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“Where have you been all this time, Brendan? Aidan searched everywhere, but after years with no word from you, he finally gave up and believed you were dead. We all did.”
“Right about now, Aidan probably wishes I’d stayed dead.” He glanced over at her. Gave an offhand shrug, as he realized she’d not be put off with another non-answer. “Where was I? Let’s see. The Low Countries. Spain. Italy. Though it was difficult during the war, and I finally fled farther south. North Africa. The Levant. Spent two years in Turkey before settling in Greece.”
She envisioned Brendan attired in sultan’s kaftan and turban, reclining upon a seraglio’s carpets and cushions. Given his dark hair and tanned features, not a difficult image to conjure. Actually embarrassingly seductive. “Complete with your very own harem, no doubt,” she scoffed, praying her face didn’t betray her thoughts.
“Nothing that exciting. Actually, it was devilish uncomfortable. Staying alive can be a deuced difficult job.”
“It still is, isn’t it? You said you were in hiding.”
He played a sad little run of notes before wincing, a grimace of pain passing over his face.
“You are hurt.”
He shook his fingers out. “A disagreement with someone’s boot heel. Staying alive doesn’t always equal staying in one piece.”
The darkness seemed to close in on them. A listening, watching hush, pregnant with stale regret. Elisabeth’s skin prickled, though not due to mage energy this time, but to Brendan’s diamond-edged charisma. He’d always possessed spellbinding self-confidence. It glittered off him. Sparkled the very air he breathed. Everyone who knew him fell under that strange mixture of cynicism and magnetism. It made him seem almost otherworldly. As if the blood of the Fey ran thick and icy just beneath his skin.
Tonight, that crystalline brilliance seemed tempered. That white inner light dimmed to mere humanity. Or perhaps the scales had finally fallen from her eyes and she saw him for what he was. Not glittering and silver perfect as the Fey. But a man chained by years and exile and events she couldn’t begin to imagine.
She asked the first question that swam to the front of her mind. “Did you kill your father, Brendan? I never thought . . . but . . . you said you’re hiding and . . .” Once the words were out, she wished to call them back. The stricken look on his face cut her like a whiplash.
His hands curled to fists. Dropping them to his lap, he flexed them loose before laying them palms down against his breeches.
“Forget I asked,” she entreated. “I know you didn’t have anything to do with his death. I should never have said. It was—”
“Long ago? Murder is murder, isn’t it? Makes no difference whether the crime happened a week ago or an age hence. The stain remains.”
“But the two of you were so close. He loved you. It was plain to everyone who saw you together.”
“It makes the sin all the greater then, doesn’t it?”
She chewed her lip. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“No, Lissa. I didn’t murder my father. But I didn’t prevent it either. And isn’t a sin of omission still a sin? Burying one’s head in the sand is not a defense.”
He began playing. The hop-skip tune of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” rang out. His idea of a joke? If so, she wasn’t amused, but it did serve to snap them from the quagmire of this hushed room, these sinister broodings.
“Should I worry you’ll turn me in for the bounty on my head?” he asked over the music.
“Is there one?”
“Oh, to be sure. I mean, as long as I’m to be hunted as a criminal, I may as well bring a high price. It’s undignified to be worth any less than a thousand pounds.” He joked, but a trace of unhappiness showed through his banter.
“You won’t tell me what you’re hiding from, will you? Or who hunts you?”
“Trust me, my love. You don’t want to know. And wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
He finished the piece, the tension following almost palpable. It pounded against her ears. Throbbed in the air like the beating of great wings.
“This is all to do with magic, isn’t it?” She caught herself peeking over her shoulder at every flickering dance of the candelabra’s flames. Feeling the gaze of unseen creatures lifting the hairs at the back of her neck. “Something to do with the Other.” She jumped at a breeze rattling the casement.
“Easy, now. There’s no one there. You’re tying yourself in knots.”
She continued to peer into the corners of the room. “So you say.”
“Believe me. After seven years, I can sense danger a mile away. But aye, my difficulties originate within that world. So, keep my secret, Lissa. And when it’s safe, I’ll vanish as fully as I did the last time. You’ll wonder if I wasn’t just a figment of your imagination.”
“What if I told you I was happy to see you again?” The words caught in her throat, low and halting.
