Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  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.

  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 onc
e 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.

  “J’adoube,” she whispered. I touch. I adjust.

  Seven times now she’d prevented the extinction of the purest and most potent of the Druid lines.

  And positioned the five most powerful Druids that had ever lived precisely where she wanted them. Where they could ally her.

  Where they could save her.

  There was Dageus, possessing far more knowledge than any one Druid should have: all the knowledge of the Draghar, the thirteen ancients. The memories she’d left in him were doing things to him he wasn’t admitting. Not to Drustan, not to his mate.

  There was Cian, possessing far more power than any one Druid should have: the genetic fluke, the unexpected mutation born once in a bloodline. The things Dageus and Cian could do together if they put their minds to it worried even her.

  Then there was Drustan: compared to his dangerously endowed kin, modest of power, modest of knowledge, yet superior in a way they could never be. Dageus and Cian could go either way, good or evil. Drustan MacKeltar was that unique kind of man whose name lived forever in legends of men—a warrior so pure of heart that he was beyond corrupting. A man who would die for his beliefs, not just once but ten thousand times over if necessary.

  As for her other two chosen, she would be seeing them soon.

  Below her, in Castle Keltar’s great hall, the humans stood talking, oblivious to her presence. Blissfully unaware that a little over five years in their future, their world was in chaos, the walls between Man and Faery were down, and the Unseelie ruled with an icy, brutal hand. The Shades were feeding again, the Hunters were enforcing compliance, calling death sentences for the slightest infraction, and the exquisite Unseelie Princes were indulging their insatiable appetite for mortal women, brutally raping, leaving mindless shells.

  And she?

  Ah, that was the problem.

  Her gaze shifted inward from the tableau below.

  Though her race could move at will through the past, they could not penetrate a future that had not yet occurred. If one attempted to go forward beyond one’s present existence, one encountered an oppressive white mist, nothing more. If one went too far back in the past, one encountered the same mist. Not even the Tuatha Dé Danaan understood time. They knew how to traverse only the simplest facet of it.

  She’d sifted back countless times now, from five and a half years in Earth’s future—her present—delicately altering events while trying not to change too much. Concealing from all, even those of her own court, that she was temporally displaced while doing it. Worlds were fragile; one could destroy an entire planet inadvertently. She already carried the weight of such an error. It was a heavy burden. As did her long-ago consort, though the unfathomably ancient Dark King cared nothing about the blood of billions.

  She’d been alive for over sixty thousand years. Many of her kind wearied of existence long before that.

  Not she. She had no wish to cease. Though the loss of Adam Black to his mortal mate grieved her, and she’d considered undoing that as well, she’d learned that there was a human element that was highly dangerous to meddle with. Love’s power was violently unpredictable; it affected events in ways her Tuatha Dé mind had failed to anticipate on more than one occasion.

  She could not hope to predict what she could not understand. There were times when she suspected human love harbored a power more elemental and greater than any her race possessed. It infused things with strength in impossible excess of the sum of its parts. Indeed, it had been the matching of each Keltar below with his mate that had tempered them, given them cores of steel, and made her Druids into allies worthy of a queen.

  The room below fell into a sudden hush. The silence drew her gaze back to the small group of men and women.

  Dageus, Chloe, Drustan, Gwen, and Jessica were all staring at Cian, who had a startled expression on his face and was gazing directly up at her, where she stood beyond the balustrade.

  She stiffened. Impossible! She wasn’t even truly there, but a projection of herself, concealed by countless layers of illusion, beyond an impenetrable Fae veil. Not even the most adept of Sidhe-seers would be able to isolate her formless form within the dimensional deception she’d created!

  Ah, yes, this Druid had power beyond any other.

  “What is it, Cian?” Drustan said, glancing over his shoulder in the direction Cian was looking. “Is aught amiss? Do you see something, kinsman?”

  Aoibheal stared at the Highlander, her lips tightening. She smoothed them again. Waited for him to betray her presence.

  No, no, no, it was not time yet—it could too drastically alter things—it could destroy what chance the
y had!

  She’d attained a tenuous balance of possibles at best. She needed more time.

  She held his gaze, used her human eyes to convey a mute plea. Say nothing, Keltar-mine.

  The ninth-century Highlander regarded her silently. After a moment he inclined his head in the barest nod, then turned and glanced at Drustan.

  “Nay,” he said. “ ’Tis nothing, Drustan. Nothing at all.”

  * * *

  Dear Reader:

  Though the MacKeltars tried to persuade Cian and Jessi to remain at Castle Keltar, Cian had had enough of stone walls surrounding him, and hungered for the great wide-open.

  With the aid of her contacts at the Manhattan museum at which she used to work, Chloe arranged the sale of Cian’s ninth-century, jewel-encrusted wrist cuffs and skean dubh, making Cian a wealthy man.

  After a quick trip back to the States—where Lilly St. James bestowed her ecstatic blessing upon them and insisted upon a second wedding attended by the entire extended St. James clan—Cian and Jessi set off to tour the British Isles, so he could see the future he’d missed, and she could indulge her passion for the study of the past.

  Cian used his unique “talents” to clear his wife of all blame in the matter of the missing mirror and attendant events, and Jessi plans to one day finish her PhD, but right now she’s too busy living life to worry about planning it.

  The two of them were last seen, a little bit tipsy and a whole lot in love, dancing slow and sweet to an old Scots ballad, in a tiny pub in the northern Highlands of Scotland.

  On a different note, a great many of you have written to ask whether there will be more Keltar and Fae stories in the future.

  Yes. More of both are in the works. I have no intention of ending the Highlander series for some time to come.

  Thanks to all of you for loving these Keltar Druids as much as I do.

  All my best, and happy reading!

  Karen

  * * *

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