Heir of Danger (32 page)

A cannonball dropped into the pit of her stomach. Her aunts. How on earth was she going to face them after this? Somehow in the mounting chaos of her days in Dublin, that question had gotten lost in the shuffle. Aidan’s arrival drove it front and center. “Are they all right?”

He released her to once more prowl like some great hunting cat, his hand tapping at his thigh. “Mrs. Pheeney has taken to her bed with hartshorn for her nerves and magnesia for her upset stomach, but Miss Sara has been stalwart in containing the scandal. In fact, she was the only one unsurprised by your elopement.”

Elisabeth took a seat upon the edge of a settee, her queasiness resuming double force. “She knew Brendan had returned. She recognized him, you see.” Elisabeth rubbed
her temples as if trying to keep her brains from oozing out her ears. “And I think somehow . . . some way . . . she sensed what would happen.”

“Did she?” He grunted. “Fancy that. Don’t doubt it. Your grandmother carried the blood.” He scraped a knuckle along his chin. A gesture she’d seen Brendan make a million times. The cannonball moved up into her chest.

“Was it . . . as bad as I imagine?” she ventured.

“I wasn’t there during the ruckus, but Lady Kilronan told me the place was pandemonium, with everyone accusing everyone else. One group wanted to charge out after you and drag you back by the hair. The other faction washed their hands of the debacle.”

“I can imagine which side Gordon came down on.”

“Apparently Mr. Shaw and his brother left Dun Eyre three days after you did following an argument between the pair of them and Lord Taverner. Your guardian was quite the bulldog, I’m told.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Not to fear. I believe your great-aunt came ably to your defense with a raking that had the entire household in an uproar and both Mr. Shaws resembling a pair of startled codfish. My wife’s opinion, not mine.”

Bless Great-aunt Charity. Elisabeth well knew what sort of tongue-lashing might issue from that plain-speaking mouth. But poor Gordon. It hadn’t been his fault, though it was a relief to know his heart had been as little touched as hers. He would find his glittering political hostess just as she had found the man she needed. Who turned her legs to jelly and her blood to fire. Who’d dragged her into the deepest, most treacherous currents and then left her to sink or swim on her own.

Aidan straightened, decision settling easily over his broad shoulders. “Come with me tonight. I have my traveling coach in town. You can return to Belfoyle. You’ll be safe there, and Cat and Sabrina would love to discover they’ve a new sister-in-law.”

She looked around at Helena Roseingrave’s stylish yet simple drawing room. The snapping fire. The thick Turkey carpets. The indescribable sensation of otherworldliness that seemed to permeate even the most mundane items.

“I’m tempted, but no.” She shook her head. “It sounds like madness when all I’ve wanted since waking in Brendan’s company was to find a way home again, but I think I need to stay here for the time being.”

His gaze narrowed with obstinacy. She’d forgotten how stubborn he could be. A Douglas trait, apparently. “As Brendan’s wife, you’re my responsibility now. He would want you safe. Your aunts will want to know what’s become of you.”

Elisabeth straightened. “I’ll write straightaway to Aunt Fitz and Aunt Pheeney, but Madame Arana has offered me a home here as long as I have need of it. I want to be here when”—she refused to say “if”—“Brendan returns.”

A flash of something dark and furious boiled up through Aidan’s eyes, a glimpse of his wild
Other
blood. As if a monster surfaced for a moment before descending back into the deep. “And if he doesn’t? Máelodor’s obsession with
Other
supremacy has twisted him until he’s naught but evil shaped in the form of man. He’s barely human anymore. Brendan’s powers are strong, but are they strong enough?”

Elisabeth gazed into the fire, seeing in the glowing embers a pair of yellow-hot eyes. In its heat a warm touch
upon her face. And still she felt frozen, the blood washing cold and sluggish through her veins. A fear she could not push away.

“What do you think?”

Aidan tossed his lit cheroot on the fire with a trembling hand. “I’ve lost Brendan once. I refuse to lose him twice over.”

Elisabeth’s smile came tinged with sadness. Her sentiments exactly.

After Aidan’s departure, Elisabeth went in search of Madame Arana. Found her, as she knew she would, in her attic studio, seated in a deep, tapestried chair, her needlework in her lap, though she wasn’t sewing. Instead, the old woman stared serenely out the window on a night scraped low with rain, lights washing up from the streets below, a breeze hissing through the casement gap to lift the curtains. Killer lay upon a rug nearby asleep, his whistling, whuffing snores comforting in an otherwise delicate peace. She seemed to tear her gaze from the window with great difficulty, a strange shadow passing over her face. “Lord Kilronan has gone?”

Refusing to glance over at the old bed she and Brendan had shared only hours before, Elisabeth sucked in a sharp breath. “You knew he wasn’t
Amhas-draoi
. Why did you pretend otherwise?”

Madame Arana rose stiffly, her body bent as if the mounting trouble bore her down. “There is much confusion within the mirror. All is in flux and nothing is certain, though I have scryed the glass every day, hoping to make sense of the images. The only thing I can say with confidence is that Douglas must face this challenge alone. Only
in this way will he succeed against Máelodor and against his own private demons. Kilronan’s presence would have changed events. Perhaps even tipped the scales in a different direction. I could not allow that.”

“‘Not allow’? Who are you to move people about like pieces upon a chessboard?”

Madame Arana’s grandmotherly persona slipped, her eyes blazing, a strange unearthly brilliance glowing beneath her skin. “I do what I must to ensure my race’s survival in a world all too quick to condemn. Just as Brendan Douglas does what he must. We all have a role to play, Elisabeth. Perhaps even you. Though you are not of our race, you are of our world.”

“Show me,” Elisabeth demanded. “Show me what you’ve seen.”

For the first time Madame Arana seemed wary, her gaze slanting between Elisabeth and the long mirror half-hidden in the shadows. “I do not understand.”

“You said the mirror is aware. That it will reveal what it knows if I’m strong enough to accept it. I’m strong enough. Let me see the future.”

“Very well.” Madame Arana crossed to the mirror, pulling free the slippery silk covering its surface, caressing the polished frame. Immediately the glass darkened, the rolling thunderclouds pushing thick and angry. The border of woodland animals and twining greenery alive and writhing under her
Fey
-born touch.

“Come close,
ma puce
. If the mirror wishes, it will reveal what it knows. But do not be disappointed if it chooses to hide its wisdom, or if it shows you something you do not want to see. It answers my pleas, it does not follow my commands, and I cannot force it to show you anything if it believes it would be best to keep its secrets.”

Now that she was faced with the crackling, hypnotizing scrying glass, Elisabeth’s feet became lead, her heart beating erratically, her breath coming fast. What on earth had she been thinking? Knowing the future was not a good idea. Not even a little bit.

Yet her legs seemed to propel her across the floor without her brain putting up a fuss. One minute she was at the top of the steps, the next she stood in front of the scrying glass, mesmerized by a rainbow’s prism rising and falling within the flickering, black-bellied clouds.

Unsure of how to proceed—she’d never made a conscious decision to read the future before—she emptied her mind of anything but Brendan’s face as she’d seen it last. Laughing. Wild. Eager. Placed her palms flat upon the surface. Tried to cast her silent question out to whoever or whatever might answer.

Immediately it felt as if ice crystals formed inside her veins. Her heart glazed over with a frosty coating so that each breath drew forth a white winter cloud. Her teeth chattered, her stomach clenched with cold, and numbness spread from her fingers up her arms toward her chest, but she did not break free. She stared within the mirror to the rainbow’s dancing hues as the clouds parted here and then there, a glimpse of color, a flash of movement that changed or disappeared before she could focus her gaze.

“The mirror may reveal past events or future possibilities. Or it might reveal only what is written in your own heart. There is no way to predict.”

Madame Arana’s voice echoed from far away, her words fading into the noises of Elisabeth’s body—her blood moving through her arteries, her lungs filling and collapsing, her joints’ slow click and grind as she moved,
the pulse of her brain as it struggled to make sense of the nonsensical.

An image. Caught for an instant. Long enough for Elisabeth to catch a glimpse. A man and a woman pleasuring one another. His golden body sleek with sweat, her head thrown back amid a river of red hair. Aflame with embarrassment, Elisabeth’s stomach plunged as she watched the man drive himself deep into the woman. Felt a throbbing pull between her own legs as the cresting of their need played out before her.

She blinked, and the image was swallowed back into the clouds, replaced by a second. A man crippled and stooped, his grotesque face aglow with greed and desire and success. He turned to speak to someone barely discernible in the fog but for one pale eye, hollow of emotion.

“Does the mirror answer what you ask of it, or does it play the coy lover and wrap itself in veils to entice?” Madame Arana asked.

Elisabeth tried swallowing, but her throat closed, her mouth dry, her tongue swollen. She couldn’t blink. Couldn’t move. It was the only reason she caught the final fleeting image—the broken body of a man amid a bleeding, smoke-smeared sky. A cry of pain shouted to the heavens that ripped through Elisabeth like a knife.

With a retching, gagging moan she tore free of the mirror, flinging herself into Madame Arana’s waiting arms. Her sobs cracking the icy shell encasing her, her tears scalding her cheeks, leaking hot and bitter into her mouth.

“What, young one? What has the mirror revealed?”

“Brendan won’t be alone.” Elisabeth closed her eyes, but the image seared her brain like fire. “I’ll be with him when he dies and Máelodor claims victory.”

North. South. East. West.

Earth. Air. Water—Máelodor cast flame to wick—fire.

All was set to draw upon the mage energy bound within the combined strength of compass and element. To tear the fabric between this world and the
Unseelie
abyss.

Stepping into the circle, Máelodor immediately sensed the power of the forbidden magics seeping into him. Pain no longer touched him. Uncertainty no longer weakened him. He was no longer bound only to one universe. Instead, his awareness expanded to other worlds, other planes of being, as he traveled on a current of thought. The attainment of this power had cost him—some might say the price had been too high—but he knew better. Knowledge involved sacrifice. As did victory.

He sought both.

As he cast the blood runes upon the floor, his lungs struggled to fill, air and light swallowed into a pinhole stretching outward as if someone had stabbed a knife into the world, ripping downward in a violent rift. Beyond the tear loomed a horrible gaping emptiness, a chasm of freezing, eternal nothing that was the Dark Court’s abode. And a voice rising from that wasteland like Lorelei’s call—pure and soulful and full of pain. “Is it time, son of man? Are we at last able to prove to you our gratitude and loyalty? Your humble servants yearn to join ourselves to you.”

“Patience,” Máelodor replied. “The stone is found. It will not be long now before Arthur stands by my side and I open the gates to you. Together, we will overcome any opposition. The
Duinedon
will have no chance.”

There was a long silence when all that could be heard was a crackling roar, the infernal emptiness of the abyss beyond the rift roiling with a million shades of black.
Then: “The
Fey
do not suspect? They would stop us if they could.”

“They remain ignorant of our contract.” Máelodor felt his very essence being pulled into the hole, the
Unseelie
feeding on him like maggots upon a corpse. But in this case, they replaced what they stole with bits of themselves. Dark for light. Power in payment for a soul. They understood it was their only chance at freedom from their prison. “Your spells of concealment, combined with my own manipulations, have kept their eyes turned elsewhere, and I have been left to proceed in peace.”

“We wait only on you, our master and liberator. When the gate is opened, we will come. We will fight. It shall be as you command.”

He smiled, his tongue running over his lips in delicious expectation. “Then go and prepare your armies and await my call.”

Bending down, he wiped a hand through the runes, smearing the blood in which they’d been written. Immediately, the rift shrank, the howling, vicious chasm fading back into four corners marked by four objects—a candle, a pile of earth, an eagle’s feather, a shallow dish of water.