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His features rearranged themselves into cool impenetrability as he answered questions with questions. “My turn. What are you doing in Dublin? Damn it, Sabrina. You’re supposed to be safe at Glenlorgan. Not here. And certainly not with that villain.”
“My brother sent for me.”
He went rigid, every inch of steel reasserting itself. Now he towered over her like an erupting thundercloud. Menacing. Powerful. Dangerous. “The Earl of Kilronan? Sabrina, did he say why? Or ask you about a tapestry? It was kept with the bandraoi.”
The blank wall. The frayed threads. “You stole it. Sister Ainnir was right.”
He spoke over her. “Listen to me, Sabrina. Did Kilronan mention a tapestry? Someone named Máelodor? Or your brother Brendan?”
“How could you take from—” She drew up short. “What did you say?”
“Did Kilronan mention Brendan Douglas? That he’d seen him? Been in touch with him?”
How did it all come back to Brendan? It was as if in writing about that horrible long-ago day she’d summoned some dark, threatening evil from the past. She stared at him blankly. “What have you heard? What do you know of Brendan?”
Footsteps and voices growing louder. Aunt Delia’s voice hallooing as if she were on the hunting field. “Sabrina! Darling! Where’ve you taken yourself off to?”
She turned to leave. “I’ve got to go.”
He grasped her hand. Pulled her close, his face inches away from hers. “Stay away from St. John. Don’t talk to him. Don’t trust him.”
She nodded dumbly. The black of his eyes drawing her in until the heat of a fire, the song of a harpist, and the rasp of stone on steel filled her head. She need only let herself be swept into that gaze to be back in that place.
“I’ll see you soon.” He released her, shocking her out of the moment.
“Promise me?” Challenge in her tone.
He did not—or could not—answer.
Daigh tossed back his wine. Poured another from the bottle left by the publican. Sought to gather the lost pieces of his life. Hywel. Caernarvon. Sabrina might not have known the significance of those tossed words, but he did. She had triggered a cascade of images. Two lives sliding simultaneously through his fractured mind.
A man honor bound to his prince and liege lord, whose mixed lineage made him an asset to Gwynedd’s court.
A man slave bound to a gnarled, haggard master-mage with a malicious nature whose hands dealt excruciating pain. Whose mouth spewed mind-twisting poison.
Máelodor. The Other who’d unearthed his bones. Had pulled his spirit from the abyss of Annwn and bound him once more to this plane as a Domnuathi, a soldier of Domnu. To a life splintered and broken where memories brought with them body crushing pain, and where a dark force always lurked just beyond his consciousness. An evil that was both a part of him and a way to control him.
The black rage had almost conquered him this afternoon. His nightmare come true. Lancelot, or as he now discovered, St. John with Sabrina. The whoreson touching her arm. Whispering his nauseating filth in her ear. Close enough to steal her away to be used as bait.
Seeing them together nearly destroyed every wall he’d struggled to build between sanity and the howling storm of madness. Awakened his killer instinct, narrowing his vision to a pinprick, icing over a soul black with hate.
What had pulled him from the brink? What had fed the demons pursuing him, allowing him to escape?
He closed his fingers over the lacing of scars across his palm. Pushed himself back from the table to stand.
A memory. A dream. A precious moment from a life that couldn’t have happened.
Sabrina.
This time the misshapen dwarf barely cracked the door open before tossing him a belligerent scowl. “Lord Kilronan’s still not at home.”
“I know,” Daigh said, jamming his foot in the door before the man could slam it shut. “It’s Lady Sabrina I want. Tell her Daigh MacLir calls for her.”
He might as well have told the man to strip naked and paint himself blue. He eyed him like a disease.
“Lady Sabrina’s not at home,” he answered in an imperious tone. “But even if she were, she’s certainly not available to persons what look as if they’re straight from Newgate.”
