When the clock struck four and the first birds called in the fields, Callista rose. Pulled her gown across her shoulders, struggled with the buttons as best she could, and grabbed up a shawl.

The corridor was unlit, but she felt her way past rows of closed doors, through a long gallery where centuries of de Coursys held sway, and slipped down the stairs. Perhaps a novel or maybe even a shot of brandy. Anything to dull her mind and slow her pulse.

The castle was immense. Room after room, all threaded by a maze of corridors, passages, and stairways. She found her way back to the entrance hall by sheer luck, the great double doors barred for the night, a lamp left burning upon a table. But the salon where she’d spent a few awkward hours before arguing her way to David’s side proved elusive. Behind one door, a paneled lounge. Behind another, a billiard room, a cue left abandoned upon the table. A third turned out to be the dining room, silent and empty, the sideboard cleared for breakfast. She descended a staircase and passed through a long hall populated by suits of armor and enough weaponry to outfit an army. Just when she’d lost hope of ever finding her way, she rounded a corner and there it was.

The door stood ajar. A light flickered within.

She peeked around the jamb to find a man seated in a chair by the fire, a whisky glass in hand, a crumbling old book open in his lap. From his tall, lean physique and his clothing—a sober coat of brown and a pair of well-worn boots—Callista would have mistaken him for the local vicar or a servant taking advantage of his master’s absence, except for the aura of command that shimmered off him like a halo, even at rest. This was a man who wore control like armor. Even his stark, chiseled face registered nothing but mild surprise at her arrival, though his eyes glittered like blue ice, and when he turned his full gaze upon her, a shiver raced up her spine.

“I’m sorry to intrude, my lord. I didn’t think anyone would be awake this time of night,” she said.

Gray de Coursy rose from his chair. “I don’t sleep well, either. Perhaps we can keep each other company.”

A shadow rippled across the carpet like water, and Callista’s heart fluttered before sinking into her toes as a voice croaked and scraped across the surface of her brain. Death. Death. Death.

Badb stepped from behind the door, holding out a hand to draw her into the room. “Your novel and your brandy can wait, Callista Hawthorne. Your questions cannot.”

* * *

He woke alone. Air tickled over his bare skin, cool and scented with dust and old leather, steel and smoke. His chest hurt, but it was a bearable ache. He mended, slow and frustrating though it might be, and he would live to fight. To kill.

Callista had retired to her own room, hopefully to rest. She’d earned it, looking after him like a damned nursemaid. Another reason, if he still needed one, to forget the crazy ideas flitting through his head. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be a full-time invalid. He’d not trap Callista into the role of drudge. He might be selfish, but he wasn’t cruel. And Callista deserved more than to spend her days watching him disintegrate before her eyes. David had thought there was nothing worse than the hell the Fey-blood’s black spell had wrought. He’d been wrong.

Worse than death was having what you desired as close as a mingled breath and being forced to walk away. It was looking at Callista and seeing what could be, perhaps even should be, while knowing it would never happen. And worst of all, it was knowing that even the brief time remaining was tainted with prophecies of death.

His enemies gathered.

The danger mounted.

The sooner Callista departed Addershiels for the Isle of Skye, the better. She would be safe there, beyond Corey’s reach.

She would be safe there, beyond his reach.

He couldn’t change his fate, but he might . . . just might . . . be able to change hers.

That would have to be enough.

15

From the window of his room within the comfortable hotel, Corey looked down on the busy square and noted every coach and carriage, as well as the throng of busy pedestrians out on a rare sunny day after a week of rain and sullen skies. He scanned the passersby, not because he thought he might spy the towering figure of David St. Leger cutting his way through the crowd or Callista’s trim shape and dowdy attire moving in and out of the shops in nearby Catherine Street, but simply out of habit after a week on the road north in search of the elusive runaways.

Only the phlegmy clearing of a throat broke him from his scrutiny of a suspicious gentleman standing head and shoulders above those around him on a nearby corner. Corey swung around to face the weasely slump-backed cutpurse, his mutilated hand half hidden in the wide pocket of a greasy smock.

He continued to utilize gallows bait like this one when necessary, but his lip curled in repugnance at the stench of gin and defeat.

“I paid you your pennies. Is there a reason you’re still here?”

“You said a shilling,” the thug growled, his yellow teeth showing, in what Corey supposed was meant to be a threatening leer. “This ain’t even half that.”

“Bring me a shilling’s worth of information next time. What you’ve given me is tavern gossip and whores’ whispers,” he answered before turning back to watch the gentleman across the square.

He hadn’t moved, and the swarm of afternoon strollers and street vendors with their baskets and sacks had to joggle round him in consternation, yet, oddly, none confronted the man. Instead, they seemed to avoid him, heads down as they scurried past. As Corey continued to watch, the gentleman looked up at the window, his face shadowed by a broad-brimmed hat, but Corey had the sensation of the man’s stare drilling down into his brain.

A crow settled on the ledge just outside the window, its great black wings spread, its beak wide as it croaked and squawked. A wash of cold splashed over Corey’s shoulders and down his spine. He shooed the bird away, but the feeling of menace remained.

“You’re trying to cheat me, you is,” the thief-taker complained. “It’s him just like in them drawings. I seen him with my own eyes not thirty miles from here.”

Corey rubbed a hand over the knob of his cane, his patience fraying. “Then where’s the woman? He’s traveling with a woman.” He rounded on his informer, cane raised. “Did your pox-ridden slatterns mention her? I want them both, you grimy, flea-ridden sewer rat.”

The man’s back rounded as if he’d been struck, but he held his ground, coughing wetly into a large soiled handkerchief. “Next time, I’ll take my news to the other fella. He’ll pay what’s owed me,” he grumbled.

Corey visibly relaxed his face into a smile, though inside every alarm was ringing. “Other fellow?”

“You’re not the only one out there asking about that St. Leger bloke. And he pays twice as much. I only come to you ’cause we had a deal. Not no more. Not when I see how you pay honest chaps for honest work.”

“Honest, my ass,” Corey replied. “You probably stole your mother’s liver as you were being squeezed out between her legs. Give me a name. Who is he? Who is this champion of the rights of honest thieves everywhere?”

The man’s expression grew petulant, arms folded over his chest. “We’re to go to the Swan and Crown and tell ’em we’ve got news for Beskin. That’s all I know.”

It didn’t matter. Let this Beskin son of a bitch play seek-and-find up and down the Great North Road; Corey knew where the two of them were headed. He would be there in a few days more. Then all he had to do was wait for St. Leger and Callista to come to him.

Corey smiled and flipped the cellar rat another penny. “And there’s a half crown more if you tell this jack at the Swan and Crown that St. Leger’s halfway to Cardiff with his doxy in tow.”

As the man stretched to catch the coin, Corey’s hand shot out, grabbing him around the throat, his fingers digging deep into his flesh. He leaned in, his voice low and almost pleasant. “Don’t ever tell me I don’t pay what’s owing.”

The penny hit the floor to roll away under a table.

The man hit the floor and lay unmoving.

* * *

David eased a shirt on over his head, stifling a groan as pain slashed up his chest and into his skull. The room wavered but did not spin. His body ached but did not collapse. And he’d be damned if he’d lay in that bed another minute. Still, he sat and breathed deeply for a moment before he dared attempt to pull on his breeches, glancing only briefly at the door.

“Come in and scold me in person,” he called out. “Much easier than glaring at me through the keyhole.”

The latch turned, and Gray de Coursy stood on the threshold, bearing a whisky bottle and two glasses. At least he assumed it was Gray. This gentleman bore the familiar rangy build and stark aristocratic features, but gone was the champagne shine and the cool, prideful gaze that had England’s elite climbing over themselves to curry favor . . . and gain a husband for their daughters. Instead, he looked battle-toughened and forbidding in a way he never had before, even during the long years campaigning. Perhaps because this war was far more personal, the stakes much closer to home.

“How did you know I was there?” Gray asked, placing the glasses upon a cabinet. Filling them with whisky.

“You always were horrible at stealth. You have the tread of an elephant. I heard you halfway down the corridor.” David sucked in a breath and resumed the laborious process of dressing. One leg . . . easy does it. “Stick to aerial surveillance and leave scouting enemy terrain to those familiar with the ground.”

Now for his boots. When had his legs grown so damned long? His feet seemed bloody miles away. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing for his valet. Wishing for any valet. Wishing for a room that didn’t waver in and out of focus.

“Do you consider Addershiels in the hands of the enemy?” Gray turned around, a glass in each hand. David noted the bandage wrapped around his palm and his waxy complexion and silently cursed the draught’s sinister destruction.

“The Duncallans, a Fey, and a dead traitor roam the halls. It’s either enemy territory or a circus freak show, and I learned more than I care to about circuses in the past few weeks.” David accepted the glass, though he did not taste. Somehow, the idea of alcohol at—he checked the clock—two in the afternoon didn’t seem quite as appealing as it once had.

“An awful lot of people track your scent, St. Leger,” Gray commented, sipping his drink.

If it had been David, he’d have downed the whole in one throat-burning swallow. Hell, he’d have tipped the bottle to his mouth and washed the world away. Or at one time he would have. Gray had always been a cold fish, passionless and prim as any maiden aunt and more severe than a Puritan. Gray was methodical, practical, and calculating. It drove David mad, but it had probably kept him alive through five years, three countries, and countless battles.

Not that he’d ever admit that to Gray. The man was as puffed up as a bloody rooster as it was.

“You can use the title, but that doesn’t make me a soldier. Not anymore.”

“The Ossine believe otherwise,” Gray said.

“I wonder why. Maybe it has something to do with a stolen book and a dead Imnada courier, and a plot to suck me in that Machiavelli would have endorsed.”