Free Awaken the Curse by Alexa Egan Page B

out of the ruin after her.
    The snow had stopped falling and the wind had died. Broken clouds drifted across a midnight sky, and an enormous full moon shed light over the blanket of white with the brightness of a million candles. No sign of Katherine or d’Espe, but ten paces away a man in an enormous coat and muffler bent over a body in the snow. Fucking hell! Katherine!
    Mage energy flowed from the man’s hands into the body, a river of twining, flowing color and light. Blue to indigo to scarlet to citrine.
    An agonized scream ripped the night, the body convulsing as the magic penetrated.
    “You’re killing her!” James shouted.
    The man tore his hands from the body, the magic winking out, leaving the night darker, the stench of charred flesh hovering like smoke in the air.
    James’s bowels turned to water, fear closing like a fist around his heart as his faltering steps propelled him through the deep snow. “Katie love!”
    The man turned, revealing a shock of white hair, moonlight glinting off his spectacles. “Duncallan!” the man called. “You’re alive, boy.”
    James plowed to a stop, his lungs on fire. “What’s happened? Is Katherine all right?”
    “Katherine’s with d’Espe. He took her with him to the obelisk as insurance.”
    “Then who—”
    The moon chose this moment to slide free of a wispy cloud, picking out the waxen features and bloodied body of Cade.
    The professor shoved his spectacles up his nose. “I dare not attempt more. Not with such a violent reaction to my healing spells.”
    “What are you doing? He tried to kill us to get his hands on the disk.”
    “The four disks that make up the Gylferion are sacred relics to his people.”
    “Sacred enough to kill for?”
    “Oh, yes. Sacred enough to die for as well,” the professor answered sadly, his hands bloody to the wrists as he pressed a torn strip of cloth hard against Cade’s chest. “They are referred to in some of the earliest chronicles, but even the most scholarly of researchers doubted their existence. It would be like stumbling upon the sword of Arthur or the legendary books of Deresphides. Who would not wish to capture such a priceless treasure?”
    “But we left him tied hand and foot back at the obelisk. How did he get here?”
    “The nightwalkers know every secret way and hidden trail within these mountains. That’s how they’ve survived undetected for centuries.”
    “Shit,” James muttered. “It’s true? The Imnada really exist?”
    “Your proof lies dying before you. The chevalier used a silver dagger on him. The slash to the heart was bad enough, but silver is lethal to the shapechangers.”
    “So I’ve been told. But why? Aren’t Cade and d’Espe in league with one another?”
    “In league? Hardly. Cade has spent months trying to frighten both d’Espe and myself away before we could discover the secret of the Imnada’s existence. His plan might have succeeded, but for one thing—your disk. Once d’Espe heard about it, he was more determined than ever to remain and continue his work.”
    James’s hand instinctively reached for his neck where his amulet should have hung. The attack on the road, the break-in at the house—it all began to come together. “But he needed my disk to do it.”
    “Indeed. I figured out what he planned and would have been there to warn you but for that last horrid snow that left me stranded in the mountains,” Professor Lacey explained.
    “Gylferion . . .” Cade’s eyes snapped open and focused on James, widening in recognition, a grimace twisting his lips. “Go. D’Espe knows the Imnada’s secret . . . must stop . . . stop before he uses . . .”
    James scrambled to his feet, shaking off the dizziness crowding his vision. Ignoring the questions avalanching through his brain at Cade’s revelation. Time enough for them once Katherine was safe. “How long ago did they leave?”
    “An hour, no more.”
    “I’ll go after them.”
    “The