Lord of Shadows

by Alix Rickloff

  Six hundred years old.

  Seconds fresh.

  A marcher lord’s dimly lit solar.

  A dusty, smelly Dublin garret.

  She stood gawking with gem blue eyes, face creamy as marble, expression doe-shy and stretched with appalled concern as she flew to his side.

  He curled himself more tightly against the gut-seizing cramps accompanying this new flash of remembrance.

  “Did she hurt you?” she fumed. “So help me . . .” This forceful, outraged Sabrina burst through the pallid ghost-version like sun against fog. Eradicated it with the vibrant energy of the living.

  “That was my line,” he answered, scrubbing his mouth with the back of his hand. “And you once said I didn’t need your healing.”

  She pushed his hair back off his face. Tutted over his fever heat. “How was I to know you were going to run afoul of a hateful, fire-breathing gorgon?”

  “I think they turn you to stone.”

  “Who?” she asked absently as she quickly and efficiently arranged blankets, smoothed tousled clothing, eased him back against his pillow.

  “Gorgons. Dragons breathe fire. Gorgons turn you to stone.” Already he felt knotted muscles easing, though his brain remained burnt and blistered with the full knowledge of his sins.

  Hands on hips, she scowled at him with a gifted healer’s skeptical eye. “Why are you babbling about gorgons? What on earth did she do to you?”

  He looked to the window. To the floor. Anywhere but at her. “Miss Roseingrave merely filled in the blanks.”

  Sabrina drew up his one and only chair. Settled herself with experienced professionalism. But he was aware of the smooth, cool flesh beneath that proper high-collared exterior. The sweet taste of that mouth and the dreams filling that sapphire gaze. It made him want to howl his anguish. Pull the world down around him and crush out the pain of this new exile.

  She childishly chewed the edge of one finger. “She claims she’s going to kill Brendan if she finds him.” A wobble threaded her words. And now you’re hurt . . .”

  “Miss Roseingrave is Amhas-draoi, Sabrina.”

  She sucked in a frightened breath, her face going chalk white, brows snapping into a frown.

  He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Puzzled it out, have you? She wants me to hand her Brendan Douglas’s head on a platter. Or at least his whereabouts.”

  “That’s why you kept asking if I’d heard from him. You planned on—”

  “Trading him for a clean, quick death. Aye.”

  “You want so much to die?”

  He opened his eyes to see her glowering down at him from eyes bright with outrage.

  “I want to be free,” he answered firmly. “The form of it makes no difference.”

  She gazed at him for long unbearable minutes, her words when they came soft but certain. “So what made you change your mind about Brendan?”

  “What makes you think I have?”

  “You’d not be telling me otherwise.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His stomach rolled, but the room had stopped the wild spinning of earlier. “Perhaps it’s all part of my wily plan,” he said, running a hand over his chin. “Make you think I’m on your side when the only side I’m on is my own.”

  “I don’t believe it. You’re too forthright. Deception and conniving aren’t your way. You face your enemies head-on.”

  He straightened, shooting her a sarcastic look. “Your empathic gifts are so great you can read my character?”

  A dogged glint flashed in her eyes. “It’s naught to do with empathy. I read the man as he’s shown himself to me over and over.” She leaned forward. “Honorable. Principled.” So close he counted the freckles upon her nose. Drowned in her jewel blue irises. “Compassionate.” She barely pressed her lips to his.

  His body shuddered, this time with suppressed need. “This isn’t a game, Sabrina. I can’t save you. I can’t even save myself.”

  “I’m not asking to be saved.” Such a serious face. Determined. Almost angry.

  No. He knew exactly what she was asking for, and it was becoming harder to deny her. And why should he? His villainy had been firmly established.

  “It wouldn’t be our first time,” she cajoled. “You know it. You remember.”

  All too well. Sabrina, smiling as she teased him to arousal. Wanton and passionate, her body sleek and soft beneath him. Spooned against him as she slept after. The picture burned in his mind.

  “It never happened. Couldn’t have.” He denied his memories. Yet here she was before him. An impossible reality. But then—as death undone—so was he. Perhaps two impossibilities created their own mysterious magic.

  He reached for her. Felt her shiver beneath his fingers as he drew her up and against him. For all her brave talk, she remained fearful.

  He cupped her face in his hands, sliding his tongue along the seam of her lips. She opened to him, letting him dip inside. Quick flicks to entice. To tempt. While she stood without moving, hands splayed against his chest as if unsure where to go from here.

  Taking the decision away from her, he caressed her shoulders, the curve of her breasts, down her sides, settling his hands on her hips. Gathering her close.

  As she relaxed, his kisses deepened. She tasted velvety sweet, her honey heat acting on him like a drug until he hungered for more. Hunger for her congealing into a devastating greed. He wanted not just to recall their passion. But to relive it. Sabrina belonged to him. Body and soul. In this life and the last.

  Buttons. Knots. Ribbons. Each article of clothing discarded with wicked eroticism until he throbbed with impatience, and her breathing came quick and gasping with every touch of his hands upon her flesh.

  There was an instant when he stood before her naked, his uncountable scars ice-white and puckered against the bronze of his skin. Shame and cowardice and the burning knowledge of his crimes flared through him once more.

  Sabrina would find out. Sabrina would hate him.

  Then she bent, kissing his chest. Tracing the myriad paths of Máelodor’s cruelty, her gaze bright with unshed tears.

  Courage. Strength. Compassion. Generosity. She possessed them all.

  Heart beating painfully, he swept her up and into bed to lie atop him, her sun-drenched brown hair spilling over him, her skin silken soft and blushed pink and gold like a sunrise. With ever-increasing abandon, she kissed him, tugging at his bottom lip with her teeth, darting a tongue inside, matching his temptations with her own.

  Urgency ignited his blood, his cock hard at the junction of her legs. It would take seconds to bury himself deep inside her. Instead, he spun out his seduction. Enjoyed her body inch by melting inch. Treated this time as precious and never to be again.

  She moaned her yearning into his open mouth, begged him even when she knew not what she begged for. Her body sinuous, sinful perfection.

  Rolling her beneath him, he spread her legs, kissing his way down over her breasts, alternately laving and sucking her nipples until she trembled. Preparing her for him with skillful gentling as if she were indeed the self-conscious wild creature he’d first envisioned upon that rocky mile of lonesome beach below Glenlorgan.

  So when he entered her with a tender stroke, her body curved into his, hands twined around his neck, hips arched to meet him.

  She gasped, eyes wide as he remained poised above her. But only for a moment before she smiled, spurring him onward with a siren’s invitation. Taking him deeper within her until it was his turn to tremble, his body closing fast toward a dangerous edge.

  He slowed the tempo, savoring the pleasure. Knowing it for what it was. A beginning and an end.

  She may not have understood the significance of his actions, but she responded with a sweet eagerness that had every nerve in his body leaping to new heights of attention as he thrust deeper.

  Sabrina wound her arms around his back, face dappled with light and shadow, breasts high and round, tips pebble-hard. Pressur
e built within him. Pooling low. Radiating outward. The pleasure-pain of their joining increasing with every thrust.

  Her eyes fluttered open, meeting his steady gaze with a diamond-blue rapture. And it was as if he were back where he began. At the ship’s gunwale, staring deep into the heart of the sea. Praying to any god he could to be allowed to rejoin his lost lover in Annwn. Had this then been their answer? Had the gods heard him after all? And was this one moment with Sabrina his reward?

  Or his punishment?

  Desire coalesced down to a focused instant. Boiled high in a brilliant shockwave as he exploded inside her. Kissed her as she moaned her bliss into his mouth.

  She dug her hands into his shoulders, head thrown back, breath ragged. Whispered his name over and over as she climaxed around him. Achingly star-bright and beautiful in ecstasy.

  Later, they lay nestled together, neither one ready to gather the discarded proprieties they’d shed with their clothes. The day lingered into twilight as they talked and dozed and talked some more. He should release her. Let her go. Force her out of his bed and, even if she didn’t realize it, out of his life. Instead, his arms wrapped around her, his chin resting against the top of her head, the heat of her warming every dead place within him.

  “Will you return to Glenlorgan?” he asked.

  She shifted in his arms until they faced one another, a crease between her brows. “Not if Aidan has his way.” She curled closer into him. “He wants me to return with him to Belfoyle. He thinks going there will make me forget the last seven years. As if we can re-create the life we had before Father’s murder, and I’ll suddenly realize his plans for my future are the best.”

  “Perhaps going home would help you lay aside your grief. You can see things as they are now. Not dwell on what was.”

  “Once he’s got me safely hidden away at Belfoyle, he’ll never allow me to return to take my place among the sisters. I’ll be fitted out as the latest Douglas up for sale on the marriage market. Healthy, all my teeth, and the rents from an estate or two thrown in for good measure. What gentleman could resist?”

  “Love can sometimes be found even in the most practical of alliances. You may be lucky in your brother’s choice.” Like picking at a half-healed wound, he tormented himself with the statement, imagining Sabrina with another man.

  “Even if I did, what use would my healing abilities be in this world? I’d be trapped in the role of good little hostess and breeder of sons. Never allowed to utilize the gifts I’ve been given. I couldn’t stand that.”

  He pushed her hair off her face. Kissed her forehead. “Your brother sees happiness in marriage and family. And who can argue? Not many men are blessed with a woman as courageous and spirited as Lady Kilronan.”

  She lifted her head, her crease deepening. “You know her?”

  He shrugged, answering quickly, “By reputation only,” hoping that satisfied her.

  It seemed to. She lay back down. “You think I should listen to him and return to Belfoyle.”

  Isolated. Warded. Far from Dublin and St. John and Máelodor.

  And him.

  Belfoyle was exactly where she needed to be.

  “I do,” he answered.

  She snuggled into his chest, almost as if she were burrowing in. Her body sending tingles of renewed heat straight to his groin. He clenched his teeth, knowing if he surrendered to his body’s increasing demands, she’d be fortunate to arrive home before dawn.

  “And if I shocked you by asking to stay?” she murmured. “With you?”

  “Don’t, Sabrina.”

  She rolled up onto an elbow. “That sounds very much like a thank-you but no.”

  He ignored the scraps of heart left to him. Cracked his mind to the presence as a way to fight back against the temptation of her proposal. Immediately, the ominous brimstone anger overwhelmed his lust. Black emotions scorched the insides of his skull, leaving naught but the charred remains of his earlier desire. “I can’t protect you. I’m who you need protecting from.”

  He stared at her. Without speaking. Unable to breach a gap of inches. No way around the dead bodies lying between them. No way over the mountain of sins he’d committed for the sake of his master. His creator. The Great One.

  “Mr. MacLir.” A rap upon the door broke them both free. “There’s someone downstairs asking for you. A rather foul-tempered gentleman with a pistol and an unstable eye.”

  St. John? Here? Could it get worse?

  “Says he’s the Earl of Kilronan.”

  Bloody hell. He’d had to ask.

  Sabrina dressed in a frantic race, ears tuned to clomping footsteps on the stairs or a pistol report. Neither occurred, and she entered the parlor, more or less in a presentable and unfrenzied state. Hair bundled into a loose chignon. Stays abandoned, but stockings in place and gown right way around and buttoned correctly.

  She hoped.

  “How did you find me?” she demanded, pretending a bravery she didn’t feel.

  Aidan swung around, brows drawn down over narrowed eyes, body radiating violence. “Recognize this?” He slammed her journal on the table.

  She cringed, wracking her brain. Surely she’d hidden it away. She never left it out. But she’d stayed up late, jotting as much down as she could. Every moment. Every kiss. And this morning, Aidan’s arrival had surprised her from her normal routine. She must have forgotten . . . A weight pressed on her chest, making her fight for every breath.

  All her thoughts. All her actions. Spread across page after page for anyone to read. Anyone and Aidan, who now looked primed for murder.

  “Don’t even try the holier-than-thou act. Not when your own wife—” She swallowed back her words at the vicious glare centered on her. “It’s not the way it looks,” she finished lamely, though it was exactly how it looked. And Aidan knew it.

  “Where is he?” Aidan seethed. “Has the monster left you to face the music while he skulks back to his master gloating over your maidenhead?” His hand gripping the pistol shook.

  “Have care with your insults, Lord Kilronan. My rage can be fatal.”

  The deep, velvety baritone slid along nerves still jumping with aftershocks of their lovemaking. She inhaled the sexy man scent of him. Reveled in the warmth of his body. If she stepped back, she’d be in the circle of his arms.

  “Lazarus.” That one syllable filled with enough venom to kill. “I should have murdered you when I had the chance.”

  Daigh stepped around her, the towering strength of his body emphasized by the tiny parlor. She’d forgotten how big he was. How he seemed to pulse with a savage light. How his very presence sucked every bit of air from a room and his gaze could smolder with enough heat to singe. “As I remember, my lord, you tried. And how is your lady wife?”

  Wait. Daigh? Aidan? Aidan’s wife? Did they know one another? Apparently knew and loathed by the killer stare her brother focused on Daigh.

  “Did you think to attack me through Sabrina? Were you planning on taking her to Máelodor for his pleasure once you were finished with her?”

  Aidan looked in danger of exploding. His face purple. His eyes burning with a dark intensity she’d never seen before. Almost as if the shadow of another crouched waiting in the ruthless gaze. He brought the pistol up to level it at Daigh’s chest. The shadow overtaking him. His stare as soulless and empty as if someone else controlled him. Inhabited him.

  Daigh never faltered. “That will avail you nothing.”

  “You forget, Lazarus, I carry within me a little piece of my own monster. My own hell, thanks to you.”

  “And would you summon it here? Risk losing yourself to the evil of the Unseelie?”

  “A risk worth taking,” Aidan snarled.

  “Stop! Stop it now!” Sabrina stepped between them as if she could fend off the inevitable. “Do you hear yourself, Aidan? Is this even about me?”

  “What do you think, Sabrina? Or did you think at all when you took up with this thrice damned savage fiend? He’s a
freak of nature. A cursed, hellish experiment.”

  “Careful, my lord. I’ve killed men for less.”

  “I’m well aware of the men you’ve killed.”

  Like two curs circling, teeth bared. Did they even hear her over their chest-thumping brinksmanship?

  She grabbed Daigh’s arm. Dragged him around long enough to focus on her. “What’s this about?” A question she seemed to ask with maddening regularity. But confusion had become her permanent state of mind. And she tired of it. “Why are you ready to tear each other apart?”

  Daigh offered her a mad dog stare, a feverish, implacable rage burning in his jet-black eyes. Emotion flooded her senses, but instead of the unstoppable rush of memory, she came up against a wall, stark and impassable. She read nothing of his thoughts. Saw nothing of his past. Only a black, dizzying emptiness like a razored maw. An unblinking serpent’s eye. She shuddered under that malevolent, unyielding gaze. Fell back with a startled cry.

  “You once said I was given a second chance, Sabrina. But that chance came with strings. The diary I dreamt about? The visions of death and destruction?”

  “What about them?”

  “Your brother. His wife. Your cousin. Your house. I destroyed them all. Or tried to at my master’s bidding. I am a creature in thrall to a madman.”

  Aidan’s injuries in the spring. They’d told her he’d had an accident climbing the cliffs below Belfoyle. Jack dead at the hands of highwaymen. Kilronan House burnt to the ground from a dropped candle on a carpet. All of these had been caused by Daigh? No. It couldn’t be. She would have known. Would have seen. Would have sensed it.

  But she had. She did. And she’d refused to give any of her concerns credence. Too caught up in her girlish fantasy of Daigh riding to her rescue. Her black-eyed paladin swooping in to save her. It had been just that—fantasy.

  Her body went cold then hot. She hugged herself against the shudders wracking her body.

  Aidan grabbed her arm. “Come, Sabrina.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she whispered, praying for a denial.