Finally a finger.
She’d surrendered, retching up her breakfast, dry gulping sobs tearing raggedly up her throat.
Corey had come to her, proud as a peacock, and the marriage had been performed. Thankfully, he’d left straight after, and she could only wait in half-panicked frustration as the hours ticked past.
Circling the bedchamber, she paused at the window. No escape there. Far too small for her to climb through, and the only way was down—far down, over the sheer, knife-edged cliffs to the gray-green sea below. And if they caught her attempting to leave, what would happen to David? Bile curdled her stomach. She knew all too well.
The door opened, and Corey entered, dressed as if he were preparing for war, with a pistol and a sheathed dirk at his waist. He motioned to a wiry man, his shaved head and stubbled jowls giving him the look of a belligerent mastiff. “Bring her.”
They climbed two sets of stairs to a narrow wooden door leading to a wide bricked parapet and a low, crenellated wall running the length of the house. The sea churned and growled below, the cliffs a tumble of jagged rocks and broken boulders. This morning’s sun had given way to heavy clouds licked black with storm shadows. The wind flapped at Callista’s skirts and tore the pins from her hair as it shoved her unwilling toward the wall. It wouldn’t take but a quick wrench to escape her captor. A few steps to the edge and she’d be free.
She glanced down at the foaming surf and the wild spumes of icy spray and knew she’d never be able to do it. Not while David lived. Not while there was still a chance. Killing herself was the coward’s way. And the weeks past had proved her no coward.
A table had been set in the middle of the walkway. Beside it rested her box. Upon it stood her bells. Corey’s smirk grew.
“This is madness, Victor,” she pleaded. “You’ve more wealth and power than half the nobility already. What more could you want?”
“I want those nose-in-the-air toffs with their high breeding and their ancient pedigrees to admit that I’m just as good as they are. After that, I want them to fear me and know their lives depend on my goodwill. A wrong word, an ill-thought whisper, and I’ll make them wish they’d never been born.” He motioned to the bells. “Open the door. Open the door and summon me an army.”
“I won’t.”
“You will, my dear, or I’ll slice off another finger. He has nine more he doesn’t need.”
She glanced to the door where her bribed coachman stood with a pistol to David’s temple. He knelt upon the bricks, head bowed. Blood-spattered and shoulders hunched. She couldn’t see his face. Afraid she wouldn’t want to. Not after the hours he’d spent with Corey. Not after the sight of his finger laid on a bed of velvet as a bridal gift.
He lifted his head for a moment, and she caught back an anguished gasp at the wreckage of his face.
Callista scanned the hills for hope, praying to see the dark wings of a crow against the clouds. To catch sight of a troop of Amhas-draoi riding to the rescue.
Nothing. And no one.
She stepped to the table. Knelt. And laid her shaking hand upon Key.
Blood . . . pain . . . fire . . .
The only part of his dream yet unrealized was death. And that would be denied him as long as Corey believed him worth more alive. David focused on the pattern of the bricks on which he knelt, the mossy cracks, the ants crawling, the wind moving across his raw and broken flesh, the cold of the pistol’s mouth against his skull. It kept him from dwelling on the agony of his maimed hand, the savage pain gnawing at his innards, the blue and silver flames tearing through his mind.
Nine fingers they would take. Ten toes. An eye. Or two. A nose. His tongue. The process had been recounted in gory detail in the hell of Corey’s basements. But that was nothing compared to the threats the bastard had made toward Callista, the whispered promises that left David struggling against his bonds, every word a hurled curse.
Corey had laughed.
Corey wouldn’t be laughing soon.
Back and forth. Over and over until blood and torn skin slickened his wrists, his jaw clamped against the agony of his smashed hand. He kept his head down as shadow and sun passed across the surface of the stone. Smiled, for none knew it yet, but freedom was almost his.
The path wound through a deep, silent wood. Even the stream sliding beside her moved slow and sluggish and without a sound. She had never been here before; the landscape was wild and black, with upthrust boulders like grasping hands and trees climbing forever into a flat gray sky.
Annwn’s creatures watched her. She couldn’t see them but she felt their eyes crawling over her skin and sensed their desire for the heat and the life she possessed. What would they do if freed of the realms of man? But how could she refuse when it meant David would suffer?
She had no choice.
Lucan would claim otherwise. “There is always a choice,” he’d told her that long-ago afternoon in the Addershiels summerhouse.
She knew what her choice must be, no matter how it pained her.
She continued walking, and now snow dusted her shoulders and coated the path in white. The chill bit into her face and numbed her hands; her fingers upon Blade were cramped and throbbing. The gray light dimmed and the trees became sentinels, their branches reaching for her, their roots ensnaring her feet and twisting round her ankles. She fell, the bell clanging as it rolled from her hand. The creatures receded into the murky twilight with the crash and rumble of feet upon the packed earth and the screech and yowl of voices raised in frustration.
She drew her legs up to her chest, but the cold sapped her strength as it clawed her throat and raked her lungs. It wouldn’t take long. All she need do was remain here, and if the snow and ice didn’t claim her, something else would.
Corey would fail. The threat would end with her death.
She smiled, feeling the pinch of cold in her cheeks. If she died within, she would die without. She would have changed the dream. She would have outsmarted the fates.
The screeches grew in volume. The rumble of footsteps grew in number. She struggled to her feet with a moan of pain and failure.
Annwn’s monsters did not flee her bell.
They raced for the door.
The wind stank of sulfur and sweat, the stench of sickness and rotting flesh, grave earth and wounds gone sour. Clouds rolled thick and green across the sky, spreading out across the rolling barren cliffs and crags. Magic crackled the air like a summer storm, electrifying the hair at the back of his neck, the pain in his head, and the illness churning his gut.
No breath stirred Callista’s frozen lungs, and her flesh shone white as snow. Ice coated the three bells, and the table upon which they rested was slick and shiny. Around her, shadowy forms snaked over the stones of the parapet. Curled along the walls. Drifted up into the sky like slender wisps of smoke.
David ignored the hard, tight knot centered in his chest and the raging inferno tearing into his muscles as the curse and the draught warred for dominance. In one fluid move, he rose from his knees. With one hand, he swept the gun from his temple. With the other, he crushed the man’s nose before snatching the cocked weapon free. A quick squeeze of the trigger, and the guard tumbled to the stones, blood pooling beneath his body.
Corey pulled a pistol from his coat. “You might be faster than a bullet, but she’s not.” He aimed the pistol at Callista. “And you’d do anything to save her life, wouldn’t you? You’d even let me carve you into pieces as I sell you off an ounce at a time.”
