Enslaved by Fear

by Claire Ashgrove

  Struggling to sit upright, he squeezed his temples between thumb and middle finger. He needed a shower along with an entire bottle of Aspirin. Maybe then he’d feel somewhat normal and the bang-bang in his head would cease.

  Of all the foolish things—he couldn’t remember a time when he’d drank himself into oblivion over a woman.

  Demon.

  Woman, he relented with a sigh. He’d dreamt about her soft curves and even softer whispers all damn night to deny the truth of what Brigid was.

  Time for that shower. Before other, still-sleeping parts of his body began to throb.

  He mustered his determination and pushed to his feet. As he straightened, the oddness that dragged him from dreams hit him square in the sternum. His wards. He’d forgotten to renew his wards.

  Shit!

  No longer concerned by the hammering against his temples, his gaze jerked to the spot on the table where Nyamah’s spellbook had rested the night before. But instead of the aged leather book, he found only his bottles—framing a great gaping empty spot in the middle of the table.

  Son of a bitch—Fintan had warned him. But no, he’d let his heart get mixed up in things and handed Brigid opportunity. By now, she’d be long gone.

  Though he knew it was futile, he whipped around, searching for her at her usual spot near the window. When he found the window lifted two inches and the sheers fluttering in the breeze, guilt slammed a fist into his gut. Self-loathing jammed a subsequent fist, in rapid fire. In typical Brigid fashion, she taunted him with the evidence of his failure.

  Stupid!

  He’d been stupid and careless. To think—last night he’d believed, even for a fraction of time, that she cared for him.

  He clenched a fist at his side and ground his teeth together, uncertain what to do first. Tell Fintan? Search the property for her like some besotted fool? He knew better than to hope she’d be hanging around in the nearby woods. No, Brigid was gone.

  But looking for her delayed having to confess his error to Fintan.

  The sound of Brigid clearing her throat brought Micah’s self-directed punishment to an abrupt halt. Certain he’d imagined the sound, he stared at her open bedroom door.

  Rustling sounded from within. The mattress creaking. Something heavy hitting the floor.

  His heart kicked. Maybe he’d caught her in the act. Maybe he could stop this disaster before it played out.

  His headache completely forgotten, he vaulted over the back of the couch and jogged to her door. She’d be pissed as a viper to be thwarted in the middle of escape. He could use a good argument. It might just give him opportunity to vent his pent-up frustration from the night before. And any outlet for that nonsense would be welcome.

  But as Micah nudged the door open wider and poked his head inside, confusion drew his brow into a sharp frown. She wasn’t packing. Wasn’t hurrying around like she had flight on her mind.

  Instead, she sat in the middle of her bed with her mother’s spellbook open in her lap. The heavy sound he’d heard, evidently one of the two shoes that lay in a heap by the footboard.

  Brigid ripped a page from the book.

  A whole new panic set in. She was destroying Nyamah’s ancient words. Fintan would wring his neck! Brigid escaping would be far better than the eternal loss of the ritual. Without it, they would never overpower Drandar.

  As he opened his mouth to demand she stop, however, Brigid carefully laid the removed page in front of her, next to three others. One hand gingerly smoothed it flat. She studied it for a moment, then turned to the back of the book and tore out another page. That one she set beside the first in her line of three.

  Studying the ritual.

  Shock stole Micah’s panic and left him staring wide-eyed. She hadn’t fled, hadn’t destroyed the one thing she despised…

  Hope swelled his chest.

  Quietly, he made his way to the bed and sat down beside her. With a soft smile, he gathered her long hair in his hands, swept it away from her shoulders, and planted a lingering kiss on the back of her neck. “What does it say?” he whispered.

  Chapter Twelve

  The warm press of Micah’s lips scalded far more than they soothed. Brigid straightened like someone had applied a hot poker to her skin, and let out a breath between her teeth. Hours now, she’d poured over her mother’s writing, finally realizing that the book was bound incorrectly. The runes didn’t make concurrent sense. Trying to find logic in the ancient language had given her a doozy of a headache.

  Worse, each minute that ticked by sent the dark half of her soul into a rage. Between the fierce demand that she destroy this powerful ritual and the overwhelming awareness of Micah’s sudden presence, her ability to control her father’s blood rapidly diminished. If Micah touched her again, if he put that incredible mouth on her skin once more, she didn’t trust herself not to turn around and claw out his eyes.

  “Don’t…touch…me,” she ordered in a near whisper.

  He drew back in a flash. The mattress bounced as he shoved off the bed. “You know—the hot and cold I can do without. Either you want me, or you don’t, Brigid.”

  Want him? Had the man lost all his marbles? He knew what she was, what curse loomed over her head. Of all people, Micah should understand that her request had nothing to do with what she wanted, or how desperately she craved his touch.

  She twisted to look at him to explain. But the look of hurt on his handsome face only made her grimace. “Micah…” By the sacred ancestors, she didn’t want to cause him pain.

  “What, Brigid?”

  The sharp edge to his voice as he moved toward the door doubled Brigid’s anguish. She lifted her lashes and met his brittle blue eyes. Silently, she pled for him to understand. Prayed he would read the words in her expression that she didn’t know how to voice. In all her life, she’d never told a soul she loved them. Not her mother, her sire, nor her siblings. She didn’t know how to spit out a phrase so foreign and so damnably forbidden.

  He held her stare, questioning her with the same silence.

  She swallowed, and the noose around her throat gave a fraction. “I…don’t want you…to go.”

  Confusion erased the harshness of his frown. His gaze dipped to her shaking hands, the paper she held between her fingers. When he looked at her once more, his eyes widened, and he took a protective step back.

  He understood. Thank the stars, he understood. But then, Micah had been understanding her on levels she hadn’t been aware of for longer than she’d realized.

  Brigid let out the breath she’d been holding. Her throat relaxed. “I need you to set the wards in this room. Please. Drandar is close. He knows I have the spell.”

  Micah didn’t move, but his attention jumped to the window.

  “The sabot is tonight, Micah. Please, ward my room.”

  With a slight shake of his head, his focus returned, and he crossed to the window. Brigid turned her attention back to her mother’s writing, forcing both halves of her soul to ignore Micah’s dominant presence. How she ached to touch him. But touching him when her spirit churned like this—he’d be better served by warding himself against her.

  His voice rumbled at her side. “What else do you need, sweetheart?”

  “Herbs. Dozens.” Brigid picked up the first page and rattled off the list. “Dragonsblood, garlic, heliotrope leaves, mullein leaves, pennyroyal, peppermint, strips of birch from the tree closest to the henge.” She looked up with a tentative smile. “Most of the rest are in the garden that’s overgrown. You know what they are, right?”

  ****

  Oh, Micah knew—he also knew what collecting that list of herbs meant to the both of them. He edged his hip onto the mattress, and despite her earlier warning, tucked her hair away from her face. “Are you really going through with this?”

  It pained him just to ask. For months now he’d waited for this moment, for her to find her courage and stand against Drandar and her fears. But now that it was here…


  Blocking the hollow ache that set into his heart, he held her gaze, unwilling to hear her answer, unable to pretend the sabot would come and everything would be normal between them. It wouldn’t be. Not with her curse.

  Brigid dipped her chin and stared at her lap. Time stood still as he watched the emotion pass over her profile, the war that she battled within herself. Seconds became unbearable, harbingers to the fate he must now embrace. To the truth he couldn’t bring himself to confront.

  She lifted her gaze, and those amber eyes poured out emotion. Love, tenderness, and longing reached in to squeeze his insides into a tight vise. The fierce urge to crush her in a hug swept over him. Only her warning not to touch him, the subtle confession that she felt the calling of her sire’s dark omen, kept him from following through on the need.

  Making not touching her all that much more impossible, Brigid’s eyes misted with a fine sheen of moisture. He had to strain to hear her whisper.

  “I won’t come back, Micah. You know that.”

  Like someone had shoved a knife into his midsection, he bled. He hadn’t even considered that aspect of the ritual, the part where she must stand before the ancestors in hopes they would allow her to return as a mortal. But the moment her words registered, he knew the answer. No, she wouldn’t. She would give her life for this ritual and stand before her ancestors, forced to confront the darkness she had lived. There was no balance when it came to Brigid. No weighing her past against her possible future that could work to her advantage.

  Swallowing down a hard lump in his throat, he brushed a stray tear from her cheek. She leaned away from his touch. But her gaze held his, swimming with tender affection.

  “If I stay…you know what else will happen.”

  She would kill him. Because, somehow, somewhere in this crazy mess of things, Brigid had lost her heart. She’d fallen in love with him, every bit as much as he was in love with her. And damn it all, he’d lose her tonight, without ever saying the words.

  Not that they were necessary. She knew. He knew. They wouldn’t be sitting here with the spell, he memorizing her list of ingredients, she asking him to ward the room from Drandar, otherwise.

  Sometimes, words just made everything more painful.

  Nodding, he quietly rose to his feet. “I’ll be back in a little while.” Halfway across the room, the whisper of her voice drew him to a halt.

  “Thank you, Micah.”

  Sheer force of will allowed him to walk through the door. He bit heartache back with a grimace and refused to acknowledge the hot sting in the corners of his eyes. She shouldn’t be thanking him. He’d pushed. He’d forced her to confront the secrets of her soul.

  Damn it, he didn’t want this on his shoulders. He didn’t want to be the cause of Brigid’s death.

  If Fintan could have accepted she was different. If he hadn’t insisted Micah act as guard, if he’d chosen someone else…

  Jealousy gnawed at Micah. If Fintan had chosen someone else, another man could know the beauty Brigid seldom revealed. Another man would know the sweet heaven of her body, the immortality of her kiss.

  No. Someone else was entirely unacceptable. But goddamn, Micah had never expected to fall in love. Never imagined he could know such unending pain.

  He made his way through the castle, lost in a haze of conflicted emotion. She couldn’t exist this way. He couldn’t ask her to die.

  “Micah!” Fintan hailed from his office.

  Micah kept going, down the hall, out the rear entrance to the overgrown garden. For thirty-five years, Micah had celebrated the sabots, rejoiced with each one and anxiously awaited the next. He’d thrilled in the escalating power as the days drew nearer, savored the way his own powers increased. Now, with the high hour of Litha upon them, he despised the rising energy that washed over his skin.

  And to his shame, a small portion of his spirit despised the friend that had placed him in this mess. That Fintan had faced his own death, that he had suffered the same curse that now enveloped Brigid meant nothing. He had always held a chance of survival. His greater goods here in Scotland, aiding his plight with the ancestors.

  Fintan didn’t even hesitate over the fact he would lose his sister eternally if she embraced Nyamah’s will.

  Then again, Micah supposed Fintan wouldn’t. After all, Brigid had shown him zero empathy and had done everything in her power to keep him subjected to the curse. Bad blood flowed between them, and five hundred years of sharing the same household couldn’t forge that necessary bridge.

  Micah expelled a heavy sigh as he entered the garden. His gaze swept over the overgrown plants, the weeds that rooted in amongst the powerful herbs. In his mind’s eye, he saw another time, another place. A day three years ago when he’d stopped in to pay his neighbors a visit, and Brigid was on hands and knees, up to her eyeballs in dirt out here. Tending the one thing that could never harm her, Micah now realized.

  Funny how no one had realized her gentleness in all this time.

  No one but him.

  Clenching his teeth, he bent over a mound of peppermint that threatened to take over the garden and yanked a handful free.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As twilight settled on the castle, Micah left the garden, Brigid’s collection of plants in hand. Sgàil na Faileas, Veil of Shadows. Though Cian had named it for the secrets it disguised, the castle’s name had never felt more appropriate. As Micah walked into the cool shade, the very walls cast a thick oppressive curtain around him. Inside, the warm lighting he had once taken comfort in, held a chill that seeped into his bones.

  He made his way up the stairs to the rooms he shared with Brigid on legs that felt like lead. The plants he crushed in his hand itched like poison ivy. He wanted nothing more than to fling them to the ground and mash them beneath his toe. Render their properties useless. Make them as powerless as he felt.

  But he couldn’t. He owed it to Brigid to remain strong. To be there for her, no matter the toll on his heart or the sudden cowardice that held him in a chokehold.

  He entered their rooms to find the light on in her bedroom. The faint scent of something hearty from the kitchen lingered in the air. His gaze tracked the aroma to the kitchenette and an untouched platter of grilled salmon. Despite everything, a smile touched his mouth. In her darkest moment, she had still cooked for them.

  The scent of patchouli wafted to his nose, and he turned from the food to find Brigid exiting her bedroom. She’d showered at some point during his excursion, and her hair flowed freely about her shoulders, glinting in the low glow of sunset like wildfire. The intricate tattoos on her forehead shone deep blue in the pale light.

  She smiled, and Micah’s heart flipped over.

  “Hey. I made us dinner. Are you hungry?”

  With that simple question, Micah’s heart broke in two. He dropped the plants, crossed to her, and framed her pretty face between his palms. His mouth covered hers, nudging her lips apart. Her tongue slid against his, her hands fisted into the short hair on the crown of his head. A greedy murmur vibrated in the back of her throat, and Micah wound his arm around her waist to forbid her from ever leaving.

  His heart poured free, emotion ran unfettered. He loved this woman more than he had ever cared about anything. And in her hungry kiss he tasted the love that seeped from her soul as well.

  He couldn’t do it. No matter the danger he faced, he could not let Brigid die. If he did, he only postponed the fate her curse promised, for he would join her not long after. Maybe not by his own hand, but he’d leave an opening for the next demon he battled, a deliberate hole that would take him from the misery of a life without Brigid.

  And that fate, the horrific end that came at a demon’s hands, he never wanted to experience.

  Micah tore his mouth away as the pain of the inevitable became too much. He pressed his forehead to hers, closed his eyes against the anguish. “Go,” he whispered. “I can’t let you die when I can protect myself from you.”

  She shook h
er head. “You can’t. I’m stronger than you, Micah.”

  He didn’t care. Didn’t give a damn about her ability to overpower him. He’d risk that encounter when it arrived. Right now, he refused to say goodbye like this.

  Forcing himself to let her go, he stepped back. With one murmur, he dropped all the wards that kept her chained inside. “Just go, damn it. I won’t be responsible for your death.” He strode to the door and jerked it open. “I’ll give you an hour before I tell Fintan. That should be enough.”

  He watched the indecision pass across her face, the struggle between freedom and the fate that awaited her with the ritual.

  “Go!” he insisted.

  ****

  Everything that was malevolent inside Brigid’s soul rose up in a victorious swell at the sight of the open door. Escape! Freedom to run, to destroy, to kill and harm as she desired. No chains or conscience to reel her in.

  Her father’s energy enveloped her in a welcoming embrace. Warm and comforting, despite the chill that shriveled the last of her mother’s light. The fight had been arduous, the day too long.

  She didn’t want to die.

  Brigid cast one last look of longing at Micah and sprinted for the door. She took the stairs in double time, passed through the hallway in a blur. One hand shot out to shove the back door open, and she paused to draw in a breath of the crisp midsummer’s eve air. Power infused her blood, strength centuries of existence gave her. Might that came with the vilest of purposes.

  Footsteps sounded behind her.

  “Micah?” Fintan called out.

  A low snarl reverberated in Brigid’s throat, and she set her foot back inside the castle. Drandar couldn’t hurt her brother, but they had unfinished business between them. He needed to pay for locking her away, for dismissing her like some insignificant vermin.

  “Let him be, Fintan. He knows what time the ritual is. He promised he would help.” Beth’s voice drifted closer to the door.

  Brigid pulled herself back outside. Her brother would have to wait. But in the near future, she’d catch him when his wife wasn’t around to keep him safe.