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Miss Roseingrave’s face dropped into solemn lines. Unsettling even to one accustomed to the freedoms allowed women among his kind. Freedoms were one thing. A female who wielded magic and weapons with a soldier?
?s ease was something completely different. Again, unsettling.
“Not a normal human, no. But Lazarus isn’t a normal human. Not anymore. He’s a soldier of Domnu. One of the Domnuathi.”
Jack and Aidan exchanged mirroring expressions of confusion.
“A creature whose original humanity has been twisted into something unnatural,” she clarified. “Whose soul has been drawn back from the land of the dead to inhabit a body created from the bones of its former self. As Domnuathi, he is in thrall to his maker. Compelled to follow his commands.”
“A slave,” Jack offered as if he’d passed some kind of test.
She answered with another quick nod. “Aye. Though we’re speaking mainly in theory. None within the current order of Amhas-draoi have encountered a soldier of Domnu before. The magic it takes to create one is staggering. None have ever survived the attempt.”
Aidan kept up his mad pacing as his mind grappled with this new scenario. “So how do you kill something already dead?”
Her gaze flicked to the sideboard, Jack jumping to fill her a restorative glass. Aidan watching the interplay with an eye roll and impatient drumming of his fingers.
She let out a resigned sigh at the first sip of claret. “He’s not dead. He’s as alive in his own way as you or me. Just in an altered state.”
“That’s not an answer to my question. How do we kill him?”
Jack shot him a pained glance, but Aidan’s impatience grew. His thigh and his head hurt. His body ached. Cat lay insensible upstairs. And he was no closer than before to discovering what all this had to do with the diary or his father.
“If I can’t kill him, what’s to stop him from returning and trying again? Do I have to watch my back from now on? Jump at every shadow? Are you planning on camping out in my drawing room?”
This time it was Jack and Miss Roseingrave who exchanged pointed looks. She straightened, a stance one took when meeting an enemy head on. “Give us the diary, Lord Kilronan. Give it to the Amhas-draoi, and Lazarus will have no reason to return. That’s what he wants. That’s his directive.”
Her words landed like stones on his chest. Tore the answer from his mouth in a chain of sailor’s swearing even Jack winced against. “Who told you about—” the red haze of his vision landed square on “—Jack?”
His cousin leapt to his own defense. “I warned you that book would lead to trouble. And I was right. Only Miss Roseingrave’s arrival drove that hell spawn away. Only her abilities kept you and Cat from death tonight.”
“I can handle it.”
“What more needs to happen? This fellow, Lazarus. The Unseelie summoning. Hell, the damned brawl in that alley. Your father’s obsession is threatening to pull you in just as deep.”
“Enough!” Aidan’s barked command stunned Jack to silence. He turned to the Amhas-draoi. “If I’d risk death to keep the diary from him, why would I hand it over to you?”
“You may despise our actions, but you know we act in good faith and for the good of all Other.”
“You do what’s advantageous to your cause. Having the diary locked away serves you. Not me. My family’s future is tied to that book. To learning what really happened.” He met her stare for stare. “To knowing the whole truth.”
“And if I offer you truth, would you believe?”
“Try me.”
“Lazarus is a slave to his creator. Do you wonder who that man might be? Who has the power and the motivation to capture your father’s diary for himself? Who would eliminate anyone standing between himself and gaining the knowledge therein?”
Aidan sat in silent fume, refusing to surrender an inch. He’d been trapped into this confrontation. Hated every minute of it.
Miss Roseingrave speared him with another unnerving Amhas-draoi stare that burned with brandy intensity. “Lord Kilronan, what do you know of your brother’s recent movements?
She woke, remembering.
Not where she was or how she’d come to be lying muffled beneath quilts in a bed large enough to fit ten of her. Instead she recalled the tight, searching pucker of her son’s mouth, the wispy black hair, the clean baby smell of him. Even things she’d since forgotten were newly etched on her waking consciousness with indelible clarity. The way he had of patting her breast as he suckled, the incalculable wisdom in his newborn eyes. For one glistening moment she’d traveled back in time, and he remained a soft weight against her heart.
She lay completely still, hoping to cage these recaptured memories before they faded, but already shadows clouded the perfection of the images. Gaps punctuated the picture she’d conjured, leaving her with naught but sensations of helplessness, grief, and a loss as great as when they’d torn her dead son from her arms.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Slid down her cheeks to drop salt bitter past her lips.
