King's Highlander

by Jessi Gage

  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.”

  Chapter 5

  Magnus’s heart banged in his throat as he crouched at Seona’s side. His breath came in heaving bursts, but he forced himself to stillness long enough to assure himself of the rise and fall of her chest.

  She had been dead. And now she lived.

  “It’s a miracle.” Riggs gave voice to the conclusion Magnus had formed. Clearly, he had been wrong. The goddess had not forgotten them. Nothing but divine intervention could explain what they’d just witnessed.

  “Danu be praised,” Magnus said, a tremor in his voice. Wonder coursed through his veins.

  “Danu be praised,” Riggs echoed.

  Magnus couldn’t tear his gaze from Seona. Never before had he been granted an opportunity to view her so closely while her face was peaceful. Between Anya’s fierce protectiveness and Seona’s hatred of him, he’d developed an impression of cold, untouchable beauty where she was concerned.

  His days were filled with duties that kept him from dwelling on his lukewarm interest in the human, but during his oft sleepless nights, worry chased him in endless circles. A sense of wrongness hung over him like a storm cloud. He did not feel the way he was supposed to feel toward Seona.

  In the vision Danu had blessed him with the night of his coronation, he’d experienced an overwhelming flood of adoration for her. The child she’d held in her arms meant salvation for his people, but even in his dream, he’d understood that a barren womb would not have decreased the measure of his love for her. It was her he loved. Her essence. Her moonsoul.

  Nothing like that had come upon him when Seona had been discovered in Bantus’s dungeon with the other human women. He’d felt no differently for her than for any of the others. It was only due to the vision that he’d treated her any differently, cosseting her in the chamber beside his while the others recovered from their captivity among the wolfkind women in the Fiona Blath.

  For fifty years, he had anticipated an incomparable love for the woman in his vision. For fifty years, he had planned for her arrival. For fifty years, he had longed to finally hold her in his arms, to join with her in the tradition of old and make her not only his pledgemate and queen, but his lifemate. Together, they would restore the sacred, ancient tradition, done away with when women became too scarce for a man to have one all to himself. For the first time in centuries, one man and one woman would pledge their moonsouls to one another while joining in body beneath the full moon. Danu would bless their union, sealing their moonsouls together for eternity. He and Seona would be celebrated far and wide, bringing hope to their people. When she grew with his child, that hope would be strengthened. Through them, wolfkind would be saved.

  That was how it was supposed to have gone.

  Instead, since the discovery of the human women, Magnus had despaired at his failure to love Seona the way he ought to. He’d despaired at her hatred of him. How would they bring new life to the world when she could not even bear the sight of him? When she demanded each and every day to be allowed to return to her native realm?

  As he bent over her on the canyon floor, something changed. He drank in the miracle of her renewed life and something moved inside his chest.

  His feelings for her had been like a polished boulder resting in a basin. The visible face held no markings of note, only a duty-filled affection, no more or less remarkable than what he felt toward the other women in his care. But as he marveled at her in the wake of her rebirth, it was like a pair of massive hands rotated the boulder to reveal hidden treasures set into the stone. Diamonds, gold, silver, and gems of every color sparkled to life inside him. He was suddenly awakened to a precious bounty he’d not noticed before.

  Her parted lips released puff after puff of steam into the cold air.

  He yanked off his cloak and flung it over her for warmth. Then he searched her form with careful hands, looking for non-obvious injuries. He would not take this miracle for granted.

  Gentle squeezing of her arms and legs produced no movement of the bones where there shouldn’t be. Pressing fingertips along the back of her neck and what he could reach of her spine, he found no obvious deformities. He would have his physician inspect her when they returned to Glendall, but, incredibly, she showed no sign of damage. Not even a bump on her head where blood matted her hair to her completely healed scalp.

  “How will we get her up?” Riggs asked. Palming the back of his neck, the knight squinted up the canyon wall. “Shall I make a litter?”

  Magnus shook his head. The thought of trusting
her wellbeing to sticks and twine left a bitter taste on his tongue. “I’ll carry her.”

  Riggs ventured a step closer. Magnus didn’t blame him for keeping a small distance. What they had witnessed had been jarring. Magnus would never forget it as long as he lived. He would never forget that he had doubted his goddess only to have her prove her faithfulness in the most powerful of ways.

  “How will you climb and keep her safe?” His knight’s brow furrowed with doubt.

  Magnus grinned as he lifted her into his arms, the most precious bundle imaginable, more precious than all the game he’d brought up since his youth put together. “Have a little faith,” he said. Cradling her to him, he led the way to a hidden, gentler path a furlong east of where they’d descended.

  The ascent ate up the rest of the morning. By the time Magnus mounted Taranis with Seona still clutched to his chest, his buoyant mood had faded. At long last, he had discovered the sort of affection for her he had longed to feel, but that did little to soothe the anger building behind his breastbone.

  During the return ride to Glendall, his thoughts were plagued with the circumstances that had led them to Lachlan’s Promontory. Seona had not only betrayed the safety and luxury he had offered, but she had entrusted her fate to another man. A prisoner and member of the Breeding First rebellion. This lawless rebel was her choice of ally in place of the king who had rescued her?

  His arms tightened around her delicate form. Anger gave jagged edges to his protective urge. She’d misplaced her trust and nearly been killed—had been killed, for the love of the moon. He would not stand for any more of this foolishness.

  Magnus had honored Anya’s request to give Seona time. He’d kept his distance when he’d wanted nothing more than to be close to her in hopes of sparking his dormant affection. No more.

  Seona was his, damn the moon. No one would keep him from her again.

  * * * *

  “I want my own realm someday, Papa.” Danu tugged on her father’s beard, pleased to be on his lap, the focus of his adoring attention.