the weak and the sick and those no longer able to serve the bloodlines must be excised like a cancer for fear the whole pack would be brought low. Lowest peasant or heir to the Morieux himself made no difference when it came to keeping the five clans of Imnada safe.
Gray found himself scanning the crowd for one particular face—though he knew she wouldn’t be there. The Duke had sent her north months ago. Still, Gray found himself repeating her name in his head like a mantra, a way to hold himself together in these final horrific moments.
What would she have done had she been here to witness his sentence? Would she have turned her back like the rest of them? Or would she have leapt to his defense as she had so many times over the years? He’d never know, and for that he was almost glad.
The brand’s heat could be felt from three feet away. Gray clamped his jaw lest he embarrass himself with last-minute pleas for mercy. Still, two broken rasping words leaked from his bloody mouth as he stood bowed and shaking beneath the weight of his fear.
“Grandfather. Please.”
The Duke’s chin lifted from the sagging folds of his neck while his hands fluttered for a moment as if he might speak. Then Sir Dromon leaned close to the aging leader of the five clans of Imnada, whispering his poison like silver into the old man’s ear. The Duke nodded. His hands relaxed into his lap. His mouth pursed and his eyes hardened once more, pale and uncaring as stones in a pool.
The enforcer laid the brand to Gray’s back, singeing away the skin to the muscles and tendons below. The charred stench of roasting flesh filled his nose. The screams ripped from his body tore up his throat and bounced off the stone circle of the Deepings Hall, echoing back to him in waves of anguish. His knees buckled as he arched away from the pain, every nerve aflame, every drop of blood in his veins on fire, his very soul being cleaved from his body.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he escaped to the darkest corner of his mind as a hunted creature burrows away from even the hope of light, but the desolate keening sounds of his disgrace followed him even there as his clan mark was burned away in a stripping of everything he was or would ever hope to be. He retched until his ribs cracked and piss leaked into his boots.
But not one tear fell.
They never saw him weep.
She never saw him weep.
1
LONDON, AUGUST 1817
The bells were ringing nine in the morning when Major Gray de Coursy stepped from the hackney at Tower Hill. Despite the hour, fog cloaked the streets in a thick, choking darkness. It swirled in the alleys and gathered in the parks, bringing with it the stench of dead fish, river mud, and chimney soot. Lanterns threw dim greasy pools of light over the cobbles while footsteps and voices echoed eerily in the green-gray miasma. A link boy offered Gray his services but was waved away. His keen vision cut the gloom like a knife, and he wanted no witnesses to his final destination.
He passed through a narrow, dingy lane, coming out near the disused water stairs south of the Tower and St. Katherine’s, stopping finally in front of a door set deep into a stone wall—part of an ancient chapterhouse, though the wall and yard beyond were all that remained. He knocked once, then twice more.
A key turned. A bolt slid clear and the door swung open on the hunched figure of a man. “She awaits you, my lord.”
“It’s simply Major de Coursy, Breg. Lord Halvossa was my father’s title and would have been my brother’s after. Never mine.”
“Yes, my lord . . . er . . . Major, sir. As you say.” The porter bowed him in, throwing the bolt behind him. “I offered her breakfast but she refused.”
“You did as you should.” Gray approached a low columned outbuilding, Breg following. At the entrance, the old man paused, shuffling foot to foot.
“Out with it,” Gray said sternly.
The porter licked his lips and gave a quick breath as if steeling himself. “It’s an enforcer, my lord. Prowling the streets near Cheapside last night.”
“How could you tell it was an Ossine?”
Breg huffed. “I may be rogue and cast from my holding, but I can still sense a member of the five clans right enough. And I know a shaman when I cast my peepers on one. They’re different, ain’t they?”
“What was he doing?”
“Asking questions, my lord. I was afraid to get too close. Didn’t want him catching wind of me following. No clan member would sob to hear old Breg had ended as food for the grubs with a stake through his heart, that’s for sure.”
Gray’s mouth curved in a faint smile. “This clan member would. If you see him again, send word. But don’t go sniffing around on your own. I can’t afford to lose you.”
“They’re growing bolder, ain’t they, my lord . . . Major, sir? I heard tell of a rogue clansman near Clapham disappeared and turned up dead. Another one up north off Islington Road by the Quaker workhouse. It’s not safe to be unmarked no more.”
Gray’s hand tightened around the head of his cane. “Things will change. They must, or the clans are doomed.”
“Hope you’re right, Major. I surely do.”
Gray left Breg and entered the outbuilding, placing aside his worry over the man’s revelations, to be mulled over later. This morning’s meeting was too important for distractions.
A woman rose from her chair to meet him, the lamplight gilding her golden hair and flushing her rose and cream skin. “It’s been a long time, Gray.”
Lady Delia Swann’s serene beauty hid many secrets, as Gray well knew; her Fey-blood magic, her alliance with his rebels, and her sexual activities with a prince of the realm, two generals, and an archbishop. She assumed she knew all his secrets as well, but there were some things he did not speak aloud. Some fears he refused to name.
“I’ve been busy.” He bowed over the hand she held out, ignoring the glitter of conquest in her eyes.
“As have I, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be busy together from time to time.” Her gaze traveled sensuously over him, lifting the hairs at the back of his neck. “By the looks of you, I’d guess you haven’t been to bed yet. Was it that little Nicholls girl? She practically leapt in your arms last night at the Prater’s ball. I wouldn’t think virgins were to your taste, but then you’ve always been full of surprises. And she comes with an ample dowry.”
“I’m old enough to be her father.”
Lady Delia laughed. “Only if you’d sired her at the ripe old age of eleven.”
“I should have said I
“That I would believe. But if it wasn’t the Nicholls girl, it must have been Lady Bute.” She laid a finger against her full lips, gold-flecked eyes lifted in thought. “Then there’s that opera dancer they say tried to drown herself in the Thames for love of the mysterious Ghost Earl. Hmm . . . so many choices . . .”
“Whoever came up with that damned sobriquet should have their heads boiled in oil.”
She crossed to his side. “You should be flattered. It makes you seem dashing and dangerous and passionately gallant. A hero in a swashbuckling romance.” She cupped his face in her hands. “If they only knew the half of it, am I right?”
He stepped back, out of her reach. “Can we move on with the reason for this meeting?”
She gave a little half shrug. “Of course. Have you made the arrangements we spoke of? If I’m to disappear, I want to be sure all my affairs are in order and that includes the boy.”
His hand tightened around the head of his cane, lips pinched tight. “It’s been done just as you asked.”
