If You Dare
MacCarrick Brothers 1
Kresley Cole
For Ginny, the sister I never had, because we've been best friends since preschool. And because I'm on the phone with you as I'm writing this and wish you were here.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the wonderful people at the Catalan House of the University of Florida for their gracious gifts of time and knowledge, with special thanks to Mireia Vilamala for her help with translation and to Juan Torras-Costa for his assistance with Andorran geography.
Many, many thanks to Dr. Domhnall Uilleam Stiubhart in the Celtic and Scottish Studies Department at Edinburgh University for his help with Gaelic translation and Scottish history.
And I think I will make a tradition of acknowledging all the incredible support Sally Fairchild has given me with this book and the two previous ones. Just when I think I know how fantastic she is, she still amazes.
No reason under heaven excuses bad manners.
—Lady Annalía Elisabet Catherina Tristán Llorente
Might makes right.
—Courtland Eadd MacCarrick
Prologue
Carrickliffe, Scotland, 1838
Read from the Leabhar nan Sùil-radharc, the Book of Fates:
To the tenth Carrick:
Your lady fair shall bear you three dark sons.
Joy they bring you until they read this tome.
Words before their eyes cut your life's line young.
You die dread knowing cursed men they become,
Shadowed to walk with death or walk alone.
Not to marry, know love, or bind, their fate;