Unleash the Curse: An Imnada Brotherhood Novella Read Online Free Page B

was Sarah doing here?
    “We have to stanch the bleeding.” Duncallan stripped off his shirt and pressed it against the deep slash on the man’s back. But it would take half a dozen shirts to cover all the wounds upon his bleeding body.
    Lucan swung his midnight gaze toward him. Even dull with pain, it seemed to pick him apart thread by thread. “ Naxos katarth theorta  . . .” He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut as Sebastian and Duncallan dragged him to his feet. “. . . the door . . . theorta  . . . naxos  . . . nax  . . . they’re here . . . naxos  . . . must stop them . . .” He closed his eyes, his head sagging onto his chest.
    “Help me get him up,” Duncallan said. “We need to hide him before he’s discovered.”
    “Sorry, old chap. This is going to hurt like the devil.” Sebastian shoved an arm under the Imnada’s prone body. “Right. Now what?”
    Duncallan gave a jerk of his head. “I’ll take him to the west tower. No one will think to look there. You stay and make sure there’s no trace left of our presence then send word to Gray. Tell him he needs to come immediately.”
    “You can’t just wander the corridors with a naked man.” Sebastian grabbed up a rug from a nearby chair, wrapping it around Lucan’s hips, securing it with a knot and a tug. “If anyone asks, he drank too much and passed out. Hopefully they don’t look too closely.”
    Duncallan headed for the door. “Be sure de Coursy gets that letter.”
    “Consider it written and delivered.”
    Alone, Sebastian sat down, pulling a piece of paper from a drawer, shuffling through a box for a pen and ink. His jangled, jumpy nerves eased as the shadows settled once more over the room, and he rolled his shoulders as he scratched a quick message to Gray.
    “You can come out now, Miss Haye,” he said without looking up.
    Not a sound.
    Folding and sealing the note, he left it on the desk as he rose to stand at the terrace doors. “I know you’re here. I can smell your perfume.”
    There followed the rustle of silk, the creak of a floorboard.
    “Is there a reason you’re skulking behind the furniture?” he asked, never taking his eyes off the moon-washed park.
    “I lost a bauble during the dancing. I came to search for it.”
    Her voice boiled up out of the quiet, touching him in places aching and hollow. He pressed a hand to his chest, reminding himself of her squalid relationship with the prince and every other reason she was the last woman in the world he needed in his life. The queer pang passed, and when he spoke, it was as if she meant nothing to him, though the effort left him exhausted. “And found far more than you bargained for.”
    “Who is he?”
    Sarah came to stand beside him, still dressed in her evening wear, but for a shawl carelessly tossed around her shoulders. Her hair spilled loose down her back in soft brown waves. She might be the last woman in the world he needed, but she was most definitely the only woman in the world he wanted; never more so than right now, when any normal female would be shrieking their hysteria to the skies or blubbering like a leaky waterworks.
    “What is he?” she asked as calmly as if she were questioning the menu at dinner.
    Breathing slowly, he wrestled his libido to a draw, though he remained acutely aware of the scented warmth of her skin and the way her hair gleamed in the light of the single candle. “A shapechanger. One of the Imnada.”
    He felt her body tense with shock, her eyes nearly silver in the dark. “They’re just stories.”
    “So we believed for over a thousand years, but you saw him shift as well as I did.”
    “Why is he here? And what was he saying? It seemed familiar somehow. Like I’d heard it before.”
    “Doubtful. The shapechangers have been in hiding ever since the Other sought to wipe them from the earth in retaliation for King Arthur’s death.”
    “You know about the Other?” Her body went rigid as if preparing for