Free Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) by Alexa Egan Page A

astray.”
    “You know as well as I do that my lost home offers me my best chance for survival.” He gritted his teeth as she probed at the wound. “Let me guess, Lucan discovered my plan and dispatched you to watch over me.”
    Lucan Kingkiller—the one person Sir Dromon feared and loathed more than Gray. The ancient Imnada warlord possessed the undiluted strength and cunning of the old clans in every inch of his titan’s body. King’s confidant, sorceress’s lover, savage traitor, and captive of the Fey for thousands of years, Lucan was a man out of time since being freed from his prison three years earlier.
    As much an exile as Gray, he’d found a place among the rebels.
    But he’d yet to find peace for his sins.
    The Fey girl deftly wound the bandage, pinning it in place. “Lucan is wroth with you, shapechanger. You throw all our lives into jeopardy by riding alone into your enemies’ camp. Should this girl betray you to Sir Dromon, there will be many who will suffer.”
    “Should I have brought him with me to guard my back? Who would have guarded his? I couldn’t ask that of him. Too many still blame him for the Fealla Mhòr and the massacres that followed. If it’s dangerous for me to enter Deepings, it would be certain death for him.”
    She offered him a contemptuous look. “Enter Deepings? You’ll be fortunate if you don’t end at the point of a sword by dawn.”
    Gray rose from his bed to pour a drink. Held another one out for Badb, who wrinkled her nose and swung away in continued agitation. “If Meeryn wanted me dead, she could have let the Fey-blood have me tonight,” he argued, “but she didn’t.”
    Badb wheeled around, sharp gaze narrowed, cheeks flushed with anger. “A Fey-blood? Here?”
    Gray sipped at his brandy, letting the heat burn life back into his limbs. “No longer. Thanks to a well-aimed knife.” He gave a dry humorless snort of laughter and rubbed at the back of his neck in a useless bid to ease the crick in it. “Didn’t see that one coming, though not surprised. She always was a terrible hoyden.”
    “Who killed the assassin is irrelevant. It is the fact that he was here and knew what you were and where you were traveling that is of concern.”
    “Someone’s been talking.”
    Badb paced the floor, her lip caught between her teeth in a very un-Fey-like expression. “Return to London, son of Idrin. It is the safest course until we know who has exposed your secret and where the danger lies.”
    “I can’t return and you know it.”
    She stamped her bare foot in frustration. “Thenwait for Lucan . . . or call upon your friends. They would ride with you. They would share your danger.”
    “I can’t ask that of them. Mac and David have done enough already. And they’re needed elsewhere. This fight is coming to us whether we’re ready or not. And I fear we’re not nearly ready enough.”
    “It’s not a sin to ask for help, shapechanger. Or to admit you are not strong enough to succeed unaided.”
    “Alone means no one else gets hurt.”
    Badb leveled him with a stare that seemed to strip him down to each individual thought in his head, each drop of blood in his body. He felt her in his mind. Seeing what he did not want her to see, understanding things about him that he barely understood. “Or does alone mean you do not get hurt?”
    *  *  *
    Gray came for Meeryn as dawn pinked the sky. The inn was already awash in confusion over the discovery of a dead body. As the landlord struggled against a tide of frightened staff, inconvenienced guests, and bothersome magistrate’s men, Gray ordered his young groom to load their luggage and see that the coach was hitched while he settled their accounts, all with the calm efficiency and arrogant aplomb of a nobleman born. None questioned him. None dare even approach him. Instead they bowed and scraped and fell over themselves in their desire to order all as he wished it. Not until they were safely away did Gray’s