The man struggled, his mouth clamped against a scream.

“You’re in the bowels of the shapechangers’ stronghold,” David snarled. “None will care or come to your aid. Shout all you want.”

“You’re a monster.”

“No, just curious.” David drew another line curved parallel to the first.

It took another sting of the blade to loosen the man’s tongue and a last deep gash to make sense of his babblings. “Skye,” he gasped. “Corey’s on Skye.”

Mother of All! Callista was riding into a trap.

David rose to his feet, shaky and sickened, dropped the bloody blade, his heart like ice, leaving the bastard where he lay, with the crescent mark of the Imnada carved deep into his bloated flesh.

* * *

The coach rattled over the narrow track, the horses straining at the harness as the mountains rose steeply on either side, covered in gray-green stands of pine and birch, the highest peaks shrouded in mist and low-hanging clouds. They had hoped to make Fort William by nightfall, but delays upon the road had slowed their progress. The sun sank red and bloody behind them, the landscape barren of life except for a few remote homesteads nestled within the glens, smoke curling white into the fading sky.

Still, if the weather stayed dry and the tracks passable, they would be crossing over to the island in a day, perhaps two.

She should be relieved. Ecstatic. Awash with anticipation and excitement. She would finally be beyond Corey’s grasp. She would finally meet her aunt, the only real family she had left. She would gain a new life with the priestesses where her gifts were more than a circus act.

She would never see David again.

At one time, the prospect would have been easy. He was arrogant, stubborn, vain, and reckless. He hopped from bed to bed and woman to woman with the ease of a born scoundrel. He was an Imnada, the sworn enemy of her people. And yet none of that mattered when she measured his would-be faults against his honor, his loyalty, and his courage. When she watched him fight to chain the rage that burned white-hot behind his gray eyes. When she felt him shudder in her arms as the weight of the Fey-blood’s curse crushed him and despair was a breath away.

No, she reminded herself. Skye was her destination. She owed it to her mother to try to mend the rift between sisters. She owed it to herself to understand the family she belonged to, even if they never acknowledged her. David was her past. He’d said so himself. He’d sent her away. Had he wanted her, truly wanted her, he would have begged her to stay. He would have given her that much of himself, surely. So, perhaps he did not care as much as she hoped.

Or perhaps, a small voice whispered, he cares more than you know and this is his final sacrifice.

She stiffened, lips pressed tight, a knot choking off her breath, the broad, windswept hills and dark mysterious lakes blurred as her eyes burned with unshed tears. She wiped a hand across her cheeks and stared hard at the wide silver sky, where clouds spread and broke and spread again. A bird rode the drafts, its wings outstretched. As she watched, it dove close to earth and she saw it was a crow, black and sleek as a missile.

Badb? One of her sisters?

She shielded her eyes. “You’re one of the true Fey,” she whispered. “You must know how to help him. If a curse can be cast, then a curse can be broken.”

The crow soared high, beating its wings before dropping like a stone toward the trees. Death. Death. Death.

The word filled Callista’s head and broke against her heart. The sun slid behind a cloud, and she dragged her shawl close around her shoulders.

“I’ll warn you now, divine intervention can bring unwanted consequences.” Lord Duncallan had awakened. He sat across from her, his hand gripping his cane, his eyes bleak. “And Badb is clever and cunning. Causing trouble is one of her few real pleasures.”

“I ask again and again, but I only ever receive the same answer.”

“I assume by your glum expression that it’s not the answer you want.”

“David can’t die. He’s so strong, so full of life. He’s like a human lightning bolt, all fire and energy. How can he just . . . not be?”

“Death takes us all in the end.”

“Don’t preach to me of death. I know the place intimately. I’ve trod its paths and seen the flickering shades of countless men as vital as David, but I refuse to let him just give up without a fight.”

“Is it your decision to make?”

His words stung, and she turned back to the window to watch the passing country. If David wasn’t hers to lose in the first place, then why was she fighting so hard to keep him alive?

The sting became a hollow feeling that dropped into her stomach and tightened her throat. The answer was simple. Because she didn’t want to look up at the moon one day from within the cold stone walls of Dunsgathaic and know that he was gone forever. That she had missed her chance to have a life with him. As long as David lived, so, too, lived her hope.

The coach crested a hill. The sky seemed to stretch forever before disappearing into a gray horizon. The crow had vanished and the clouds moved slowly east, darkening the long, winding lake below.

Somewhere up ahead lay Dunsgathaic, a seat of Other power, a source of Other wisdom. She blinked, heart turning over in her chest, lip caught between her teeth in sudden inspiration. Other wisdom . . . Other power . . .

If an Other cast the spell on David, could an Other possibly . . . maybe . . . perhaps . . . conceivably lift it?

Her stomach knotted with excitement.

Perhaps it wasn’t death that awaited David on Skye . . . but life.

“Lord Duncallan, we have to turn around.”

* * *

“Was violence necessary?” Gray leaned, arms folded, against the doorframe to David’s bedchamber, his eyes hard as steel.

David shrugged. “I don’t know if it was necessary, but the bastard deserved it.”

“And what of our bid to win hearts and change minds?”

“Do you really think if I’d treated him with kindness and dignity that the slimy, worm-ridden sack of shit would suddenly change his opinion and love and trust a demon shifter? There are some people you can’t win over, Gray. Not with all your pretty words of alliance and common cause. They hate you because you’re not them. The end.” David’s rage turned in his chest like a blade, his mind aflame.

Gray pushed off the doorway, coming into the room, and eyed the maps spread out on a nearby desk. “Where are you going?”

“Where do you think?”

“Duncallan can take care of Miss Hawthorne. No harm will come to her.”

“You’re right about that. I’ll be there to make sure of it.”

“And if Corey’s men are as thick and as close as we suspect? You’ll never win through to Skye undetected.”

“They’re looking for the man on that broadsheet.” David jerked his head at the wrinkled piece of parchment on the bed. The wolf scented blood and the thrill of the hunt. Fangs extended, skin prickled and burned, and his heart drummed in his ears, but this time it was in anticipation of the shift. “I’ll win my way through.”

“And what then? What of your vision of her slaying and your death? Can you dismiss that so easily?”

Always reasonable. Always cool, calm, and collected. Gray was bloodless. Heartless. As remote as his godforsaken castle.

“Do you think this is easy?” David seethed. “What awaits me chills me to the bone, but doing nothing is a hundred times worse.” He looked to the window where twilight bleached the color from the far hills and transformed the trees to black shifting shapes against the gray sky. But above, the Mother hung fat and golden in the sky, her light spilling through the curtains to bathe him in her power. It was Silmith, the night of the full moon, and there would be no greater time to face Corey than when the wolf ran strongest. “Callista is my responsibility.”

“Liability, more like. She makes you vulnerable, David. She sidetracks you from your ultimate duty, which is to the clans.”

“Fuck the damn clans!” David wheeled on Gray. “Ever since Charleroi, ever since Beskin took his red-hot iron to my back and ripped my very mind apart with his weapons, I’ve been devoured by hate and rage and bitterness. Then I met Callista.” He tried dragging in a breath, but it was as if steel bands clamped his chest. His hands shook. “I won’t go back to that, Gray. Not for you or the clans. If you want me after, I’m yours. But I have to see her safe within Dunsgathaic first. A week is all I need.”

“You don’t have a week. You’ll need to dose yourself again or suffer for it before long.”

David closed his hands around the scars on his palm. As always, Gray was right. The first stirrings of illness tightened David’s muscles, and the lick of blue and silver flames hovered at the edges of his sight. The curse strengthened as the medicine ebbed from his weakened system. “The draught must wait. Callista cannot.”

“And what of your promise? You swore that if I did as you asked and sent her away, you would follow my orders.”

“I made a promise to her as well.”

“No, you lied to get what you wanted, which is all you’ve ever done, David. But no longer. You’re mine. I’ll send Lucan if that will ease your worry, but you stay here. I need you, Captain.”

David closed his eyes in silent apology before spinning on his heel, his fist catching Gray clean on the jaw with enough power behind the blow to crush a normal human’s skull. Caught off guard, Gray reeled backward, unable to stop the second punch that dropped him to the floor unconscious.