Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) Read Free Page A

forbidden marriage outside the clans.”
    “I never said he was marrying her. I said he was swiving her,” David said with a leer.
    Gray’s face betrayed his disgust.
    “Wrinkle your princely nose all you want, de Coursy, but you know as well as I do that as long as we lay under the curse, a quick shag is all you and I are ever going to get.”
    “That may be, but some of us still wish for more than a tumble with some faceless, nameless doxy.”
    David shrugged. “Wish all you want. It won’t change the facts. Besides, what does it matter to the man they refer to as the ‘Ghost Earl’? With that tall, dark, and mysterious act, you’ve got every woman in England panting for you, ring or no ring.”
    If David’s smirk was any indication, Mac and Gray would do best to ignore him. St. Leger had always been a loose cannon. It was doubtful whether the curse had diminished his reckless ways.
    Mac stepped into the breach. “Terminology aside, if Adam and Mrs. Parrino were lovers, she might know about the Imnada. About us.”
    “I still don’t believe it,” Gray declared. “Adam would never have betrayed us to an out-clan. It was his verydetermination to keep the Imnada’s secret that led to the . . . to our . . .”
    “Say it, de Coursy,” David urged, his features rigid. “Or are you too frightened to speak of it out loud? Will the shade of our maker rise up from the grave and strike us down? Curse us again? What the hell could he do that’s worse than what we already suffer? Forcing the shift . . . renunciation by the clans . . . Death would be preferable.”
    David’s histrionics aside, Mac had to agree.
    Tainted by Fey-blood magic, the four of them had been declared mortally damaged and a blight on the clans, their bloodlines forever corrupted. Worthless. Contemptible. Abominations.
    And yet, they’d not been offered the swift mercy of a falling ax or a sharp snap of the neck. Instead, the Gather elders had pronounced a far harsher sentence of exile, severing the four of them from the protection and community of clan and holding, cutting them off from everyone they cared about, erasing them from the world they knew as if they’d never been born.
    Mac’s back twitched with the memory of the destruction the Ossine’s enforcers wreaked upon his body as they stripped him of his clan mark. His bowels loosened as he recalled the violent shredding of his mental signum, as if a great claw had ripped through his brain. Both punishments had destroyed every bond with his past, leaving him adrift and alone. He’d only survived by hardening his mind and his heart against any pain and any loss, becoming as unfeeling and remote as a speck of dirt, focusing no further than the next day, the next cycle of the moon, the next season.
    “Had your grandfather not caved to the Ossine’scommands, we’d have faced a quick end and you could have been the Ghost Earl in earnest then,” David jibed.
    “That’s enough.” Gray’s terse command was unmistakable.
    St. Leger lashed out, smashing his glass down on the tabletop, the shards spraying his hand, cutting his cheek. Blood slid down his face like a single crimson tear. “You’re not my superior officer anymore. I don’t take your orders.”
    “Did you ever?”
    David froze for a moment, his expression unreadable. His body poised as if he might throw himself on Gray and beat him to a jelly. It wouldn’t be the first time these two had come to blows. Like oil and water, they were, with Mac the inevitable peacemaker. He’d thought those days long past.
    But as quickly as David’s rage had ignited, it dissipated in a bout of laughter. “Damn, but I forgot what a right bastard you are.” He passed the palm of his hand across his cheek, wiping away the blood.
    “Feeling’s mutual,” Gray grumbled.
    Mac swallowed back his aggravation. “That woman is aware of our existence. I’d bet on it. We’re vulnerable—the Imnada are vulnerable—until we