AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Nothing permanent.” He grimaced.
“Of course.” Her voice sharpened. “Then you can explain why you broke into my bedchamber.”
Pacing a few steps, he leaned against the mantel. Stared into the slumbering fire. “Tell me about Brendan.” She gave a little gasp. He whirled to face her. “Then I’ll tell you what I can.”
Her gaze narrowed at his choice of phrase, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she dropped into a chair. Her profile etched in soft charcoal lines. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Everything.”
She shook her head as if it pained her. “He disappeared seven years ago just before my father’s murder. But—”
“Murder?”
She flashed him a scorching glare. “My father was executed by the Amhas-draoi.”
He jerked in his seat, a flush of heat then cold queasing him from head to foot.
Did you really think you could win against an Amhas-draoi?
Lancelot’s taunt curled up from a corner where he’d shoved the man’s predatory sexuality. The scouring taste of his mouth crushed to his. The nerve-disrupting blast of magic that had left Daigh praying for death amid his own vomit.
Sabrina continued, unaware of Daigh’s struggle against the cloying chilly sweat. Still with her eyes locked on her lap. Her words lacking any emotion as if she spoke of strangers. “Father and his associates were hunted down and executed.”
Were Máelodor and St. John after Douglas as part of some Amhas-draoi operation? No, couldn’t be. They’d been too wary of discovery. And St. John had spoken of their plan. Other dominance. The Nine.
He followed a hunch. “Did Máelodor suffer the same fate?”
She looked up. A line between her brows. “I’ve never heard that name.” She gave a slight shake of her head.
A roadblock. He detoured. “What were your father and his friends doing to have the Amhas-draoi after them?”
“Daigh, tell me what’s going on?”
“I will, but first—what were they planning? What crimes did they commit that ended in a death sentence?”
She subsided, but fear finally stole over her face. “The Amhas-draoi came to me at Glenlorgan. They asked me questions. Over and over until I wanted to scream. Then they told me horrible stories of Father and Brendan. I didn’t want to believe them, but they said they had proof.”
Daigh watched as the past took hold of her. Her body fading into the dark as if hoping none would find her there. The world and the memories might pass her by.
“They claimed Father and the others twisted their mage energy into dangerous paths. Worked dark magics. Experimented with things they shouldn’t have.”
Summoning Domnuathi perhaps? He pushed that thought away as being of little use.
“Your brother disappeared,” he mused.
She stiffened, her face once more achingly alive. Fever bright with unshed tears. “It was just before Father’s murder. He said he had to leave for a time. Then he never wrote. Never tried to contact me. After all these years, I just assumed he was dead. Like Father and Mother. Like all of them.” Did she seek to convince him or herself?
He took her hands in his. The bones fragile. His work-roughened skin at odds with her dainty femininity. “He’s not, Sabrina. Brendan Douglas is alive.”
Her lashes swept down to shield her thoughts from him, her face averted. “How can you be certain?”
“The night I disappeared from Glenlorgan I surprised an intruder in Ard-siúr’s office. He’d been sent by a man named Máelodor to steal a tapestry from the bandraoi. I followed him as far as Cork before he escaped, but I overheard him speak of Brendan. He’d been seen in Dublin and was thought to be trying to contact the Earl of Kilronan.”
Her face went rigid, her hands clenched in her lap. “And you think that’s why Aidan summoned me to Dublin?”
Their eyes met, hers so deep a blue as to be painful. A bottomless well in which he might forget the horrors of his existence. The truth of his monstrous origins. Tears illuminated the indigo brilliance of her gaze. Quivered on her lashes. A silver track sliding down one pale cheek.
He turned back to the fire. Suddenly needing to put a distance between them. Space for him to breathe. Gain control. Remember what he was. And what could not be. “I don’t know. But it all fits together. The tapestry was housed with the bandraoi. You’ve been called to Dublin, where Douglas was last seen.”
