Lord of Shadows (5 page)

“Rise and shine, slugabed. The sisters are calling us to breakfast.”

Sabrina cracked open her eyes on a dawn filtered through a misty drizzle that added dampness to an already miserable, chilly morning.

“Go way. Tired.” Rolling over, she stuffed her head under her pillow. Pretended she hadn’t heard her friend’s overly cheerful summons. Jane enjoyed annoying Sabrina far too much and had done so ever since they’d met.

Her pillow was yanked away. “Sister Brigh will be in here with the ice water if you’re not quick.”

Sabrina shivered, but even that threat didn’t pull her out of bed. She’d worked in the infirmary until two in the morning. Used the following hours to complete her unfinished journal entry. By the time she’d closed the book, she’d a fierce headache and a heart heavy as lead.

So much of what she’d forgotten about those days returned beneath her pen. Her initial shock and terror. The screaming
and cursing that followed. Her mother’s wretched, furious weeping and the servants’ quiet treachery as they slunk like rats abandoning a sinking ship from a house and a family labeled cursed. Sabrina hadn’t known it could get worse until it did.

Her mother’s grief quickly gave way to a vacant, staring sorrow that ended in a grave beside her husband. Sabrina’s brother Aidan—the new Earl of Kilronan—retreated into surly silence behind the closed doors of her father’s study. And, Brendan, the brother she’d loved with slavish devotion, simply vanished without a word of explanation. No one knew where, though everyone hinted at why.

After that, the Sisters of High
Danu
became a place of safety. A refuge.

A home.

She’d been content. Never contemplated a life beyond the community of
bandraoi
. Not until this last endless season when change flourished everywhere but here. Aidan’s unexpected marriage. Her childhood friend and neighbor Elisabeth Fitzgerald’s letter announcing her recent betrothal. Even Jane would be leaving Sabrina behind when she was elevated to full priestess at the next festival. Only Sabrina remained in frustrating limbo.

Dissatisfaction crept beneath her guard and set up shop. Unshakable. Uncomfortable.

“Are you even listening to me?” Jane scolded.

Sabrina pulled the blankets over her head. “Tell them I’m sick.”

“You’re not sick.”

“Then tell them I’m dead. I don’t care. I need sleep.”

“You’ve slept for hours.”

“And I’d like to continue doing so if you’d be so kind,” she grumbled.

She disliked Jane in her perky, mothery mode. Especially since she could survive on a few snatched catnaps and didn’t understand why Sabrina couldn’t do the same.

“Can I borrow a clean pair of stockings? Mine have a great hole in the toe.” Jane had given up on Sabrina and directed her conversation to the third occupant of their chamber, privacy not being high on the sisters’ list of must-haves.

“Only if I can borrow an extra petticoat,” Teresa bargained. “I almost froze in the library yesterday. Sister Ursula refuses to light a fire until icicles are hanging from my nose.”

“Try the kitchens. It’s hot as a bloody oven in there.”

“Jane! Your language.”

“Well it is. I almost fainted the day before yesterday.”

What Sabrina wouldn’t give for her lost bedchamber at Belfoyle. Sweet privacy. Space to toss her things about. Quiet when she needed it.

She clamped her pillow back over her head to drown out the others’ morning chatter; banging drawers, requests for assistance in buttoning or unbuttoning; the clink of pitchers and basins, the thump of sturdy boots across the floor. And always the relentless conversation. It seeped around the edges of her pillow, muffled but intelligible.

Jane’s excited voice penetrated like a cannon salvo. “Did you ever find out who the man is they brought in yesterday?”

The final reason for her exhaustion dragged at Sabrina like an anchor—the man.

She’d wished for change—any change—and been rewarded with a mysterious, glowering stranger who watched her as though he could pull the very thoughts from her head. No more wishes for her.

Unable to erase his intense, endless black gaze, she’d tossed and turned for hours.

“I heard he can’t remember anything,” Jane continued with relish.

Sabrina began to suffocate under her blankets. And a few escaping feathers made her nose itch.

“I think he’s here to murder us all in our beds,” Teresa speculated. “I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow, just in case.”

Sabrina flung back the covers. Gulped in a chilly breath of air just as Jane shot back, “You would.”

She was right. Teresa thought every outsider held sinister intentions.

“Have you seen him?” Jane plopped on the end of Sabrina’s bed with a friendly bounce. Already dressed, she talked while shoving her hair up under her prim white kerchief. A crime. Sabrina’s own brown tangle was only improved by concealment, but Jane’s floating mass of auburn waves deserved to be admired.

Surrendering to Jane’s buoyant cheerfulness, Sabrina stretched. Two hours of sleep would have to do. “I have. And spoken with him.”

No need to reveal her schoolgirl flight. Even now she writhed with mortification. What had frightened her into running away in such a ridiculous fashion? Teresa, yes. She was barely seventeen. Wet behind the ears and still in that giggly, graceless stage. But Sabrina had left that awkward childhood self-consciousness behind long ago. Hadn’t she?

“Is he handsome as they say?” Jane leaned forward eagerly.

“Who says?” Teresa chimed in.

Thankfully, Jane’s attention drifted back to Teresa,
relieving Sabrina of the need to explain the man’s primal, yet sensual appeal. Not that she could. Even to herself.

“Two of the sisters. They said he was delicious as sin and wished they could—”

“Jane!”

She sniffed. “I’m only relating the comments of others.”

People would be surprised at the earthiness found within the confines of an all-female community. With no men to hinder tongues or curb actions, normally taboo subjects could be openly discussed, joked about, or explained in depth. Sabrina only wished this particular discussion would end before the heat flooding her cheeks was noticed.

“So is he?” Jane prodded Sabrina. “Handsome, I mean.”

A prickly tingle cruised her skin like static. “You could call him that,” she murmured.

Somewhere a bell was ringing. Or was that the roaring of blood in her ears?

A pillow caught her square in the face.

“Blast! We’re late! There’s last call.” Jane and Teresa dashed from the room, leaving Sabrina alone and wishing for a good dousing of Sister Brigh’s ice water.

He tried not to squirm beneath the unblinking stare of the old woman, but it was difficult in his present position—flat on his back and naked—a few thin blankets the only shield between him and the hefty mountain towering over him.

“Sister Ainnir says you have no recollection of how you came to be washed up on our beach with enough seawater in you to float an armada.”

“No, mistress. I remember nothing before waking in this chamber yesterday.”

A flicker of her eyes. A slight shifting in her pose. But what she reacted to, he couldn’t tell. Something he’d said? Hadn’t said? Did she know who he was? Did they all know, but chose not to tell him?

“Not even your name?” she asked.

Anger flared along nerves like a lit fuse.

“I told you. Nothing.”

Again came the infinitesimal glimmer of knowledge in the woman’s eyes, causing his hands to fist at his sides as he struggled to quell a mounting rage he didn’t comprehend.

“And that brand on your forearm?” she continued, smooth and cool as glass. “It’s an unusual symbol.”

His hand rose to touch the brand burned into his left forearm, a broken arrow and crescent.

“Can you recall what it signifies?” she prodded. “Why you would mark yourself in such a grisly fashion?”

Did she think he lied? That he was feigning memory loss for some hidden purpose? He only wished it were that simple. His anger swelled, twitching muscles. Bringing him to an edgy awareness of his surroundings—the inches separating them, the rain hissing against the window, the thick, humid air. His awareness expanded to the blood moving through arteries and veins, the quickening beat of his heart, the breath filling his lungs. And something more. Something that was and wasn’t a part of him. A sliding, slithering presence lurking in the hidden recesses of his mind. Seeking access. Seeking control.

“I don’t know,” he snarled. “I can’t remember.”

He pushed back. Harder. Defied the questing sensation. Damped the fury to manageable levels, though it cost him in a burst of pain across his temples. Gut-gripping nausea.

A satisfied smile creased the wrinkles of her face, and
she nodded as if making up her mind of something. “Very well. We can’t simply keep calling you the man in the still-room. Until you recall your own name, we’ll choose one for you. How about”—she tapped a thoughtful finger to her lips—“how about Daigh?”

He cocked a questioning brow, caught off balance by her sudden change of topic.

Again one of those wise, all-knowing smiles, this time with a hint of humor. “I had a younger brother named Daigh. He had a bit of your dark looks.” The seams of her face resettled into properly stern lines. “We can only hope you don’t end as he did. Anyhow, let’s see. Daigh”—the finger kept tapping—“Daigh . . . Daigh MacLir.”

It was his turn to favor her with a smile, though it felt feeble and unnatural on his face. “Son of the sea. How poetic of you, mistress.”

She straightened, shoulders back. Head up. “I am Ard-siúr and head of this community.”

“Where am I? What is this place?”

Her brows disappeared into her kerchief. “You’ve washed ashore in Glenlorgan among the Sisters of High
Danu
. An order of
bandraoi
priestesses devoted to a spiritual life. One where we may remain true to our
Other
heritage away from the mistrust of our
Duinedon
neighbors.”

He knew those terms.
Other
—
Fey
-tainted human half bloods.
Duinedon
—mortals without the powers that signified their mage-touched human neighbors. Why did he know this? What did
Other
and
Duinedon
mean to him? What part did they play in his life?

“You risk much to tell me this. Suppose I betray you all?”

“That is a possibility. But my bones tell me you will not do so.”

“Your bones?”

“I sense great pride in you. Some might see it as arrogance even. But there is also much honor.”

“If you know all that about me, why the questions?” That flash of anger sparked anew. His hand closed around an invisible weapon. Felt the lack with a strange twinge of regret.

The priestess had raised inscrutability to an art form. She leveled him with a quiet stare that seemed to penetrate blankets, flesh, bone, and a few layers of soul to his very core. But her gaze drew away, confusion disturbing a woman who, he suspected, was used to certainty.

“Because of what I do not sense, Mr. MacLir. That is what worries me.”

“Time to eat.” Juggling a tray while maneuvering open a door with her elbow, Sabrina backed her way into the still-room. Luncheon was late today. A product of too many
bandraoi
spoiling the broth. Household magic was well and good, but an excess of mage energy in an enclosed space could make for chaos—as those assigned to the kitchens found when the stove began belching black smoke and the scullery sinks sent rivers of dirty dishwater spilling over the floors. “I apologize for the delay, but—”

Turning, she gasped, jiggling her tray ominously. Her patient was abed no longer. Nor was he comfortingly obscured by mountains of blankets. Instead he loomed above her like some titan from myth, his head scraping the low ceiling, his body seeming to fill every spare inch of room. Even air was at a premium. She couldn’t get enough to catch her breath.

She blinked, her gaze traveling over a bare muscled torso chiseled as granite, the accumulation of scars like
some strange warrior’s language written upon his body in blood. But instead of wielding a battle-notched blade or an infantryman’s musket, he held only a shirt.

“Up here,” came an amused growl.

Heat rushed to her face as she lifted her gaze to his, the view only staggering her anew. Not handsome in the classical sense. No, his visage held too much toughness to be considered good-looking. All rugged angles and strong lines, a clenched jaw hewn from stone. Straight, firm mouth. Hair cropped unfashionably short and close to the head. And always that devouring black stare stripping her down to an awkward girl.

“Oh, excuse me,” she stammered. “I didn’t know . . . no one told me . . .” With a few shuddery gulps, she fought to recover her lost aplomb. “That is, I’m surprised to see you up and dressed.”

“Dress-
ing
. As you see.” He spread his hands, the shirt clasped on one great fist.

“Yes, well . . .” She tried looking anywhere but at him. “At least you’re wearing breeches.”

Again came gruff amusement. “At least.”

Had she really said that? Had she really looked . . . Oh, if only the floor would open and swallow her whole. Her entire body flamed with humiliation. A
bandraoi
did not go about ogling men. Not even if the man in question was exquisite ogling material.

He eased the tray from her before she dropped it. Placed it on the bench. Drew the shirt over his head, snapping her out of her daze.

She wiped her damp hands down her apron. Shifted under his enigmatic stare. “I best be getting back. Sister Ainnir will—”

“Stay.” A request that sounded very much like a command.

“Excuse me?”

“Stay with me. Please.” His eyes pleaded with her as if he were drowning and she held his only lifeline. “Sabrina.”

With his fluid lilting voice, her name on his tongue rolled and rippled like water. Sent a shivery rush straight to her center.

“Your Sister Ainnir doesn’t talk, she glowers. Ard-siúr asks questions but provides no answers.” He plowed a hand through his dark hair. Exhaled a heavy sigh. “I need to learn what brought me here. Who I am. That’s impossible closeted in this monk’s cell.”