Lord of Shadows (10 page)

“It would seem the most prudent course.”

Ard-siúr and Sister Ainnir’s back-and-forth sounded as a dull bass line to her own noisy thoughts.

If not
Fey,
what? No normal human could survive a pistol shot square to the chest. Or the myriad dagger cuts spilling a river of blood she relived in nauseating crimson detail every time she closed her eyes. But if he wasn’t
Fey
and wasn’t human, what did that leave?

“Or would it be wiser to keep him close while we seek to unravel what nature of man he is?” Ard-siúr continued with her slow deliberation.

Sabrina picked at the dried blood remaining beneath her nails despite a hasty scrubbing. Skin still crawling with the feel of the bandit’s hand at her throat. The stench of his unwashed body souring her nose. Daigh had saved her. He’d been her knight-errant. Her champion. Could she remain silent while others argued out his fate? Or should she risk speaking out?

She lifted her head. Searched out Ard-siúr’s cool, appraising eyes. “You can’t send him away,” she decreed.

Sister Ainnir regarded her with shock, as if she were a piece of furniture sprung to life. Or a normally submissive apprentice gaining will and voice.

Ard-siúr’s pale brows rose to be lost in her kerchief. “You have something to say, Sabrina?”

Now that she’d become their focus, she lost the certainty of her own conviction. Who was she to tell Ard-siúr what to do? What did she know? It was her larking about that had resulted in her and Jane being caught in the ambush.

“I . . . that is, he . . . we can’t just . . . that is after . . .” Her words trailed off as she deflated beneath their level, questing stares, returning to the childhood comfort of silence.

Sister Ainnir shook her off like a bothersome fly. Resumed her worried pacing. But Ard-siúr’s gaze never faltered. She caught Sabrina in a disconcerting look that seemed to see right through her to the wall behind. “Go on. If you have something to add to the discussion, voice it now.”

Courage surfaced through an icy layer of nervousness. Now that the urge to speak her opinion had come, it slid over her like a glove on a hand. “No matter who or what he is, he didn’t abandon me. I can’t abandon him.” Hurried to amend. “We can’t abandon him.”

Ard-siúr’s smile felt like sun through clouds. She nodded. “Well spoken, Sabrina. And though Mr. MacLir’s body remains inviolate, I am as unclear about his mind. His is an odd tangle of impossibilities that makes me question my scrying’s accuracy. As a result, I believe keeping him within our care would be best.”

As if only waiting on Ard-siúr’s official word, Sister Ainnir immediately shifted focus. “Perhaps a consult of the texts that deal with this type of magic,” she agreed eagerly. “Sister Ursula would know where best to search.”

“A good thought. And I have my own sources who may be able to guide us in our understanding.”

Absorbed with their own planning, they turned their attention from Sabrina.

Each passing moment spiraled her deeper into an unknown, unnamed fear shredding her insides. Tugging her to her feet. This was wrong. All wrong. Daigh needed her. He looked to her for help. Not them. Her. She sensed the call more strongly each moment. As if the gods guided her thoughts.

She scrambled out of her chair, an immediate need to escape pressing against her heart. Fresh air. Rain upon her face. A scrubbing of his blood off her skin. If only she could cleanse the endless well of his horrified gaze from her mind. His pounding dread from her soul.

“Sabrina.” Ard-siúr’s sharp voice, catching Sabrina short.

“Ma’am?”

“Remember. A wounded animal can be unpredictable. Trapped, he can become deadly.” Her stare drew inward on some scene invisible to Sabrina, her face falling into careworn lines. “Daigh MacLir is both.”

He collapsed on his pallet, head in hands. Body braced against a flash of pain that struck him like the slam of an axe between the eyes.

A man’s face. Rage burning like hellfire in his gold-brown eyes. His mouth open on a scream of hate.

The image filled every corner of Daigh’s mind until his brain threatened to spill out his ears and sickness churned his gut. Twisted him into so many knots it left him retching his supper into the slops jar.

Instantly the coiling nightmare awareness he’d experienced in the woods slid up out of the darkest parts of his
consciousness. He sensed it waiting upon the far side of that vast empty chasm of memory. Seeking entry. Enjoying his anguish.

Anger touched him like spark from a flint. Burned up through him in a funeral pyre conflagration. Muscles constricted on a destructive emotional whirlpool, his vision clouding as the man’s enraged features receded to a crimson fog blanketing and thick as the rain clouds outside.

A hand upon his shoulder threw Daigh to his feet in an instinctual defensive move that swung him around, one arm dragging the intruder close. Another locking around their neck, windpipe crushed in the crook of his elbow.

A gurgling plea chased the red from his eyes. Pulled him back from the brink. The enemy beneath his hold dissolved into a gray-gowned woman, kerchief dangling, hair falling in a cascade of lost pins over thin, trembling shoulders.

He released her with a broken oath. Stumbled back to fall heavy on his pallet. “Gods, forgive me.”

Sabrina stood shaking in the far corner of the still-room, her face white as the kerchief she threaded through unsteady fingers. “I startled you. I . . . you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

He flexed his hands. The scars incised into his palms, a sickening reminder that what he didn’t know about himself might kill. “Are you sure of that?”

He looked up to see her straighten, certainty asserting itself. Bright steel entering a gaze that until now had always remained petal soft. “You didn’t mean to harm me,” she said again.

Whom did she seek to convince?

Exhaustion rushed in to replace the earlier maelstrom as
if he carried the weight of centuries upon his back. “You were in the woods. You saw what happened, Sabrina. By rights I should be dead.”

The men on the beach. The knife. The tearing, clutching hands. It became clearer.

“This isn’t the first time it’s happened.”

“There’s an explanation. You’ll see.” She knelt to gather up pieces of broken crockery; less fortunate victims of his attack, giving him a perfect view of the sleek spill of gilded brown hair, the arch of her neck where the fragile bones moved beneath skin flushed pink.

Heat that had nothing of anger about it sparked down leaden limbs. Flashed across a gulf between past and present. Between a dim vision of this woman laughing up at him amid a wrinkled heap of blankets and another more tactile impression of a body sweet and taut molded to his chest. Breathing quick and fast. Her fragrance clean and fresh and holding none of the grave about it; important to him though he’d no idea why.

She sucked in a sharp breath, her hand closing on a broken shard, a stinging between her fingers. Her body swayed as if she might faint.

“Sabrina?” he spoke roughly through a throat scratchy and hoarse with his own hesitation. Took her under the arm to steady her.

She flinched before allowing him to assist her. But even then, she seemed off-balance and confused.

“Your hand,” he said, turning her palm up to examine the narrow cut in the flesh between thumb and finger.

“It’s nothing.” She sucked away the thin line of blood before shoving her hand into her apron pocket.

“Are you unwell?” he asked.

She gave a shrug and a confused smile. “A little light-headed. No supper. I wasn’t hungry.”

She studied him as if she searched for something in his face, and he met her clear gaze head-on. Stars glowed in the blue depths of her eyes. Points of light holding at bay a midnight void that seemed to suck him always downward. He held her gaze as if he gripped a cliff edge. Drew himself up to stand above her, her face tilted to meet him.

She barely reached as high as his collarbone, and his hands could span her tiny waist, but she never once regarded him with fear or hesitation. As if she read beyond the menacing strength of his body and the violence lurking in his mind.

“So much for the pitcher of water I brought you.”

He tipped her chin. Swam in that star-shot sea of blue. Sensed her curious excitement in the hesitant parting of her lips, the slight sway of her body toward him. If he kissed her, she’d respond. It wouldn’t take more than moments to have her answering his need with her own.

Caressing the line of her jaw, the column of her throat, he felt her mounting anticipation. A passion bound but not broken by the order’s constraints.

He bent to brush his lips against hers. She closed her eyes, fluttering black lashes shadowing the rose of her cheeks. One shy hand touched his chest. Fingers spread against the jump of muscles beneath his skin.

And with an earth-rocking explosion that tore through him with the force of a gunshot, present exploded into past.

The coiled serpent freed itself. Shattered his control, bringing with it a bowel-knifing ferocity. The man’s face returned. Pitiless. Twisted in frenzied, ruthless hate. A
sword cut the air. Its downward thrust punching through Daigh’s flesh with screaming agony. And again. The blade sending ice cascading along his veins. And an answering ferocity that singed his heart.

He shoved her away, falling onto the pallet, head on fire. Body numb. Struggling against the memory while battling the menacing presence that seemed bent on its own dark purpose. It wanted him. But for what?

“Oh gods, let me help you.” She knelt at his side, taking hold of his hand, but he shook her off. Unable to endure the transformation of her touch from desire to sympathy.

“Leave me.”

Hurt clouded her clear blue gaze.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out.” He hardened his heart. Not difficult while his body remained caught in this malignant storm. Retching, he drew himself into a fetal ball, shuddering against the paroxysms raking him like a fusillade.

“I’ll get Sister Ainnir.”

He scrubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “You’ll get no one. You’ll tell no one. Do you hear me?”

Despite his humiliation and fear, his tone still carried the bite of command.

She nodded slowly as she groped for the door handle. “You won’t harm me, Daigh. I know that for truth. No matter what Ard-siúr says.”

So, she’d been warned away from him? Sorrow touched the frozen place in him, and he almost wished he never remembered. That his past could be shed like an outgrown skin. He could become someone new. Someone honorable. Someone worthy of Sabrina’s trust.

Sabrina stumbled into night’s damp, bone-chilling fog. Steadied herself against a column as she inhaled long, dragging gulps, letting the cold air settle thoughts ricocheting from heart-thundering desire to jagged alarm, hitting every emotion in between.

Her head swam, making her woozy and sick. Just as it had done moments earlier when she’d bent to the water pitcher and experienced diamond-clear images of her and Daigh together—she squirmed—doing things she had never done. Not with Daigh. Not with any man. It had been so real. An instant in time but she’d reveled in his hands upon her skin, welcomed the light of desire in his eyes, heard the gasp of her own breath as he entered her.

Had he hypnotized her? Cast some spell of seduction? Did that explain the strange flashes and queer feelings he generated? Or was she merely fishing for excuses to justify her own hoydenish behavior? She’d almost let him kiss her. Wanted him to kiss her. Badly.

Thoughts whirled and spun in an endless tangled loop. Her stomach lurched as her vision clouded and burst with odd spearing lights and colors. Black. Gold. Red. Purple.

The fog thickened, muffling sound, erasing everything around her, including the column she leaned against. She clung to it, trying not to faint, hoping the air would clear her head, but the sweet tang of wet leaves and wood smoke filled her nose.

As the fog dissipated, she stood in a clearing, arms wrapped about a huge moss-covered tree trunk, branches lifting away into the sky to mix with branches from hundreds and thousands of other trees as massive as this oak. A path wound off to her left, and she heard water passing over stones, the jingle of harness from a tethered horse. A
man emerged into the dappled light. Daigh. Though he carried himself with an easy stride, unlike his usual tension-filled prowling.

She stepped forward into his embrace, his arms encircling her. His breath warm against her cheek. And it happened. The kiss she’d been waiting for. Her stomach leapt into her throat. He bent and . . .

A blast of air stung her face. An icy rain chilled her skin. She stood alone. In the dark. The courtyard, rather than the primeval forest, rising around her. The fog had thinned to streamers of heavy mist, leaving her shivering and afraid, yet aching with a unexpected yearning to return to that forest glen.

Was Daigh conjuring these visions? Was she?

She looked to the lighted windows of Ard-siúr’s office. Nearly called out for help. She needed Sister Ainnir. Ard-siúr. Someone older and wiser and more experienced. But Daigh had begged her silence. Done more than beg. He’d demanded it. And no wonder. They already questioned his continued stay among them. Any more bizarre behavior and he’d be sent away.