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

could ignore his peers’ derision, but could she bring that disgrace down upon him? If she truly cared for him, could she allow him to ruin his future for her?
    She’d contemplated marriage to Prince Christophe knowing these same social obstacles lay before him. Why then did she shrink away from marrying Seb?
    She stared out the window onto the snow-frosted park, barely registering the bright moonlight glittering across the high rugged hills to the west or the flicker of a torch moving between the black arms of the trees below. Instead, she pictured Sebastian’s hard chiseled jaw as he argued with her, the curve of his full lips when he teased her to laughter, the wicked desire in his eyes as he sheathed himself between her legs. These things made her want him.
    But it was the way she saw herself when she was with him that truly touched her—clever, talented, determined, courageous. As if he drew the best from her. As if he made her feel like the great lady she would never be, no matter how many diamonds or silks she wore.
    And there was her answer.
    She did not love Christophe.
    She loved Sebastian.
    The pain in her chest she’d felt upon waking had dulled to a hard tangled knot and a sick uneasy feeling in her stomach as she considered another option; she could accept Sebastian’s protection and become his mistress. A situation that, until now, she’d scorned as beneath her contempt, but twice now, she’d let her runaway emotions get the better of her. So could she really continue to maintain that argument?
    She pressed a hand to her midriff, but the ache and the questions remained.
    At what point did she give up the pretense of self-righteous virtue? Where did she draw the line between her moral fortitude and her desperate heart? Or had point and line already been crossed and all that remained was acceptance?
    She thought of the years of hard work as she’d struggled to outrun her upbringing and already knew her answer, making the pain in her chest expand a hundredfold.
    *   *   *
    The second time Sarah woke, the dream was more vivid, the dread tightening her shoulders more painful, and the panic burrowing frozen into her center enough to double her over.
    “Naxos,” she whispered.
    The word curdled her stomach while a wild thought singed her brain. “The door,” Lucan had muttered, but another term for door was gate. Could he have been referring to the Gateway? She’d seen more than one reference in her research to the Imnada’s tales of a mythical passage between worlds. The shapechangers were said to have come through this portal to earth, their souls traveling back to the ancestral homeland at their deaths. Perhaps she needed to adjust her focus and start there.
    And what better time to start than now.
    She’d not find sleep again. Not now while her mind reeled with nightmare visions of amorphous shadow monsters and her heart ached for the bitter loss of a dream. If she went now, she’d have hours to herself with none to ask questions or wonder at her sudden scholarship. None to question the tears swimming in her eyes or the waxen pallor of her face. Mind made up, she dressed quickly, bundling her hair up in a loose bun, donning a heavy velvet dressing gown against the drafty halls of Sharrow House.
    A few sconces still flickered as she made her way downstairs. A musty breeze lifted the hairs at the back of her neck, whispered gibberish in her ears. Ignoring it, she hurried across the hall and pushed open the door to the library. Four walls of shelves stretched up to be lost amid the shadows hugging the ceiling. Thousands of books. A needle in a haystack.
    She pulled the first volume from the first shelf. Settled into a chair by the light of her candle. And opened to the first page.
    *   *   *
    Sebastian turned the key in the lock, securing the door to the tower behind him. Lucan’s fever had broken, his wounds knit closed, but he’d yet to wake. Suspicions and questions banged against