Marked for Death

by Claire Ashgrove

  Solène bit back a flinch. Avoiding eye-contact, she returned to her side and snuggled into his embrace. “I don’t need them.” More quietly, the subconscious thought drifted free, “I have you.”

  “Fine lot that will grant—”

  “Sleep, love.” She covered the back of his hand with hers and twined her fingers through his. With a gentle squeeze, she encouraged, “We’ll be just fine.”

  They wouldn’t though. As Taran’s body relaxed and sleep eased the comfortable grasp of his fingers, the reality struck home with Solène. She was fighting to keep Taran alive, when doing so would see them torn apart regardless.

  He can be free. He deserves to be free.

  Sound logic, reasonable, and all very true. Taran had spent an eternity suffering. He, more than any of the other McLaine siblings, deserved to know a life of freedom from the curse. But living separate lives had been impossible for them since the night they met. He would be as miserable as she. More if he knew the penalty she would pay. And as well as she knew him, she knew he would fault himself for the fate she met at Drandar’s hands.

  Unfair—the entire circumstance was unfair. Drandar should have left her drifting through the Aether, blissfully unaware.

  Biting back tears, Solène closed her eyes and gripped Taran’s hand tight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Long ebony hair danced free on the breeze as Solène turned in Taran’s arms. With the next brisk waltz step, she pressed into his body, scandalously, excruciatingly close. He inhaled her cinnamon-jasmine perfume, and the space behind his ribs laced painfully tight. Her laughter stilled his heart.

  She danced as she did everything—with her whole heart. It made no difference that the violins played in their heads or that they waltzed alone, in the confines of their own ballroom. She would have danced the same if they twirled before a king. She would not have distanced her body either.

  Taran tightened the arm at her waist and dipped his lips to the hollow of her neck and shoulder. “Are you happy with the house, love?”

  She nestled deeper into his embrace and turned expressive eyes to him. Invitation shimmered in those startling green depths. “I could be happier.”

  “Mm. Tell me how.” He didn’t need to ask. His body already responded to the low husky tone of her voice. Yet he enjoyed the game.

  Solène lifted to tiptoe, high enough her lips skimmed the side of his neck. “Love me, Taran,” she whispered.

  He slowed his steps, still guiding her across the floor, entranced by the softness of her curves. His own voice lowered. “Shall we christen our bedroom?”

  “It would take too long to reach the bed. I hunger for you now.” Her hand slipped between them to ply at the buttons on his shirt. The flutter of her fingertips provoked his muffled groan.

  His mouth descended on hers as his feet came to a halt. Her honesty broke him every time, and it carried the power of a thousand magical incantations. One word, and he was hers to command. Utterly.

  He swept her into his embrace, lowered her to the floor. But when he opened his eyes to lose himself in the affection that lit her gaze, she didn’t lay on the floor. Instead, she thrashed in their bed, perspiration dampening her brow. Muffled pleas slipped off her parted lips.

  Her fear saturated his awareness. He breathed in the vibrant tang, tasted it on his tongue.

  And down deep in his soul, something unspeakable stirred from its slumber.

  Taran reached across her fragile body and fumbled with the nightstand drawer. Like an ominous knell, it squeaked open. His fingers dipped inside to wrap around the cold steel of a deadly blade.

  Taran jerked to wakefulness. His breath rasped unevenly in the dark. Behind his ribs, his heart battered violently. He darted his gaze around the bedroom, uncertain for a moment, whether he’d been dreaming or whether he had once again committed the unthinkable.

  Solène’s hand settled over his heart. “Shh. It’s just a dream.”

  Relief poured through him. The tension in his muscles ebbed, and he sank into the soft mattress. Would this never end? How many times must he relive the sin he had committed before he would be allowed escape?

  Must he die, and lose her all over again, to know peace?

  As frustration surfaced, Solène’s mouth descended onto his. Sweet silken softness soothed the racket taking place in his chest and quieted the blare of sirens in his head. The tender catch and release of her lips grounded him in the here and now. The scent of jasmine and cinnamon assuaged the wounds that bled within his soul.

  As everything she was permeated his awareness, he lifted a hand to the back of her head. Holding her in place, parting his lips to accept the comfort she offered. Even after all this time, how she knew exactly what he needed, how she possessed the ability to communicate so much through simple caresses, still eluded him. Yet, as if the ancestors had put her in his arms for that exclusive purpose, somehow she did.

  Gradually, Solène eased the kiss to a close and rested her forearms on his chest. The rest of her body weighed gloriously into his. Her fingertips danced across his cheekbone. Sympathy reflected in her eyes. “It’s been too long since you’ve known restful sleep. What do you dream of that torments you every night?”

  He smoothed a hand down her hair. “I dream of those I’ve wronged. Of you.”

  Her thumb drifted over his lower lip, his chin, and then tender fingers cupped the side of his face. “What can I do?”

  “Mm. You already are.”

  As a tender smile drifted to her full mouth, she scooted up his body a little more and caught him in another kiss. By the sacred ancestors she couldn’t possibly imagine how desperately he clung to her unhesitating affection. She was the only saving grace in his existence, and he needed her as he needed air. His free hand slipped around her waist, drawing her more fully across his body so he could soak in the beauty of her gentle soul, her vibrant spirit, and the courage that he drew strength from. In moments like this he could forget the curse that cloaked him. He could believe they were simple man and woman, lovers who could embrace the future that waited.

  Taran’s body responded to her nearness as it always did, warming in places he didn’t know existed until she somehow touched them. The press of her bare skin stirred an even deeper hunger. A craving his dark half thrilled upon while his lighter soul drank in salvation like a wandering traveler on sun-baked desert.

  Rising bliss shattered as the door to their bedroom thumped open. “Sol—”

  Solène’s head snapped up in surprise at the same time Taran twisted his to the side. Isolde stood in the doorway, her eyes wide. She lifted a hand to cover her open mouth, and crimson color rushed to her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect…Ah…I’ll just…Ah…I’ll be in the hall.” She spun on her toe and the door settled a bit too firmly into place.

  Despite the unwelcome interruption to what had begun as a promising morning, Taran chuckled. Impishness touched the corners of Solène’s mouth, and she let out a soft giggle. “You would think, after all this time, she would know better. How many times now has she forgotten I cannot keep my hands off you?”

  Her easy laughter fed his good humor, and Taran pinched her bottom. “She expects you to have discovered better sense.”

  With a squeak, Solène rolled off him, onto her side of the bed. He pursued, pinning her in place with his thighs. His mouth hovered over her exposed breast. “I vote we keep her waiting.” Teasingly, he traced the tip of his tongue around her aroused nipple.

  Her breath caught briefly. Long lashes fluttered to her cheekbones, and pleasure softened her expression. But before Taran could close his lips around the tight bud, she pushed on his shoulder. Somberness rang in the low tone of her voice. “She probably has news about your mother’s writings.”

  At once, circumstance crashed down on Taran’s shoulders. The eve of Samhain was upon them. Tonight he either escaped his curse or embraced a dark and hellish future. One way or another, he would lose Solène again. Be it
by eternal parting with death, or by the inevitable hand of his vile curse.

  He rolled off her with a heavy sigh and sat on the edge of the mattress. Beyond the partly open window, birds greeted the morning. Sunlight danced through colorful leaves that had not yet relinquished their hold on life. The last time they’d awakened together on Samhain, they’d celebrated his birthday. The pocket watch she’d gifted him still sat on his dresser.

  “Taran.” Her hand glided down his back. “Trust in your sister.”

  He gave a short nod and bent down to retrieve his jeans. Rising, he stepped into them. Maybe, by some stroke of fate he had long ago lost faith in, Isolde could stop this madness. But though he wanted to believe, though he longed for an alternate solution, in his heart, he knew the only thing his sister could accomplish was restoring Nyamah’s spell to its original purpose. A purpose that would demand his death and subject him to the will of the ancestors.

  And the hesitating way Solène chewed on her lower lip while she quietly dressed told him she comprehended the same.

  He met her at the door. She brushed a chaste kiss across his cheek before turning the knob and exiting the room. Isolde paced the length of the faded carpeting, her hands working furious knots at her waist. Angus sat atop the topmost stair, a frown darkening his face as he watched her worry.

  She came to an abrupt stop, rushed to Solène’s side, and with a hand on the small of her back ushered her to the stair. “You must hear this, Solène.” She glanced at Taran. “Both of you.”

  “You found something?” Hating the urgency that rang in his own ears, Taran followed.

  “Yes.” She took the steps two at a time, leading them all down to the magical shop’s front room. “I’ve warded this place. For now. But he is here.”

  Even as she announced their sire’s presence, the dark foreboding pressed down on them. Taran grimaced against the pull of his vile half, breathing easier as he stepped inside the store and into his sister’s powerful wards.

  There was something to be said for the might she had inherited.

  “Angus?” Isolde moved to his side and smoothed a hand down the center of his chest. His affectionate gaze dropped to hers. “Try Dáire again?”

  “Of course.” He extracted himself from her embrace and strode outside.

  Taran leaned against the countertop where Solène had perched on the roughened wood. Her knee rested against his elbow, a casual touch he had never imagined he could need the way he presently did. His insides twisted with anticipation. His pulse tapped out a staccato beat. He fought down rising hope, but could not wrest it under control.

  “What did you learn?” Solène rushed to ask.

  Isolde drew the scroll from her oversized purse and smoothed it on the countertop at Solène’s opposite hip. Taran leaned across her knees to examine the ancient writing.

  Isolde tapped the center of the second page. “Listen to this.” She looked between Solène and Taran before reciting:

  “Seven skies guide the sun,

  A bridge for all to walk as one.

  Break the stone for truth to see,

  In moonlight from darkness be free.”

  Taran searched his sister’s face as he asked, “What does that mean? Break what stone? Find me it, and I’ll crush it into pieces if it takes me from this madness.”

  Isolde shook her head, and a sad smile drifted over her face. “Those are Drandar’s words, Taran. If there was a stone, you would play right into his wishes. You should sit.”

  Sit? Mistrusting the warning edge in Isolde’s voice, he braced his hands on the countertop behind him and hefted himself up beside Solène. Her hand glided into his, the twining of her fingers offering support. Determined to ignore the intolerable clatter behind his ribs, he gave her hand a grateful squeeze.

  “This is what Mother intended.” Isolde rolled the scroll and set it aside.

  “Seven blend with one,

  To see the wrongs undone.

  Broken veins forge lost unity.

  Beneath the harvest moon, bleed with me.”

  Taran swallowed hard. That was it then—there would be no life with Solène. He was damned to stand before the ancestors. He closed his eyes, his voice low and quiet. “So I must die.”

  “No,” Isolde murmured.

  “No?” Solène’s surprised question rang in chorus with Taran’s.

  “You must live, Taran. You cannot bleed if you are dead.”

  Flashbacks of Cian’s ritual, the only one he had witnessed from start to finish surfaced, blending with the bits and pieces he had learned of his other sibling’s sabot rites. He shook his head, confused. “Cian bled. Fintan and Beth…”

  Wisdom lightened Isolde’s eyes, giving her a strange, surreal quality, as if she carried knowledge that spanned beyond her corporeal awareness. That bright glow sent a shiver coursing down Taran’s spine. He had seen it only once before, the last time he embraced his mother.

  “Fintan was injured. Cian is the only one who bled without cause. And Cian did not fully die.”

  Taran’s brow scrunched together as he struggled for comprehension. He had seen his eldest brother fall. Watched the blood spread from a wound that had no source.

  “Miranda stopped his final death. Mother urged her to him, knowing her touch would ground him in this world. His pulse stopped, but Mother has always protected Cian.”

  He hated the reminder that their eldest sibling held their mother’s favor, but Taran bit down the bitterness.

  “Ask him, Taran, if you must. He is the only one of us who cannot tell you of the ancestors,” Isolde added quietly. “He never stood before them. Though I’m not certain he, himself, would recognize he wasn’t judged.”

  Damnation. Just more evidence that Nyamah controlled their fates as much as Drandar. Taran ground his teeth together. “So I am damned to existing.”

  Isolde shook her head, and a bright smile lit her blue eyes. “Not at all, Taran. Nyamah did not forsake you. She’s been trying to tell you this.”

  “How do you know?” A chill surged through Taran’s veins. He had told no one of Nyamah’s constant badgerings. How could his sister be aware?

  “Do you need to ask, truly?”

  No, he didn’t. One look at her, one glimpse of the ethereal beauty that had not been present the last time he stood in the same space as her, answered everything. She had inherited Nyamah’s light on birth. Now it consumed her. And with that power came awareness that originated with the ancestors.

  Sacred guardians above…he had misjudged his sister.

  As if she understood the conflicted emotion that tore at his heart, the regret for all the wrongs he had committed unto Isolde out of sheer jealousy, Solène leaned into his side and dusted her lips across his cheek. His eyes misted over, and he bowed his head to hide tears he didn’t know how to stop.

  “How?” Solène asked on his behalf.

  “Well, that’s the difficult part.” Isolde sighed and turned toward the long shelves of herbs and talismans. “Seven blend with one, broken veins forge lost unity—all of us are required. Tonight. And Dáire is in the cabin. We cannot reach him.”

  Taran grimaced a heartbeat before he let out a harsh chortle. Promised salvation, only to be thwarted by time. “Well there is always the next sabot. I can distance—”

  “I’ll go.” Strong and confident, Solène’s voice rang out. She slipped her hand from his and slid off the counter. “I can walk to him.”

  Taran’s gaze jerked to her. The distance was astronomical and she’d had little sleep. She had no business attempting something so risky. “No. It’s too dangerous.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Solène ordered her hand not to shake as she set it on Taran’s knee. It would do no good to let him know how truthful his objection was. Without her wards, her exhausted body and even more drained spirit would struggle with journeying through astral for such an extended distance.

  But she’d reached a point where Taran’s obviou
s suffering broke her. The hope in his voice, that he so desperately tried to disguise, tore her into pieces. If contacting Dáire would help him find escape, she’d risk whatever it took.

  “There’s no other option, Taran,” she insisted. “We can’t wait until the next sabot. Drandar will have—” Solène stopped, a second before she blurted out the truth that Drandar would regain strength through her. She turned pleading eyes on Taran. “Who knows what Drandar might accomplish between now and Yule.”

  He frowned at her. “I won’t have you risking yourself, Solène. It’s too dangerous.”

  Isolde cleared her throat as Angus reentered the room. “Did you reach him?”

  Angus shook his head, his expression grave. “I contacted the ranger’s outpost again. They sent a patrol up there, but the cabin is currently empty. Fire was still going in the stove, though. We’ll have to try later.”

  Solène sighed. “Later won’t help. If we wait too long, they can’t make it here, even on the family plane.”

  Shooting Solène a brief grimace, Isolde compounded Solène’s sense of urgency. “The jet is leaving in two hours. They’re waiting on Belen and Faith right now.”

  Never before more desperate to see something done her way, Solène fitted herself between Taran’s parted knees and squeezed his thighs. She held his gaze, willing him to understand, begging him to accept the one chance he had. “I’m doing this, Taran. Please don’t argue.”

  A firestorm of conflicting emotions glinted in his eyes. He bent forward, pressed his forehead to hers. The sigh he freed held the weight of centuries. “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  Aware he wouldn’t voice permission, but that he accepted what he couldn’t control, Solène brushed a kiss against his lips and stepped toward the doorway. “I’ll be in my room. If I haven’t returned in twenty minutes…” Her gaze drifted to Taran as foreboding tread upon her shoulders. “Pull me back.”

  Regret flashed in his eyes before he closed them and nodded.

  She mounted the stairs, all too aware of the heavy darkness surrounding the house. Drandar loomed around them. Waiting for an opportunity, no doubt enraged beyond all reason by her deliberate betrayal. He would come for her, in time. She only hoped he wouldn't risk the possibility that tonight's ritual might succeed as he desired and make an appearance now, with Isolde present. If Isolde damaged him before the sabot hour, he might not regain the strength he needed.