by Leigh Kelsey
“Because you had a stake in your heart,” I repeated fiercely. I couldn’t get past it. “It went all the way through—I watched it—and then you—you bled out on the ground and I couldn’t do anything.” The dam of my tears broke. “I couldn’t do anything, and you just—died.”
Oisìn’s anger evaporated as he pulled me into his arms. “I’m sorry.”
“For dying?” I laughed, a little hysterically.
He pressed a kiss to my temple, and I could swear this was real, this moment between us. “For putting you through that. For not being stronger.” He sighed, his voice so tormented it reminded me of the first time I’d touched him, in a darkened bedroom with his self-hatred an almost physical presence in the room with us. “I didn’t die, Elara, but that stake took me out for three hours. Finn found me, brought me back to the Fair House, and removed it. As soon as it was gone, I was able to use my magic to heal myself.”
I shook my head, even as the words penetrated my grief. It was just an ordinary stake, and he was so old, so powerful…
“It will kill me, if I believe you and then I wake up and find out you’re really—gone.”
His thumb skimmed my jaw, tipping it up so I looked into his deep green eyes. I wanted, so badly, to believe him. “It would kill me, too,” he said quietly. He glanced away. “I don’t know how you coped when I was taken across the portal.”
“I didn’t.” I shrugged. “I lost my mind and went icy with rage.”
He nodded sharply as if that made perfect sense. “Yes.”
I looked at him, from the messy red hair falling across his pale, almost gaunt face, to his tormented emerald eyes, the little scar on his jaw, and the freckles under his chin. I leant forward and kissed the cluster of freckles because, dream or not, I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance again. “I love you,” I said, my heart aching again. “I should have told you when you were alive.”
He sighed, sounding more exasperated than I’d expected. “I love you too, stubborn woman.” He frowned down at me. “Can’t you feel that this is real?”
“It’s a dream, Oisìn.”
“And that automatically means it’s imaginary?”
Yes. It did. But still that hope was drumming inside my ribcage, pushing me to believe him, even if just for a minute. “If you’re real, and you’re really Oisìn, what were you going to tell me? Before they caught us?” A dream version of him couldn’t fake that, surely?
His eyes shuttered.
“What?” I pressed.
He tried to pull away from me but I just clung to him tighter. “Fine. Don’t tell me. But I’m not letting go.”
I laid my head on his chest so I could listen to his pseudo-heartbeat again, inhaling the scent of him deep into my lungs. My whole body relaxed, melting into him. As if my instincts … were telling me this was Oisìn, he was here, alive.
“I suspected once before,” he said abruptly. “That morning I came to your room to tell you Fear Doirche’s weakness. When you hugged me—I thought maybe, but I had to be wrong. You were human in life, not supernatural at all despite your grandmother’s legacy.”
This … was not what I’d expected. I frowned up at him in confusion, uneasy when he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“When you followed me across the portal and came to rescue me, I hoped, but I didn’t know for sure until three days ago, the morning before you were taken. You were never fully human—you were always half vampire.”
“And that means…” I tried to get him to meet my eyes but he wouldn’t.
Looking at the rippling grass in the distance, he said, “It means, Elara Wood, that you’re my mate.”
I jerked in his arms, startled, but his words felt right, the way it had felt right when I’d told him I was never meant to hurt him. And finally I had a word for it, for this supercharged bond between us, this feeling, this connection. Mate. That was why I’d lost it when he was hurt and taken far from me? Why the thought of him going back to Fear Doirche destroyed me? Why his death had broken me beyond repair?
But … if this was a dream—my dream—that meant it was just my subconscious speaking to me. And I hadn’t had the slightest inkling of this. Not one tiny bit.
If this turned out to be an illusion, I would never be able to put myself back together again.
Later. I would face that later. Now, I threw my arms around Oisìn’s neck and hugged him as close as possible. “How are you alive? I know that stake wasn’t old and evil but—it went into your heart.”
“It didn’t. It looked like it did, because it was meant to.”
I pulled back to frown at him, and found him finally looking at me. His eyes seared deep into the place where my soul had been, his arms around me soothing and reassuring, and I—believed it. I believed he was alive.
I kissed him like the world was ending around us. Although for me, it felt like my world had already ended and was now reforming around us. My heart beat fast and frantic as his arms tightened around my waist and he kissed me back with a fierceness that made me breathless.
If this was our last kiss, I could live with it. It was a kiss I’d never forget, probably never recover from. My knees were weak and my lips thoroughly swollen.
He caressed my bottom lip with his thumb as we finally stopped kissing. “You love me?” he asked with a giddiness that made my heart feel full to bursting.
“You’re my mate?” I threw back, grinning.
I went to kiss him again—and woke up in the cold, damp, darkness of my cell. But my smile only grew. Oisìn wasn’t dead. He was alive—and somehow, he could contact me through my dreams. I wouldn’t die here after all. I wouldn’t betray Finn and give up his weaknesses.
Hope unfurled in my chest and I clung to it.
MISTRESS’S CASTLE
I whispered my dream to Sceolan and Kwame, leaving out all the emotion and kissing.
By a few hours after I’d woken—or what I guessed to be a few hours, sometime in the night—I’d convinced myself it was real. I went back and forth, arguing in my head that it was just a dream, but the indisputable evidence was my shoulder. It was healed. Oisìn had been there, really there. He’d healed me, held me, kissed me. My mate.
Tears rolled down my cheeks but they were the good kind now, and no sobs came. “I know it was real,” I breathed. I didn’t want to say it too loudly in case any other vampire was listening.
“Normally I’d say you’re delusional,” Sceolan said with no attempt at tact, “but with the mate bond at play, it’s possible. I’ve heard of mates being able to connect spiritually, so you may be right.”
“I am,” I said, trying not to get mad. I didn’t know much about my cellmates but I knew Sceolan was brash and harsh, and that was just him. He didn’t mean any offence or insult. Kwame, on the other hand, was silent more often than he spoke, weighing his words.
“You think Oisìn survived?” Kwame asked quietly. “I admit, the idea of him being killed by an ordinary stake was disturbing. This is more logical.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “Exactly. And my shoulder isn’t dislocated anymore. It has to be real.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Sceolan sighed. I heard him moving on the other side of the wall, pacing maybe.
“It means,” I whispered, “that when I dream of him next, I can tell him where we are. And he, and Finn, and the others can come rescue us.”
“Or,” Kwame said slowly, “we could rescue ourselves. We were entertaining the idea before you arrived.”
“But we dismissed the idea because it was complete lunacy,” Sceolan spat. “Do you know where we are, Elara? We’re in the Mistress’s fucking fortress. Magic’s Ruin is crushed in these walls, built into the stone itself. There’s no way out of here. I should know—I’ve been here three years.”
My breath cut out. “Three years?” I breathed. “Sceolan, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He grunted. “I didn’t feel like talking about it. But you’
re not fucking listening. There’s no way out unless they take us out. My magic is neutralised, Kwame’s strength is gone. Whatever you had coming in here, it’ll be gone now too. Waiting for rescue isn’t a bad option, except anyone who tries to get to us will be slaughtered by the nest of vampires living in the castle above us. We’re fucked.”
My heart sank but I buoyed it, reminding myself of Oisìn, our mate connection. He could tell Finn and Allen and my mum and Sinclair every single thing I said.
“Do you know if Oisìn has ever been here?” I asked Sceolan. “Have you ever seen him?”
“What’s he look like?”
“Tall, too thin, dark red hair and bright green eyes. He’d have a sword on his back and a row of stakes around his waist.” I was picturing the warrior that marched into Saint Mary’s with me.
“That bastard,” Sceolan hissed, and I flinched. “Yes, I’ve seen him. He brought me to the fucking portal that got me here.”
My stomach dropped at the reminder of everything Oisìn had done, but he was reformed, he was different. He was mine now. And even when he hadn’t been, I knew he’d tormented himself—punished himself—for everything he did.
“That’s your fucking mate?” Sceolan spat.
“Yes,” I replied, my voice coming out dangerously even. “And be careful how you talk about him. If you try to hurt him, if you even speak about it, I can’t be sure I won’t kill you when we get out of here.”
Sceolan was silent for a second. “Shit, you’re scary sometimes,” he laughed. “I won’t touch your mate, don’t worry. If that’s Oisìn, he’s my family. I don’t hurt family.”
There was a noble promise in there, and it settled the vicious protectiveness in me. I relaxed. “So we’re in the Mistress’s castle? Does it happen to be huge, pale, and gothic by any chance?” And that thing he’d mentioned, Magic’s Ruin, crushed in the walls … I remembered the chains Fear Doirche had restrained my mum with, back at the abbey. It had to be something similar.
“Yes,” Kwame replied in a low voice.
So it was the castle I’d seen when Oisìn and I left the gatehouse through the portal on the wall. “Where did you come through? Both of you? Was it through a portal in St. Mary’s Church?”
“No,” Kwame replied. “I was put in a van and carried away from Whitby.”
“As was I,” Sceolan said.
I remembered being shoved into a car too. “So … there are two portals in this world,” I said quietly, thinking out loud. “And I bet that one is protected, if they’re using that more often. But the other… If we can get out of the castle—”
“We can’t,” Sceolan input.
“—I can get us back to Whitby.”
“You can certainly try,” Sceolan laughed bitterly. “The gods know I have. You’ll give up eventually.”
I sighed, part of me frustrated but the rest of me wanting to break through the wall to give him a big hug. He’d been here three years. “We can—” I began but cut off at the sound of footsteps thumping down the stairs at the end of the row of cells. My stomach flipped, and I pressed myself into a corner as far away from the cells as possible. I needed Finn, I wanted Allen, I wished Oisìn was here holding my hand so we could face this all together. And as a brutish vampire came into view, his nose broken in two different places and a whip coiled at his waist, I wanted Scarlett. I wanted her to protect me and reassure me and make me laugh with her remarks.
The vampire stopped in front of my cell, and Scarlett’s betrayal didn’t seem to matter so much. She was my friend, and she’d only broken my trust because the woman she loved was threatened. Not because she wanted to.
“No,” I whimpered as the man unlocked a door in the bars I hadn’t noticed and stepped inside. “Please,” I whispered, not above begging and so, so scared as his meaty hands gripped my forearms and dragged me out of what had been my prison mere seconds ago but now felt a lot like my sanctuary.
MONSTER
“Hello, Elara,” a pleasant voice said as I was pushed over the threshold into a warm, cosy study in the castle above the cells. My blood went cold at the sight of Fear Doirche, all violence and cruelty hidden behind something like curiosity. His white hair was tied back and he was dressed in modern clothes: black jeans and a leather bomber jacket. It was unsettling, not because he was so old and looked merely thirty, but because he was evil and he looked normal. I wouldn’t pass him on the street and think this man is a monster who kidnaps, brainwashes, and kills innocent people.
“Sit,” he said in his paper-thin voice, gesturing at two chairs before a flickering fire in a stone fireplace. The room definitely felt like it was in a castle—the walls were made of dark grey stone and tapestries and rugs tried to keep out the cold. Even aboveground, I still felt trapped. I expected the huge man who’d carted me up three flights of stairs to shove me into a seat but when I looked around, he’d gone. A trick, I thought, to get me to feel at ease around Fear Doirche.
I sat, if only to look like I was behaving. From the corner of my eye I scanned bookcases and tables and the desk on the far wall, wishing I saw even a toothpick. I’d take a candelabra right now, and copy Scarlett’s move, but I didn’t even see that.
“Welcome to my Mistress’s castle,” he said with a smile that threatened to turn my stomach inside out. It wasn’t wicked or unpleasant—bland, normal. I hated him. I hated him so much already but I despised him even more for looking so ordinary and unremarkable and fucking pleasant when he’d made Finn’s entire existence hell, cursing his mate and then leaving her to a slow death, abducting his son, leaving Finn to search for his missing child for a thousand years, unending, never giving up. It occurred to me that I could try to kill Fear Doirche right now. I wouldn’t succeed, not without a weapon, but I could try to squeeze the air out of his worthless lungs.
“Ah,” he said with a frown. “You’re not a fan of me.”
“No,” I said icily. I couldn’t tell him Oisìn was my mate; he’d use that against both of us. Use me to lure him back the way he’d used Abriana and Rosa. He knew Oisìn was staying with us at the Fair House but he obviously didn’t know we were close. Closer than close. Good. “You had me killed and turned. You kidnapped my mother, you psychopath,” I hissed instead. I hadn’t forgotten that, and if he thought I could put it aside and play nice, he was crazy.
“I did,” he allowed, waving it aside as if it didn’t matter. “I can lie and apologise if it would make you feel better,” he offered pleasantly.
I bared my teeth and hissed.
“Or not,” he said, sighing like I was a disappointment. “I had hoped we could talk reasonably.”
“What,” I laughed, “so you could pry Finn’s secrets out of me?” His eyes flickered, anger just under the surface. Finn had told me never to provoke Fear Doirche, but right now, I really wanted to. I wanted him as unbalanced as I was, as uneasy and furious. It would get me hurt, I knew, but he was going to hurt me anyway. I pushed on. “Why are you so obsessed with him? Are you jealous? Because Finn’s kind, and strong, and handsome?” A muscle in his face ticked but his expression didn’t change.
I dug my fingernails into the upholstered arm of the chair and said, “No? Did he get all the girls while none of them gave you a second glance? Can you blame them?” I laughed. “You’re fucked up. You’re a monster.”
“And you aren’t?” he laughed coldly. “You have killed.”
“I have,” I admitted. “But I’ve never kidnapped a baby.” Shock lit his eyes. “Yeah, Finn told me about that. About all of it. Why would you do something like that? Did you wish Oisìn was yours? You did,” I said, pausing in surprise. “God, you’re so screwed up. You were obsessed with his mother, weren’t you? I bet it really hurt when she picked Finn, the better man in every way—”
One second I was speaking and the next, a cool hand was squeezing the breath from my throat, the life from my lungs. My whole body seized. “Keep talking, Elara,” he said with a sneer. “You won’t lik
e what happens.”
I managed to laugh. “All the villains say that.”
Black spots crowded my vision but I clung on, digging my nails into the smooth wood chair arm, determined not to black out. I thought of Finn holding me close, used that memory to stay conscious as Fear Doirche grabbed a fistful of my hair and used it to drag me out of the chair, releasing his grip on my neck. I sucked in mouthfuls of air, gasping, tears sliding down my face. It hurt so much, and I could already feel the bruises, but I felt powerful. I had done that—I had taken control and made him lose his.
He’d meant to play word games with me, to bat me around until I coughed up Finn’s secrets, and then he’d have hurt me. But now I’d forced his hand. And it hurt like hell, especially when he used the grip on my hair to wrench me against the hard stone wall. I cried out, pain spiking through my back and all along my skull.
“Nasty little bitch,” Fear Doirche hissed, and finally I saw his true face, every bit of evil in him exposed. “You want me to hurt you? Fine. I’ll hurt you.” He slammed my head against the wall twice until I was crying hard, screaming in pain and sliding down the stone. “But first, you are going to confess every single thing you know about Fionn Mac Cumhaill.”
I was ready to lie down and beg—until he said that. The reminder of why I needed this bit of control, why I needed him off balance. Because I couldn’t let him be in control. I couldn’t tell him anything about Finn, my Finn, my protector and my safe space. I wouldn’t. He’d taken me in, given me a home and helped me adjust to my new life—he’d helped me every step of the way to becoming the vampire I was now. He was always beside me, loving and loyal, and there was no way I was going to let him down.
Fear Doirche slammed my head against the wall again, holding me upright by my hair until I was sobbing and pleading with him to stop.
“Tell me,” he demanded, sounding crazed.
I screwed my eyes shut, tears streaming down my face and my chest hitching with every breath. I wanted Finn here. I wanted to be in his arms with his scent in my lungs, knowing I was safe.
