His smile faded. Unfortunately, her actions changed nothing. “Over my dead body,” he murmured. Which, as he’d always known, was the only way.
Jessi gazed up at the landing, high above the hall where, for the past two weeks, she’d slept every night unless Cian had been free to sleep in a bed with her.
Framed in the mirror, he stared down at her as she stood arm in arm with his enemy. He closed his eyes briefly, as if trying to cleanse the image from his vision. Then he said softly, “Call me out, lass. You doona wish to do this. You must let me stop him.”
Jessi glanced at the tall grandfather clock in the alcove to the left of the staircase. Five minutes to midnight.
Biting her lip, she shook her head.
“Jessica, you’re not just keeping me alive, you’re letting him live. We’ve been through this. You must summon me out.”
Spine straight with resolve, she shook her head again.
When the mirror blazed brilliantly and the hall was suddenly skewed by that odd sense of spatial distortion, for a moment Jessi simply couldn’t make sense of it.
Then Dageus stepped from the shadows behind the balustrade and she realized he must have murmured the chant to release Cian—the chant she herself had told him that first night in the library—softly enough that only Cian had been able to hear.
But why?
“Dageus—what are you—why did you—oh!” she cried. He was moving protectively toward the Dark Glass, making his intentions all too clear.
She was too stunned by Dageus’s betrayal to register the danger she was in until it was too late.
Lucan dropped a silken cord over her head and had it cinched tightly around the slender column of her throat, the choke handles twisted before she even knew what he was doing.
“You son of a bitch, let her go!” Cian roared, bursting from the mirror.
Rather than releasing her, Lucan turned the choke handles just a bit.
Jessica went stiff and still. She understood the use of those handles, she was familiar with the garrote as an ancient weapon. One twist and she was dead. She didn’t dare move even the few inches necessary to try to use the dagger Dageus had given her.
Expect anything, he’d said.
Now, she thought bitterly, she knew why.
Three minutes to midnight.
Lucan had his wife hostage, a garrote about her neck.
“Get back in the mirror, Highlander. Return to it willingly and I’ll let her live. Move. Now.”
Cian stretched his senses. He should have felt it earlier, but he’d had no reason to suspect anything. Aye, the wards barring Lucan from the castle were down.
But the wards preventing Lucan from using sorcery were still up. Which meant Cian could use a spell on the bastard and Lucan wouldn’t be able to counter it.
He opened his mouth, and just as he did, Lucan hissed, “Say one word in sorcerer’s tongue and she’s dead. I won’t give you the chance to bespell me. If I hear one wrong syllable, I’ll snap her neck.”
Cian closed his mouth, a muscle working in his jaw.
“And that goes for you too,” he barked at Dageus. “Either of you start a spell and she dies. Get back in the glass, Keltar. Now. I’m coming up to pass the tithe through.”
Centuries of hatred and fury filled Cian as he stared down at the man who’d stolen his life so long ago and was now threatening his woman.
Vengeance: ’Twas what he’d lived and breathed for for so long, he’d nearly lost his own humanity.
’Til his fiery, passionate Jessica had come along.
Once he’d hungered for nothing more than to see Lucan Trevayne dead. No matter the cost. In truth, it hadn’t been so many days ago that he’d hungered for it above all else—twenty-six days ago, to be exact.
Now, staring down at his ancient enemy holding his woman captive, something inside him changed.
He no longer cared if Lucan lived or died. All that mattered was getting the bastard’s hands off his wife long enough to save her. Nothing else. Just that his woman live. That she see another dawn, be granted another day. She was his light, his truth, his highest aspiration.
Love for her filled him so completely that, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, eleven centuries of hatred and lust for vengeance were burned out of him as if they’d never been.
Trevayne was no longer his problem. Only Jessica was.
A quiet resolve, an unexpected serenity filled him, unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
“I would have bargained with the devil for you, too, lass,” he said softly. “I’d have done anything too. I love you, Jessica. You are my one true mate, lass. Never forget that.”
“Back in the glass, Highlander,” Lucan snarled. “Or she dies. I mean it! Now!”
“You want to pass the tithe through, Lucan? Fine. Be my guest. I won’t stop you.”
In one smooth, fluid motion, he turned, lifted the mirror from the wall, spun about, and tossed it into the air, casting it end over end, out and over fifty-odd stairs, down to the hard marble floor below.
“Catch.”
For the second time in her life, events unfolded for Jessi as if in slow motion.
With Cian’s admission that she was his one true mate ringing in her ears, she watched the only thing that could keep him alive plummet to virtually certain destruction.
She knew why he’d done it. To save her. Trevayne could not both hold her and go after the mirror. Cian had forced him to choose.
Her husband knew his ancient enemy well. Of course he’d go after the mirror. Survive now, live to kill another day.
The rope slackened around her neck as Lucan released the handles and lunged forward.
She tugged the garrote from her throat and dropped it to the floor, watching, heart pounding.
If, by some miracle, Lucan managed to actually catch the man-sized looking glass, she wouldn’t be surprised if the ancient mirror shattered merely from the impact of him stopping its fall.
Eyes huge, she tipped her head back and up. Cian stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at her. Love blazed in his eyes so fiercely, so intensely, that it took her breath away.
She stared at him, drinking him in. She knew she’d never make it up the stairs in time to touch him. To hold him. To kiss him just one last time.
Lucan was almost beneath the glass.
Almost.
She caught her breath and held it. Miracles sometimes happened. Maybe he’d reach it, shove the tithe through, and they’d all live to fight another day.
Mere inches from Lucan’s outstretched hands, the mirror crashed to the floor. One corner of the ornate golden frame struck marble with the sharp report of a gunshot.
The Dark Glass shattered into thousands of silvery, tinkling pieces.
To Jessi, it seemed as if the entire universe froze but for those glittering shards of silver cascading across the floor.
Her husband’s life lay in those pieces.
When the clock began chiming the midnight hour, her pent breath exploded from her lungs on a soft sob.
One. Two.
She raised her gaze from the floor, stared up at Cian. The Dark Glass was broken now, beyond repair. The tithe could never be paid again. She’d lost him.
Three. Four.
Dimly she was aware of Lucan, frozen, looking all-too-humanly bewildered, standing next to the twisted frame, in the midst of the shattered glass.
Five. Six.
She felt the same. Bewildered. Disbelieving. Devastated. She’d begun the day with so much hope, only to end it with none.
Dimly she was aware that the other MacKeltar had, at some point, joined Dageus behind the balustrade and everyone seemed rooted to the ground, transfixed by the scene before them.
Seven. Eight.
There was a silent request in her husband’s eyes. She knew what it was.
She’d promised not to watch him die. To remember him as her man, not a prisoner of Dark Magycks.
&nbs
p; Nine.
It was a promise she’d always meant to keep. Just not this way. Dear God, just not this way. “I love you, Cian,” she cried.
Ten. Eleven.
Her promise kept was all she had left to give him.
Tears spilled down her cheeks when she squeezed her eyes shut.
Twelve.
28
It was Lucan’s laughter—after the twelfth chime—that made her eyes snap open again.
Jessi gaped blankly at the dark sorcerer who was still, mystifyingly, standing there.
Then up to the landing beyond. Her heart lodged in her throat.
Cian was still there, too!
How could that be? The glass was shattered—it was after midnight on Samhain—and the tithe hadn’t been paid.
They should both be dead!
They should be dust. Little piles of it. Why weren’t they? Not that she wanted them to be. At least not one of them.
“Oh, God,” Jessi breathed, “who cares? You’re still there! Oh, God, Cian!” Inhaling sharply, she broke into a sprint for the stairs, for her beloved, living, breathing husband!
“Jessica, love, watch out!” Cian roared.
Lucan had spun around and was heading straight for her, slipping and sliding over slivers of glass.
“Blethering hell, Cian, he’s mortal now,” Dageus roared. “Doona kill him. We need to know where the Dark Book is!”
But his warning came too late. For both of them.
As Lucan lunged for her, she slid the blade that Dageus had given her down her sleeve, into her palm.
She raised her hands to fend him off, and the blade slid into the front of Lucan’s chest at the same moment the tip of a jeweled dirk pierced through him from behind, driven straight through his heart by the force of Cian’s throw.
Then she was backpedaling away from the falling sorcerer and Cian was racing down the stairs toward her and taking her in his arms, turning her away from the gruesome sight.
She heard Dageus shouting down at Lucan, “Where’s the Dark Book, Trevayne? Blethering hell, tell us what you know of it!”
Lucan Trevayne whispered, “Fuck you, Keltar.”
And died.
“Oh, my God, you’re alive. I can’t believe you’re alive!” Jessi couldn’t seem to stop saying. Nor could she stop touching Cian, kissing him frantically, desperate to assure herself he was really there and wasn’t going to disappear, or turn to dust at any moment.
“Aye, love, I’m alive.” A string of curses spilled from his lips and he scowled down at her. “You tried to barter with the devil himself for me, you crazy woman. Bloody hell, doona you ever risk your life for mine. Ever! Do you hear me?” Burying his hands in her dark curls, he pulled her against him, slanted his mouth over hers, and kissed her hungrily.
“You would have done the same for me,” she said breathlessly when he let her breathe again. As a matter of fact, he’d said so much on the day of their wedding. Should death come anon, he’d said, ’twill be my life for yours. So what if he’d refused to let her say the same. She made identical promises in her heart. I am Given.
“Not the point,” he growled. “ ’Tis what a man does for his mate.”
His mate. Jessi stared up at him, a sudden, stunning realization dawning. “Oh! The wedding vows you said that day were the binding vows you told me about, weren’t they? You gave me the binding vows and wouldn’t let me give them back! Didn’t you?” She thumped him in the chest with her palm. “You tricked me!”
“I refused to let you be bound to a dead man, lass,” he said grimly. “Nor was I willing to miss the chance to pledge my heart to you forever. Even if it meant I would have to be reborn again and again, and serve as naught but your protector from afar, while you loved another. To ken you were alive and well would have been enough.” He paused a moment. “Not that I wouldn’t have done all in my power to steal your heart from whoever the bloody bastard was,” he added in a fierce growl. “I would have.”
Tears of joy misted her eyes and she laughed aloud. Oh, yes, she could see her ferocious Highlander doing battle for her heart. He’d easily have won it in any lifetime. “But you didn’t die, so don’t try to stop me now,” she said softly, taking his hand and putting it over her heart, pressing her palm to his. Speaking with quiet reverence, she echoed the words he’d given her that day in the chapel.
The moment the vow was said, the final pledge echoing in the stone hall, emotion crashed over her so intensely, her knees buckled. Love for him filled every ounce of her being. It was the most incredible sensation she’d ever felt. They were inextricably linked now, for all eternity. Cian caught her and crushed his mouth to hers, kissing her passionately. She clung to him, savoring the strength of his hard, powerful body against hers, the raw, carnal heat of his kiss.
“But wait a minute,” she said, frowning up at him a few minutes later, “how are you still alive? I don’t get it. What just happened?”
It was Dageus who replied. While she and Cian had been otherwise occupied, he and the other MacKeltars had hurried down the stairs and joined them in the great hall.
Now he guided them all away from the fallen sorcerer and the three couples moved to stand near one of the hearths.
“I didn’t quite tell you the truth, lass,” he said. “The truth was, we could find no way to free him. Our only hope lay in trying to void the Unseelie Indenture. The Draghar believed that, much as a Seelie Compact can be voided by an evil deed, an Unseelie Compact could be voided by a selfless act. Not broken, breached, nor violated. Voided. Both parties released from the binding and returned to their normal state.”
“Believed?” Drustan exclaimed. “You told me they knew.”
“They believed it very strongly,” Dageus amended hastily, slipping an arm around his wife and drawing her close.
“Wait a minute,” Chloe protested, “wouldn’t the fact that Cian had been willing to die to stop Lucan from getting the Dark Book have counted as a selfless act?”
“Nay,” Dageus said. “A selfless act cannot be tainted by personal motive. Cian was driven for centuries by hunger for vengeance. ’Twas in his voice every time he spoke of Lucan, of dying in order to kill him.”
Cian nodded. “Aye, ’tis true. I didn’t want to die. I never wanted to die. I wanted Lucan dead, and there was only one way I could accomplish it. Though I wanted to keep him from getting the Dark Book, I hungered for revenge even more.”
“But he was ready to die for you, Jessica,” Dageus told her softly. “ ‘Twas what I was wagering on. That he would die for you selflessly. At the moment he threw that mirror, there was no thought of vengeance in his heart at all. There was only the desperate, pure self-sacrifice of unconditional love. And it voided the dark indenture.”
“You had no way of knowing ’twould work,” Cian growled.
“You’re right. I didn’t. But I was once in a like position, kinsman.” Dageus gazed down at Chloe. “I thought it safe to wager on your feelings for your mate.”
“You shaved it damn close. Mere seconds!”
Dageus arched a brow at Cian’s rebuke. “ ‘Twas our only hope.”
“You placed my woman in danger.”
“At least you have her,” Dageus pointed out. “Christ, doona be tripping all over yourself trying to thank me for saving you, kinsman.”
“You didn’t save him,” eternal-physicist-and-human-calculator-of-odds Gwen pointed out matter-of-factly. “Not really. You just set up the circumstances. He saved himself.”
“Bloody good thing I didn’t do this for thanks,” Dageus said dryly.
“Doona be looking to me for thanks. You put us all at risk,” said Drustan.
“I’ll thank you, Dageus,” Jessi said fervently. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll thank you a hundred times a day for the rest of your life if you want me to, and I’m sorry I hated you there for a minute when I’d thought you’d betrayed me.”
Dageus nodded. “You’re welcome, lass. Though
you might have kept the hating me part to yourself.”
Chloe beamed up at her husband. “I’ll thank you too. I think you did a brilliant job of setting up circumstances, Dageus.”
He dropped a kiss on her nose. Chloe was his greatest fan, as he was hers, and would always be.
“Speaking of setting up circumstances,” Drustan said slowly, “I’ve had the oddest feeling since the two of you arrived at Castle Keltar. Verily, I’ve felt it a few times prior to your arrival too. Almost as if—nay, ’tis foolish.” He shook his head.
“What, brother?” Dageus asked.
Drustan rubbed his jaw, frowning. “ ’Tis probably naught. But I’ve been suffering the strangest feeling that there’s more going on around Castle Keltar of late than meets the eye. Has no one else been feeling this?”
“I can’t speak for Castle Keltar, Drustan, but I think I know what you mean,” Jessi said. “I’ve felt it a few times lately too. There’s been this word on the tip of my tongue since this all began. I keep getting close to it, but it’s the darnedest thing—just when I think I have it, it melts away.”
Her brow furrowed and she was silent a long moment. Then “Aha! I think I’ve got it!” she exclaimed. “Is this what you mean? Synchro—”
“—nicity,” Queen Aoibheal of the Tuatha Dé Danaan murmured, her iridescent eyes shimmering.
A collision of possibles so incalculably improbable that it would appear to imply divine intervention.
The corners of her lips lifted in a faint smile. She smoothed them. She’d been employing a mortal form so much of late that she was beginning to mimic their expressions.
Humans were forever attributing the meddling of the Fae to the divine. As well they should, for handling so many threads, subtly altering the weft and weck of the world, truly required something of the divine.
They were here now.
Her players, her pieces on the board. More than pawns, less than kings.
The catastrophe that had occurred in the seventeenth century hadn’t taken place after all, not since she’d rearranged events to get the Keltar’s underground chamber sealed. The one in the twentieth century hadn’t come to fruition either, for the same reason. Nor had the other two, though for different reasons.
The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 213
