Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) Read Online Free PDF

remember that being a favorite only means you have farther to fall.” She crossed to the window, pushing back the curtains to look down upon the street. “I’ve missed you too, Gray. For years, Deepings has been a ghost of its former self, but since your exile, it’s become a tomb. A tomb for the living.”
    “Grandfather’s really dying?”
    “A breath of air could blow his soul through the Gateway. It might be your last chance to make peace with him . . . and with yourself.” She turned to see Gray pull himself to his feet and take a few shaky steps toward his bed. Tremors quivered his body, every muscle taut with lingering pain. He leaned against the post, dark head bowed.
    “What would I say to him?” he asked.
    “Tell him you love him,” she answered.
    “And if that’s a lie?”
    “He’s only a few weeks left. He’ll never know.”
    He lifted his head, eyes cold as steel in a bleak and brutal face. “I’ll know.”
    *  *  *
    Gray rubbed at his bandaged hand in an attempt to alleviate the infuriating itch of healing across his scarred palm. It helped, but not much, and he finally jammed his hand into a pocket, hoping out of sight would mean out of mind. Glancing up, he was just in time to catch David St. Leger holding the one and only copy in existence of Cathal Du’s States of Mirage by a dog-eared corner. “Bloody hell, David. That book’s a priceless historical artifact. Don’t dangle it like something the dog hawked up.”
    David dropped the book in a flutter of dusty pages. “Calm down. It’s fine. If it’s lasted a thousand years, I don’t think one dangling will do it any harm.”
    Gray rubbed his temples. “Can you restrain him, Mac? My brain feels mushy as an egg; the last thing I need this morning is David’s brand of humor.”
    Mac Flannery looked up from the sheaf of pages in his hand long enough to cock a dubious eyebrow in question. “What would you have me do? Tie him to a chair and gag him?”
    “If need be,” Gray barked, immediately regretting it as pain radiated from his tender skull all the way down into his toes.
    “Why did you even bother asking me here if all you’re going to do is threaten and insult?” David crossed his arms as he settled deeper into his chair and put his boots up on the tea table.
    “I ask myself that very question.” Gray had an almost overwhelming urge to wipe off the offendinglook with his fists. Hardly the first time he’d wanted to pummel David senseless. Doubtless it wouldn’t be the last. But it was clear by the annoying smirk that St. Leger goaded him. Gray refused to give him the satisfaction. It would only encourage him.
    “I think command has gone to your head.” David eyed him over his steepled fingers. “You’re not that much older than I am, yet you treat me like an addled child.”
    “That’s because you act like an addled child more often than not.”
    David breezed past this criticism unabated. “What of Mac? You don’t treat him with such a lack of respect.”
    Gray’s headache was now oozing down his spine into his boots. Even his eyebrows hurt. “I doubt Mac acted like a child even when he was one.”
    “Good point,” David muttered.
    “Here, St. Leger.” Mac poured him a tall glass of whisky. “Sip it very very slowly.”
    For five years, Adam Kinloch, David St. Leger, Mac Flannery, and Gray had served together as military scouts. From Lisbon, through Spain, over the Pyrenees into France, they’d prowled, slunk, stalked, and soared, gathering intelligence where no mere mortals could. Until the chaotic days before Waterloo, when a Fey-blood had cursed them with his dying breath.
    Exile caused their friendship to unravel. Adam’s murder brought them together again. And now treason bound them fast in a dangerous alliance.
    Mac’s strict sense of honor, devotion to duty, and raw courage made him a valuable asset to the rebel’s cause. But David possessed more cunning, streetsmarts, and savage battle