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Daz rubbed a thoughtful finger alongside his nose. “Ah yes, Kilronan’s diary. The trouble in a nutshell.” His pale gaze raked Aidan with the blistering power of a torch. Seemed to strip him down to bone. “What do you seek among its pages? Your father’s motivation? That’s easy. He was driven by pride. Misplaced arrogance. Thought he could remake the world the way it should be. Ignore the way it was.” He flicked a careless hand in Aidan’s direction. “Do you look for approval? You won’t find it among those pages. He loved you. But he despaired of you. Your lack of skill. Your lack of ambition.”
“Loved me? Are we speaking of the same man?”
“Aye, but he wanted more from you than you could ever have given. Your complete devotion. Your undivided loyalty. And your unquestioning enthusiasm. He gave up on you when he saw you for the flawed vessel you were. When he finally admitted to himself your powers would never rival his own.”
“I tried. Hell, I damn near turned myself inside out trying.”
Daz ignored him. “Brendan had it all. Gave it all. In the end, Brendan turned out to be just as flawed—in his own way—as you were.”
“How do you know this?” Aidan’s voice came raspy with emotion, his throat closed around the lump. “How can you say these things?”
“I was your Uncle Daz, wasn’t I? Kilronan’s best friend. His trusted confidant. I may not have been one of the Nine, but I saw it all. Knew it all.”
The Nine. There was that term again. “Who were they, Daz? What really happened to make the Amhas-draoi come after them? Tell me the truth.”
The air seemed to thicken around the older man. Aging his features. Deepening the wrinkles in his face, the worry in his eyes, trembling his hands as they clutched the arms of the chair. Had Aidan gone too far? Would his question send Daz back to that shadow-filled world of delirium? He worked his jaw as if chewing his words carefully.
“What really happened? What did we do to have the Amhas-draoi after us?” Even his voice creaked, his stare turning inward to a time and place Aidan could not follow. ?
??The true question, lad, is not what did we do, but what did we not do?” He shuddered, licking his lips. “The diary can tell you some of it. The meetings. The experiments. The speeches and posturing. But it can never bring to life the real terror of those days.”
He paused, leaving Aidan stretched and waiting. Frightened. Sick at heart.
“Your father originated the idea—organize the Other. Unite them in common cause against the Duinedon oppressors. A rope of many strands is always stronger than a single thread. That’s what he used to say.”
Luck favors the strong. His family’s motto. His father’s battle cry.
“The Nine grew from there. A spreading menace threatening to devour us all. We ignored the warning signs. We were justified. Had right on our side. But when words weren’t enough to advance our cause, we turned more and more to violence and murder. Our dream had become our obsession.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” Daz’s harsh, level gaze speared Aidan to his seat. “I think you understand all of it, even if you won’t admit it to yourself. Your father. Your brother. We washed ourselves in the blood of anyone who stood against us. Disagreed with us. All in the name of our Fey inheritance. Our race. We sought to use our powers to unleash magics locked away in the void of the Unseelie. Imprisoned for good reason. No human can control those forces. They act according to their own will. They do not ally and they do not supplicate.”
“Father had to know he could never hope to achieve such a victory.” Now his voice came as quick and shaky as Daz’s. “The Duinedon far outnumber the Other. A hundred to one? A thousand? Even if we resorted to using our powers, the mortal world would crush us as easily as breaking an egg. We bleed. We die. There’s nothing special about us that way.”
“Yes, but if we had a leader. Someone to rally our scattered numbers and show us what we could be.”
“Arthur,” Aidan murmured.
“Brendan’s idea. He came up with it. Followed it through. Fought for it. Was even prepared to sacrifice himself on the altar of his cause.” Daz slumped back, his face as gray as his hair. “It never got that far, though. Instead of a grand and glorious end, Brendan found naught but an ignoble death.”
Or had he only made it seem so?
Light-headedness. A frenzied horror. A sweep of gut-churning heat followed by teeth-chattering cold. Aidan slumped against the wall of the upper corridor. Squeezed his eyes against the pictures in his head.
He and Father scaling the cliffs below Belfoyle. Brendan laughing as he and Aidan thundered neck and neck down the gallop. Father, a stern disciplinarian, yet always willing to take the time to listen to his children. Brendan, a rival in so many ways, but a friend as much as a brother.
Plotters in a scheme to rearrange a world order? Evil conspirators in a plan to raise a dead king? Ignite a brutal war of supremacy between Other and Duinedon? Bloodthirsty, conscienceless killers leaving a trail of bodies behind them as they worked their dark magics?
He couldn’t believe it even as he knew it for fact. It was what he’d feared. And so much worse.
He shoved off the wall. Stumbled like a drunk down the narrow passage. If he could just get to bed. Fall into oblivion and wipe out the incessant drumbeat of Daz’s voice, killing off cherished memories with the downward stroke of the executioner’s axe.
He made it ten paces before his damned thigh gave out. Sent him reeling to his knees on an anguished moan born of poorly healed muscles and an ache grinding his tendons like a millstone.
Rage boiled through him like a sick, black cloud. Anger tensed his arms. His shoulders. Squeezed his brain. Set him on fire. Father’s crimes had not only crushed him and those friends who’d joined him, but whole families had been torn asunder. Lives ruined. Futures blotted out with the finality of an Amhas-draoi sword thrust.
He dropped his gaze to his hands, the heavy weight of the Kilronan emerald on his hand like a stone pinning him to the dragging fortunes of his house.
