The Dark Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  It should be her choice, his conscience prodded.

  “I’ll think on it,” he grumbled.

  And if you die before you finish thinking on it?

  Scowling, he slipped the tome into one of the clever pouches Nellie had stitched for him inside the blue robes he favored and was about to rise when he became aware of a presence in the room, standing just behind his shoulder.

  He went motionless, reaching out with his Druid senses to identify the intruder, but whoever or whatever it was that stood behind him, defied his comprehension.

  “Sit, Keltar,” a silvery, lilting voice said.

  He sat. He wasn’t certain if he’d chosen to comply, or if her voice had robbed him of will.

  As he sat tensely waiting, a woman stepped forward from the shadows behind him. Nay, a . . . och, a being. Wonderingly, he cocked his head, staring up at her. The creature was so brilliant, so lovely that he could scarce gaze upon her. She had eyes of iridescent hues, colors impossible to name. Hair of spun silver, a delicate, elfin, inhumanly beautiful face. He suddenly wondered if he’d gotten a bit of bad beef for dinner and was suffering some instability of the mind induced by poisoned digestion. Then a worse fear gripped him, one that made his head feel alarmingly light and his blood pound too fast inside his chest: mayhap ’twas his time, and this was Death, for she was certainly beautiful enough to lure any man to that great unknown that lay beyond. He could hear his own breath coming too fast and harsh, could feel his hands going curiously tingly, as if they were about to go numb. A cold sweat broke out on his skin.

  I canna die now, he thought dimly. I haven’t claimed Nellie. He wouldn’t be able to bear it, he thought, blinking enormously heavy eyelids. They might never find each other again. He might be forced to suffer a hundred lives without her. ’Twould be the purest hell!

  “Aoibheal, queen of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, bids you greeting, Keltar.”

  His vision blurred alarmingly, and his last thought before . . . er, before the stress of the moment temporarily leeched him of his wits, was relief that he wasn’t dying, and fury at himself for missing even a second of what was surely the most thrilling event in his entire life.

  The legendary Tuatha Dé Danaan had come! And what did the grand Keltar laird do?

  Fainted like a willy-nilly peahen.

  A few minutes later, Chloe was sitting on the sofa with her head between her knees, trying desperately to breathe.

  Dageus was at her feet, his hands wrapped around her calves. “Lass, let me get a paper bag, you’re hyperventilating.”

  “Don’t you”—pant-pant—“DARE”—pant-pant—“leave me!” She clutched at his shoulders.

  “I doona plan to leave you ever again, love,” he said soothingly, stroking her hair. “I’m but going to the kitchen for a bag. Try to relax, sweet.”

  Chloe nearly screamed again out of sheer frustration. Relax. As if. She needed to hold him, to kiss him, to demand to be told what in the world was going on, but she couldn’t get a deep enough breath to manage anything.

  Standing there at the door, when she’d heard his voice slicing through the darkness, she’d nearly fainted. The sword had clattered from her suddenly lifeless hands, her knees had turned to butter, and her lungs had simply stopped functioning properly. She’d thought hiccups were awful, but she’d take them over hyperventilating any day.

  And she’d cut him! There was a thin line of blood on his neck. She tried to dab at it, but he caught both her hands in one of his, pressed them gently to her lap, then began moving toward the kitchen. She craned her head sideways and watched him go. How could this be? How was he alive? Oh, God, he was alive!

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him, and twisted around, following his progress, not letting him out of her sight for a minute. He was here. He was really here. He was real. She’d touched him.

  She knew, from how ashen his face was, that her inability to get a deep breath was scaring him. It was scaring her too, so she forced herself to concentrate on unknotting inside.

  By the time he returned with the paper bag, although she was still trembling visibly, she was managing complete breaths. She stared up at him, tears of joy spilling down her cheeks.

  “How? How is this possible?” she cried, flinging herself into his arms.

  “Och, lass,” he purred, catching her in his embrace. He ducked his head and brushed his lips to hers. Once, twice, a dozen times. “I thought I’d lost you forever, Chloe,” he groaned.

  “You? So did I!”

  More frantic kisses, deep and hungry. She locked her hands behind his neck, savoring the solidity of him, the warm press of his body against hers—a thing she’d thought she would never get to feel again.

  Finally, Dageus murmured against her lips, “How did you get here, lass? How did you get back from Scotland so quickly?”

  “Quickly?” Chloe drew back and gaped at him. “Dageus, it’s been three and a half weeks since you disappeared.” Just thinking about those awful weeks was enough to make her start crying again.

  He gazed down at her, stunned. “Three and a half—ah! So that’s what the queen meant,” he exclaimed.

  “The queen? What queen? What happened? Where have you been? And why were you picking the lock? Why didn’t you just—oh!” She broke off and gazed deep into his exotic, sensual golden eyes.

  Golden.

  “Oh, Dageus,” she breathed. “They’re gone, aren’t they? You’re not just alive—you’re free, aren’t you?”

  He flashed her a dazzling smile and laughed exultantly. “Aye, lass. They’re gone. Forever. And as for picking the lock, since they’re gone, I no longer know their spells. I’m afraid my thieving days are over, lass. Will you still be having me as little more than a man? A simple Keltar Druid, naught more?”

  “Oh, I’ll have you, Dageus MacKeltar,” Chloe said fervently. “I’ll have you any way I can get you.”

  It took dozens of kisses before she was finally calm enough—and convinced enough that he was real—that she let him pull her down onto his lap on the sofa and tell her what had happened.

  When Silvan regained consciousness and stirred in his chair, the queen was sitting across from him, watching him intently.

  “You’re real,” he managed to say.

  She looked mildly amused. “It was recently drawn to my attention that perhaps we should not have left you so completely unguided. That perhaps you’d begun to think we weren’t real. I wasn’t convinced. I am now.”

  “What are you, precisely?” Silvan asked, abjectly fascinated.

  “That would be difficult to explain in your language. I could show you, but you didn’t fare so well with this form, so I think not.”

  Silvan stared at her, trying to commit every detail of her to memory.

  “Your son is free, Keltar.”

  Silvan’s heart leapt. “Dageus triumphed over the Draghar? Did he succeed in reimprisoning them?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Suffice to say, he proved himself.”

  “And he lives?” Silvan pressed. “Is he with Chloe?”

  “I gave him back to the woman who chose him as her consort. He can never return to this century. Already time has been altered more than is wise.”

  Silvan’s mouth opened and closed several times as he tried to decide what to say. Nothing remotely intelligent occurred to him, so finally he settled for a simple, “Thank you for coming to tell me this.” He was utterly flummoxed that the queen of the legendary race had bothered to come tell him.

  “I didn’t come to tell you this. You appeared weak upon awakening. I thought to increase your strength with glad tidings. We have work to do.”

  “We do?” His eyes widened.

  “There is the small matter of a broken Compact. Broken in this century on the Keltar side. It must be resealed, here and now.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “So you did take the knife from my neck,” Chloe said, sniffling and wiping her eyes with a tissue. He’d told
her everything: how the sect of the Draghar had drugged him with a potion that had made it impossible for him to control the use of magic, how he’d realized when they’d brought her in that he had only one choice left.

  As she and Drustan had both suspected, Dageus had been honorable to the last—he’d tried to kill himself. “You were going to die and leave me,” she hissed, thumping his chest with her fist. “I could almost hate you for that.” She sighed gustily, knowing she loved him for it too. His honor was an integral part of him, and she wouldn’t have him any other way.

  “Believe me, lass, ’twas the most difficult thing I’ve ever forced myself to do. Bidding you farewell nigh ripped my heart to pieces. But the alternative was releasing something that might ultimately destroy—not only the world—but you as well. Think you I didn’t suffer a thousand deaths fearing what the Draghar might do to you if I failed to die before they took me over? Verily, I never want to endure such fears again.” He ran his hands up her arms, swept them into her hair and kissed her hard and demanding, his tongue gliding deep.

  When they were both breathless, she said, “So what happened then?” She traced her fingers over his face, savoring the feel of his rough, unshaven jaw, the softness of his sinfully sensual lips. And oh—the sight of those clear, golden tiger-eyes with no shadows!

  He told her that he’d used magic to rob her of vision and hearing so she wouldn’t be forced to watch him change and die. A mere moment after he drove the knife into his heart, a man and a woman—of sorts—had appeared. The Tuatha Dé Danaan themselves.

  “The Tuatha Dé came? You actually met them?” Chloe nearly shouted.

  “Aye.” Dageus smiled at the expression of insatiable curiosity on her face. He suspected he’d be forced to repeat this portion of his story dozens of times over the next fortnight, so she could be certain she hadn’t missed a single detail. “They did something to the fallen sect members that made them disappear. I’ve no idea where they went. My chains fell away and the next thing I knew, they’d taken me somewhere . . . else. I was dimly aware that I was lying on a beach near an ocean in a place that was . . . unlike any other place I’ve ever been. The colors around me were so brilliant—”

  “What about them?” Chloe exclaimed impatiently. “What were the Tuatha Dé like?”

  “Not human, for a certainty. I suspect they truly doona look like us at all, though they choose to appear in a similar fashion. They are much as the legends describe them: tall, willowy, mesmerizing to behold. Verily, they are difficult to look at directly. Had I not been bleeding and so weak, like as not, their appearance would have fashed me far more than it did. They were immensely powerful. I could feel it in the air around them. I’d thought the ancient Druids possessed of great power, but they were mere dust motes compared to the Tuatha Dé.”

  “And? What happened?”

  “They healed me.” Dageus then explained what they’d done and why.

  The woman had identified herself as the queen of the Tuatha Dé. She’d said that, though he’d broken his oath and used the stones for personal motive, he’d absolved himself by being willing to take his own life to prevent the Prophecy from being fulfilled. She’d said that by his actions, he’d proved himself worthy of the Keltar name, and hence was being given a second chance.

  Dageus smiled wryly. “You should have seen me, Chloe-lass, lying there, believing that I was dying and never going to see you again, then realizing not only was she going to free me, but she planned to heal me and return me to you.” He paused, pondering what else had transpired, but he couldn’t think of a way to explain it because it hadn’t made full sense to him.

  He suspected it never would. There’d been a thick tension between the queen and the other Tuatha Dé, whom she’d called Adam. As he’d lain there, the queen had instructed Adam to heal him, but Adam had protested that Dageus was too near death. Adam had argued that it would cost him too much to save the mortal’s life.

  The queen replied that such was the price she was claiming due for the formal plea Adam had lodged—whatever that had meant.

  The male Tuatha Dé had not been pleased. Verily, for such an otherworldly being, he’d seemed mortally horrified by her decree.

  “What? What aren’t you telling me?” Chloe said impatiently, cupping his face with her hands.

  “Och, ’tis naught, lass. I was just thinking there were undercurrents betwixt the two Tuatha Dé that I didn’t fathom. At any rate, Adam healed me and the queen lifted the souls of the Draghar from my body and destroyed them.”

  Chloe sighed happily. “Is that when she closed the stones?”

  “Aye. She said she’d reconsidered and decided the power to move through time was not one man should yet possess.”

  “So why did it take you so long to get back here?”

  “Chloe-love, for me, but a few hours have passed since that moment in the catacombs. Only when you told me that it’s been nearly a month, did I understand what the queen meant when she said that time didn’t pass the same way in our realms.”

  “So that part of the legend is true too!” Chloe exclaimed. “The ancient tales claim that a single year in the Tuatha Dé’s realm is roughly a century in the mortal world.”

  “Aye. Theirs is a different dimension.” He paused, staring down at her with a troubled gaze. He took in the sight of her swollen eyes, her reddened nose. “Och, lass, you’ve been grieving me for a long time,” he said sadly. “I wouldn’t have had such a thing happen. What did you do?”

  “I waited with Gwen and Drustan and—oh! We have to call them!” She tried to squirm from his lap for the phone, but he tightened his arms around her, refusing to let her go.

  “Anon, love. I’m so sorry you suffered. If I’d known—”

  “If you’d known, what? If this is what had to happen so I could have you back, I don’t have a single regret. It’s okay. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

  “I could,” Dageus said quietly.

  Chloe blinked, looking confused and a bit wounded.

  Dageus kissed her tenderly. “I’ve been wanting to ask you this for so long, but I feared I may not have a future to promise you. I do now. Will you marry me, Chloe-lass? Here, at this moment, in the Druid way?”

  And so commenced one of the most thrilling hours of Silvan MacKeltar’s life. He sat across from the queen of the Tuatha Dé Danaan and renegotiated terms. It was fascinating; it was frustrating because she would tell him nothing of herself; it was exhilarating. She was clever, and immensely powerful, tenfold what he’d sensed in the Draghar.

  There was no need to ask that the power of the stones be removed from their duties, for he’d felt them close shortly after Dageus had left. The ancient circle of stones had felt abruptly dead. Void of energy, left with a mere brush of presence that made them seem slightly more there than the surrounding landscape. When he inquired about it, she merely said that she’d reconsidered the Keltar’s duties.

  They squabbled a bit—he squabbled with the queen!—over a few minor points. Mostly because it was rather like a game of chess and finessing for the advantage was as much a part of her nature as it was his.

  Gold was required, the amount unimportant, the queen told him, as it was simply a token, to be melted and added to the original Compact. Naught else was at hand, so he pledged the ring Nellie had given him on their wedding day.

  Though she’d steadfastly refused to answer any of his questions about their race, she advised him that henceforth she would personally attend one Keltar in every generation so they would never lose sight of their place in things again.

  And so The Compact was pledged anew and the responsibility of the stones was bid a grateful farewell, to be suffered again only on the day—and Silvan hoped it would not come for a very, very long time—that man discovered such dangerous secrets on his own.

  When all was done and the queen had vanished, Silvan went in search of Nellie.

  He
had so much to tell her, yet first, there was an entirely different matter weighing heavily on his mind. In that moment he’d thought he was dying, he’d realized what a fool he’d been. He had to try. He had to at least offer, and let Nellie choose whether or not she wanted him forever.

  He found her in their bedchamber, fluffing the pillows, preparing for bed. In his eyes, there was no woman more beautiful. In his heart, there was none more perfect.

  “Nellie,” he said softly.

  She glanced up and smiled. It was a smile that said she loved him, a smile that beckoned him to join her in their bed.

  Hurrying to her side, he plucked the pillow from her hand and tossed aside. He wanted her full attention.

  And now that he had it, he found himself unaccountably nervous. He cleared his throat. He’d prepared, he’d rehearsed a dozen times what he was going to say, but now that the moment had come, now that he was gazing into her lovely eyes, it all seemed to have fled his mind. He ended up beginning rather badly.

  “I’m going to die before you,” he said flatly.

  Nell gave a little snort of laughter and patted him reassuringly. “Och, Silvan, where do ye come up with yer—”

  “Hush.” He laid a gentle finger against her lips and kept it there.

  Her eyes widened and she gazed at him inquiringly.

  “The odds that I will die before you, Nellie, are significant. I would not have you grieve me. I ne’er offered my first wife the binding vows because she was not my mate, and I knew it. I ne’er offered them to you because you are my mate, and I knew it.” He paused, searching for the right words. Her eyes were huge and round and she’d gone very still.

  “That is without a doubt the most discombobulated bit of logic ye’ve e’er spouted, Silvan,” she finally whispered against his finger.

  “I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you alone, bound to me.”

  She took his finger from her lips and slipped her hand into his. “I could bear any number of years, Silvan, if I know we’ll meet again.”