Warrior's Curse

by Alexa Egan

“Is that why you broke ranks with Sir Dromon and freed me? Is that why you saved me . . . again?”

  What did he want her to admit? That she’d gone against a lifetime of teaching because she’d finally come to the realization that Sir Dromon’s version of security was as calamitous to the Imnada as any Fey-blood assault? That she wanted to prove herself to all those people who doubted her worth as N’thuil and all those souls who came to beg the sphere’s intercession despite their dwindling faith? That she couldn’t stand by and see the clans’ last chance for healing tied down and staked in a public execution?

  Or that she’d begun to fear that the clans’ last chance for healing was her last chance as well?

  “The future you offer scares me to death, but I begin to fear the alternative more.”

  “Do you?” His words were barely more than a breath upon her cheek. “I always knew you were a rebel at heart.”

  She felt her body swaying against her will, felt her bones melting and the blood pouring hot through her veins. Every nerve sizzled in anticipation. He hovered above her, over her, his eyes boring into hers, his body so close she had but to reach a hand to pull him toward her. But he never moved, never came any closer. Why did he hold back? What stayed his hand when his eyes gave his desire away? She wished she were brave enough to ask. She wished she were brave enough to hear his answer.

  Instead she was left with a choice—frustration or brazenness.

  Her hand threaded his hair, her heart skipped a beat, and she kissed him.

  His mouth tasted salty while his tongue slid hot between her lips, teasing, tempting, dragging her deeper, offering her everything. Time seemed to stretch as his mouth moved over hers in a slow delicious dance, breath mingling, eyes darkening, passion mounting.

  Her vision narrowed to the sharp-edged solemnity of his face, the arching sweep of his brows, the old scar at his temple and the new gash on his forehead, the smudges of exhaustion and the jump of tension. She closed her eyes, letting the weight of her desire drag her under. Her bones turned to ash. Her limbs gave way. She fell hard with a whimper of desire.

  He jerked away with a groan of pain.

  Not exactly the reaction she was looking for.

  So much for brazenness.

  * * *

  “Are you certain your wrist is all right? I can tighten the splint. It shouldn’t look like that, should it? Or bend in quite that way?” Meeryn wrinkled her nose.

  “I’ll heal.” He clamped his jaw and tightened his hands on the reins of his “borrowed” horse. He didn’t need Meeryn drawing any more attention to the fact he felt like a damned fool for shrieking like a girl and nearly fainting dead at her bloody feet. At least the agony in his wrist kept him from dwelling on the ass he’d made of himself—again.

  How was she able to burrow her way beneath every defense until he lost control like an adolescent boy faced with his first bedsport? How was she able to wring such confessions from him when he’d barely acknowledged these truths to himself? Ollie was a name he rarely spoke. A face he barely remembered. But his brother’s life had forever shadowed everything Gray was just as his death had forever tainted it. Meeryn was one of the few who knew how much he’d loved his brother and one of the few who knew how much he’d grieved for him.

  “Gray, are you certain we’re traveling in the right direction? I think we passed that tree twice already.”

  Her question drew him back to the present. He looked up and, indeed, the tall spruce with the crooked trunk stood at the same fork in the road it had stood the last time they’d ridden this way. He turned his horse’s head to the left and followed the uphill track away from a distant church spire and the comforting village rooftops and farm fields. “Aren’t we meeting Kelan in Sidnam? That’s miles south of here.”

  “We’re taking the long way.”

  She jogged her bony gray mare up beside him, hair a wild tangle beneath her kerchief, her dark eyes like two black wells in her pale face. She had to be exhausted and unused to such effort, but she continued to sit her horse well, despite the long hours in the saddle and her purloined kirtle and apron, which rode up her thighs with every rough bone-jarring stride. “You mean the wrong way,” she muttered.

  “Do you want to take over?” he snapped, anger at himself shortening an already frayed temper.

  “No, I’m just pointing out that—” With a moan, she slumped forward on her mare’s neck, eyes rolled back in her head.

  “Meeryn, what’s wrong?” He kicked free of his stirrups and slithered to the ground, catching her as she slid down her horse’s shoulder into his arms, gritting his teeth as his wrist took and held her weight. “Meeryn? Can you hear me?”

  She spoke not a word, but her eyes remained wide and staring and her lips moved as if she fought to answer. He bent his ear close, caught only a hitch of breath and a murmured, “Katarth theorta . . .”

  He carried her to the grass, hands shaking as he laid her down. Had she been shot? It couldn’t be. He’d have heard the cock of a pistol or a musket, seen the slice of a shadow made by a crouching shooter or the flash off a barrel. He’d spent too many years watching his back and surveying his surroundings to be lulled into complaisance. And there wasn’t any blood. No wound anywhere on her, not even a graze.

  A shudder spasmed her body. She dragged in a ragged breath, chest heaving as if her lungs struggled to work. Her gaze found and locked on his eyes, face ashen, fingers dug into the dirt. “Dromon . . . he’s discovered Jai Idrish is missing.”

  “How do you know?”

  Tremors continued to ripple through her body and she hung her head, her fingers trembling. “He told me.”

  “Sir Dromon?”

  “No.” She lifted her head and her eyes held a new and terrible knowledge. “It was Idrin.”

  * * *

  Meeryn caught sight of Gray as a wheeling speck upon the clouds and again as an arrow unleashed upon a target, the scream of his prey signaling success. They would eat tonight.

  Cupping Jai Idrish in her palms, she stared into the flames of the small cookfire they’d risked, its thin white smoke dispersed by a steady breeze. Human figures and animal aspects twisted and writhed within the flames as the pressure built in her head and the crystal sang of distant stars and invisible galaxies and the frantic flight of a race on the verge of extinction. The Imnada had suffered more than once at the hands of dangerous enemies; the Fealla Mhòr had only been the most recent catastrophe.

  Could she focus this new power, or would it always be a wild unpredictable tumble of images and ideas jumbling her brain?

  Muffled footsteps and the scent of game heralded Gray’s arrival. She returned Jai Idrish to her bag as he appeared from amid the trees, carrying two bloody hares already skinned and dressed. “You’re awake. How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Coddled.” She grimaced her irritation. “I’m not an invalid and perfectly capable of sitting a horse.”

  “You fell off—twice. You’re fortunate the beast is lethargic bordering on insensate or you’d be recovering from more than a ghostly visitation.”

  “It wasn’t a ghost. It was Jai Idrish that spoke to me.”

  “With Idrin’s voice.”

  “Yes . . . no . . . I can’t explain it exactly.” She tapped her forehead in frustration.

  “So it would seem.” He knelt to the fire, setting the hares to cook. “We’ll stay here and rest until you’re feeling better.”

  “I am better, and the Ossine will find us if we linger.”

  “Not if we’re careful.”

  He tested the sizzling meat, pulling chunks off as they cooked, offering them to Meeryn. She didn’t think she was hungry until she began to eat, then she found herself burning fingers and tongue as she devoured the hare’s sweet gamey flavor, washed it down with the tepid water from a nearby stream. Night fell, and the fire threw long shadows across the ground, hollowed the stark lines of Gray’s face, and burnished his skin a golden bronze. He leaned against th
e trunk of an ash, a stalk of grass between his teeth, eyes gleaming gold beneath half-lowered lids.

  “Better?”

  She licked the grease from her fingers. “Much.”

  His gaze swept to the bag at her hip. “Has Idrin’s ghost offered any more words of warning, or are we on our own again?”

  “I told you . . . it wasn’t his ghost who spoke to me. Or rather, it was, but he was only one thread amid a web of a million such, the spirits of every N’thuil stretching back to the beginning, all joined within the crystal.”

  “They’re imprisoned within Jai Idrish?”

  “They are Jai Idrish.” Faces moved behind her eyelids, a string of men and women lost to time but forever a part of her as N’thuil. Daunting, yes, but also exhilarating. “We had it wrong. Jai Idrish isn’t our link to the Mother Goddess. It’s our link to the past going back to the very beginning. Every N’thuil adds his voice to the whole in an unbroken stream of information. Every N’thuil is able to draw on that store of knowledge when it’s needed.”

  “So why has it been silent for so long?”

  “Perhaps in our complacency, we forgot how to access the power within its heart. Perhaps it sensed we had no need of its wisdom and so simply stopped listening. I don’t know. All I know is that something”—she paused to stare him down—“has caused it to take an interest in us again. Something has caused it to hear me in a way it hasn’t listened to a N’thuil since our grandfather’s grandfather’s day.”

  “Then you can work the magic that will bring the Gylferion to life. I wasn’t wrong.”

  A whisper of a thought passed fleeting and was gone. Something important she should remember. She grasped for the words but they drifted high and thin as the smoke of the cookfire and were lost. “I think I can. I don’t know. I haven’t tried to control or guide its power. It just seems to happen. Like falling through a door you never knew was there.”

  “Falling is a start.”

  She bit her lip, tasting blood along with juicy fat from the meat. “I don’t think Jai Idrish is the answer to the curse, Gray. Or not all of it. The Fey-blood’s magic is too strong and there’s too much of darkness and evil in its casting.”

  “Did Idrin tell you that, too?”

  “Gray . . .”

  He sat up, tossed away his stalk of grass. “I won’t believe it. No magic is immutable.”

  He rose from his seat, his pose of quiet contemplation vanished in a white-hot impatience. The soft gleam in his gaze became a conflagration. His aristocratic features and liquid grace burned away to reveal a warrior’s stance and a warrior’s will. The eagle moved under his skin, fighting to escape the manners of man, battling to rend and slash and tear its taloned way out of his chest and take flight . . . not to flee his destiny but to remake it.

  * * *

  Dawn was barely a smudge of light in the eastern sky when Meeryn rose from her makeshift bed, traded her frock for the breeches and shirt she’d worn out of Deepings. The horses snuffled and stamped, but a soft pat on their noses and a scratch behind their ears settled them before they woke Gray. He remained a lump at the far side of the smoldering fire, head upon his arm, dark lashes like shadows upon his cheeks. Just as well. Every time she’d woken during the long uncomfortable night, he’d been seated across from her, a brooding figure, eyes locked on the dying flames.

  She paused to take up one of the knives they’d stolen along with the horses. A plain serviceable farmer’s tool, but sharp. It would work as well as any other.

  The path she followed ended in a small meadow. Dewy grass dragged at her legs and already she felt the day’s heat in the perspiration damping her back and trickling down her neck. But, as she’d been trained, she located her target—a young birch, its trunk long and narrow. Paced out the distance, as the sky turned from a dark cloudy pearl to a creamy steely blue and the night breeze died.

  The blade felt right in her hand, the weight well balanced. She squared her shoulders, and on an exhalation of breath, let fly with a turn of her elbow and a flick of her wrist. The blade buried itself where she’d intended; in the crook of trunk and lowest branch. The second throw was the same, as was the third. Each effort grew easier as her muscles fell into a practiced groove, her movements fluid as a dancer’s. Only at the last did the rhythm of her actions falter. A prickle between her shoulder blades that was not caused by the hot sun set the knife flying wide of the tree to land with a thud in the bushes.

  “I didn’t mean to distract you.” Gray scrubbed a hand through his tousled hair, his shirt open to reveal a golden triangle of skin.

  She curled her fingers into her palm to prevent her from reaching out to touch the pulse beating steady at the base of his throat. Instead she made a great show of stalking into the undergrowth in search of the lost weapon. “I thought I should take the time . . . just in case.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Hope doesn’t mean much these days, though, does it?” she answered, aiming and delivering the knife blade dead center.

  Only now and again did her eyes flick to where he leaned against a nearby tree, arms folded across his chest. His wrist was bandaged, deep purple bruising replacing the ominous black streaks from wrist to elbow. His posture remained slightly crooked, his features slightly strained, but despite looking like a pugilist’s punching sack, he still managed to exude an unruffled elegance as if he’d just emerged from his London club. The feral savagery of last night had been smothered until only the opaque aristocratic exterior remained.

  “That’s all well and good if your target is rooted to the ground, but what happens when you meet up with a foe a bit less herbaceous?” he asked with enough of a superior tone to set her teeth on edge.

  She stalked to the birch and pulled the blade free. “That Fey-blood at the posting inn was moving. I don’t recall you complaining over my aim then.”

  “He was almost fifty feet away and unaware of your presence.”

  She returned to her spot and let the blade fly once more, this time with a bit more force behind the throw. “His failure—not mine.”

  “And if you’d missed or he’d counterattacked?”

  “But I didn’t miss, and he could hardly have climbed two stories to come after me.” She retrieved the blade, took up position again, hands gripping the knife a bit tighter, teeth grinding a bit harder, breathing a bit more shallow as she fought her temper. Was he really questioning her skills? Was he really critiquing her ability?

  “Don’t plant your feet,” he suggested, “and perhaps if you relax your stance a bit . . .”

  “Honestly, Gray,” she snapped. “I’m not an idiot. Conal taught me—”

  “I’m well aware of everything Conal taught you, Meeryn.” His eyes flashed to hers. “Now show me.”

  What the hell did he mean by that, the bloody, infuriating, smug bastard? She let the blade sing from her fingers with every ounce of strength at her command. And gasped in alarm as he stepped forward into its path, his face blank of expression, lips hard and ringed in white.

  “Gray! Look out!” Her blood ran cold, and she unconsciously looked away, hands over her eyes.

  “I could have died a thousand different ways over the course of the last week.” His words were a mix of exasperation and amusement. “Did you really think I’d end it all on the point of your dagger?”

  She turned back, peeking through the gaps in her fingers, to see his hand fisted around the blade’s handle. “Did you just do what I think you did?”

  He flipped the knife end over end, catching it once more, a smile dancing in his eyes. “A circus trick I learned in the military. Not very useful, though it does tend to make people tread more carefully around you.”

  He handed her the knife and drew his own. “Did Conal show you”—he lunged, dagger sliding forward as if he aimed for her heart—“this?”

  She sprang out of the way, a hand up to block the thrust of his arm. “Yesterday you were trying to wrap
me in cotton like an invalid. Now you’re trying to murder me. Why the change of attitude?”

  He thrust again, giving her only a second to dodge the blade and parry with her own. “A night to reflect.”

  She barely fought off his third blow, the blades screeching one against the other, her fingers numb at the force of his attack. They broke apart, she breathing heavily, he dancing about like a marionette. His fourth was a dirty twisting move that had her on her knees. She managed to squirt away but only because she ripped free, part of her shirt coming away in his hand. He grinned. “McIlroy didn’t teach you that one? What sort of professor was he?”

  That did it. She scrambled back to her feet, face burning, determination locking her jaw. Gray wanted a fight? So be it. She’d give him a bloody fight. To hell with his bruises and his broken wrist.

  She attacked with renewed energy and a honed ferocity. Now he was the one on the defensive, dancing in and out as he dodged her assault. Blades met and parted. She caught him a blow to the jaw, another to the ribs. His smile tightened, but he never surrendered or eased up on her. His breathing became heavy as his teasing died away. Now sweat beaded his temples and glued his shirt to his muscled chest. His gaze lost its brightness, his expression as grim as she knew her own must be.

  Her arm ached all the way to her shoulder and her legs shook with the effort to stay one step ahead, one step above. Her hair fell from its bun to fly about her shoulders, and the shirt she’d swiped from the soldier at Deepings had at least two provocative tears. But she refused to give him the satisfaction. Knowing Gray, she’d never hear the end of it. She backed him slowly across the clearing, then just as he lunged, she threw a leg out in a move proven to take him down in a tumble of arms and legs.

  Off-balance, he stumbled, lurching forward, his blade spinning away into the grass.

  She smiled her success, opened her mouth to shout her victory, and found herself on the turf amid the wildflowers with the air punched from her lungs, her body pinned by the weight of his on top of her, her stolen blade resting against her throat.

  “Surrender?” he asked softly.