Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (28 page)

“Mordred was a treacherous despot,” she argued. “The stories all say so.”

“He was a spoiled, selfish boy. And as you yourself just pointed out, the Fey-blood stories describing the Imnada as monsters and demons are wrong. Why shouldn’t the stories the shapechangers told of the Fey-bloods be just as inaccurate?”

She didn’t have an immediate answer for that one, though she was sure she’d come up with the perfect rejoinder about an hour from now.

“Mordred won the throne but he lost the kingdom,” Lucan added sadly.

She sat up. “
You
won him the throne.”

He bowed his head, not in shame, though she noted a tightening of his jaw, but as if he were lost in dark memories. A look she’d seen cross Gray’s face more than once. A pensive, remorseful expression. “I did, and in so doing, I loosed an evil upon the world. My ideas of a greater peace became a nightmare of bloody war.”

“Are you saying Gray is repeating your failure? That the Fey-bloods will never accept us?”

“If I believed that, I would not be aiding him. No, my failure came from arrogance and pride. I believed that I could impose peace between Fey-blood and shapechanger from above. That I, through Mordred, could decree it so and it would happen. De Coursy seeks to channel a groundswell and ride it to a new and real alliance. Look around you at Captain Flannery and his human bride; St. Leger married to a young Fey-blood. Jamie Wallace and the Flannery’s son are half-breeds with powers as great as any marked Imnada of the clans. Lady Estelle and Lady Delia are Fey-bloods, young Kelan and the Doule brothers marked members of their clan and holdings—all of them bound by one cause. That is hope, Lady N’thuil. That is the future.”

“And if the curse takes Gray? Will that future unravel?”

Lucan turned toward her, his gaze solemn. “Gray did not start this movement, but his position as heir to
the five clans has forced him to the head of it. Should he die, it is likely our best chance for peace will die with him.”

*  *  *

Lifting his head from his notes, Gray rubbed the space between his brows, the back of his neck, stretched the kinks until he cracked, but still the tension banded his body; a tightening grip he couldn’t shake. Despite the dwindling afternoon sun, heat smothered the house, the air stifling as a wet blanket, the atmosphere charged like a held breath. For so many people in residence, it was oddly silent. He’d seen no one since Meeryn tried to press lunch on him. Heard no one since Estelle and Delia passed in the corridor, voices raised in argument.

He stood up, the rush of his rising causing blue and silver light to pinwheel across his vision. He staggered, banging his hip against the table, jarring the disks, the silver spinning away to the floor with a thud. Squeezing his eyes shut, he steadied himself until the episode passed, but it was a warning, as if he needed one, that his hours dwindled. Perhaps tonight he’d be safe. Perhaps even tomorrow, but there would be a time . . . very soon . . . when the curse would roar up from the dark horrible corner of his soul and take him over.

A life spent learning control—schooling features, masking hurts, refusing pain—had been obliterated in a cataclysmic hellfire of Fey-blood sorcery. He could no more control the shift than he could stop his lungs from filling or his heart from beating. A prisoner of the very power that made him Imnada.

“Lord Halvossa? Are you all right?”

Gray started to refuse the title as he’d always done, then looked up and saw Jamie Wallace watching him from the doorway. The long mellow afternoon light only managed to make the boy look worse, his face barely more than skin stretched tight over his skull, his body gaunt, shoulders hunched. But his eyes burned with a light that had been absent in the catacombs and his chin bore a new and defiant jut.

Gray squared his shoulders and offered a soldier’s game smile in return. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I was tired of resting, and I . . . I needed to see the sky.” Color pinked Jamie’s emaciated white cheeks. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand more than you know about freedom and the lack of it.” Gray gathered up the disks. Bent to pick up the dropped one, faltering as the curse flickered and died once more at the edges of his vision.

Jamie continued to watch him uneasily. “It’s the curse, isn’t it? You suffer the way Adam did. He said there were four of you.”

Adam Kinloch; the sword stroke severing Gray’s life into a before and after. The hand of hope when hope had all but vanished. Adam had died almost two years ago, cruelly and needlessly at the hands of a murderous Other bent on vengeance, but his discovery had started the three left alive on a quixotic quest that resembled a bad anecdote. A Fey, a shapechanger, and a dead kingslayer steal a girl and a stone. . . .

“I forgot you knew Adam,” Gray said as they walked together through the quiet house.

“He spent a lot of time at my da’s farm. I liked him.
He treated me like an adult. He spoke to me about things my da wouldn’t.”

Glass doors led out onto a wide stone terrace where weeds poked through the cracks in the bricks and a rose twined its wild way up over the wall in a profusion of blossoms and droning bees. Jamie lifted his face to the sun and drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. When he turned back to Gray, his face bore less the look of an escaped prisoner and more of the naive adolescent boy he’d been before his captivity.

“Adam spoke to you about the clans?” Gray asked.

“Some. Mostly it was about the war. Stories of bloody battles and midnight raids, and sneaking past pickets, and the pretty Spanish girls in the villages you passed through.” He grinned. “Ma didn’t like those stories.”

“What did he tell you of the curse?”

Jamie swallowed, his face solemn. “Not much. But I saw what it did to him. And I helped him gather what he needed. All of us children did. It was like a great scavenger hunt.” He kicked at the base of the stone baluster, shoulders hunched, eyes down. “Adam told me once that it was all his fault. That he was responsible for the four of you being cast out of the clans.”

Guilt. Responsibility. Those two words drove so much of what one did in life. Shaped so much of what one became. Gray stared out across the overgrown lawns toward the distant belt of trees. Reached out for Meeryn with the slightest of mental touches. He felt her answering path as a breeze on his cheek and was surprised how reassuring her presence was. She’d always been the missing piece. Ten years hadn’t changed that.

“Lord Halvossa? Are you certain you’re feeling well?”

Lord Halvossa—it had been his father’s title and would have been Ollie’s when the time came. But they had died. The earldom had fallen to Gray, who had felt the guilt but refused the responsibility . . . until now.

“I’m sorry, I meant to say Your Grace,” Jamie fumbled. “Kelan told me about . . . that is . . . that your grandfather the Duke . . .”

Gray plucked one of the roses, twirling the stem between his fingers, the scent saturating the drowsy air. “I’ve sent word to your parents. Not where you are, but that you’re alive and safe.”

Jamie’s gaze slid away. “They’ll never forgive me for running off. Da warned me . . . Captain Flannery, too. They said I’d never make it through the Palings in one piece. But . . .” He shook his head. “I thought . . .”

“You wanted to understand where you came from . . . what you were . . .” Gray said, watching a bee hover close to the plucked bloom.

“Father told such stories about the Imnada. On one hand he made the holdings hidden behind the mists sound like this amazing paradise, and on the other he was always carping on about the dangers of surrendering to our animal aspect. We weren’t to speak of the clans, we weren’t to use the power within us, we weren’t to tell anyone, we weren’t to care that he was asking us to be something we weren’t, to cut off the best part of ourselves.”

The bee landed, creeping among the riffled petals in search of food before departing for greener pastures. “You’re unmarked, Jamie. A rogue with neither signum nor clan mark to protect you. Your father
knew you’d be hunted down and killed if the Ossine suspected your powers.”

“But surely I’m not the first half-breed. The Imnada must know we’re out here.”

“I’m sure they do. The enforcers defend and protect the clans from all threats.”

Jamie’s gaze flicked to his. “Including from people like us?”

Gray tossed away the flower, catching sight of the crisscross of scars on his palm. “Especially from people like you.” He ran a thumb over the spiderweb of knife cuts, barely a place on his hand untouched by the silver blade. “No, Jamie. You and your siblings are not the first half-breeds. There are graveyards full of those who came before.”

Jamie ran a hand over the balustrade, hair flopped forward to cover his eyes. “Funny, but I felt as if all those months . . . all those times they dragged me before Sir Dromon and asked me questions about the rebels . . . all that time, Sir Dromon was more scared of me than I was of him.”

“He is scared. But his fear is what makes him dangerous.”

“Kelan said the Arch Ossine would never let you live long enough to take over leadership of the clans. That we were fighting a rearguard action and it was only a matter of time.”

Gray closed his hand around his scars, but he could still feel them like a ghost pain, a threat of what awaited him if he didn’t break the curse. Then he reached out one last time to feel the bright glow of Meeryn’s happiness, the promise of what could be. “Kelan was right about that.”

*  *  *

They lay side by side upon the soft turf beside the murky pool, hands clasped, bodies cooling. Savoring the last fading echoes of pleasure dancing through her sluggish limbs, Meeryn stared up through the trees at the fragments of night sky. A star glimmered, unchallenged by the moon which had set an hour ago. A soft splash broke the quiet as a frog entered the water.

A perfect idea. She rose from the soft bower they’d made among the ferns, to dip her toes into the chilly pool. Stretched her arms over her head and launched herself like a knife into the water. The cold snatched her breath away, but by the time she surfaced, the shock had become a delicious caress. Gray rolled up on an elbow to watch her, his eyes seeming to burn like blue fire in the dark. She sensed his smile even though she couldn’t see it.

“Join me?”

His smile faded. “Probably not the best of ideas.”

She swam to the edge, then hoisted herself back upon the bank beside him. He rolled up to sit, his thigh lying warm against her own. So close she could feel his ragged breathing and the new tension ratcheting his shoulders. “You used to swim like a fish. They couldn’t keep you out of the water.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“It’s like riding a horse. Once you learn, you never forget.”

“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? The not forgetting.”

“Someone once told me not to dwell on a past that’s long gone. To look to the future.”

“Wise words. But it’s not always so easy to do what we know we should, is it? There’s no way to know what that right path is until we take it and then it’s too late.”

“Is this the right path?” She said it and immediately wished the world would swallow her whole. A fool’s question with no good answer. It was like asking him if she were too fat or if the dress she wore made her look like a sack of potatoes. Of course, he’d say what she wanted to hear. That’s what smart lovers did.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

Maybe he wasn’t as smart as she thought.

“But it’s the path I’ve chosen,” he continued solemnly. “And right now, it feels damn near perfect.”

He slid his hand into hers, his touch shooting sparks through her insides until she felt as if she glowed. She leaned her head on his shoulder as he put an arm around her waist.

She smiled into the dark, memories unearthed from a deep place where she’d held them tight. “Remember the cove we found that we promised to keep secret from everyone?”

“Until we realized Ollie had known about it for years?” He stared down into the rippling water. “I remember.”

“I was sure you’d told. I wouldn’t talk to you for a week.”

“It was closer to a month.”

He was quiet for so long after that she thought she’d put her foot in it. The topic of Ollie was still tender to the touch. Gray might have allowed himself to be swayed by his desire, but his guilt remained like an old battle wound, twinges felt whenever it was jarred too cruelly.

“I have a confession to make, Meeryn,” Gray said softly.

She held her breath, an unexpected shiver overtaking her despite the humid night air.

“I . . . ah . . .”—he stared up into the trees, down into the water, everywhere but at her face—“I
did
tell Ollie about that cove.”

Her head snapped up and she shook off his arm. “You bastard. You scared me to death.”

He laughed, the shadows lifted from his eyes and his voice. “Had you going, didn’t I?”

If he’d seen her answering smile, he’d have fled. But he was too busy feeling proud of himself for nearly stopping her heart. So when she grabbed his hand and half-leaned, half-shoved against him, he had nowhere to go but in.

They landed together, the water closing over her head, his hand still in hers. She felt his grip tighten in a spasm of panic, felt his first flailing kicks. He ripped his hand from hers as his body descended. Now it was her turn to panic. What had she done? As far as she knew, Gray hadn’t voluntarily gone into the water since the shipwreck. He was probably terrified, frozen with horror.

She dove, seeking him amid the dark murky gloom of the pool. Felt for the churning stir he would make in the otherwise calm water.
Gray! Where are you?

By now, her lungs were screaming for air. Her feet still hadn’t touched the bottom, while her arms reached and felt nothing beyond tangled strands of duckweed and frogbit. She surfaced with a strong scissor kick, bursting free with an anxious gasp, to find him treading water a few feet away, the water slapped from his grinning face.

“Are you mad? Was that your idea of a sick joke?” she growled, furious and frightened at the same time. Foolish tears formed at the corners of her eyes, and a lump choked off her words. Just as well. She couldn’t trust herself to speak without tearing him tooth and claw.