Shadow's Curse (37 page)

“I had an old auntie that used to tell me stories of
the shifters,” Sister Clara said, drawing Callista back to the conversation. “Hair-raising they were, sent shivers right up my spine, but I loved them.”

“See?” Katherine said confidently.

Still, Callista couldn’t shake the sense these high walls she’d run to for refuge were closing around her like the jaws of a poacher’s trap. She kicked herself for being such a dim-witted optimist. She’d been foolish to believe her aunt would welcome a niece she never knew and stupid to think the order would overlook the fact that David was Imnada and help him break the curse.

“. . . baths, milady? Aye, they’re still here. Hardly used anymore, though. Ard-siur discourages it. I’ve only been down there once since I arrived as a novice.”

Dreams of a lifetime lay shattered around her, but Callista refused to give in to the heartbreak. She refused to sit and weep over a pile of old letters and useless regrets. Her mother had done that, finally surrendering to grief and loss and loneliness.

Callista was made of sterner stuff.

“. . . mum lives on the southern shore near Kinloch. Sister Walda’s not supposed to, but she lets me visit her each morning and take a bit of soup and bread from the kitchens.”

“Can you get a note to Mr. St. Leger for me?” Callista asked.

Sister Clara and Katherine looked up as one.

The priestess’s eyes lit up. “You mean a secret love letter? That kind of note?”

“Can you do it?” Callista repeated.

The girl bit the tip of her finger as she thought. “I heard whispers he’s being held in the north tower.
That’s usually Sister Lissa’s domain, but I can manage easy enough.”

“Callista, what are you planning?” Katherine asked, an uneasy look on her face.

“I can’t allow David to be locked away forever because of me. I need to see him. Need to let him know . . .” She shook her head. “I need him. That’s all. I need him.”

Sister Clara jumped to her feet. “You write the note, miss. I’ll deliver it.”

Callista sat down at the desk. Stared long and hard out the narrow window onto the busy yard below, where sisters in gray moved about their daily chores, a herd of cows was being shepherded by a girl in a kirtle and apron, and a boy was riding a mule with a dog at his side. Riders streamed in through the fortress gate, with nothing about them to signal who they were but for the swords at their hips, the daggers at their belts, and the stern looks in their hard faces—Amhas-draoi. Scathach’s warriors. Guardians of the divide between human and Fey. Was this the beginning of the war Gray and the Duncallans feared?

With a shiver, she bent pen to paper in a frightened scribble and prayed David would come.

*  *  *

“Callista? Are you down here?” David’s footsteps and voice echoed against the brick walls as he stepped off into a long room lit only by high slitted vents, a welcome breeze riffling down to stir the hairs at the back of his neck. Otherwise, the air hung heavy and damp against his skin. Stone benches ran the perimeter of the room, rounded and softened by thousands of years
of use. High buttresses of intricately carved marble rose and then were lost in the dark of the ceiling, while steps to his left descended into a murky green pool.

He knelt and dipped his hand in the water. Pleasantly hot. Horribly stinky. And bitter on his tongue. He splashed it on his face to relieve his faint dizziness; let it trickle under his collar to ease the fever heat and the tightening and cramping of his muscles. Too much magic. Too small a space. It was like having every nerve plucked and every breath laced with needles. His brain hummed while his flesh crawled. He doused his head with another handful. Slapped his wet hair off his face with a flick of his neck and closed his eyes until the worst passed. Felt a hand on his shoulder.

He wheeled around, reaching for the dagger that wasn’t there, his body a live fuse.

“David, it’s me.”

He breathed a silent prayer to the Mother. Callista. Whole. Unharmed. A few shadows that hadn’t been there before. A strain in her face and around her eyes, but otherwise untouched. He could take solace knowing that whatever else happened, Corey had failed. The door to death would not swing open. Callista would not be the key to the king of the stews becoming the king of the world.

“
Orneai aimara
,” he said in the language of the ancients. “My beautiful.” He cupped her face in his hands and drank in a deep thirst-quenching kiss, his body alive now with more than sickness.

“You’re ill. And burning with fever.”

“It’s nothing.”

She gave a small shake of her head, but otherwise didn’t argue. Instead she gripped his arms, her gaze
clear, though he saw the fear lurking just beneath the surface. “I wasn’t certain you’d get my note . . . or if you’d be able to come.”

“I’ve offered my parole. I’m free to move about the fortress as long as I don’t attempt to leave. Your aunt is playing nice for the moment.”

“For the moment is well and good, but you need to escape before they change their minds. Sister Clara can smuggle you out when she goes to visit her mother tomorrow at dawn. She thinks you’re brilliant and our story’s a romantic adventure straight out of Sir Walter Scott.”

“Did any of those stories end well?”

“Don’t joke, David. The Amhas-draoi will never let you go. They’ll hold you captive until they pull every last secret of the Imnada out of you. Then they’ll go after the clans. You have to run while you can.”

“I thought you didn’t want me running.”

“It’s different now. Didn’t you say this place was the heart of the enemy? That you’d never be caught within its walls?”

He took her hands. Brushed a kiss upon her forehead. “Don’t fear for me, Callista. As long as I’m their only connection to the Imnada, they’ll treat me with respect.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but he placed a finger on her lips. “To show their good faith, the commander of the garrison sent men to search for Corey and your brother. An army of dead ravaging Great Britain is in no one’s interest, shapechanger or Fey-blood.”

She molded herself against him, the leap of her pulse in her throat and the catch of her breath making his own body respond.

“You’re finally free, my love. No longer forced to
hide. You can find a life anywhere and be anyone you wish to be.”

“With you?” she asked.

He couldn’t keep the sorrow from his gaze. It reflected back to him in the dark of her eyes.

“I meant what I said to my aunt, David. Every syllable. I love you.”

“Then unsay it. Take it back and never think on it again.”

“Love doesn’t work that way.”

“I did what I set out to do, Callista. The book is safe with Gray. You’re safe from Corey. And Beskin is a frozen corpse. I can die a happy man.”

She frowned. “Stop it. Stop talking that way. There are other convents and other priestesses. We’ll search them out. Scour their libraries and their archives. Find a
bandraoi
more powerful than any living here and convince them to help, but you need to escape before it’s too late.”

“Is this what the spirits have shown you? Is this my future?”

Anger flashed in her face. “The spirits know nothing.”

“You saw my death, didn’t you?” he asked. She did not deny it, but there was a stiffening of her body and she slid her gaze to the wall behind him. “You saw your death as well, didn’t you?”

“Prophecies are not fact,” she argued.

“Why ask the question if you won’t believe the answer?”

“To change the answer. I’ve stepped from the path once. I can do it again.”

He pushed a curl behind her ear, caressed the curve of her cheek. “You make me almost believe.”

“I won’t stop trying until you do.” She pulled him down to her, her kiss sweet with sherry. Her tongue dipped to taste, her teeth nibbled at his lip. He drank her in, the scent of her hair and her skin, the honey warmth of her mouth. She answered with a rising passion, her back arching as she melted into his touch.

Then, just as suddenly, she stepped clear of his arms. Holding his gaze, she unbuttoned the ugly brown wool gown they had given her and let it fall to the bricks. Slowly, sensuously, she untied the prim ribbons of her chemise, drew one arm free and then the other, and the slip of cotton soon joined the gown as a puddle at her feet.

Her skin glowed pink and silver, golden and white as milk. The heat from the baths moistened her breasts, a trickle of sweat sliding into the valley between them. Her dark hair curled over her shoulders in the humid air, little ringlets damp against her forehead and temple.

She passed him, hips swaying with just a hint of come-hither sensuality, the earthy scents of sex mingling with the mineral tang of the baths. Stepped into the murky water, a slow step at a time. It lapped at her ankles, her knees, the junction between her legs.

A smile lit her face, and she slapped at the surface of the pool, sending spray to douse him. “Wake up!”

He answered her smile with an encouraging grin. “Minx.” Shed his clothing, pausing upon the top step, his need for her evident. “Where’s the shy maiden who knew nothing of kisses and shrank from my touch?

“I left part of her in a closet in Cumberland Place, another piece in a wagon between Grantham and
Newcastle, and finally shed her in a castle bed high above the North Sea.”

He descended into the bath, dropped below the water, letting it wash away his last hesitation. He surfaced with a flick of water from his face to find her molten gaze devouring him as if he were a confection. “Much warmer than that creek.”

She took his hands. “You didn’t touch me then.”

“I wanted to.”

“Touch me now.”

“Gladly.”

He lapped at her skin, sucking the water from her shoulders, her collarbone, her breasts; took her nipples in his mouth and suckled until they hardened under his tongue. His hands moved in the water, gliding over hips and the flat of her stomach, touching the brush between her legs, the cleft of her mound. She gasped, the water moving with them, stirred by their desire.

She guided him inside her, the dark wrapping close around them, the damp air warm in their lungs, dripping down their cheeks, silvering their hair. He held her, feeling her close around him, sheathed tight inside her. He made no move. And then slowly . . . very slowly he withdrew and plunged deep again. Each stroke a torture. Each thrust dragging him closer to the edge. He locked his gaze with hers, dilated pupils and parted lips, clawing fingernails and wet skin. Her pleasure aroused him further until lightning licked along every raw nerve.

This was the end between them. He tried to console himself. She was not the first woman he had walked away from without a backward glance. Yet his heart ached as he pictured the future that might have been theirs, the family they might have had, the life
they might have lived. And for the first time, David felt an irresistible urge to fight tooth and claw against his fate rather than resign himself to the inevitable. Because, for the first time, he had someone worth fighting for.

*  *  *

Callista wrapped her legs around David’s waist, lifted her hips to take him deeper. Head thrown back, she groaned as the water sluiced over them and between them, as she felt her blood pouring volcanic through her body. She’d heard the act of love called the tiny death, but there was nothing of death in this giving and receiving of pleasure. Death was a cold and frigid place, a vast empty landscape, a gray forever where no sun burned or stars shone. This was light and heat and life and blazing, heart-stopping emotion. This was the promise of bliss shadowed by the fear of despair.

This was what she had told herself she would not and could not do.

Love.

She arched against the sweet friction of their joining as he kissed her in a sweeping, heated, toe-curling, stomach-knotting kiss. Felt the cresting wave of her bliss pull her under, and cried her climax into his mouth. His sending struck hard as a warrior’s vow in her dizzy head.

I love you, Callista.

The groan of door hinges broke the spell, the splash of lantern light over the bricks tore them apart, and the soft shush of robes over the stone had David bracing for attack.

“Down here, Ard-siur.” A grizzled priestess with a mole on her chin wobbled down the stairs. Two more
followed, the last gripping the wrist of Sister Clara, who shot Callista a look of frightened apology.

The outraged group drew to a halt at the bottom of the steps, Aunt Deirdre close to boiling over as she took in the scene. “How dare you!” She fairly trembled with rage. “I offer you comfort and you repay me with lechery. I offer you aid and you pay me back with whore’s gold. Mr. St. Leger, you’re to return to your rooms. Tomorrow you’ll be turned over to the Amhas-draoi. You can be their distraction. I hope they offer you the hospitality that one of your kind deserves.”

Beneath the water, David squeezed Callista’s hand. Touched her leg. “You can’t keep him against his wishes, Aunt,” she argued. “He only came with me because I asked it of him. He’s only here because he worried about my safety.”

“Perhaps it’s best this way,” David murmured, and she knew he recalled his dangerous dream. That the fear of what he might do to her still gripped him. She would not believe. She could not believe that so soon after such joy there would follow such pain.

Ard-siur dismissed Callista with a scowl. “You will leave Dunsgathaic at first light. I’m sorry you traveled so far with nothing to show for your journey.”

David’s hand froze, his breath caught in his throat.

Callista had been wrong. It could happen. She closed her eyes and refused the horrible, violent images assailing her.

“Don’t be sorry, Aunt Deirdre,” she answered, defying her aunt as much as the voices raking her skull with whispers of death. “I’ve gained far more from these past few weeks with David than I could have found closeted away here with you in a hundred lifetimes. Love.”