cries. Do not speak to those who would lure you from the path. And whatever happens, do not loosen the knot binding us together.”
“What lies within the between?”
“The abyss where the Unseelie dwell, the soulless and the damned and the forgotten.”
He limped with his precious burden behind them up the hill to the ridge and the stone circle. Stepped into the waves and wash of Fey magic captured there. The midnight black took them where none of his Imnada senses worked. He was blind and deaf to the emptiness around him. He felt only the weight of Callista’s body in his arms. Only the heat of the rope taut against his wrist. The force of magic tore his words away, then his breath, drove his stomach into his throat, clawed at his mind with a thousand screaming voices.
But at least in the emptiness of the abyss, none could hear his painful screams and he might weep without being seen.
19
Warmth woke her. Blankets tucked to her chin, a hot brick wrapped in flannel against her feet, and a cheerful fire dancing in the hearth combined to ease the throb of thawing tired limbs. Then memory flooded her sluggish brain and she sat up with a cry. A hand, spotted and knobbed with age, but deceptively strong, pressed her back against the pillows. A face swam into view above her, but it was not the one she yearned for. Instead wrinkles lined a pleasant countenance and crouched in the corners of two pale blue eyes. “Easy, lass. ’Tis all right. You’re out of the wicked snow and warm as toast within the walls of Dunsgathaic. None will harm you.”
She’d arrived on Skye? But how? Callista remembered nothing after falling beneath the horse’s flailing hooves. Her memories were all of snow and ice and blood and death. And a red-hot slash of pain in her head before the black swallowed her.
“Where’s David? Is he here? Did he . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question.
“The shapechanger lives,” the woman answered, though her gaze grew serious, and the smile fled from her face. “Rest now. I’ll return when you’re summoned before the head of our order, the Ard-siur.”
She wanted to argue. Wanted to wrestle the sister aside and search for David, but her body refused to cooperate. Her brain was as muddled as her memories, and her legs and arms seemed weighted to the soft mattress.
She slept and woke again. The shadows had moved, and the sky beyond the window was a crisp blue. She gazed around at the room for the first time noticing the scattered rugs upon the floor and the comfortable chairs drawn up to a tiled hearth. A cabinet contained a pitcher and washstand. Another table was scattered with curios and curiosities. A bird’s nest. A bowl of sea-washed pebbles. A vase of celadon holding skeletal winter branches.
And, set upon a far cabinet by the door, a familiar mahogany box, the carved lid worn smooth with generations of hands running over it, the round brass lock and hinges as shiny as if new forged.
She rose from bed to take up the box. Set it back on the coverlet beside her, positioning the tumblers and springing the lock. Key, Summoner, and Blade; all as she’d left them. Her mother’s letters still nestled in the corner. Callista pulled them from their resting place. Felt the crinkle of the thin paper under her fingers, the faded ink, the frayed ribbon.
“I’m finally here, Mother,” she whispered to no one. “I’m in Dunsgathaic.”
Wind rattled the casement and moaned round the door, a lonely sound that sent worry curdling unbidden up through her. She swallowed back a hard knot of fear. The sisters wouldn’t harm David. But what of the Amhas- draoi? They lived within these walls as well. The battle-queen Scathach’s army of warriors and mages were sworn to protect and defend. Would they see David as a threat? Would they recall the story of Lucan Kingkiller and take their revenge?
Bypassing the robe hanging over a chair, she scrambled into her own discarded gown drying upon a rack before the fire and wound her hair up into a knot. The mirror over the mantel showed her a peaked face of drawn skin and dark hollows. It also revealed the tremble in her fingers as she buttoned the last button and the nervous pulling at her lip with her bottom teeth.
In a moment of childish longing, she slid the packet of old letters into her pocket as a reassuring talisman against nervous uncertainty. These were all she had left of her mother, a last link to the heartbroken woman, forever torn between love for the family into which she’d been born and the family she’d built together with the man of her dreams. A last link to the last true home Callista had ever known. These, even more than the bells, were the true treasure kept safe in that box.
The door opened, a draft chilling the back of her neck and guttering the sconces. The priestess didn’t even lift an eyebrow when she saw her charge up and dressed. She merely motioned for Callista to follow. “Ard-siur is ready for you now.”
“What of Mr. St. Leger? I refuse to budge a step until you tell me where he is.”
“All your questions will be answered when you see the Ard-siur.”
“I want them answered now.” Callista folded her arms over her chest.
The priestess’s pose of serenity cracked and an irritated frown passed over her face. “The shifter is safe and in one piece, which is more than you’ll be if you keep the head of our order waiting.”
Without another word, she led the way through a long stone passage and down a steep winding flight of steps. Callista had no choice but to follow. She stared with wide eyes as they crossed a broad, muddy courtyard. A group of sisters stood in conversation. A heavy-set priestess in a dirty apron carried a basket on her shoulder. Another trailed a tail of four young girls like ducklings. Two
This would be her home from now on. These women would replace the family she had lost.
Why did the idea not fill her with the joy and anticipation she had thought it would? Why did the walls seem higher, the sky seem grayer, and her heart feel weighted with lead?
A set of tall double doors opened onto an enormous chamber of streaming blue and gold and ruby light from rows of high stained-glass windows. The priestess gestured Callista in with an impatient wave of her hand. “Miss Hawthorne, Ard-siur.”
“Thank you, Sister Brida.” A woman stood at a table, her gray robe edged in royal blue, her expression hard and unyielding as flint, but it hadn’t always been that way. Callista had seen it young and unlined and bright with laughter as a girl gripped a kite string and raced across a green lawn toward a house of golden stone.
“Aunt Deirdre?”
David felt the priestess’s hard gaze like a blade, her disapproval evident in her stiff posture and her clenched arms. She did everything but curl her lip in a superior sneer. He flashed her a winning smile that usually had London’s mothers queuing up with daughters in tow.
She scowled harder.
“You’re fortunate in your allies, Mr. St. Leger. The sisters do not bestir themselves for every traveler plagued by difficulties. Without Lord Duncallan’s persuasive urging, you would have found yourself without our aid. You owe His Lordship your life.”
“With that and a penny, he’d have enough for a beggar’s bowl,” David quipped.
She eyed him down her long hawkish nose. “Just so.”
“Always good for the convent coffers to help a peer of the realm, but that wasn’t what really brought you scurrying to our rescue, was it?”
She pursed her thin lips tight, her hands in her long sleeves tighter.
Callista stepped forward, face flushed, dark hair spilling free from a hasty chignon to curl against her cheeks. Just seeing her clenched his stomach and heated his skin.
“Please, Aunt Deirdre. I’ve told you everything. Can you help him? Can you lift the curse?”
If the woman sneered at him, she fairly glowered at Callista. Not exactly the hearts-and-flowers reunion with her aunt that she had been hoping for. The head priestess had been as sour as a lemon, unbending as an
