“It can’t be. The Lost Days were over a thousand years ago. Lucan was slaughtered during the battle.”
“I know the stories as well as you do. When you’re around him, do you feel anything”—he placed a hand against his bandaged chest—“here?”
She shook her head. “There’s no feeling of death surrounding him. He’s alive—or at least not dead.”
“Is there a difference?”
Her face hardened. “Very much so.”
“But how? Why does he travel in company with one of the true Fey? What’s in that book that’s so important to Gray he’d send men to their deaths over it?” He glanced at the scars crisscrossing his palm before closing his hand into a frustrated fist. “Questions but no answers and me flat on my back.”
“Better that than six feet under, sewn into a shroud.”
Callista rose in a fluster of skirts to wander the room, a hand trailing across a table, a cabinet, picking up and putting down a china figurine, a row of porcelain boxes, a Wedgwood urn. She glanced at the fire in the hearth but then turned her steps to the window to draw back the heavy drapes. The moon washed the park in silver and outlined her face and hair like a halo.
“Why did you do it, David?” she asked gently, her gaze still upon the lawn and the far horizon where the hills dipped down toward the sea. “Why did you take that bullet?”
Another question with no good answer. Or at least one he dare not speak aloud. Not if he wanted to keep the dark future he dreamed from coming to pass. Instead, he offered her a flippant—and very painful—shrug. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, her hair shimmering in the ghost light, her expression giving nothing away. “You used that as an excuse before.”
“You’ll find it’s my answer to a great many questions.”
She gripped the drapes in both hands, head bowed. “You were right about the Fey-bloods and about Corey. He wants you not because of me but for your blood. He wants to sell it. I don’t know why, but he—”
Shock jerked him up against his pillows, pain wrung a gasp of air from his lungs as if he’d been punched. “There’s only one reason to want to milk me for my blood and that’s the
Callista returned to the chair, brows furrowed. “What’s the
“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.
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
