Free Unleash the Curse: An Imnada Brotherhood Novella by Alexa Egan Page A

unthinking rush to claim her, he’d only pushed her farther away.
    She leaned to eye her face in the mirror, a hand to her throat. “This was a moment out of time. Somewhere out there is a woman with blood as blue as yours who will make you the wife I never could.”
    “There are ways.”
    She straightened, her spine straight, her posture rigid. “I once told you I would be no man’s whore. That’s still true. I won’t be kept as a sop to your libido or a shameful secret on the side.”
    “What makes you think that’s what I had in mind?”
    Her gaze shimmered as she reached for the door latch. “Because whatever else you may be, Sebastian Commin, you’re no fool.”
    *   *   *
    Faces wove in and out of her consciousness, some as clear as if they stood beside her . . . a fine-boned blonde, her eyes green as new leaves . . . a sultry, black-eyed brunette . . . an older woman, her mouth bracketed with years. Others were mere gray shapeless forms with no recognizable features. There were eight of them. All of them reached for her. All of them called to her. All of them wore Christophe’s bracelet.
    Sarah gasped as she came awake, heart racing, dread shivering up her spine. The nightmare clung heavy and vivid. The taste of blood in her mouth where she’d bitten back a scream. The scents of pine and damp moss and grave earth filling her nose. The feel of rough stone at her back as she crouched in the lee of a high crumbling wall running north onto the moors. And the sight of eight figures standing beneath a starless sky within a raised earthen circle, faces contorted with terror then agony as an enormous shadow overtook them one by one, leaving naught but smears of oily gelatinous muck behind.
    She felt the cold of the shadow like a dagger through her chest and rubbed a palm over her skin, half expecting to feel the roughened flesh of an ugly scar. Nothing but the soft linen of her nightgown beneath her fingers, lace bunched at her throat. Still, it would be hard to close her eyes while the sinister images lingered.
    She rose from bed, whispering the household spell that flickered the candles in her room to life. Paced as she fought a childish urge to seek out a comforting embrace against the bogeyman. Sebastian was the last person she should run to for anything. Being together in the same house had been dangerous. Being together in the same room had been a complete disaster. And yet, he was the one she longed for. The only person who could erase the shade of her nightmare.
    She sank into an armchair with a huff of frustration that turned into a hiss of pain as something hard dug against her ribs. The Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage she’d been reading earlier had wedged itself between the cushions. She drew it free with a wry smile. If anything could lull her to sleep while dousing any ideas of a future with Sebastian, this book was it.
    She opened to a page at random. Viscount Falmouth. Married to the daughter of Henry Bankes of Kingston-House. Another page. Another viscount. This time it was Lord Torrington who married the daughter of Phillip Langmead, Esq. She couldn’t seem to stop the turn of her thoughts. She found herself seeking the entries out one by one . . . daughter of General Graeme, sister of Lord de Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Leitrim, daughter of Sir Hugh Dalyrimple. The names went on and on, as did the titles. Not one of them less than a gentlewoman with a sterling reputation to match her superior pedigree. Certainly, no actresses from the crowded tenements of Thames Street and Billiter Lane. No fishmongers’ daughters bearing the wharf stench of brine, blood, and tar.
    There was a reason for that absence.
    Even if hard work and determination had won her a new life far away from the mean streets of her birth, Society would scorn such a lopsided union. Women like her had their position within the accepted order, and countess was not among them.
    Sebastian might believe he