Once Upon a Castle

by Nora Roberts

  He scowled at the bottles, refusing to argue the point. “Which blue one?”

  “The cobalt bottle with the long neck.”

  He set the bottle and a short glass on the table. “Drugs are dangerous.”

  She poured a careful two fingers of liquid as blue as the bottle that held it. “‘Tis herbs.” Her eyes flickered up to his, laughed. “And a touch or two of magic. This is for energy and strength.” She sipped with apparent enjoyment. “Will you be sitting down, Calin? You could use a meal, and it should be ready by now.”

  He’d already felt his stomach yearn at the scents filling the room, puffing out of the steam from a pot on the stove.

  “What is it?”

  “Craibechan.” She smiled as his brows drew together. “A kind of soup,” she explained. “It’s hearty, and your appetite’s been off. You’ve lost more than a pound or two in recent weeks, and I feel the blame for that.”

  Wanting to see just what craibechan consisted off—and make sure there was no eye of newt or tongue of frog in the mix, he had started to reach for the lid on the pot. Now he drew back, faced her. He was going to make one vital point perfectly clear.

  “I don’t believe in witches.”

  A glint of amusement was in her eyes as she pushed back from the table. “We’ll set to working on that soon enough.”

  “But I’m willing to consider some I don’t know…psychic connection.”

  “That’s a beginning, then.” She took out a loaf of brown bread, set it in the oven to warm. “Would you have wine with your meal? There’s a bottle you could open. I’ve chilled it a bit.” She opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle.

  He accepted it, studied the label. It was his favorite Bourdeax—a wine that he preferred chilled just a bit. Considering, he took the corkscrew she offered.

  The obsessed-fan theory just didn’t hold, he decided, as he set the open bottle on the slate-gray counter to breathe. No matter how much information she might have dug up about him, she couldn’t have predicted he would come to Ireland—and certainly not to this place.

  He would accept the oddity of a connection. What else could he call it? It had been her voice echoing through his dreams, her face floating through the mists of his memory. And it had been his hands on the wheel of the car he’d driven up to this place. To her.

  It was time, he thought, to discover more about her.

  “Bryna.”

  She paused in the act of spooning stew into thick white bowls. “Aye?”

  “How long have you lived here, alone like this?”

  “The last five years I’ve been alone. It was part of the pattern. The wineglasses are to the right of you there.”

  “How old are you?” He took down two crystal glasses, poured blood-red wine.

  “Twenty-six. Four years less than you.” She set the bowls on the table, took one of the glasses. “My first memory of you, this time, was of you riding a horse made out of a broom around a parlor with blue curtains. A little black dog chased you. You called him Hero.”

  She took a sip from her glass, set it down, then turned to take the warmed bread from the oven. “And when he died, fifteen years later on a hot summer day, you buried him in the backyard, and your parents helped you plant a rosebush over his grave. All of you wept, for he’d been very dear. Neither you nor your parents have had a pet since. You don’t think you have the heart to lose one again.”

  He let out a long, uneasy breath, took a deep gulp of wine. None of that information, none of it, was in his official bio. And certainly none of the emotions were public fare. “Where is your family?”

  “Oh, here and there.” She bent to give Hecate an affectionate scratch between the ears. “It’s difficult for them just now. There’s nothing they can do to help. But I feel them close, and that’s comfort enough.”

  “So…your parents are witches too?”

  She heard the amusement in his voice and bristled. “I’m a hereditary witch. My power and my gift runs through the blood, generation to generation. It’s not an avocation I have, Calin, nor is it a hobby or a game. It is my destiny, my legacy and my pride. And don’t be insulting me when you’re about to eat my food.” She tossed her head and sat down.

  He scratched his chin. “Yes, ma’am.” He sat across from her, sniffed at the bowl. “Smells great.” He spooned up some, sampled, felt the spicy warmth of it spread through his system. “Tastes even better.”

  “Don’t flatter me, either. You’re hungry enough to eat a plate of raw horsemeat.”

  “Got me there.” He dug in with relish. “So, any eye of newt in here?”

  Her eyes kindled. “Very funny.”

  “I thought so.” It was either take the situation with humor or run screaming, he decided. “Anyway, what do you do up here alone?” No, he realized, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know that. “I mean, what do you do for a living?”

  It was no use being annoyed with him, she told herself. No use at all. “You’re meaning to make money? Well, that’s a necessary thing.” She passed him the bread and salt butter. “I weave, and sell my wares. Sweaters, rugs, blankets, throws, and the like. It’s a soothing art, and a solitary one. It gives me independence.”

  “The rugs in the other room? Your work?”

  “They are, yes.”

  “They’re beautiful—color, texture, workmanship.” Remembering the spinning wheel, he blinked. “Are you telling me you spin your own wool?”

  “It’s an old and venerable art. One I enjoy.”

  Most of the women he knew couldn’t even sew on a button. He’d never held the lack of domesticity against anyone, but he found the surplus of it intriguing in Bryna. “I wouldn’t think a witch would…well, I’d think she’d just—you know—poof.”

  “Proof?” Her brows arched high. “Saying if I wanted a pot of gold I’d just whistle up the wind and coins would drop into my hands?” She leaned forward. Annoyance spiked her voice. “Tell me why you use that camera with all the buttons and business when they make those tidy little things that all but think for you and snap the picture themselves?”

  “It’s hardly worthwhile if you automate the whole process. If it’s to mean anything I have to be involved, in control, do the planning out, see the picture…” He trailed off, catching her slow, and smug, smile. “Okay, I get it. If you could just snap your fingers it wouldn’t be art.”

  “It wouldn’t. And more, it’s a pledge, you see. Not to abuse a gift or take it for granted. And most vital, never to use power to harm. You nearly believe me, Calin.”

  Stunned that she was right, he jerked back. “Just making conversation,” he muttered, then rose to refill his empty bowl, the cat trailing him like a hopeful shadow. “When’s the last time you were in the States?”

  “I’ve never been to America.” She picked up her wine after he topped it off. “It wasn’t permitted for me to contact you, face-to-face, until you came here. It wasn’t permitted for you to come until one month before the millennium passed.”

  Cal drummed his fingers on the table. She sure knew how to stick to a story. “So it’s a month to the anniversary of…the spell casting.”

  “No, it’s on the solstice. Tomorrow night.” She picked up her wine again, but only turned the stem around and around in her fingers.

  “Cutting it close, aren’t you?”

  “You didn’t want to hear me—and I waited too long. It was pride. I was wanting you to call to me, just once.” Defeated by her own heart, she closed her eyes. “Like some foolish teenage girl waiting by the phone for her boy to call her. You’d hurt me when you turned away from me.” Her eyes opened again, pinned him with the sharp edge of her unhappiness. “Why did you turn from me, Calin? Why did you stop answering, stop hearing?”

  He couldn’t deny it. He was here, and so was she. He’d been pulled to her, and no matter how he struggled to refuse it, he could remember—the soft voice, the plea in it. And those eyes, so incredibly blue, with that same deep hurt
glowing in them.

  It was, he realized, accept this or accept insanity. “Because I didn’t want to answer, and I didn’t want to be here.” His voice roughened as he shoved the bowl aside. “I wanted to be normal.”

  “So you rejected me, and the gift you’d been given, for what you see as normality?”

  “Do you know what it’s like to be different, to be odd?” he tossed back furiously. Then he hissed through his teeth. “I suppose you do,” he muttered. “But I hated it, hated seeing how it worried my parents.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be a burden but a joy. It was part of her, part of me that was passed to you, Calin, that small gift of sight. To protect you, not to threaten.”

  “I didn’t want it!” He shoved back from the table. “Where are my rights in all this? Where’s my choice?”

  She wanted to weep for him, for the small boy who hadn’t understood that his uniqueness had been a loving gift. And for the man who would reject it still. “The choice has always been yours.”

  “Fine. I don’t want any of this.”

  “And me, Calin.” She rose as well, slowly, pride in the set of her shoulders, the set of her head. “Do you not want me as well?”

  “No.” It was a lie, and it burned on his tongue. “I don’t want you.”

  He heard the laughter, a nasty buzz on the air. Hecate hissed, arched her back, then growled out a warning. Cal saw fear leap into Bryna’s eyes even as she whirled and flung herself in front of him like a shield.

  “No!” Her voice boomed, power and authority. “You are not welcome here. You have no right here.”

  The shadows in the doorway swirled, coalesced, formed into a man. He wore sorcerer’s black, piped with silver, on a slender frame. A face as handsome as a fairy-tale prince was framed with golden hair and accented with eyes as black as midnight.

  “Bryna, your time is short.” His voice was smooth, laced with dark amusement. “There is no need for this war between us. I offer you such power, such a world. You’ve only to take my hand, accept.”

  “Do you think I would? That a thousand years, or ten thousand, would change my heart? Doomed you are, Alasdair, and the choice was your own.”

  “The wait’s nearly at an end.” Alasdair lifted a hand, and thunder crashed overhead like swords meeting. “Send him away and I will allow it. My word to you, Bryna. Send him away and he goes unharmed by me. If he stays, his end will be as it was before, and I will have you, Bryna, unbound or in chains. That choice is your own.”

  She lifted a hand, and light glinted off her ring of carved silver. “Come into my circle now, Alasdair.” Her lips curved in a sultry dare, though her heart was pounding in terror, for she was not ready to meet him power to power. “Do you risk it?”

  His lips thinned in a sneer, his dark eyes glittering with malicious promise. “On the solstice, Bryna.” His gaze flickered to Cal, amusement shining dark. “You, warrior, remember death.”

  There was pain, bright and sharp and sudden, stabbing into Cal’s belly. It burned through him like acid, cutting off his breath, weakening his knees, even as he gripped Bryna’s shoulders and shoved her behind him.

  “Touch her and die.” He felt the words rise in his throat, heard them come through his lips. He felt the sweat pearl cold and clammy on his brow as he faced down the image.

  And so it faded, leaving only a dark glint like a smudge, and an echo of taunting laughter.

  5

  Cal pressed a hand to his stomach, half expecting to find blood, and worse, dripping through his fingers. The pain had dulled to numbness, with a slick echo of agony.

  “He can’t harm you.” Bryna’s voice registered dimly, made him aware that he was still gripping her arm. “He can only make you remember, deceive you with the pain. It’s all tricks and lies with him.”

  “I saw him.” Dazed, Cal studied his own fingers. “I saw it.”

  “Aye. He’s stronger than I’d believed, and more rash, to come here like this.” Gently she put a hand over the one bruising her arm. “Alasdair is sly and full of lies. You must remember that, Calin. You must never forget it.”

  “I saw him,” Cal repeated, struggling to absorb the impossible into reality. “I could see through him, the table in the hall, the flowers on it.”

  “He wouldn’t dare risk coming here in full form. Not as yet. Calin, you’re hurting my arm.”

  His fingers jerked, dropped. “Sorry. I lost my head. Seeing ghosts does that to me.”

  “A ghost he isn’t. But a witch, one who embraced the dark and closed out the light. One who broke every oath.”

  “Is he a man?” He whirled on her so abruptly that she caught her breath, then winced as his hands gripped her arms again. “He looked at you as a man would, with desire.”

  “We’re not spirits. We have our needs, our weaknesses. He wants me, yes. He has broken into my dreams and shown me just what he wants from me. And rape in dreams is no less a rape.” She trembled and her eyes went blind. For a moment she was only a woman, with a woman’s fears. “He frightens me. Is that enough for you? Is it enough that I’d rather die than have his hands on me? He frightens me,” she said again and pressed her face into Cal’s shoulder. “Oh, Calin, his hands are cold, so cold.”

  “He won’t touch you.” The need to protect was too strong to deny. His arms tightened, brought her close. “He won’t touch you. Bryna.” His lips brushed over her hair, down her temple. Found hers. “Bryna,” he said again. “Sweet God.”

  She melted into him, yielding like wax, giving like glory. All the confusion, the doubt, the fear slid away from him. Here was the woman, the only, the ever. His hands dived into her hair, fisted in those soft ropes of red silk, pulled her head back so that he could drive the kiss deeper.

  Whatever had brought him here he would face. Whatever else he might continue to deny, there was no denying this. Need could be stronger than reason.

  The sounds humming in her throat were both plea and seduction. Her heart hammered fast and hard against his, and her body shuddered lightly. She nipped at his lip, urging him on. He heard her sigh his name, moan it, then whisper words ripe with longing.

  The words were in Gaelic, and that was what stopped him. He understood them as if he’d been speaking the language all his life.

  “Love,” she had said. “My love.”

  “Is this the answer?” The fury returned as he pushed her back against the wall. “Is this what you want?” Now his kiss tasted of violence, of desperation, nearly of punishment.

  Her own fears sprang hot to her throat, taunting her to fight him, to reject the anger. But she offered no struggle, took the heat, the rough hands until he drew back and stared at her out of stormy eyes.

  She took a steadying breath, waited until she was sure her voice would be strong and sure. “It’s one answer. Yes, I want you.” Slowly she unfastened the buttons running down the front of her dress. “I want you to touch me, to take me.” Parted the material, let it slide to the floor so that she stood before him defenseless and naked. “Where you like, when you like, how you like.”

  He kept his eyes on hers. “You said that to me before, once before.”

  Emotions swirling, she closed her eyes, then opened them again. And smiled. “I did. A thousand years ago. More or less.”

  He remembered. She had stood facing him, flowers blooming at her feet. And she had undraped herself so that the pearly light had gleamed on her skin. She had offered herself without restrictions. He’d lost himself in her, flowers crushed and fragrant under their eager bodies.

  He shook his head, and the image faded away. Memory or imagination, it no longer mattered. He knew only one vital thing. “This is now. This is you and me. Nothing else touches it. Whatever happened or didn’t happen before, this is for us.”

  He scooped her into his arms. “That’s the way I want it,” he stated.

  She stared at him, for she was spellbound now. She’d thought he would simply take her where they stood, seekin
g release, even oblivion. She’d tasted the sharp edge of his passion, felt the violence simmering under his skin. Instead, he carried her in his arms as if she were something he could cherish.

  And when he laid her on the bed, stepped back to look at her, she felt a flush warm her cheeks. She managed a quick smile. “You’ll be needing your clothes off,” she said, tried to laugh and sit up, but he touched a hand to her shoulder.

  “I’ll do it. Lie back, Bryna. I want to see you with your hair burning over the pillows, and the sun on your skin.” He would photograph her like this, he realized. Would be compelled to see if he could capture the magic of it, of her—long limbs, slender curves, eyes full of needs and nerves.

  He watched her as he undressed, and his voice was quiet and serious when he spoke. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “I wasn’t. I didn’t expect to be.” But her heart was fluttering like bird’s wings. “I suppose I am, yes. A little. Because it means…everything.”

  He tossed his clothes toward the little chair, never taking his eyes from hers. “I don’t know what I believe, what I can accept. Except one thing.” He lowered himself to her, kept his mouth a whisper from hers. “This matters. Here. Now. You. It matters.”

  “Love me.” She drew his mouth down to hers. “I’ve ached for you so long.”

  It was slow and testing and sweet. Sighs and secrets, tastes and textures. He knew how her mouth would fit against his, knew the erotic slide of her tongue, the suggestive arch of her hips. He swallowed each catchy breath as he took his hands slowly, so slowly over her. Skimming curves, warming flesh. He filled his hands with her breasts, then his mouth, teasing her nipples with tongue and teeth until she groaned out his name like a prayer.

  She took her hands over him, testing those muscles, tracing the small scars. Not a warrior’s body, but a man’s, she thought. And for now, hers. Her heart beat slow and thick as he used his mouth on her with a patience and concentration she knew now she’d been foolish not to expect.