With a quick steadying breath, he rolled up onto his knees, the world tipping and spinning like the deck of a ship. In between the bursting fireworks shattering his vision, he made out Badb’s feathered shape, a kneeling figure that might or might not be Lord Duncallan, the table, the spilled bells. “Where’s Callista?”
The Fey knelt by his side, her cap of black curls tousled in the wind, her cloak billowing loose to reveal her pearly skin. “You succeeded, child of the wolf. You sealed the door.”
“Damn it, what’s happened to her?”
Badb’s gaze flickered, her lips pursing slightly.
“My niece chose death. She is a true daughter of Arawn now.” The head of the
No mark of his knife marred her throat. No blood stained the white of her muslin gown. She could be asleep, her hands placed upon her breast as if already prepared for her coffin. A death of earth and dust. No journey beyond the stars and through the Gateway.
“I killed her.” David scrambled to her side, touching her, brushing her hair from her face. Waiting for the moment she opened her eyes, stuck out her tongue, and told him it was all a prank. All a dream.
But the dream had been real. His dream had unfolded as he’d seen it a million times. He’d failed.
“You were merely the weapon Callista turned upon herself. It was her choice,” Badb said.
“Damn it, there was no choice about it. You forced her to close the door. You forced me to be her killer.” He rubbed his sticky hands over his face, blood tasting of iron and salt on his lips. It mingled with the tears burning against his cheeks. He fisted his good hand against the rage. Opened it slowly, his gaze locked upon the silver scars interlacing his palm, the blood slicking his wrist. An idea formed in his weary head. A chance. A hope. All he had left.
He grabbed up a fallen knife, clumsy with only four fingers, but still adept enough to slide it over his opposite wrist. His blood oozed from the narrow gash. He placed his wrist against Callista’s blue lips, letting his heart push the blood a drop at a time into her mouth. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .
“Come on, Callista. Open your damn eyes. Take a breath. Something.”
“What are you doing?” The Ard-siur rushed to pull him away, her words snapping against his brain, her fingers wrenching his shoulder, but Lord Duncallan stopped her with a gentle word and a stern grip. “He offers her the
“Death cannot be undone,” the old woman argued. “Arawn will not be cheated.”
Lord Duncallan pulled her away, his words calm but allowing no resistance.“The Imnada owe no allegiance to the lord of the dead, and the ways of the shapechangers are not our ways. I’ve seen it work and felt its power. Let him be.”
Ten . . . eleven . . . twelve . . .
David seemed to float above his body, his vision fading in and out as his injuries made themselves felt in every muscle.
Twenty . . . twenty-one . . .
Did her chest rise? Did her cheeks pink? He bent to lay his head upon her chest, and felt the curve of an arm come round to hold him close. A breath warm against his cheek. “David?” she murmured.
He gathered her up against him, her hair spilling over his arms, his kisses brushing her temple, her forehead, her cheek, her neck. “Callista. Edern, my beautiful Fey princess.
“. . . reconsidered my initial and perhaps hasty assessment. I will allow you to stay on, but you can expect no special treatment due to our . . . familial connection. You will be taken in as the lowest novice and worked harder than you’ve ever worked before, but perhaps, if you have a tenth of your mother’s promise . . . there might just be . . . hope for you as a necromancer.”
It must have been like chewing worms to speak those words. Callista wanted to laugh at the pained expression chasing its way over her aunt’s dour face. She wanted to, but her throat hurt and her chest felt prickly, as if bees had taken up residence under her ribs. Instead she closed her hands around the book she’d been reading and smiled her thanks.
“You can’t know how much it means to me to hear you say that. But why? After all you said, why go into death after us? You could have simply let the door remain shut. It would have been simple.”
Her aunt pulled the packet of letters from her pocket, the frayed blue ribbon replaced with a purple satin bow. She put them on the bed beside Callista. “No matter your unfortunate paternity, you and I share blood and birthright. I couldn’t make up for the years I lost with my sister. I needed to try to make amends with her daughter.”
How many momentous decisions in life hinge on a single moment in a single day?
Had her aunt spoken those words just one day earlier, all would have ended differently. Now Callista swallowed around a knot in her throat, dreading what she had to say. Her heart’s desire lay spread before her, but despite her aunt’s softening, Callista knew this was no longer the right path for her. “I appreciate your offer, Aunt Deirdre. But”—her aunt frowned—“I can’t accept. You were right. I don’t belong here. In my mind, I turned Dunsgathaic into the home I never had and you into the mother I lost. I thought I could make a place for myself here, but I can’t. The home and family I truly want is still out there waiting for me.” She glanced to the window, where sunset painted the sky red and gold, pink and orange, while the sea rippled dark as ink.
“If you speak of St. Leger, he’s gone.” Aunt Deirdre’s hand clamped round the bedpost, her large knobby fingers white.
“Gone?”
“He disappeared last night. None know how, but the castle has been searched with no sign of him, and Lord Duncallan refuses to answer any questions. A disappointment, as I would have liked to interrogate the shifter further, but it is not to be helped.”
Callista frowned, the bees settling to her stomach with a dull thud. “He can’t have left. We . . . he called me Edern.”
Aunt Deirdre sniffed, her gaze falling to the book. “The Fey-born princess married off to the monster to save the kingdom. A sentimental if affecting tale.”
Callista’s cheeks flushed hot even as the rest of her shivered with cold. “Rinaci Hammerclaw won Edern’s heart. He loved her.”
“As long as Mr. St. Leger’s alive, you’ll be wed to this ridiculous dream.”
“No, the dream is past. We fought it and we won. I just didn’t realize that winning the battle would be losing the war.”
“So you will stay here with us. I will inform Sister Hosta, our mistress of novices, of your decision and —”
“I won’t wall myself away, Aunt. I won’t exchange one prison for another.”
Aunt Deirdre’s expression hardened as she straightened her gown with a twitch of a sleeve. A brush of the collar. “You say the shifter is doomed to die? Perhaps I should have left him in death. Perhaps that would have been the mercy . . . for both of you.”
From her high window, Callista took a last look at the swiftly churning clouds, the flocks of feeding sea- birds, and far sails upon the sea beyond Dunsgathaic’s walls, but it was Rinaci Hammerclaw and Idrin the Traveler, Helene of the Rhaynor and Brune the Hairy, she saw out her bedchamber window. Lords and ladies, heroes and villains, daring battles and tragic romances. She knew all about those. She ran a hand over the book as if she might step within the pages before shoving it in her satchel beside her bells. The letters Aunt Deirdre had kept.
She turned her mind from thoughts of David. A week had passed with no sign of him beyond a hastily scribbled note, the handwriting sloppy, ink splattering the page. She tried not to imagine him fumbling with the pen, awkward with his mangled hand. Struggled to forget the deep slash on his cheek, the broken bloody nose, and the smashed and splintered wrist. Instead, she focused on the words he’d whispered, the way he’d held her, the depth of his fog-shrouded gaze. It was all she had left of him.
“Ahhh,
