The wolf lay panting, a long, jagged gash upon its shoulder, blood and slaver dripping from its jaws. Beskin’s shadow speared the snow above it, his silver sword flashing against the slate-gray sky.

“David!” she screamed. “Look out!”

Just as the sword descended, the wolf rolled up and away, its jaws clamping on Beskin’s leg, tearing through flesh and muscle, ripping in a frenzy of animal brutality, though the beast’s eyes shone pale with human hate and human desperation.

The enforcer screamed in agony, the sword falling from his hand as he grappled with the wolf, the snow a churned mess of blood and earth. A dagger aimed for the wolf’s throat was turned aside at the last minute, glancing off bone and rib instead. The animal yelped and sprang free, sides heaving, blood streaming from half a dozen wounds. It took a few shaky steps before sinking lifeless against a tree.

Callista fought the ropes, tears streaming frozen from her eyes as she cursed her helplessness. Just a bit more. A little farther.

A hot wind buffeted her face as the air around the wolf shimmered and blurred like rain streaming down a pane of glass. Raw, unfamiliar magic sizzled along her skin and flip-flopped her empty stomach. She blinked away her tears to see David lying wounded and dazed on the snow. A shimmer of light rippled across his broad shoulders and down his long legs before dispersing to mingle with the rivulets of blood sliding in ribbons and curls down the hill.

“David?” she whispered.

He rolled up and onto his feet. Eyed Beskin with revulsion. The enforcer’s leg below the knee was a mess of pulpy cartilage and bone, his face an ugly mask of horrified agony as he struggled to crawl across the snow toward his abandoned sword, dragging his mangled limb behind him. The crows thickened and wheeled, diving down to pluck at Beskin’s flesh, grabbing up gobbets of blood.

A little more. A little closer. She could feel her right wrist sliding free. The horse shimmied to one side, agitated at the scent of blood and animal and the growing cloud of crows and ravens drawn by the blood-soaked snow.

David crossed the few yards and plucked up the enforcer’s sword with a smile as cold and cruel as death. He stood over Beskin, his expression grim, his jaw jumping, muscles taut. It was like watching a stranger. The man she knew and loved had vanished behind a brutal and merciless mask of vengeance. She wanted to call out to him, speak words to pull him back from the brink of madness, but her voice caught in her lungs, her breath naught but a frosty cloud. Bending low and awkward across the horse’s shoulder, she turned her efforts to the icy-hard knots at her ankles.

“This is for Kineally and the others you’ve slaughtered.”

“Kill me, more will follow,” Beskin groaned through lips drawn back from long sharpened teeth. “Pryor’s power grows. The Duke’s time is past. The Ossine rule”—his hand whipped out to latch on David’s ankle—“now!”

He dragged David off-balance and hard into the ground, his fist driving up into his jaw with bone-crunching strength. “The curse tainted your blood. The Fey-blood polluted your mind. You’re weak.”

David struggled for the sword, but the hilt had tumbled just out of reach and Beskin’s hold was like iron. His face seemed to warp and lengthen, the shades of man and beast flickering beneath his skin as he sought to shift. As David scrabbled to reach the fallen sword, Beskin reached to his left boot. Drew free a needle-thin blade. Let it sail.

Callista shouted as her right ankle came loose, while the blade whistled past her ear to land hilt-deep in the horse’s neck. It screamed and reared before falling to the ground in a tangle of churning legs. Callista tried rolling clear of the dying gelding, left, then right, until her head exploded in a burst of red and black, and darkness took her.

* * *

David kicked and twisted free of Beskin’s grip and scrambled over the snow to where Callista lay curled at the base of a tree, the snow from its heavy branches half burying her, the dying horse thrashing as it pumped its blood onto the churned ground. He pulled her clear and felt the lump at the back of her skull. She’d survive, but he needed to get her out of the weather. Somewhere warm. Somewhere safe. A shadow speared the air above him. He looked up into the maddened eyes of an enormous bear dragging the grisly ruin of its leg behind it. Small advantage when David still faced razor claws and fangs long as daggers.

He threw himself sideways as the bear swung one giant paw down in a blow that would have scissored through flesh like a knife through butter.

He spun and darted, luring Beskin away from Callista, drawing ever closer to the fallen sword. Beskin followed, roaring his rage and pain. His breath blew hot on David’s neck as he swiped at him. Claws tore into David’s calf, dropping him to the ground. Rising up on his hind legs, the bear bellowed in triumph. Lurching with one last gasp toward the sword, David braced for the crushing, gut-ripping, claw-tipped strike. Instead, a rush of wind and feathers brushed his face.

The bear roared and reeled backward, deep gouges slashed across its snout. The crow dove again, raking and clawing. David snatched up the fallen sword, and before he could breathe or think or regret one more ghost to haunt his dreams, he drove the blade through the enforcer’s chest. Pulled it free with a sucking yank and slashed downward, slicing deep into the bear’s shoulder and neck.

Blood gushed from the bear’s throat and it slumped to the ground, its eyes glazing as death approached, its great hairy body fading in a rush of shimmering air back into the naked pallor of a man. Beskin stared up into the hard sky and the girl in her cloak of crow feathers. Blood spilled from his mouth and his chest as his life ebbed. “It’s true. Lucan lives.”

Badb returned his black stare. “He never died.”

Crumpling to his knees, David retched his stomach empty. His body shook with tremors, his head crawling with voices, dry and crackling, smooth and silky sweet, hard as a smithy’s anvil. Fey magic sizzled the air, and he gripped his skull as if his brain might leak out his ears.

“The enforcer is dead. They will see you the rest of the way to Dunsgathaic,” Badb said, her voice coming from far away and yet echoing through his shattered skull.

David looked up to see a group of gray-robed women surrounding them. Old, seamed faces and gnarled fingers; plump, young cheeks and curious stares. One stepped forward. Small as a child, she walked with the grace of a dancer. Her golden eyes shone like the sun. Her potent Fey-blood magic nearly doubled him over. “The stones will see us home,” she said.

“I can’t,” he tried to explain. “I mustn’t.”

“It is for us to maintain the path between. You must bear her body.”

“The dream . . . you don’t understand. I’ll kill her. Badb, tell her . . .” But the Fey had flown, the crow no more than a black speck in the sky.

“Child of the clans, bring her or leave her, but you will come with us to Dunsgathaic. You, the Ard-siur wishes to see.”

Weak from illness and blood loss, he couldn’t fight. Besides, there was no point. He knew a superior force when he saw one. And these, for all their soft words and slender figures, were as single-minded as any of Napoleon’s officers. Marshaling his last ounce of strength, he scooped Callista up in his arms as they tied a rope threaded with golden and pearlescent strands to his wrist, the other end knotted around the wrist of the young priestess.

“The connection will carry us together through the void of between. Do not fear the dark. Do not heed the cries. Do not speak to those who would lure you from the path. And whatever happens, do not loosen the knot binding us together.”

“What lies within the between?”

“The abyss where the Unseelie dwell, the soulless and the damned and the forgotten.”

He limped with his precious burden behind them up the hill to the ridge and the stone circle. Stepped into the waves and wash of Fey magic captured there. The midnight black took them where none of his Imnada senses worked. He was blind and deaf to the emptiness around him. He felt only the weight of Callista’s body in his arms. Only the heat of the rope taut against his wrist. The force of magic tore his words away, then his breath, drove his stomach into his throat, clawed at his mind with a thousand screaming voices.

But at least in the emptiness of the abyss, none could hear his painful screams and he might weep without being seen.

19

Warmth woke her. Blankets tucked to her chin, a hot brick wrapped in flannel against her feet, and a cheerful fire dancing in the hearth combined to ease the throb of thawing tired limbs. Then memory flooded her sluggish brain and she sat up with a cry. A hand, spotted and knobbed with age, but deceptively strong, pressed her back against the pillows. A face swam into view above her, but it was not the one she yearned for. Instead wrinkles lined a pleasant countenance and crouched in the corners of two pale blue eyes. “Easy, lass. ’Tis all right. You’re out of the wicked snow and warm as toast within the walls of Dunsgathaic. None will harm you.”

She’d arrived on Skye? But how? Callista remembered nothing after falling beneath the horse’s flailing hooves. Her memories were all of snow and ice and blood and death. And a red-hot slash of pain in her head before the black swallowed her.

“Where’s David? Is he here? Did he . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question.

“The shapechanger lives,” the woman answered, though her gaze grew serious, and the smile fled from her face. “Rest now. I’ll return when you’re summoned before the head of our order, the Ard-siur.”

She wanted to argue. Wanted to wrestle the sister aside and search for David, but her body refused to cooperate. Her brain was as muddled as her memories, and her legs and arms seemed weighted to the soft mattress.

She slept and woke again. The shadows had moved, and the sky beyond the window was a crisp blue. She gazed around at the room for the first time noticing the scattered rugs upon the floor and the comfortable chairs drawn up to a tiled hearth. A cabinet contained a pitcher and washstand. Another table was scattered with curios and curiosities. A bird’s nest. A bowl of sea-washed pebbles. A vase of celadon holding skeletal winter branches.

And, set upon a far cabinet by the door, a familiar mahogany box, the carved lid worn smooth with generations of hands running over it, the round brass lock and hinges as shiny as if new forged.

She rose from bed to take up the box. Set it back on the coverlet beside her, positioning the tumblers and springing the lock. Key, Summoner, and Blade; all as she’d left them. Her mother’s letters still nestled in the corner. Callista pulled them from their resting place. Felt the crinkle of the thin paper under her fingers, the faded ink, the frayed ribbon.

“I’m finally here, Mother,” she whispered to no one. “I’m in Dunsgathaic.”

Wind rattled the casement and moaned round the door, a lonely sound that sent worry curdling unbidden up through her. She swallowed back a hard knot of fear. The sisters wouldn’t harm David. But what of the Amhas-draoi? They lived within these walls as well. The battle-queen Scathach’s army of warriors and mages were sworn to protect and defend. Would they see David as a threat? Would they recall the story of Lucan Kingkiller and take their revenge?