“Murder?”
She flashed him a scorching glare. “My father was executed by the Amhas-draoi.”
He jerked in his seat, a flush of heat then cold queasing him from head to foot.
Did you really think you could win against an Amhas-draoi?
Lancelot’s taunt curled up from a corner where he’d shoved the man’s predatory sexuality. The scouring taste of his mouth crushed to his. The nerve-disrupting blast of magic that had left Daigh praying for death amid his own vomit.
Sabrina continued, unaware of Daigh’s struggle against the cloying chilly sweat. Still with her eyes locked on her lap. Her words lacking any emotion as if she spoke of strangers. “Father and his associates were hunted down and executed.”
Were Máelodor and St. John after Douglas as part of some Amhas-draoi operation? No, couldn’t be. They’d been too wary of discovery. And St. John had spoken of their plan. Other dominance. The Nine.
He followed a hunch. “Did Máelodor suffer the same fate?”
She looked up. A line between her brows. “I’ve never heard that name.” She gave a slight shake of her head.
A roadblock. He detoured. “What were your father and his friends doing to have the Amhas-draoi after them?”
“Daigh, tell me what’s going on?”
“I will, but first—what were they planning? What crimes did they commit that ended in a death sentence?”
She subsided, but fear finally stole over her face. “The Amhas-draoi came to me at Glenlorgan. They asked me questions. Over and over until I wanted to scream. Then they told me horrible stories of Father and Brendan. I didn’t want to believe them, but they said they had proof.”
Daigh watched as the past took hold of her. Her body fading into the dark as if hoping none would find her there. The world and the memories might pass her by.
“They claimed Father and the others twisted their mage energy into dangerous paths. Worked dark magics. Experimented with things they shouldn’t have.”
Summoning Domnuathi perhaps? He pushed that thought away as being of little use.
“Your brother disappeared,” he mused.
She stiffened, her face once more achingly alive. Fever bright with unshed tears. “It was just before Father’s murder. He said he had to leave for a time. Then he never wrote. Never tried to contact me. After all these years, I just assumed he was dead. Like Father and Mother. Like all of them.” Did she seek to convince him or herself?
He took her hands in his. The bones fragile. His work-roughened skin at odds with her dainty femininity. “He’s not, Sabrina. Brendan Douglas is alive.”
Her lashes swept down to shield her thoughts from him, her face averted. “How can you be certain?”
“The night I disappeared from Glenlorgan I surprised an intruder in Ard-siúr’s office. He’d been sent by a man named Máelodor to steal a tapestry from the bandraoi. I followed him as far as Cork before he escaped, but I overheard him speak of Brendan. He’d been seen in Dublin and was thought to be trying to contact the Earl of Kilronan.”
Her face went rigid, her hands clenched in her lap. “And you think that’s why Aidan summoned me to Dublin?”
Their eyes met, hers so deep a blue as to be painful. A bottomless well in which he might forget the horrors of his existence. The truth of his monstrous origins. Tears illuminated the indigo brilliance of her gaze. Quivered on her lashes. A silver track sliding down one pale cheek.
He turned back to the fire. Suddenly needing to put a distance between them. Space for him to breathe. Gain control. Remember what he was. And what could not be. “I don’t know. But it all fits together. The tapestry was housed with the bandraoi. You’ve been called to Dublin, where Douglas was last seen.”
“It does make sense.” She rose to join him at the hearth.
He stared down into her upturned face. Full lips curved in a hesitant smile. Dark brown hair crackling and wild around her head. Smelling wind-sweet. A shock wave of raw arousal burst through him.
He couldn’t help himself. He traced the line of her jaw. The long swanlike column of her throat.
She didn’t move away, but he caught her broken breathing. The pulse leaping at the base of her throat. Saw his desire mirrored in her eyes.
What would it be like to come over her skin on skin? To stroke her sleek body until she cried out for release? To bury himself in her welcoming heat and feel his own nerve-sizzling climax between her legs? And why did he feel he should already know?
He dropped his hand to his side where it curled into an angry fist. “I must leave you.”
She gave him a curious look. “Daigh, you could have stayed with the bandraoi. Explained to Ard-siúr. She would have understood and helped.”
“There were reasons it was best to leave.”
A regretful quirk of her lips. “Which you’re not going to explain.”
“I can’t, Sabrina. You’ll have to trust me.”
“Was the man you surprised in Ard-siúr’s office Mr. St. John?”
“No. But St. John is part of it.”
“Part of what?”
“I don’t know. Yet. Just stay clear of him, and if you hear from your brother, warn him. Tell him he’s being hunted. Máelodor is after him. Maybe he’ll understand better than I do.”
He took a deep breath in an effort to shake himself free of this woman, this room, this fantasy where Sabrina remained within his heart’s reach.
Bloom had called him a demon. Lancelot had labeled him monster. And were they far wrong? Sabrina, alone, had looked on him without worry. Without fear. Without loathing. A heat in those deep blue eyes that warmed even the parts of him that held the taint of the grave.
A heat that would vanish if she ever learned the truth. That Daigh MacLir was a myth.
Lazarus the reality.
Daigh wasted no time tracking down St. John.
He’d entered the building across the street last night. Had yet to leave. In the interim carriages deposited their rain-soaked passengers at the steps leading up to a fan-lighted bright green door. Other cabs clattered to a halt to pick up the umbrellaed gentlemen emerging into the autumn downpour.
When Daigh had taxed a passerby on the building’s purpose, he was given a quick fearful once-over and a stuttering confession that it house
d a gentleman’s club.
So that begged the question: Why did a fashionably dressed young woman descend the steps?
High-class whore? Perhaps. She’d not the usual look of a light heel in her well-appointed outfit and the proud set of her head, but then he didn’t expect the type of gentlemen he’d seen over the last day to settle for a greasy-haired slattern in a gin-stained smock.
As he watched, she checked the street with a frown of displeasure before making a hasty retreat toward a nearby hackney stand.
He drew in behind her. A whore might be the easiest way to gather the information he needed. Pillow talk spilled for a discreet bribe. Hardly an inspired plan, but he’d already suffered St. John’s brand of pain. Had no wish for a repeat of his repulsive appetites.
She slowed as they neared the corner, and he quickly drew into an alley. If she knew she were being followed, she might duck into one of the many shops lining the street, and he’d be back to playing the waiting game.
After a few moments, she resumed her pace. Hailed the cab with a businesslike shout.
The driver bowed her in. Shut the door, taking his seat on the box behind a dagger-hipped nag with a weary air.
At the slap of the reins, Daigh made his move. Threaded the few rain-muffled pedestrians. Jumped for the hackney, unlatching the door with a menacing glare for the driver, who chose cowardice over duty and ignored the trespass. He slid inside, shaking the rain from his coat.
“So glad you could join me, sir.” The woman smiled coquettishly as she leveled a snub-nosed pistol at his chest.
Miss Helena Roseingrave strode the room like a field commander. A steel gleam in her dark eyes. A testament to the warrior goddess Scathach’s training from the breadth of her shoulders to the belligerent jut of her chin.
“Why should I believe anything you tell me?” she spat. “You’re no more than Douglas’s conjured killer.”
“Ask Lady Sabrina yourself.”
She regarded him with an intense stare that—more so than the weapon—had held him immobile through their short cab ride and the exchange that followed. “Perhaps I shall.”
“It’s Máelodor you should be hunting. Not Douglas,” Daigh growled.
“We executed Máelodor in Paris years ago. Douglas, on the other hand, is still a wanted fugitive. Gervase St. John is no rogue bounty hunter, he’s a trusted member of the brotherhood.”
“So you’ll ignore my warnings as the ravings of a madman?”
“You’re worse than a madman, aren’t you . . . Lazarus.” She smiled with glacier warmth.
The presence screamed its pleasure. Punched against the insides of Daigh’s skull with a fist like a mace. He jerked in his chair. Bit back a grunt of pain. Sweat beading his brow. He’d not let it take him over. Not let it win. It was what Máelodor wanted. Control. Domination. Damnation.
She watched his inner conflict with scientific indifference. “He lives inside you. His blood fed your creation. His madness lit the fire beneath your bones. And while you both exist, he’ll always be there, infecting your mind with his evil.”
“I’ll fight him off.”
Another sharp shrug. “You can’t hold out against his will. He’s your maker.”
“So end my misery. Kill me.”
Her eyes flew to his, the longing to do just that starkly apparent. “Much as I’d like to, I can’t. As a Domnuathi and warded by Douglas’s Unseelie spells, you’re inviolate to all but the most powerful magics. Those wielded by the Fey themselves. You’re enthralled to your master until he tires of you.”
His flesh crawled against the venom of St. John’s hissed words. His seeking hands. His sickening kiss. “I’m no man’s slave,” he snarled.
She cocked her head, gazed upon him with steel-dark eyes. “You’re the twisted sum of your creator’s ambitions.”
“As will Arthur be if what you say is true and their goal is to resurrect him.” And by the gods, what a thought.
“It won’t get that far. We’ll find Douglas before he can locate and breach the High King’s tomb.”
“And after you capture Douglas? After you realize it’s Máelodor you should fear? By then it’ll be too late.”
She remained infuriatingly placid, but all the colder for it. “A chance the brotherhood will take.”
Her words, uttered in such a calm manner, gave no hint to the crash of mage energy she unleashed.
It toppled him from his chair. He screamed, writhing like a beast caught in a trap. And gave himself to the uncoiling power of the presence. Let it pour from him in a scalding torrent of magic and strength.
Scrambling to his knees, he deflected her spell with a curse of his own that had her reeling. And left him stunned.
He could wield that much magic? Another secret lost in the unreachable depths of his forgotten memories.
But once discovered, the powers flooded his senses. Ability and then instinct controlling the mage energy surging along his bloodstream like oil burning on water.
He sucked air into his collapsed lungs as he parried the strongest of Roseingrave’s attacks while tempering his own response. Difficult to do as she pummeled him with spell after devastating spell, but he would not be goaded into retaliation. He needed her alive. Needed her willing to listen.
“Why?” he squeezed through teeth clenched against the searing pain centered at the base of his brain.
“I’m sworn to protect humanity from things like you.”
As if she’d conjured it from air and speed, she fisted a dagger. The blade’s flash caught out of the corner of his eye. The weapon’s descent barely missing him as he dodged out of its path.
In response, he slammed her to the floor with a blaze of mage energy pulled from some hidden recess of knowledge. Held her there.
She glared up at him, loathing visible in the strained muscles of her neck, her white, bitter features as she lunged for the weapon.
He tore the dagger from her hand. Touched it to her throat. “Will you surrender all for vengeance? Máelodor’s got the tapestry. All he needs is the stone and Arthur will be his.”
Her mage energy battered at him like a hurricane tide, and only his newfound battle-magic kept him on his feet and dead-steady.
“If St. John and Máelodor succeed in starting this war, it’s the end of the Other.”
He saw her mind chewing over his words.
“The Duinedon are too numerous. Too strong. They’ll slaughter you all.”
Her spells eased. Just enough so his every breath didn’t come laced with broken glass. He used the respite for one last appeal. “What do you stand to lose?”
A tense moment followed, suspicion vivid in her gaze. Finally, she spoke through a hissed indrawn breath. “What’s your proposal?”
He pulled her to her feet. “Aid me. If I’m wrong, I’ll accept any punishment the Amhas-draoi mete out.”
“And if you’re speaking truth?”
Scathach. Warrior goddess. Head of the Order of Amhas-draoi. True Fey.
A thought hit him like a blow. A flash of inspiration. “Scathach sends me back.”
“You want her to—”
“Kill me. Aye.”
She raked him with a long prescient look. “So right or wrong, you end with what you want.”
He thought of Sabrina. The damaged memories she’d loosed. Of her. And him. And a past that could never have happened. The fragile dreams she’d evoked. Of the two of them. And a future that would never be theirs.
“Do I?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she strode to the window. Looked out on the night for long quiet minutes. When she turned back, her face held a frightening and grim determination. “You have a deal. I’ll see what I can find out. But you must do something for me.”
“Go on.”
“Help me find Douglas.”
“If the Amhas-draoi haven’t found him in seven years, what makes you think I can?”
“Simple.” She lifted a brow in coy s
uggestion. “Ask Lady Sabrina.”
Aha! Just where the clerk told her it would be. Sabrina pulled the book from the lending library’s shelf as Jane appeared from the next aisle over.
“Have you found what you were looking for?”
Sabrina held up her one fat volume in answer: A Full History of Wales As Recounted by a Most Learned Professor and Traveler of That Fine Country.
The title had been squashed onto the spine in a font so tiny one needed a magnifying glass to make it out.
Jane cocked her head. Grimaced. “Yikes. Trouble sleeping?”
Did she ever.
Daigh’s pounding questions and stunted explanations set her mind spinning off into unexplored possibilities. None of them heartening. A stolen tapestry? Máelodor? Her father’s death? Brendan’s return? How were they all linked? And where did Daigh fit into that puzzle? And did any of it explain the mysterious pull of Daigh’s memories? The life she saw as hers with a man she’d only met weeks earlier?
Days and nights of an endless circle of unanswerables had unraveled her, Jane finally coming to Sabrina’s room with a dose of her own medicine.
“Here.” She handed her a cup. “This was given to me by a talented healer. It helps when you’re having trouble sleeping.”
She’d almost spilled her worries to Jane right there. But in the end had kept quiet and accepted the draught. She didn’t want to worry her friend now that she was finally losing that frozen rabbit look. And what would Sabrina say? By the way, the man I’m hallucinating about is back. And he’s warned me my dead brother is alive and being hunted by someone named Máelodor?
Not exactly conversation of the sane.
Aunt Delia would be no help. She’d long ago renounced the Other-born part of herself. Had seen no social advantage or monetary gain in her Fey blood. And only used the simplest of magics—those manifested in chubby cherubs and fires that smelled less like smoke and more like rose-water.
Sabrina had even tried penning a letter to Ard-siúr, the first draft ending in the fire along with the four versions that followed. The head of their order had asked about Brendan. But did she ask because she assumed his guilt or because she believed his innocence? Sabrina had no way of knowing, and if her brother ran for his life, she’d do him no favors by giving him away.
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