Heir of Danger by Alix Rickloff

scrollwork of the gold case, the enamel inside face painted with the Douglas spread-winged eagle bearing a crooked sword, and the complicated gadgetry of hands and dials. “You still have it.”
    He snapped the watch shut with a decided click, his lips thinning in agitation.
    “Your father’s watch. I’d forgotten all about it.” A gift for his sixteenth birthday, Brendan had guarded it with his life. His most cherished possession. “Do you remember when I borrowed it?”
    “Let’s call it what it was.” He chuckled. “You pilfered it.”
    “Your brother dared me.”
    “My brother was a nuisance and a bully.”
    “Only because you fought back. If you’d ignored him—”
    “He’d have thrashed me twice as often and with double the ferocity. Thank heavens I could run faster than him.” He grew solemn. “A lucky skill as it turned out.”
    “Where have you been all this time, Brendan? Aidan searched everywhere, but after years with no word from you, he finally gave up and believed you were dead. We all did.”
    “Right about now, Aidan probably wishes I’d stayed dead.” He glanced over at her. Gave an offhand shrug, as he realized she’d not be put off with another non-answer. “Where was I? Let’s see. The Low Countries. Spain. Italy. Though it was difficult during the war, and I finally fled farther south. North Africa. The Levant. Spent two years in Turkey before settling in Greece.”
    She envisioned Brendan attired in sultan’s kaftan and turban, reclining upon a seraglio’s carpets and cushions. Given his dark hair and tanned features, not a difficult image to conjure. Actually embarrassingly seductive. “Complete with your very own harem, no doubt,” she scoffed, praying her face didn’t betray her thoughts.
    “Nothing that exciting. Actually, it was devilish uncomfortable. Staying alive can be a deuced difficult job.”
    “It still is, isn’t it? You said you were in hiding.”
    He played a sad little run of notes before wincing, a grimace of pain passing over his face.
    “You
are
hurt.”
    He shook his fingers out. “A disagreement with someone’s boot heel. Staying alive doesn’t always equal staying in one piece.”
    The darkness seemed to close in on them. A listening, watching hush, pregnant with stale regret. Elisabeth’s skin prickled, though not due to mage energy this time, but to Brendan’s diamond-edged charisma. He’d always possessed spellbinding self-confidence. It glittered off him. Sparkled the very air he breathed. Everyone who knew him fell under that strange mixture of cynicism and magnetism. It made him seem almost otherworldly. As if the blood of the
Fey
ran thick and icy just beneath his skin.
    Tonight, that crystalline brilliance seemed tempered. That white inner light dimmed to mere humanity. Or perhaps the scales had finally fallen from her eyes and she saw him for what he was. Not glittering and silver perfect as the
Fey
. But a man chained by years and exile and events she couldn’t begin to imagine.
    She asked the first question that swam to the front of her mind. “Did you kill your father, Brendan? I never thought . . . but . . . you said you’re hiding and . . .” Once the words were out, she wished to call them back. The stricken look on his face cut her like a whiplash.
    His hands curled to fists. Dropping them to his lap, he flexed them loose before laying them palms down against his breeches.
    “Forget I asked,” she entreated. “I know you didn’t have anything to do with his death. I should never have said. It was—”
    “Long ago? Murder is murder, isn’t it? Makes no difference whether the crime happened a week ago or an age hence. The stain remains.”
    “But the two of you were so close. He loved you. It was plain to everyone who saw you together.”
    “It makes the sin all the greater then, doesn’t it?”
    She chewed her lip. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
    “No, Lissa. I didn’t murder my father. But I