Callista returned to the chair, brows furrowed. “What’s the afailth luinan?”
“Translated, it means roughly ‘blood heal.’ My gram told me the tale of the Imnada chieftain Rinaci Hammerclaw who saved the life of Edern, his Fey-blood bride. It was too full of kisses and romance for me, but if I listened without complaining, she’d tell another story with enough battles and bloodshed to keep me happy for weeks.”
“Imnada blood is a medicine?”
“It’s said to contain properties that heal any hurt, close any wound. I never believed it and most Imnada discount the ancient stories as myth, but my grandmother believed. She said all myths contain a shred of truth.”
“That truth being that your blood holds the power to close the door into death? It’s impossible.”
“Corey believes. Enough that he wants to cellar me like a fine vintage. St. Leger 1817. Good oaky notes and a light, fruity finish.”
A log fell in the fireplace, shooting sparks, throwing light across her face, and he realized that what he’d taken for tears and fear was actually anger, a fury as red and hot as his own.
“How can you joke?”
“What else can I do, Callista?”
“You can fight back. You can make him pay for treating you like dirt. You can show him you’re not going to let him hurt you or humiliate you or . . . or . . .”
“Do we talk of me . . . or of you, Fey-blood?”
“I spent years trying to please my brother,” she said softly, though still her voice shook with rage. “Trying to show him I was worth his attention and his love. It didn’t matter. He sold me to Victor Corey as if I were a dog or a horse or a stick of furniture.” She fairly quivered with unspent fury.
He knew the fire that churned her belly and coursed like lava through her veins. He understood her feelings of futility and powerlessness. Hadn’t he experienced the same for the last two years?
“If I see him again, I’ll kill him myself,” she whispered. “And should Corey’s threats come to pass, he’d better sleep with eyes wide open lest he find a knife through his heart.”
David ignored the pain and sat up, swinging his feet onto the floor. The room swam in and out of focus, but he refused to swoon. Instead, he clamped his jaw and met her dark gaze.
“You walk the paths of the dead, Fey-blood.” He levered himself up on his feet. “You do not send others down that road.” He took a few shaky steps toward her. “Take it from someone who’s sent many a man to Arawn’s realm,” He skimmed her sides before pulling her close. “Once you start killing, it becomes very hard to stop.”
She stayed with him even after he slept—peacefully this time. His breathing deep and even, his body no longer racked with chills, his skin no longer burning like an inferno. It was a sleep without the moaning whimpers and short jagged cries that turned her stomach and made her want to place her hands over her ears. Such pain he’d endured, such horrific suffering at the hands of his own people. No wonder he would not speak of it. No wonder he carried such rage within his heart. But she’d heard other things as well. Darker secrets and shadowy dreams. And these were what kept her awake even as the hours ticked by and the earth turned toward dawn.
When the clock struck four and the first birds called in the fields, Callista rose. Pulled her gown across her shoulders, struggled with the buttons as best she could, and grabbed up a shawl.
The corridor was unlit, but she felt her way past rows of closed doors, through a long gallery where centuries of de Coursys held sway, and slipped down the stairs. Perhaps a novel or maybe even a shot of brandy. Anything to dull her mind and slow her pulse.
The castle was immense. Room after room, all threaded by a maze of corridors, passages, and stairways. She found her way back to the entrance hall by sheer luck, the great double doors barred for the night, a lamp left burning upon a table. But the salon where she’d spent a few awkward hours before arguing her way to David’s side proved elusive. Behind one door, a paneled lounge. Behind another, a billiard room, a cue left abandoned upon the table. A third turned out to be the dining room, silent and empty, the sideboard cleared for breakfast. She descended a staircase and passed through a long hall populated by suits of armor and enough weaponry to outfit an army. Just when she’d lost hope of ever finding her way, she rounded a corner and there it was.
The door stood ajar. A light flickered within.
She peeked around the jamb to find a man seated in a chair by the fire, a whisky glass in hand, a crumbling old book open in his lap. From his tall, lean physique and his clothing—a sober coat of brown and a pair of well-worn boots—Callista would have mistaken him for the local vicar or a servant taking advantage of his master’s absence, except for the aura of command that shimmered off him like a halo, even at rest. This was a man who wore control like armor. Even his stark, chiseled face registered nothing but mild surprise at her arrival, though his eyes glittered like blue ice, and when he turned his full gaze upon her, a shiver raced up her spine.
“I’m sorry to intrude, my lord. I didn’t think anyone would be awake this time of night,” she said.
Gray de Coursy rose from his chair. “I don’t sleep well, either. Perhaps we can keep each other company.”
A shadow rippled across the carpet like water, and Callista’s heart fluttered before sinking into her toes as a voice croaked and scraped across the surface of her brain. Death. Death. Death.
Badb stepped from behind the door, holding out a hand to draw her into the room. “Your novel and your brandy can wait, Callista Hawthorne. Your questions cannot.”
He woke alone. Air tickled over his bare skin, cool and scented with dust and old leather, steel and smoke. His chest hurt, but it was a bearable ache. He mended, slow and frustrating though it might be, and he would live to fight. To kill.
Callista had retired to her own room, hopefully to rest. She’d earned it, looking after him like a damned nursemaid. Another reason, if he still needed one, to forget the crazy ideas flitting through his head. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be a full-time invalid. He’d not trap Callista into the role of drudge. He might be selfish, but he wasn’t cruel. And Callista deserved more than to spend her days watching him disintegrate before her eyes. David had thought there was nothing worse than the hell the Fey-blood’s black spell had wrought. He’d been wrong.
Worse than death was having what you desired as close as a mingled breath and being forced to walk away. It was looking at Callista and seeing what could be, perhaps even should be, while knowing it would never happen. And worst of all, it was knowing that even the brief time remaining was tainted with prophecies of death.
His enemies gathered.
The danger mounted.
The sooner Callista departed Addershiels for the Isle of Skye, the better. She would be safe there, beyond Corey’s reach.
She would be safe there, beyond his reach.
He couldn’t change his fate, but he might . . . just might . . . be able to change hers.
That would have to be enough.
15
From the window of his room within the comfortable hotel, Corey looked down on the busy square and noted every coach and carriage, as well as the throng of busy pedestrians out on a rare sunny day after a week of rain and sullen skies. He scanned the passersby, not because he thought he might spy the towering figure of David St. Leger cutting his way through the crowd or Callista’s trim shape and dowdy attire moving in and out of the shops in nearby Catherine Street, but simply out of habit after a week on the road north in search of the elusive runaways.
Only the phlegmy clearing of a throat broke him from his scrutiny of a suspicious gentleman standing head and shoulders above those around him on a nearby corner. Corey swung around to face the weasely slump-backed cutpurse, his mutilated hand half hidden in the wide pocket of a greasy smock.
He continued to utilize gallows bait like this one when necessary, but his lip curled in repugnance at the stench of gin and defeat.
“I paid you your pennies. Is there a reason you’re still here?”
“You said a shilling,” the thug growled, his yellow teeth showing, in what Corey supposed was meant to be a threatening leer. “This ain’t even half that.”
“Bring me a shilling’s worth of information next time. What you’ve given me is tavern gossip and whores’ whispers,” he answered before turning back to watch the gentleman across the square.
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