So focused was the little creature on determining whether the four-poster in the corner contained one or two people, it never saw the descending glass until the crystal walls surrounded it, held in place by an enormous hand.

A face leaned close, studying the mouse, searching for answers. Older now. Harder. The gentle rounded features and sweet innocence of youth had been stripped bare and scraped raw until it seemed honed like a knife blade, no softness to dull the glittering edge. No tenderness to moderate the harsh austerity. But the same icy blue eyes shone from beneath dark winged brows, the same tiny scar remained at the edge of a strong uncompromising mouth. The same long aristocratic nose flared now with suspicion and doubt.

Scooping up glass and mouse both, the man lifted them to eye level. “Eagles eat mice, you know.”

* * *

Meeryn Munro was the last person Gray had expected to visit him—in his bedchamber—in the middle of the night . . . alone. Yet here she was, shed of her mouse’s skin and seated on the edge of his bed in nothing but his borrowed robe. At this point, he would have preferred her covered in fur. It was far less revealing. Far less apt to make his thoughts wander away from what her unexpected arrival meant.

“You’ve changed—grown up.” A trite and pointless comment. Of course she’d changed. It had been almost ten years since he’d seen her last.

“Age happens to the best of us, I’m told,” she answered with a wry smile.

“Yes, but . . .” He waved a hand in her general direction. “The curls are gone”—replaced by soft waves of honey colored hair—“and your figure has matured”—the gawky flat-chested girl of his memories was now a woman of luscious, feminine curves and long elegant limbs—“and you used to have . . . I mean there were the . . . the . . .”

She wrinkled her nose. “Spots. I know, they were positively horrid, but thankfully long gone. Lemon juice and Gower’s Lotion every evening before bed. But surely, I haven’t changed that much.”

“No, not exactly.” His gaze traveled over her from head to foot and back. The ghost of the old Meeryn lingered in the narrow elfin face, pert chin, and full coral lips, but there was a shrewdness in her eyes and a severity to her jaw that had never been present in the laughing playmate of his youth. “And then again—yes.”

“Well, you haven’t. You look just as you always did.”

His smile came laced with bitterness. “That’s the first lie I’ve caught you in tonight.”

“It’s true. You do look the same. A bit longer in the tooth and leaner in the face, of course, but that’s to be expected after . . . well . . . after all you’ve been through.”

She couldn’t say the words. He didn’t blame her. It had taken months before he could speak of his sentencing without vomiting his guts until his throat and stomach were raw. He rubbed his scarred palm without even thinking. Dropped his hand to his side when he caught her watching him.

“I heard rumors that you’d lifted the curse,” she said.

“Contained . . . not lifted.”

“But it’s night”—her gaze cut to the window—“the sun is down and you’re still . . . they said when the sun left the sky, you were forced to become your animal aspect. Forced from man to beast against your will. That’s what I was told.”

“There are ways to hold the spell at bay and keep to the form I choose, but it comes at a price.” He poured and handed her a glass of restorative brandy from the decanter permanently set beside his bed for those nights he couldn’t sleep.

“Things never change, do they, Professor Gray? Still got your nose caught in a dusty old book,” she commented with a nod of her head toward his cluttered desk.

“That’s where the answers are,” he answered. Realizing he stared, he quickly busied himself with clearing away the various manuscripts he’d been studying, arranging his pencils in a row, pocketing the four ancient metal disks.

Laughter danced in her eyes. “Your response hasn’t changed in ten years either.”

Ten years—the blink of an eye. An eternity. They’d grown up together; Duke’s grandson and Duke’s ward. Close as siblings—closer even. His sibling had been seven years his senior and barely noticed Gray except as a nuisance to be shed at the first possible opportunity. Meeryn had filled that slot, becoming his boon companion in all things from illicit raids on the Deepings kitchens and nasty pranks on the string of tutors and governesses when they were young to illicit raids on the Deepings wine cellar and midnight forays beyond the protections of Deepings’s walls as they grew older.

As a child, he’d foolishly imagined their friendship would last forever. Time, distance, and circumstance had ended that dream long ago. Yet she’d remained a bright memory among so much he’d tried to put behind him when he’d been condemned to exile. Was that memory, like so many other things in his life, about to be irrevocably shattered?

“What are you doing here, Meeryn? And why come sneaking in via mousehole? Was knocking at the front door too plebeian for your tastes?”

She offered him a flippant roll of her eyes. “Would you have welcomed me in if I had?”

“Not while Pryor and his enforcers scour London, hunting anyone they think might be in league with me.” He poured himself a brandy.

“But, you see, it was Pryor who sent me.”

He froze with the glass halfway to his lips, but there was no hint of mockery in her placid expression. She was dead serious. “Did he? This visit grows more interesting by the moment.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Gray, but you can relax. I’m not here to kill you. I’m here to bring you home.”

“I am home,” he replied just as solemnly, placing his still-full glass on a nearby table. This conversation called for stone cold sobriety.

“Don’t be clever. You know what I mean—home to Deepings.”

“And why would I want to do that? Despite what people might think, I’m not looking for a quick death, even less a slow and gruesome one.”

“What if coming with me meant preventing more bloodshed among the clans? What if it meant saving the Imnada?”

“Dromon was clever in sending you as his emissary. Anyone else would have been shown the door . . . or the end of my sword. You have five minutes to explain, then you leave.”

Defiance lit her unflinching stare. “The Duke is dying.”

Gray closed his eyes briefly on a silent prayer, though for what he couldn’t say. For some reason, he’d always just assumed the old man would live forever; a craggy irascible rock upon which the world crashed and broke. His presence solid and eternal as the cliffs below Deepings.

“He’s been ill since you . . . since the summer you were sent away,” Meeryn continued. “Then this past spring he took a turn for the worse. It’s his heart. They don’t expect him to last more than a few weeks.”

“And if I said good riddance to the old bastard?”

Candlelight flickered over her face, glinting in her auburn hair, flames reflecting in her deep brown eyes. “You don’t mean that. He’s the only family you have left. When he dies, you’ll be—”

“Duke of Morieux,” he finished her sentence.

“Leader of the five clans,” she amended.

Neither role had been his by birth—a fact his grandfather had never ceased to remind him of even as Gray struggled to fill his dead brother’s shoes. He’d finally escaped into the military, unsure by then whether he hoped to win honor in battle or a quick death. There he’d found the praise he’d sought, in the letters that arrived from home. A pride that ended in the Gather’s circle with the flames charring the clan mark from his back.

“Sir Dromon Pryor is leader in all but name.” He stood at the hearth, a hand upon the mantel as he stared into the cold expanse, wishing he might glimpse the future, but seeing only the past.

“His grip on power isn’t as secure as he wants you to believe and it will only worsen if the Duke dies without an heir in place,” Meeryn explained. “Rumors spread as your rebellious Imnada grow in numbers. The Gather elders chafe under his heavy-handed authority and the brutality of his Ossine enforcers. Summary executions of clan members on the mere suspicion of sedition are becoming common. Even the Palings begin to fail, the mists thinning dangerously in some places. Now that the Fey-bloods know we’ve survived the Fealla Mhòr, it’s only a matter of time before they discover a way through the wards and the slaughter begins in earnest.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“So you say, but can you speak for all the Fey-bloods? Can you guarantee us our safety?”

“Can Pryor?”

“The clans won’t survive an attack from without while they are beset from within. Pryor concedes this and wants to talk.”

“Pryor’s tongue is as crooked as his brain. Why should I trust him?” Gray asked coolly.

“Don’t trust him. Trust me.” She smiled, her eyes alight with mischief. “As N’thuil, I can guarantee you safe passage on holding lands. So long as you’re with me, you’re protected.”

She spoke. He saw her lips move, but he heard nothing after the bit about Meeryn being named N’thuil. Voice of Jai Idrish. Living vessel of the Mother Goddess.

She dragged the robe from her shoulders and twisted around so her back faced him. There, high upon her back, was the crescent of the Imnada, a whorl of black against her golden skin. And just to the right of it, still pink at the edges, was the smaller circlet that signified her ascension to the seat of N’thuil.

Unthinking, his fingers traced the needle’s narrow marking as it curved up over her shoulder blade to the base of her neck. She shivered and cast him an arch look, the laughter dying in her eyes to be replaced with something uncertain and almost shy. His finger became his hand. The skin of her back was like silk beneath his palm as he caressed downward along her spine to the point where her hips flared and the robe and his own ragged self-control stopped him from descending further. Her lips parted, and he sensed the suspension of her breath, the tremors running beneath her feverish skin. Her eyes darkened within the thick fringe of her lashes. Was it longing he saw? Excitement?