Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (35 page)

Meeryn knelt in front of a row of cabinets, her skirts dusted with both ash and flour. “Look, Gray! I’ve found a crock of oatmeal, a half wheel of cheese, and”—she grinned—“David St. Leger.”

David poked his head around a larder door like a jack from a box. “Here’s a heel of bread, a jar of olives, and, best of all, cherry wine.” He waved a bottle above his head in triumph. “A veritable feast.”

“Did anyone see you arrive?” Gray asked.

Arms full, David brought his treasures to the table along with three wineglasses and three plates. “Aside from half your neighborhood, no. It’s two in the bloody afternoon. It’s not as if I can poof myself in here like a djinn from a bottle. But I’ve placed our own pickets with orders to sound the alarm should they notice anything suspicious. They know their business and have no love for Sir Dromon.”

“What of Callista?”

David drew the cork from the wine, topping every glass. “She’s gone north.”

“You sent her to her aunt on Skye?”

St. Leger paused a moment before placing the bottle on the table with a plate rattling thump, laughter gone from his eyes. “Sent her? I almost had to crate and mail her to the place. It took a day and a half of persuading, cajoling, threatening, and finally pleading before she agreed to ask for refuge from the old battle-ax. The woman hates me, and she’s not too fond of Callista, but they’re family. And Dunsgathaic is the safest place to be, with a plague of Ossine descending.”

Meeryn stiffened at mention of the name. “Isn’t Dunsgathaic the fortress of the Amhas-draoi?”

“It is, and a more grim-faced, humorless bunch you’re not likely to find this side of a charnel house,” David said, spearing an olive on the tip of his knife.

The brotherhood of Fey-blood warrior-mages were soldiers with no equal and sorcerers with immense power at their command. Even Sir Dromon would think twice before assaulting such a stronghold. Callista would be safe.

Meeryn cut off the usable portions of bread and cheese, placing helpings of each on the plates. Rummaged through a drawer for three forks and a bread knife and returned to the table, righting a stool.

“Who needs Mrs. Waverly?” Gray complimented, tearing into his foraged sandwich.

Meeryn smiled over the rim of her glass. “I doubt even she could ruin bread and cheese.”

“Don’t be too sure. Remember the time she served Ollie that pudding topped with currants? He had a rash for a week and spent twenty-four hours attached to his chamber pot.”

Gray hadn’t realized how much he’d lost until he began foraging his mind for lost memories of his brother. His heart still twisted in his chest and occasionally his voice would tremble over a recollection, but each instance grew easier, and Ollie’s face grew bright and clear again where it had once been no more than a dark shadow Gray shied away from.

“Who’s Ollie?” David asked with a curious tone in his voice.

Gray downed his wine in one gulp, the sandwich caught in his throat. “He was my brother.”

David speared another olive. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

Meeryn went blankly still as Gray poured another glass from the bottle on the table.

“I mean, I knew you had a brother, but I never knew he had a name. That is, I knew he had a name, just that you and he . . .” David flashed desperate eyes toward Meeryn in a silent plea for help.

Gray rolled his glass around, watching the amber liquid spin. “I don’t speak about him much.”

“Try at all,” David retorted.

Gray shot him an irritated gaze. “He’s been gone a long time. There didn’t seem to be a point.”

Meeryn’s gaze clouded, and he noticed that her own wine seemed to be disappearing as swiftly as his. “Do you remember the time he ran off to Plymouth on your grandfather’s best hunter and came back with seventy-five pounds he’d won off three sailors in a game of dice?”

Gray felt his mouth twitch upward despite the hard knot in his gut. “Grandfather couldn’t decide whether to be angry at his theft or proud of his winnings.”

Meeryn laughed. Did anyone else hear how forced it sounded? “What about when he was almost taken up by the press gang in Polperro and had to dress up like a woman to escape?”

Gray laughed. “Mother scolded him for his irresponsibility. Father scolded him for his ugly choice of bonnet.”

The stories flowed with the wine and the food, each one more outrageous than the last. David offered a few choice tales from his own sordid past, while Gray reluctantly added a wartime escapade with a donkey, a chicken, and a bag of peppermints. The camaraderie disguised the dread of what was to come. It did not
ease it. All three knew they sought to outrun a coming storm. All three knew it would swallow them anyway. There was no outrunning it. Only outlasting it.

David wiped away a tear after Gray’s hilarious retelling of Ollie’s being sent down from university for setting fire to a dean. “He sounds like my kind of man.”

“He was arrogant, prideful, sarcastic, clever,” Meeryn interrupted, “and just when you thought he was the most conceited, pigheaded, self-important know-it-all, he could turn around and do something incredibly compassionate or kind and you’d forget all that and want to follow him about like a puppy and hope he noticed you.”

“Sounds like someone else I know,” David said with a sideways glance toward Gray.

She put her glass down, and this time her smile held real amusement as she studied him like a pinned bug before announcing, “A little, perhaps.”

Gray’s spine locked, his shoulders bracing in an instinctual defense. “I’m nothing like Ollie.”

She leaned across the table, a hand barely touching his. Just a skim of her fingers, but enough to make his chest tighten. She caught and held his gaze. “No, my heart, you’re not like Ollie in any way that matters.”

“I think that was supposed to be a compliment,” he said, trying to laugh off the vising squeeze on his lungs with a jest.

She didn’t take the bait. Instead her hand slid into his and held on. “You spent a lifetime trying to emulate a ghost, Gray. You never realized you’d stepped out of his shadow long ago.”

Mac arrived with a shake of his greatcoat and a shovel of wet hair off his face. An afternoon storm slanted rain over the rooftops and split the air with window-rattling thunder. The wind pushing east came as a brief respite from the oppressive heat that lay like a dome over the city. If fortune held, the wind would die with nightfall and fog would collect along the city’s streets, giving them the advantage of cover should they need it.

“Report?” Gray asked.

“Things are quiet. None’s seen hide nor hair of any of Dromon’s Ossine. If they’re hunting, they’re well hidden.”

Gray locked the front door behind him. “Oh, they’re hunting. I’ve no doubt about that. Pryor can’t allow me to win free of the curse. Not now, with the leadership of the clans in play. He needs me out of the way once and for all.”

“But will he really come himself to see it’s done?”

“He understands the significance of the Gylferion.
His shaman’s training will have ensured it. Not only might they hold the key to the curse, they are priceless and powerful artifacts in their own right. Can you imagine the accomplishment it would be for him to return them to the clans after so many centuries? He would be hailed as a hero; a champion of the Imnada.”

“Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.” Mac shuddered.

“So we stop him. And we bring the Gylferion home, curse lifted and lives returned to us.”

“You make it sound so easy. Defeat the Ossine, kill Dromon, break a Fey-blood spell, reclaim your throne. Have I left anything out?” Mac shot a pointed look toward Meeryn descending the stairs, a smile of welcome on her face.

Gray frowned and swallowed back his reply. He dare not look ten steps ahead to a future as distant as the moon from the earth. He must stick to the task at hand. Work through the immediate problem of surviving the next twenty-four hours. Fretting over his feelings for Meeryn like an adolescent schoolboy would only get him killed—and her as well.

“No,” was his curt reply.

Mac’s face tightened while Meeryn’s fell, but at least he’d be offered no more leading questions. Time—if he was fortunate—to mend his fences with Meeryn. And if not, better she hate him than mourn for him.

“Good afternoon, Captain Flannery,” Meeryn said, passing Gray in an affronted swish of skirts.

Mac offered Meeryn a gentlemanly nod. “Miss Munro. I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in all this.”

She paused on the bottom riser, head lifted, eyes solemn. “I’m not. I’ve asked myself for the last two
months why I was chosen by Jai Idrish to serve as N’thuil. Perhaps this is the crystal’s answer.”

“To save the clans from Sir Dromon?”

“No, I’m not a warrior. I know that now. But if I can help to lift the curse, then Gray, with your help, can save the clans from Sir Dromon.”

Vanished was the hoydenish freckled girl Gray remembered. In her place stood a competent, strong, and very determined woman. Where once there had been frenzied enthusiasm now there was bold and fiery passion, and the reckless bravado of childhood had firmed to an unhesitating courage.

Would she be the same woman if she’d married Ollie, as Grandfather had intended? Or even if she had married Gray and taken up the destiny others had laid for her? He didn’t think so. She was a result of choices made and roads taken, not just by her but by others around her. He wouldn’t regret the lost years behind them. But he’d damn well fight to keep from losing any more.

She turned her attention to Gray, expression cool as a winter ocean. “While you’re meeting with Mac and David, I’m going to double-check the house. Secure the windows. Be sure all the doors are latched and bolted.” The scent of her was cool and salty clean. Her eyes gleamed, dark and mysterious as the depths in which she swam as seal. “You have an odd look on your face. Too much wine with lunch?”

“Waxing philosophical.”

“Always dangerous.”

“In this case . . . long past due,” he replied.

“Well, I hope you came to some profound conclusions.”

“Ask me again in a week, and I may enlighten you.”

“It’s a deal, Your Grace.” Her voice glided molten and smoky smooth along his bones. The sinuous grace of her slender body as she picked her way through the rubble of the entry hall reminded him of the feline slink of the tiger aspect she’d worn at Marnwood. Proud, bold, and dangerous as hell.

“Uh . . . I’ll . . . ah . . . just join David, shall I?” Mac’s voice sounded from down a long hazy tunnel.

Gray barely noticed his departure. Hell, he’d barely notice a full frontal assault from half a dozen assassin-trained Ossine at this moment. Hands upon his chest, Meeryn leaned up on her toes, her mouth sliding invitingly warm and soft against his. She paused, looking into his eyes, a mischievous glint in her gaze.

“What?” he asked, almost plaintively.

“Waiting for the moment when your good sense reasserts itself.” The light in her face faded. “Or the moment when I gain some.”

“Anything?” he asked.

She pursed her lips. “No, I’m singularly impractical and unapologetic.”

She kissed him again, a slow, deep passionate kiss that left his senses swimming. Cherry wine had nothing on Meeryn for inducing head spins and hallucinations.

He stepped out of her arms before he forgot himself completely and backed her against a convenient wall, skirts around her waist. “If you’re going to be wandering about on your own, take this.” He grabbed his dubious gift from a nearby table and knelt to ruck up her skirts.

“Gray!” She flushed crimson. “Even my impracticality has its limits.”

He skimmed her leg, his cock hard as a hammer. “I’ve embarrassed you? I didn’t know that was possible.”

“That almost sounds like a challenge,” she said, offering him a look that could melt steel.

What would he give for fifteen minutes and an empty house? He forced himself to stop his ascent midway up her thigh, though the wicked and extremely excited parts of him wished to continue the climb. Instead he took deep breaths as he buckled the sheath’s leather strap around her thigh. Slid the dirk into place, its ebony hilt capped with the de Coursys’ double-headed eagle bearing five arrows.

“I know you lost the one Conal gave you. I thought this might take its place.”

Color flooded her cheeks. “It’s not even my birthday. What do you think? Does it match my eyes?” she asked with a flutter of her lashes.

“Not many women can wear a deadly weapon and carry it off with such panache. You’re the one in a million.”

He stood, dropping her skirt in place. Offered her the pistol he wore at his belt. “This, you carry. And blow the head off anything that moves.”

“What if it’s one of you?”

The edge of his mouth quirked in a dark smile. “Then we should have ducked.”

She accepted it with a faint lift of her brows. “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment—I mean, what woman doesn’t like to receive her own private arsenal—but if the Ossine want to get in, they will. I’m not the only one with the ability to shift to any form. And this place is riddled with mouseholes.”

“Humor me,” he said, with one more check of the bolt on the front door before he sent her off with a last kiss, then took a few moments of deep breaths and arctic thoughts to recover.