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Only after he’d fallen victim to the drink and opium had he realized the similarities between those addictions and his relentless need to master the forbidden magics. That his hunger for knowledge had become a seductive obsession riding dangerously close to madness. And like the drink and the drugs, complete and total abstinence had been his answer.
Until Ireland.
Until now.
Roseingrave drummed her fingers upon the arm of her chair, her expression grave. The fire reflecting in the black of her eyes. “You really think Arthur’s resurrection is possible? That he might return to rule again?”
Asked quietly but with power enough to force an answer. Did she think to trap him into a confession? Was she looking for an explanation? Motivation?
“Máelodor’s managed it once already.”
“The creature Lazarus,” she replied. “He managed to escape Máelodor’s enslavement.”
Brendan looked deep into the fire, remembering a cottage. A man in a desperate struggle for his soul.
Brendan’s sister, Sabrina, had risked everything to help the Domnuathi fight free of his dark possession in order to gain a life with him.
“And in doing so, only hardened Máelodor’s resolve,” Brendan replied. “The man won’t fail a second time. Should Máelodor get as far as opening the tomb—should the bones of the king fall into his hands—Arthur will return a slave-born soldier of Domnu. No woman’s love will be enough to save him.”
The question hovered at the edges of Brendan’s mind: but could love save him, or would he destroy Elisabeth first?
No way to know.
There.
Brendan felt it again.
The numbing tingle just below his skin. The seeking brush of a mind against his own. A powerful Other by the focused thread of mage energy. A determined Other, as this was the third such tracing he’d sensed in less than an hour.
Every nerve bristled, every beat of his heart pushing him closer to a dangerous decision. How easy it would be to cast a cloaking spell and hide within its concealing folds as he obscured his trail before returning to Duke Street.
Instead, he tipped his hat past a chattering group of giggly young women being shepherded down Dame Street by an eagle-eyed doyenne, stepped off the pavement, threading his way between a coal man’s wagon and a crested carriage driven by a pair of blood bays. Mingled into a crowd of shoppers headed east toward College Green until he reached the corner before the bank, where he swung out of the press of bodies and into the quiet side street.
Drawing up into a doorway, he concentrated on following the touch upon his mind back to its source.
He was not a true ma
ge-chaser. The limited ability he possessed had been bought with much sweat and study, but at the least he might discover if he was still being followed.
The echoes rippled back to him on a sooty, foggy breeze. The mage energy surfacing up into his consciousness as a ribbon of curling, twisting pearl and gray. Clean. Pure. Diamond-brilliant. Nothing muddy or diluted. This mind had been trained by the best.
Amhas-draoi.
That changed everything.
There was no margin for error in a test of wills against one of Scathach’s warriors. And no second chances. It was draw upon his powers or be killed.
Brendan threw out a cloaking spell as wide as he could. Exhausting, but it might buy him a few crucial minutes. At the same time, he passed a hand over his features, settling the camouflaging fith-fath over him, the itch and prickle of the magic burrowing into his facial muscles. Lengthening his chin. Blunting his nose. Darkening his hair and eyes. His skin now pouched and craggy with middle age.
His brain hummed with effort as he juggled the separate magics, his muscles taut and jumping. He smiled at the feverish eagerness igniting his blood.
Stepping back out of the shelter of the doorway, he followed the side street north. Ambling his slow but deliberate way north and east. No hurry. No rush. Nothing about him drawing attention. Sweat dampened his shirt to his back, his limbs tiring with every step as the magic drained him. He wasn’t up to this. Not such a complicated dance of power. It had been too long and he remained annoyingly weak from the wound to his shoulder. A few more moments and he’d falter for certain. Already the cloaking spell’s shielding destabilized to a hazardous point.
He rounded a corner and there it was—the answer to his prayers. In the middle of the block. Indistinguishable from the surrounding buildings. Just one more gentleman’s club among a city that boasted a host of such elegant gathering spots for the elite, yet he could well imagine the reaction were that same city ever to discover what sort of elite congregated there.
Mages skilled in the art of war. Scathach’s brotherhood. The order of Amhas-draoi.
Instant death if he was caught.
