A bolt of hot shame coursed through the boy. “If the tutors taught us anything worthwhile, I mightn’t resort to fighting. School is so deuced boring.”

“No one ever thought you a scholar, Bram. Leave the thinking to Arthur.”

The one with value. Bram had been conceived as a contingency, but that left him with greater freedom.

I know him, Livia thought. He was one of the five men who had freed the Dark One from his prison, liberating her, as well.

“Will I go to war, Father?” He might prove himself on the battlefield, show himself to be a great hero.

The older man came around the desk, hale and handsome in a settled, prosperous way, though he’d thickened with age. At one time, he had been a sportsman, and a portrait of him hung upstairs, showing him astride a sleek horse with an alert hound quivering at attention nearby. The youth hoped to emulate his father, even though he could never have the significance of his older brother.

“Oh, my boy, ’tis unlikely. But don’t look so crestfallen. For you will cut a fine figure in your uniform, and ladies do enjoy the sight of a man in gold braid and scarlet.”

The boy brightened. He did like ladies. Greatly. He tried to envision himself in the uniform, striding down a London street with the regard of everyone flung in his path like roses.

Won’t Whit be jealous, when he sees me looking so fine?

Yes, she knew Whit. He’d been the first of the five men to turn away from the Dark One. She needed to reach him, and his woman. They were her allies.

Yet when she reached out, trying to pierce the mists between the living and the dead, she was flung back into Bram’s memories. Time splintered again, scattering images.

She was in a field at the edge of a forest. All around the field were thick-trunked trees, bare limbs stretching up toward a metallic winter sky. Scents of rotting vegetation rose up from the mud. And the sharp smell of blood, which could not be dulled by the cold wind rattling the branches. Bodies lay in the bent, brown grasses, their red jackets garish. Men with dark copper skin advanced, heavy war clubs in their hands.

“Fall back!”

It was the youth, but not so young now. Bram had become a man, his shoulders filling the bright red coat, his legs sturdy in tall black boots. Mud spattered the uniform he had coveted years earlier, and grime coated his now angular face. He raised a sword and shouted again to the remaining troops.

“Make for the cover of the woods.”

“But, sir, orders are—”

“Major Townsend is dead, Corporal, and if we stand and fight the Indians, we’ll be joining the Major.” Now is not the time for fear. Don’t think of the Major with half his head beaten in, and his brains showing.

“Sir?”

“Now, Corporal.”

The troops obeyed, and they slogged back through the sucking mud, finding shelter in the forest. They were not followed, and he led them over miles, his legs aching, his body weary. Yet he forced himself to walk upright, for he was their leader now, and must get them back to the safety of the fort.

So few of us now. Half the men killed, the other half sick and wounded. I cannot fail them. What if I do? I cannot. I am in command now.

Time fragmented again, jagged as strewn pottery shards, each with images of different moments, different places. She felt herself pulled through them, and they tore at her mind.

Now she saw ornately carved walls and a gleaming wooden floor. The chamber itself stretched out on every side, a vast chasm of a room. Music and heat saturated the air. Women in wide, silken skirts tittered behind fans, and men in equally bright silk postured and paraded before them.

Livia drifted amongst the people. Their powdered faces became the faces of her own past. Mother, father, shaking their heads over her machinations. The head priestess, who saw in Livia an unquenchable demand for greater power—a need that had taken her to the farthest reaches of the Empire. Yet these people did not wear tunicas and togas. They garbed themselves in stiff, glittering fashions, and instead of mosaics, gilded wood and polished mirrors covered the chamber in which they displayed themselves.

Conversation stilled as five men strode into the chamber, all gazes turning toward them like flowers following the sun’s progress across the sky. These men shone with the absence of light, a brilliant darkness, and the possibility that they might do anything, and no one could stop them.

A murmur rose up from somewhere in the crowd. “Hellraisers, the lot of them.” Yet the words were spoken half in fear, half in admiration.

Bram stood at the front of the group, leading the charge. The intervening years had hardened him. He was carved obsidian. Evening clothes had replaced his grimy uniform, and the sword at his side was meant for show, not killing. Shadows haunted his eyes and thoughts. She heard them, felt them.

What shall I take this evening? The dreams won’t leave me, but I can beat them back. Who will it be tonight?

Women swayed nearer. He might choose from any of them. More than a few had already filled his bed, if only for the night, but he sought something new, for his need never left him, nor did the black images that crept forward in quiet moments.

“Rothwell!”

A red-faced man stalked toward him. Collingwood. The guests stepped back to give him room, watching in scandalized fascination as he shoved closer. Then he stood before Bram, glaring up at him.

“You are a rogue and a villain,” spat Collingwood.

The crowd gasped at this insult, thrown so publicly.

“I own to both titles,” Bram answered.

“Have you no respect for the vows between a husband and wife?”

“Your wife does not, clearly. For she abandoned them with an extraordinary enthusiasm.”

Gazes turned to the wife in question, who stood at the other end of the chamber. Her hands covered her mouth, and her eyes were perfect circles of mortification.

Collingwood purpled. “You will give me satisfaction at dawn.”

Before Bram could speak, Whit drawled, “He already has his second.”

“And third,” added Leo.

“I advise you to spend the intervening hours with your fencing master,” John said.

As Collingwood paled, Bram smiled, his hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword. It wasn’t properly balanced for dueling, but there would be enough time to return home and fetch his favorite Italian-made blade.

Collingwood stormed from the chamber. A cry rose up from the end of the room, and Collingwood’s wife was borne away, hanging limply from supporting arms. Excited words filled the ballroom, everyone eager to spread the news of scandal.

“Should we also retire?” Edmund murmured.

“There is considerable time from now until the sun rises,” said Bram. “And we’ve only just arrived.”

Edmund shook his head, but his smile was wry. Together, the five men moved further into the assembly, wearing their wicked reputations like cloaks of scarlet. Yet none of the other guests turned away. Their smiles came wider, the women’s glances more flirtatious.

Truly, we have whatever we desire. Yet it never satisfies.

The opulent chamber broke apart, and memories came so thick and fast that Livia could not separate them, lost in a tempest of one man’s history. Images and emotions. Faces, voices. Anger. Sensuality. Despair.

Wasn’t it torment enough that she must have her own memories of life? Now she was lost within the remembrances of a dissolute scoundrel, thick tendrils of sorrow knotted about his heart.

He prowled the streets now, troubled and restive, with Livia dragged along in his wake.

The Dark One had him in a stranglehold. Yet she felt Bram’s heart as though it overlaid her own. He was damaged but surviving. Not lost, not yet.

Though if he gave himself fully to the Dark One, then evil’s strength would grow a hundredfold. More. That could not happen.

She must fight the Dark One’s hold on Bram. Every passing moment he stalked closer and closer to ruination. Once he crossed that boundary, he would be an unstoppable force of evil, tipping the balance into darkness.

His former friends might aid her. They could help pull him back from that chasm. She needed out of Bram’s memories, needed to reach the few mortals who were her allies.

Furious, desperate, she clawed her way free. She had to disentangle herself from him, even if the price was a return to madness.

Chapter 2

He stood outside his own home. With no memory of how he got there.

“My lord?” The footman looked baffled at his appearance on the front step of his house on Cavendish Square.

Bram stepped into the foyer. The longcase clock revealed the time to be minutes after midnight. No wonder the footman appeared mystified. Bram had not been home at this hour in . . . he couldn’t remember when. Likely he had still been in leading strings.

“Shall I fetch for a physician, my lord?”

“Fetch brandy,” he answered. “Bring it to me in the music room.”

“Yes, my lord.”

As he strode down the corridor, he pulled at his stock, loosening it from around his throat. He cast off his coat along the way. Both stock and coat dropped to the ground as if he shed a carapace. He was not usually so careless with his clothing, but tonight he could not bring himself to care about spoiling the velvet or dirtying linen.

The music room had earned its name years prior, but the pianoforte was now covered with Holland cloth, and the chairs and harp were gone. Bram stalked to a press, the chamber’s sole piece of furniture. Throwing open the press’s doors, he found not silver, nor linens or clothing. Swords lined up in neat rows. He brushed his hand over their scabbards, then selected the curved hanger sword.

Stepping back, he gave the sword a few practice slashes through the air, loosening his shoulders. The sword was an extension of his arm, as natural as his own muscle and movement.

The footman came in with a decanter of brandy and a glass on a tray, unblinking at the sword in Bram’s hand. He knew his master well enough not to falter at seeing Bram armed. Yet the footman approached slowly. Bram plucked the decanter from the tray, ignoring the glass. The servant bowed before leaving.

Taking a long drink directly from the decanter, Bram paced toward the chamber’s only other occupant. He stalked to the figure, readying his sword. An expressionless face stared back at him. But he expected no response from the straw-stuffed dummy positioned in the middle of the chamber. He stared at its blank face and drank again.

The brandy burned on its way down. It wasn’t enough. It would take far more than drink to ease this monstrous emptiness within him.

Prowling around the dummy, he assessed it as if it was an enemy. He feinted. Then swung his blade at the dummy. It hacked into the straw-filled canvas. Bodies felt different from straw—meaty and yielding, until you hit the resistance of bone. Dummies didn’t bleed, either. But if you hit a man just so, his blood would spray across your clothing, your face. He had taken a coarse rag to his skin after one fierce battle near the Niagara River and not known whether the blood staining the water was his or if it belonged to the French soldiers he’d killed.

He’d come to learn the feeling of steel meeting flesh. Grew skilled enough to know where to strike a man so that he could no longer run, and how long it took to die from a wound to the stomach.

And how much of his own blood he could lose, and still stay alive.

The blank face of the dummy shifted, transforming in his sight to the Algonquin who’d cut his throat. Snarling, Bram now launched into an attack, chopping into the dummy as if he could kill the Algonquin all over again. He still sometimes woke, choking on imaginary blood, hand pressed to his throat. But instead of an open wound, a scar snaked across his flesh, its every contour familiar.

He thrust his sword deep into the dummy’s chest. Its face changed again, and he found himself staring at Edmund—looking just as he did when he’d been stabbed. His mild brown eyes were wide with shock, his mouth forming soundless words. Only this time, Bram killed him, not John.

Perhaps he was responsible. He hadn’t been able to stop it. He could have moved faster, blocked John’s blade.

Rearing back, he pulled the sword from the dummy, and it clattered to the ground.