Faerie Fate

by Silver James

  The little clock she’d received as a present on her twenty-fifth birthday whirred and chimed the time. One small, tinkling chime. Two. Finally, twelve in all. Midnight between March twentieth and March twenty-first. The vernal equinox. The day when light and dark, good and evil, love and hate all balanced on the finely tuned axis of mother earth.

  Voices, strange with lilting accents, whispered somewhere in the darkness of her dream.

  ****

  “She sleeps,” said a soft voice, feminine, one Becca didn’t recognize.

  “Aye,” said the second voice. This one was deep, male, arrogant.

  “Will she remember?”

  “Nay, she’ll not.”

  “How then will she know what to do?”

  “She’ll know.” He sounded confident.

  “What of him?”

  “Aye, he’ll definitely know now. He should have known the last time, but she was too afraid, and he was too full of himself.”

  “What is so different this time?” She was skeptical.

  “She was young then, not matched well to him. Now, she’s no young soul. She’s had all those lives without him, the lonely nights, and the ache in her heart for all time. This time, she has courage born in the fires of suffering. She’ll know not to run from him, but to him.”

  “You’re sure with the knowing of it this time?”

  “Aye.”

  “And, if it doesn’t work?”

  “Ciaran dies. Again.”

  A sharp intake of breath came from the woman. “That cannot happen. Too much went wrong the first time.”

  Praise for Silver James...

  “Captivating, Timeless and Passionate! FAERIE FATE crosses the boundaries of time and faerie law to reunite two souls in the sacred binding of love. Silver James is a writer to watch!”

  ~Jennifer Lyon, author of Blood Magic, Book 1 in the Wing-Slayer Hunter Series (Ballentine)

  “In FAERIE FATE Silver James delivers non-stop action and a strong, funny heroine in this time-travel historical. Rebecca finds love lasting through the ages, immortals toying with human lives, and the strength to defy even the Old Ones to get back to her only mate, the one she is bound to for eternity...”

  ~Carol Shenold, author of the Tali Cates series, Eternal Press

  “One stand-out story which belongs in a ‘best of the year’ anthology, is Silver James’ [writing as Penny James] CAFÉ MIDNIGHT—a fable where a police officer is helped out in his detecting of a crime by Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade, Holmes and Watson, and Charlie Chan. Asta, Nick and Nora Charles all have walk-ons. It’s affectionate, uncontrived and very well-written...”

  ~Andi Shechter, About.com Guide to Mysteries

  Faerie Fate

  by

  Silver James

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Faerie Fate

  COPYRIGHT Ó 2009 by Silver James

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

  Cover Art by Rae Monet

  The Wild Rose Press

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0706

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Faery Rose Edition, 2010

  Print ISBN 1-60154-685-8

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  One of the things a writer dreams about (this one, anyway) is dedicating her book to those who helped along the way. I have so many to thank:

  My loving husband and daughter (I promise to buy y’all enough “unmentionables” to make up for lack of laundry services when I’m writing); my oldest, bestest friend, Toy, who first read this book and loved it; my best friend, Justin, for cheers and tech help, despite disliking the genre; my family and friends, Stacie, Kelly, Kier (no relation to the hero of Faerie Fate), Cheri and Jeff, and my critique partner, Amanda, who all kept the faith even when mine flagged.

  I can’t leave out my editor, Frances Sevilla. I also want to thank my own personal Irish leprechaun, Paul, for his help with the language and the setting and for his friendship.

  Most of all, I want to thank my dad for giving me a love of books and encouraging me to dream and use my imagination. I know he’s smiling as he watches me from Tir Nan Óg.

  Prologue

  She woke up groggy from a fitful sleep. Bracing for the throbbing ache sure to follow, she stretched her legs, desperate to ease cramped muscles without inducing the agonizing pain that caused those cramps. Rebecca was all too familiar with pain. She groaned aloud as a shooting star shot up the inside of her thigh and into her back, branding skin and muscle with white-hot heat as it traveled.

  Taking a deep breath, she glanced at her watch. It was only six o’clock and still dark outside. She was so tired of not sleeping well. When was the last time she’d slept through the night undisturbed by nightmares or pain? Had it been twenty-five years?

  Rebecca tossed her head from side to side on her pillow. She clamped her lips shut, trapping the groan welling up to join the tears spilling down her cheeks. Crying didn’t help. She’d never found solace in them yet she couldn’t stop. Today was March twenty-first, her fiftieth birthday. Half a century, and half of that had already passed her by. Her body felt a hundred. Her mind begged to feel twenty-five again, to be young enough, fit enough, to experience the passion and pangs of first love. Twenty-five years ago to the day, she’d been turned into an old woman overnight.

  When the spasms started, she practiced her deep breathing technique to get through them. The familiar routine would see her into the next period of calm. God, she was only fifty. Women in their sixties and seventies had a better quality of life than she did. She was tired—tired of the pain, tired of the loneliness, tired of not being able to live life as she wanted. There was an alternative, one she’d considered several times, but she was too stubborn to succumb to its dark lure. Death was forever.

  Rebecca punched her pillow to fluff it. Twisting and turning to find a comfortable position, she sought ever-illusive sleep once again. She wanted to sleep until noon. She wanted to sleep forever, but right now, her body insisted on attention. After a struggle, she made it to the bathroom.

  When she’d finished, she leaned against the lavatory, panting as she stared at the face in the mirror. Somewhere in there had to be the twenty-five-year-old who had been so full of life. Her dull gray hair no longer glistened with gold and silver highlights. Skin once softly kissed by the sun now looked like crumpled parchment. The lines etched across her forehead and around her mouth spoke of the pain she’d endured. Scars crisscrossed her chest and arms, as they did her whole body. She’d been an athlete and fought back, willing her body to regain the muscle tone it once enjoyed. As strong as her will was, the pain was stronger. Year after year, it beat her down. She’d had no family left by then. No husband or lover to comfort her and one by one her friends dropped by the wayside, unwilling or unable to watch her decline.

  For the past ten years, she’d been utterly alone but for the procession of home health aides who came once a day to help out for an hour or three or five. Rebecca despised herself. She’d planned to do so much with her life before her body betrayed her. Turning from the mirror, she stumbled back to bed, each step excruciating. Gratefully, she sank onto the bed and pulled her legs under
the covers. She started her deep breathing, waiting for the pain that would come. When it hit, she was surprised. This time, the bone-jarring ache was relatively mild. She glanced at her watch again, then shook her wrist. The watch still showed six o’clock. “Guess I need a new battery,” she mumbled, closing her eyes, praying sleep would come.

  Out in the living room, though, time ticked off by seconds. The little clock she’d received as a present on her twenty-fifth birthday whirred and chimed the time. One small, tinkling chime. Two. Finally, twelve in all. Midnight between March twentieth and March twenty-first. The vernal equinox. The day when light and dark, good and evil, love and hate all balanced on the finely tuned axis of mother earth.

  Voices, strange with lilting accents, whispered somewhere in the darkness of her dream.

  ****

  “She sleeps,” said a soft voice, feminine, one Becca didn’t recognize.

  “Aye,” said the second voice. This one was deep, male, arrogant.

  “Will she remember?”

  “Nay, she’ll not.”

  “How then will she know what to do?”

  “She’ll know.” He sounded confident.

  “What of him?”

  “Aye, he’ll definitely know now. He should have known the last time, but she was too afraid, and he was too full of himself.”

  “What is so different this time?” She was skeptical.

  “She was young then, not matched well to him. Now, she’s no young soul. She’s had all those lives without him, the lonely nights, and the ache in her heart for all time. This time, she has courage born in the fires of suffering. She’ll know not to run from him, but to him.”

  “You’re sure with the knowing of it this time?”

  “Aye.”

  “And, if it doesn’t work?”

  “Ciaran dies. Again.”

  A sharp intake of breath came from the woman. “That cannot happen. Too much went wrong the first time.”

  ****

  Fear numbed her whole body, her heart pumping madly as she struggled to breathe. When she opened her eyes, a whirling kaleidoscope of light and dark and fantastic colors swirled and danced around her. Her stomach churned.

  “No!” she screamed. The car turned over and over, as jagged glass sliced her skin, and crumpled metal gouged her body. “No,” she whispered, knowing if she survived the horrific crash, her life would be changed again, this time for eternity.

  ****

  He bolted up, sweat seeping from every pore in his body. Fear. The emotion tasted cold and coppery in his mouth. He pushed his hair back from his face and took a long, shuddering breath. He needed to remember this dream that left his heart hammering and his lungs gasping for air. Ciaran drew a deep breath to steady his nerves. When he looked up, Niall, the captain of his guard, stood in the doorway staring at him.

  The older man’s brow knitted with worry, but he tried not to let it show. “The dream again?” Niall already knew the answer. These past few nights passed fitfully for his Taoiseac. He would consult his wife the next time he saw her. She was gifted with the sight. Mayhap, she could divine what haunted his young chief.

  Ciaran got up and paced, his restless energy propelling him around the room like a stalking wolf looking for prey. “I remember naught of it, Niall, but for the crushing pain and fear.” He turned stricken eyes to his old mentor. “Not mine, though. Hers.” His hollow voice whispered with echoes from the grave.

  Niall rocked back on his heels. This man he’d watched grow from a gangly lad into a warrior prince, the Black Wolf of Connaught, never spoke of the fairer sex, never even noticed the dreamy sighs and covetous glances he left in his wake. There wasn’t a cailín in the castle or village, nor probably anywhere in the entire land of Eire, who wouldn’t give him a rousing tussle in the hay. Tall, Ciaran stood more than a head above even the tallest soldier in the ranks. His long hair, black as a raven’s wing, glinted with the same magical indigo lights in the sun. As cold and mysterious as the sea, Ciaran’s blue eyes changed from storm-tossed to sun-glistened in a heartbeat. Broad-shouldered, long-legged, the man was a warrior, stronger than any in his army.

  “Hers?” Niall kept his voice strictly neutral.

  “Yee heard me. Hers!” Ciaran shouted. “Though I have no knowin’ of who she is. She’s hurt, Niall, in great pain and lost somewhere in the dark, in a place so baleful that the sun refuses to shine. I don’t know how to get to her!” This last admission erupted from his anguished soul.

  A cold shiver ran down Niall’s back. He had to seek out his wife now. She would have the knowing of it, and if she didn’t, she could ask the old Druid who lived in the woods behind her cottage. Niall knew Siobhan took food and drink to the old man, as well as blankets and cast-off clothing. He’d followed her once, making sure she was safe while he watched the two of them from his hiding place in the trees. Appearing older than time, the white-haired old man gazed up at Siobhan with the doting eyes of a father.

  Niall had never seen Ciaran so agitated. Even on the eve of their biggest battles, this man was the calm eye of the storm. Now, he stalked to one end of his chamber and back again. Over and over, he paced. He was a caged wolf—an angry, dangerous wolf, black as the night itself. “Who is she?” he snarled at his second in command. “Why does she haunt me?”

  “Peace, Ciaran,” Niall soothed. “I dunno who the cailín may be. If you will allow, let me go to Siobhan. Mayhaps, she can divine the meaning of your dreams.”

  “Go, Niall.” Ciaran groaned and rubbed his temples. “Go now and bring her to me.”

  Niall turned on his heel and fled down the hall to the stairs. Never had he heard Ciaran’s voice filled with such despair. He clamored through the great hall, issuing orders on the run. Men roused from deep slumber, spurred by the harsh tones of his shouts. One scrambled to his feet, belting on his sword and scurrying up the stairs where he took a post outside Ciaran’s door. Another darted out the massive oaken doors ahead of him, already shouting for the fastest horse to be saddled.

  Niall waited in the courtyard for his horse and turned his face up to the full moon. He sniffed the air. The stars and moon put the time at just after midnight. Alban Eiler, the vernal equinox. A shooting star blazed across the sky. He sighed, afraid naught but evil could come from this night. The portents worried him. He was thankful to be going to his Siobhan. She’d have the knowing of what to do.

  Chapter One

  Rebecca awoke to unfamiliar pain. Battered from head to toe, her muscles ached, but the shooting stars of branding heat were sated for the time being. She reached deep inside searching for the memories that allowed her to float on top of the pain. Experience, the harshest of teachers, taught her to drift along rather than struggle. No matter how tenaciously she fought, nothing held the pain at bay. She remembered summers spent in the high mountains of Colorado on her grandfather’s ranch, riding madly across a meadow, her bare legs caressing the sleek sides of her horse as she rode bareback.

  “Ah, colleen,” her grandfather teased her, shaking his head in mock despair. “You’re nothing but a wild Comanche.” Yet his eyes glowed with pride as he watched. She’d never met the horse she couldn’t ride, or one she couldn’t sweet-talk out of a bad temper. Rebecca had loved those long ago summers.

  She shivered. She’d never felt so cold, except for that one time so many years ago, and she didn’t want to think about the accident. Her brain refused to move past the memory, forcing Becca to remember waking to a long moment of silence. Antifreeze dripped from the shattered radiator onto the hot motor. The drops hissed and sizzled in the frigid temperature. She’d been lucky it wasn’t gas dripping. The real temperature that night had been twenty-two degrees—a cold March night with a canopy of stars shining across the black awning of winter sky. The wind chill brought the temperature down to about twelve—survivable if one had a heavy coat or blanket and could keep moving. Rebecca couldn’t move at all. Pinned beneath three tons of crumpled steel, she couldn’t ev
en wiggle a toe.

  Now a wave of pain built down in her calf. Once again, she sought a safe memory, breathing deep to get above the pain until it crested, and she could ride it down the other side. After twenty-five years of agony, no painkiller worked without addiction, and Rebecca refused to fall into that trap. She’d kill herself before she’d let morphine or other, more powerful drugs control her. Pain already ruled her life—she would allow no other masters. The spasm passed, and she relaxed.

  Why couldn’t she get warm? Had the pilot light on the old heater blown out again? Becca groaned. Getting to the basement and back up again was a nightmare, but she couldn’t put off making the trek. She threw off the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed—only there was no bed. She lay on cold, hard ground, naked and covered only by the thin woolen blanket she’d flicked off thinking it the covers on her bed.

  Feebly, Becca found the scrap of wool and wrapped up in it. In the fetal position, she attempted to generate some body heat. Another wave of pain hit, this time squarely between her eyes. Becca screamed until blissful darkness gathered her up and sent her into oblivion.

  ****

  Niall heard the screaming and turned bleak eyes to the woman he called his wife. They’d never formally married, becoming handfasted at a long ago Lughnasadh festival and neither ever turned their back to walk away from the union. Though most of Ireland was nominally Christian, many pockets of the old Celtic traditions survived. He’d have married her in the church if she’d desired, but the handfasting was enough for his Siobhan.

  “’Tis the banshee,” he whispered. He gripped the hilt of his sword as if that mortal weapon could protect them from the infernal haunt.

  “Nay,” Siobhan spat. “’Tis a human cry, Niall, one wounded beyond feeling. You must find her and help her.”