| |
Shock doused Magnus like icy loch water. Numb to all but rage, he charged his target. Mindful of the cliff, he dug his fingers into Hyrk and threw him to the ground.
In a heartbeat, Magnus was on top of him, hands locked around the throat of what used to be one of his subjects.
Hyrk put up no fight. His attention was on the cliff. “That bitch! She stole my relic!” He writhed and scrabbled for the edge of Lachlan’s Promontory, like he would throw himself over to retrieve his gemstone.
Magnus could care less about that hideous stone. He cared only about vengeance. A fall to his death was too good for the murdering bastard.
“You killed her!” He poured every ounce of his strength into squeezing the life from his foe. “She was to be our salvation!”
The former messenger’s face reddened, like Seona’s had mere moments ago.
Hyrk’s eyes bulged, and he finally shifted his focus to Magnus, as if he’d just realized the vessel he had possessed was dying.
Overhead, a hawk screeched. Its shadow passed over them.
Hyrk’s mouth curved in a sickening grin. Magnus’s efforts should have made it impossible for Hyrk to speak, but apparently, the normal way of things did not apply. Bilkes’s mouth said, “You’ll all die now. Your supposed vision will never come to pass. And once the last of you is gone, your precious Danu will be locked in my dungeon for all eternity.” Spittle flew into the air with his taunts.
“Go to hell, Hyrk!” Magnus squeezed with all his might and felt something crack inside Bilkes’s neck.
Vaguely, Magnus was aware of his guards surrounding him and of his wolves circling. He could have let either finish Hyrk for him, but he would not be deprived. Black satisfaction filled him as he squeezed the life from a wicked deity. The enemy of Danu. The enemy of wolfkind.
But what about Bilkes, whispered his conscience. The messenger had betrayed the crown and broken many laws, but had taken no life that Magnus knew of. He didn’t deserve a death sentence.
Magnus released his grip as if he’d been burned. The feeling of Bilkes’s windpipe collapsing was a memory on the skin of his palms. There would be no washing it off. He had acted rashly, and the messenger paid the ultimate price.
Bilkes should be dead, but Hyrk continued to taunt. “Foolish, sentimental mortal. You are a weak race. But not for long. I will have my way in the end.” He fixed his gaze on the hawk circling the canyon. Then the blood-red light went out of Bilkes’s eyes.
Cackling laughter echoed off the rocky walls. That awful sound had not come from Bilkes’s body but seemed to ride on the air all around them. The hawk swooped out of sight, seeming to chase the laughter.
Bilkes, at last, lay still. His eyes, back to their color of the harvest moon, stared into the sky.
Woodenly, Magnus sat back on his heels. Regret crushed him. He’d lost Seona and taken out his fury on one not ultimately responsible for her death. “What have I done?”
“We both saw, Sire,” said Cadeyrn, one of his knights. “He killed your promised lady.” The knight’s face reflected Magnus’s grief. But there was something more. An acknowledgment of what they’d just witnessed: a deity possessing one of their kind. “You did what had to be done.”
Perhaps. Perhaps Bilkes had been dead from the moment Hyrk had taken him. Dearest Danu, take his soul to your breast. Forgive me.
He got to his feet and half-heartedly praised his wolves for their work.
“There’s still Lady Anya,” Cadeyrn said. “And her babe.”
He shut his eyes against a wave of jealousy. As much as he celebrated with Riggs and Anya, he wished it could be his offspring, his heir, to be the first child born to their people in eleven years. Still. Cadeyrn’s words brought a faint ray of consolation. He nodded his acknowledgement, throat too tight to form words.
Speaking of Anya and her mate—Magnus scanned the shelf of rock. “Where is Riggs?” He and Cadeyrn had given chase with Magnus. Riggs’s horse stood ground tied beside Cadeyrn’s, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen.
“He’s gone down into the canyon.” Cadeyrn frowned and averted his gaze. He didn’t have to voice the reason. Riggs had gone to retrieve Seona’s body.
Magnus should weep for her loss. His heart should be broken. All he felt was heavy despair for his people. And for Anya, who just one moon ago had rejoiced at finding the sister she’d thought lost forever. They knew now why Seona had gone missing. Ari had used Hyrk’s relic to invade the human realm and lure females to Bantus’s dungeon. Seona, Magnus had learned from Anya, had been the first. Of all the human women rescued from Larna, Seona had suffered the longest.
May she find peace at your breast, he prayed, gazing out at the canyon. Countless shades of gray and lavender striped the rock on the far side. Yellow moss grew in places where water trickled down to the river below. A treasured hunting spot, the canyon had provided game for generations of Marann’s kings. How cruel that the source of such beauty and provision could be so deadly.
Distantly, he heard shouts and the clatter of hooves on rock. More of his men were on their way.
He toed off his doeskin shoes. “When the others arrive, help them build a litter. I’ll bring her up with Riggs.”
Cadeyrn nodded solemnly. “Yes, Sire.”
He’d made the descent countless times, first as his father’s quiverman, then as a hunter in his own right. Always before, he’d navigated the narrow ledges and outcroppings with anticipation. Each handhold and foothold led the way to the sweet meat and luxurious pelts waiting below. Only a careful, patient climber could descend safely, and only a skilled hunter could fell the beasts that prowled the riverbanks and caves below.
On today’s descent, there was no anticipation. No excitement. He felt only regret.
He’d let this happen. He hadn’t protected Seona well enough. Perhaps if he’d loved her the way he was supposed to, she would still be alive.
“—Rather die than be yours.”
Her words had been too quiet to echo in the canyon, but they echoed in his mind. She’d gotten her wish. Poor lady.
She’d experienced such pain in the past year. The horrors she’d endured had blinded her to the honor that awaited her as his queen. Danu would soothe her pain now.
And I will bear mine with dignity and courage.
He must not lose hope. He must not let his people lose hope. They would scrutinize him in the days to come. How he responded to Seona’s death would set the tone for all Marann. If he let them see his despair, they would despair.
He would have to make a decree. There would be a service to celebrate Seona’s life and to bid her safety on her journey to Danu’s Breast.
As his soles met the bed of the canyon, he spotted Riggs’s dark head. The knight was picking his way through dormant pitberry shrubs toward where Lachlan’s Promontory cast its shadow.
He followed the trail his knight had made. His stomach turned in on itself at the thought of the terror Seona must have known in her final moments. Her body might very well be broken beyond recognition. Anya was going to be grief-stricken.
Up ahead, Riggs shouted, and a hawk took flight from the bushes. The knight’s head dipped from view, signifying he’d found Seona. The hawk had found her first and thought to make a meal of her. Danu bless Riggs for chasing it away.
With every step toward his fallen lady, his feet felt like blocks of stone. At last, he rounded a thicket and saw what had become of lovely Seona.
Blood soaked the ground beneath her head. Tangles of hair lay across her face, part of which was collapsed. Her arms and legs jutted at impossible angles, her pelvis obviously crushed. The evergreen nightgown had torn along the side, partially exposing one of her pale, hairless breasts.
He fell to his knees beside his knight and righted her nightgown before lifting his gaze to the mocking blue sky.
Doubt crept in where only thoughts of Seona should be. Fifty years ago, Danu had given him hope in the form of a vision, but Seona had never stirred his heart the way she had when he’d dreamt of her. Now she was dead. Clearly, she was not to be his queen. The dream vision he’d received from Danu had been wrong.
Are you listening? He asked the goddess in his heart. Are you watching? Do you care for us at all?
A feeling of sharp betrayal cut into him, more wicked by far than the pain Seona’s rejection had caused. Danu had created them only to abandon them. He had loved the goddess his whole life, but she had no love for him. Perhaps she had never even noticed him.
He bent over Seona’s broken body. The amethyst gemstone he’d planned to give her, the one Anya had given him and that he’d named the Translation Stone, slipped from the collar of his tunic. The bejeweled chain hung from his neck, dangling between his heart and the one he’d needed so desperately to win.
“I am so sorry,” he told her. She deserved great honor, but she had gotten death. It was his fault. If he’d sent the human women home, and her with them, she would be alive now. “I do not deserve your forgiveness. But I am sorry, sweet lady.”
A single tear slid down his cheek and landed on the gemstone. It glistened like a liquid star before plummeting from the stone and landing with a splash on Seona’s cheek. Directly over the purple paw print Bantus had branded into her.
Her cheek moved.
Flesh that had been sunken with injury filled out. Delicate facial bones that had been broken fit back into place like a puzzle solving itself. The changes spread from the place where his tear had landed over her entire body.
Her arms righted themselves. A loud snap came from her pelvis as it expanded to its normal shape.
An instinct to jump back from whatever unnatural thing was happening warred with his fascination.
“Sire?” Riggs said. “What’s—by the moon, she’s—” His knight sounded as mystified as he felt.
Seona was a broken doll, and unseen hands were mending her.
Her legs straightened. Her chest rounded. Her lips parted, and with a sound like a bellows, her lungs filled with air.
“By Danu.” If Riggs weren’t with him, Magnus would wonder if he’d gone mad. “Are you seeing this?” he asked.
“Yeah.” A shaky breath came from his knight. “Is she—alive?”
Blood still soaked the ground around her halo of silky walnut hair. Her nightgown was still torn. Otherwise, she looked completely hale. She might be a woman asleep in her bed.
He cupped her face carefully—oh so carefully, and he felt warmth. Passing his thumb over her lips, he felt breath.
“She lives.”
* * * *
One moment, Duff had been preparing to explain to an irate goddess how her relic had ended up in the hands of a mortal. The next, he watched through the bars as her fury ruptured with a hair curling scream.
Danu’s shriek echoed off the dungeon walls as she flung her arms out. She flailed as if she were on fire.
Duff shot to his feet. Only the curse kept him from breaking free from the darkness and rushing to her aid. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Danu fell to her hands and knees, gasping for breath. Panic made wild moons of her eyes.
“What is it, love? Is it Hyrk? Is he coming?” He swept the dungeon with the senses he’d honed for millennia, detecting nothing out of the ordinary—except for the fact that Danu was suddenly deathly afraid.
“Wha—what’s happened? What is this place? Did you say Hyrk? Who the bloody hell is he?” Danu seemed to have forgotten where she was and who had put her here. And her voice had taken on a decidedly Scots affectation. Interesting.
“You’re in a dungeon, my dear, locked within a cursed cell. I did indeed say Hyrk, for that is the name of your jailor.” While he spoke, he scrutinized her reaction, a narrowing of her eyes as she peered toward him, seeing nothing but the shadow that chained him. It was the look of prey assessing the capabilities of a predator.
Whoever this woman was, she was not his friend and former lover. Of that he was certain. But the body the woman inhabited most definitely belonged to Danu. He knew that body well.
He began to suspect Danu’s moonstone had worked some mischief. And mischief was one thing no Fae could resist.
“Is this hell?” the woman asked. “Is Hyrk the Devil? Does he imprison everyone he murders?”
What intriguing questions! “This is not ‘hell,’ love.” He recalled the word as one of the names mortals had given to the low realm. “But you’re not far off. Tell me the last thing you remember.” If his suspicion was correct, this woman’s memory might help him confirm where Danu had gone.
“I was falling,” the woman said. “That bloody bastard Hyrk threw me over a cliff, but I thought he was someone else. He deceived me, that good-for-nothing, lying wolf man. None of them are to be trusted. Not a single one.” The venom in her speech would flay the skin off a lesser man.
Her accent and her mistrust of wolfmen strengthened his suspicion. There were but a handful of women with this accent who were privy to the existence of wolfkind, one of whom he’d had the pleasure of meeting. This one reminded him of that one. Strongly. “What name are you called by, lass?”
His memory supplied the name at the exact moment she spoke it. “Seona.”
She was Anya’s sister, the one he had helped Anya search for all over the Highlands while she was in his care. It seemed the magic that favored him was at it again. But what broken circle did the magic seek to repair this time? Wouldn’t separating Seona from King Magnus have the opposite effect? Seona was meant to save the wolfkind people, to be Magnus’s mate, was she not?
If Seona was here in the body of Danu, that had to mean Danu was now in the body of the mortal. Wait. Had Seona said Hyrk threw her over a cliff? Worry for Danu strung him tight. It would take more to end a goddess than a fall from a great height. But if she was in a mortal’s body...
He must learn more. Something magical was afoot, and he demanded more than a spectator’s role.
“Tell me everything, love. If I am to help, I must know all you know.” Like where Hyrk was and whether Danu might be in danger from him.
Seona scoffed. “Help, indeed. No man offers aid to a lass without taking somat in return.”
Such a jaded view of males, not unlike the views of her sister. Except in his dealings with Anya, he’d never experienced an urge to prove her notions of men faulty.
For some reason, he longed to show Seona that goodness and maleness could coexist. True, he intended to help himself—he was Fae after all, but he was determined to help Seona as well, whether she wanted his help or not.
“Astute of you, my dear. What will you give me if I vow to free you from this place?” She expected him to bargain with her. He would not disappoint.
“Have you a key to this cell? You said Hyrk was my jailor.” Her tone dripped with suspicion.
“Unfortunately, this is not the sort of cell that can be opened with a key.” He doubted it could be opened at all, since Hyrk had formed it from his power. The fact it remained standing meant that wherever Hyrk was, he still possessed power enough to hold a goddess captive. But perhaps there was another way, if one was clever enough to find it.
“Then how do you propose to aid me?”
He’d given the subject much thought in the centuries since Danu had been imprisoned. “There may be a way to free you, but you must tell me everything you can recall about Hyrk.”
Seona’s sigh of acquiescence was a pleasant sound in his ear. “Very well, but there isna bloody much to tell. I only heard his name moments before I came to this place.”
Duff would be willing to wager she knew more about Hyrk than she suspected. She’d lived as a captive in Bantus’s dungeon, and Bantus had been Hyrk’s most loyal follower. And, apparently, she’d been within striking distance of the shite, though it seemed she’d thought he was someone else, a wolfkind male.
“Begin with your rescue from Saroc. King Magnus would have placed his most trusted guards around you. How is it you wound up with Hyrk?” If he learned how Hyrk had infiltrated Magnus’s keep, he might be able to find the bastard before he could harm Danu or her people. “But first, you must agree to what I desire.” No Fae worth his immortality offered help without securing something for himself in the process.
“What is it ye desire?” she asked, resigned. This was a woman who had bargained much in her life, but whom he suspected had rarely come out on top.
“Why, your hand in marriage, of course.”
