She pulled away before he could voice the suggestion. With one dull thump of his heart, fear laced his insides together. Had he misread her? Had he, by chance, confessed love when she didn’t share the same feelings? What a bloody blind fool he was.
“I see,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
Isolde stopped beside a canopy post at the foot of her bed and gave him a sad smile. “No, you don’t see. I do love you, Angus. But there are things in my family I need to work out before I can be with you.”
Her family? He blinked. In all the years he’d known her, she’d never mentioned anything amiss with her family. Concerned, he went to her side. “Are your siblings all right?”
She nodded. “With eight of us, occasionally we have some drama. My brother Taran is in trouble with the law frequently.”
Ah, the black sheep he’d heard stories about. That made more sense. He held a vague remembrance she’d mentioned the same brother was in trouble when she left for America. Whatever he’d done this time must be significant.
“Do you need an attorney, Isolde? I know a criminal lawyer in New York.” And there was no way Isolde McLaine could afford James Mahoney’s rates for a complicated criminal case. Not even if her and her remaining siblings chimed in together.
“No, no. We’ve got things under control. I just need some…time.”
It stung to have his own words returned, but he could hardly object given his use of them the night before. That she loved him was enough. For now.
He rounded the foot of her bed and drew her to sit at his side on the mattress’s edge. As he opened his mouth to tell her she could have all the time she desired, gold glinted in the corner of his peripheral vision. He turned his head, and his gaze locked onto the charm bracelet he had given Camille years ago.
Shock hollowed out his gut. Memories flashed in front of his face—the day he had given it to her, the Christmas he’d purchased the ruby to signify Thomas’s birth, the joy she’d found when she discovered a matching pearl to represent his own birthday.
The frantic way he’d searched for the trinket she never took off after the authorities removed her body from the river.
Angus snatched the bracelet off Isolde’s nightstand. “Where did you get this?” The sharp, demanding tone of his voice cracked through the room like the lash of a whip.
Her eyes rounded like saucers. “I—”
“In the river?” Angry for reasons he couldn’t explain, he shot to his feet. “Did you find it with Thomas, while you were catching frogs? Is this why you were banging on his door?”
“Angus, it’s not what you think. I found it, yes, but—”
“You have no right to this!” He shook the bracelet then closed it in a tight fist. Accusations he knew were wrongful danced on the tip of his tongue. Scathing remarks Isolde didn’t deserve. To keep from saying more, he pivoted toward the door.
“Angus, wait!”
He kept on going, blocking her out as he blocked the erratic rhythm of his heart. He couldn’t talk now. Couldn’t listen to logic when chaos reigned in his head.
Camille’s bracelet. Just looking at it brought back all the terror he couldn’t control.
Holding it was like touching a living nightmare.
Chapter Sixteen
The air held mystique as Isolde strolled through Thornborough’s grassy field. Beneath her feet, the very ground vibrated with strength and power. All around her people gathered to celebrate Beltane, and their energies connected with the ancient ancestors, adding another undercurrent of unique life to the magical henge.
She glanced sideways at Angus, unable to temper a smile at the sound of his rich laughter. Since his unfounded outburst this morning, he’d been surprisingly pleasant. Richly attentive to both herself and Thomas. As if he sought to make amends for his behavior through action, not word.
He caught her gaze, green eyes bright with happiness and conveying intimate secrets that sent heat surging to her cheeks. Caught off guard by the unexpected familiarity, she dipped her head to hide behind her hair. He caught her hand in his. Soft warm laughter rumbled in his chest, and he laced their fingers together.
“Your secrets are safe with me,” he murmured at her ear.
Hardly. His reaction to what she really was would likely make this morning’s tirade seem as effectual as a breeze paired to a hurricane. Nevertheless, the remark made her heart flutter. She gave his fingers a squeeze.
“Father!” Thomas pulled on Angus’s pocket. “Look! They’re painting faces over there.” He thrust a spindly arm toward the rise of a hill where a group of Pict reinactors strove to recreate the bold blue and white designs of war. “I want mine done. May I? Trenton and his mother are over there.”
“Of course.” Angus released Isolde’s hand to pass Thomas a handful of bills. “You go on, we’ll be along shortly.”
Thomas accepted the money with a beaming smile, then skipped across the grass to join his young friend. Isolde watched him go, enchanted by the glimpse of youthful innocence. It didn’t matter that the face paintings were poor resemblances of what the fearful Picts had once been known for. It didn’t matter that behind her, the troupe of musicians had incorporated styles from several centuries after the reign of the Celts. Her heart soared just seeing Thomas as he should be—happy, oblivious to the world around him, unaffected by the terrors of dreams he wouldn’t share.
Her gaze skipped across the rise of dirt where Thomas gave Trenton a high-five, to the skeleton of twisted branches and tree trunks that would be set afire in a few short moments.
As she focused on the heap of dried bark, all the contentedness flowing through her veins turned to instantaneous ice. Foreboding slid down her spine. The dark half of her spirit awakened in recognition. At the same time, her lighter half rose with a lion’s ferocity. Pain sliced through her at the violent push-pull of conflicted emotion, and Isolde choked down a gasp.
Drandar was here. Every vile, horrific particle of his being loomed in this glade.
“Let’s sit a minute.”
Caught off guard by her sire’s sudden presence, Isolde barely recognized the sound of Angus’s voice. She felt her head bob in agreement, but the conflict raging inside her warred so strongly, it was as if she witnessed the scene from afar.
“Isolde?”
Angus tugged on her hand, pulling her away from the torment of her soul, grounding her in the here and now. She shook her head to clear away the haze clouding her mind, and realized she hadn’t moved. With an unsteady laugh, she fell into step alongside him, following to a crude bench of stacked stone. “Sorry. I was in my head.”
Drandar, here. She’d known he would be. But she hadn’t expected him to be so strong. So physical. Nor so close to Thomas.
As she sat beside Angus, she kept her focus on Thomas. Knowledge buzzed at the base of her brain, instinctual awareness she couldn’t quite interpret. Yet she understood something would happen tonight. Something monumental that she would somehow be a part of.
“We should join Thomas, Angus.”
In a strange reversal of roles, Angus gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “He’ll be fine. Marianne will keep an eye on him, and he’s having the time of his life.”
Isolde didn’t like it. Drandar was too close. Thomas’s dreams too odd. That Drandar had yet to morph into his mortal form only spoke worse ills. He knew she was here. Knew if he left the protective boundaries of the atmosphere, he faced imminent danger. If she could kill him, she would. But until the rest of Nyamah’s spellbook was completed, she would settle for monumental damage. For whatever reason, Drandar avoided the fight.
Nevertheless, she nodded to Angus. Explaining her fears would accomplish nothing but his eternal denouncement.
More than anything, she wanted Angus to be right. Wanted this lightheartedness to stay with her, with them forever.
“That’s a handfasting, isn’t it?” Angus gestured at a small gathering beneath the shady copse of two towering elm tre
es.
“Looks that way.” Only the couple pledging their lives together stood in front of a man who dressed like a high priest of old, but who lacked any true gift of natural affinity. Their words would be legal. Sadly, they’d be deprived of the more intimate union of spirit, ancestral blessings, and sacred rite. The woman at his side acting as assistant, however…Isolde shivered. She channeled legitimate power.
“A handfasting is marriage?”
“Not always.” Isolde pulled her gaze away from the strange woman beneath the grove and smiled at Angus. The breeze tousled his hair, making it difficult to resist the urge to push her fingers through those thick dark locks. “I’ve participated in handfastings that were soulful promises and had nothing to do with what you’d consider marriage. They can be private, spiritual commitments not just a legally binding ceremony.”
“I read something similar to that this morning.”
Isolde tipped her head in surprise. “Really?”
A slow sensual smile spread over Angus’s mouth as he shifted his weight to one hand and reached inside his trouser’s pocket. When he withdrew his hand, he held a closed fist over her palm. “Open your fingers.”
Grinning, Isolde did as requested. “What are you up to?”
He bounced her wrist in his other hand. “C’mon. Open up.”
As she unfolded her fingers, she caught a glimpse of a man approaching the mountain of kindling behind Angus. In his hand, he carried a fiery torch. Metal touched her palm, jarring her away from the figure on the hillside, and as she looked in her hand, her breath caught. Angus pressed the charm bracelet against her skin. His fingers slowly closed hers around the troublesome trinket.
“I gave this to Camille on our wedding day,” he began quietly. His eyes held Isolde’s, unblinking, brimming with sentiment. “She never took it off. When I found her, it was missing. I thought it had washed down the river.”
Isolde’s eyes widened a fraction. No wonder the two men had such a powerful reaction to the bracelet. Good ancestors below, she should have put two and two together long before this. “I’m sorry, Angus. I didn’t—”
“Shh.” He scolded with a smirk. His hand tightened around hers, pressing the charms deeper into her palm. “I’d like you to have it, Isolde.” He paused, his throat working in a brief swallow. When he spoke again, his voice held a hoarse edge. “And I’d like you to walk over there to those trees with me and let me make a sacred promise to you.”
As the sincerity behind his steady gaze soaked into her, tears rushed to Isolde’s eyes. Emotion thickened her voice. “A promise?”
His lips brushed hers in a feather-light caress. “That I’m no longer afraid. That I won’t be afraid again. Not with you.”
Oh, sacred elements… She swallowed hard to silence a sob. He had just offered everything her heart craved. Happiness. Bindings that they could grow and glean from. The kind of togetherness she wanted with Angus Shaw more than she had ever wanted anything in this world.
And yet…
She couldn’t give him the togetherness he wanted. Not until Drandar no longer walked this earth. The scroll spoke of this. Mentioned a handfasting specifically. It had seen this event and warned what would happen.
Behind Angus the fires roared to life, a bright beacon against the lavender twilight. That hot flare arced through Isolde, uniting both halves of her conflicted soul in recognition of the timeless rite. Her past, present, and future flashed in her mind, a vivid clash of truth and possibility. Could she? Should she?
Angus brushed a tear from her cheek. “Isolde, let me do this. Let me make things right between us. For now. For always.”
Thomas’s laughter drifted to her ears above the hum of activity and the distant roar of flames. With that vibrant sound, the fire shifted. Dark shadows merged with the radiant reds and yellows. Life that deserved no existence.
She blinked back tears to clear her vision, unwilling to see what she could no longer ignore. To Isolde’s horror, her sire drifted closer to Thomas.
Like a scream cutting through a silent night, the voices of ancient knowledge channeled into a conscious stream that filled her with understanding. The scroll didn’t warn of travesty. It promised salvation. Not for her. Not for Angus. But for Thomas. The death that would be avenged—Camille. Nyamah claimed the bracelet as proof of Drandar’s foul actions. There could be no other reason Isolde’s mother would come to possess the trinket.
Divine understanding struck with the force of lightning. Angus Shaw didn’t descend from the Selgovae. Camille had. And Thomas bore the same blood. His affinity to recognize Drandar in dreams spoke of a connection with the ancestors few amongst the descendants could claim. Thomas held power. Power Drandar desired for himself.
And as he had taken the lives of children centuries ago to enhance his faltering power then, he sought Thomas now for the same means.
She jumped to her feet. “Okay.”
Anguish lanced through her at Angus’s tender smile. He wanted to make a heartfelt promise. She, however, couldn’t accept anything less than the ultimate union between two souls. The last thing he deserved was to be misled, and when he discovered she had tricked him into a ceremony of marriage she’d lose him forever.
Still, she knew no other way. Losing Angus would be worth it, if the sacrifice of her life would keep Thomas safe.
Sniffling, she leaned in to press a soft kiss against Angus’s mouth. “Let’s hurry before the Beltane rites begin. Call Thomas.”
Chapter Seventeen
Darkness descended on the henge, the shadows fueled by the increasing dominion of Drandar’s desired. Isolde stood before the false priest, her hands joined with Angus’s, braided rope binding them together in a timeless infinity knot. At her side, Thomas pressed into her hip, his smile wavering beneath the telltale fear that increased in his bright blue eyes.
Angus shifted his weight. His gaze flickered away from her face, his own smile faltering as he glanced at the sky above. Isolde chewed on the inside of her cheek. He felt the presence as well as the rest of them. Whether he knew what it was, she couldn’t say.
As a shudder threatened to possess her, Isolde’s eyes locked with the woman at the high priest’s side. Knowledge passed between them. Sacred secrets only those with a true affinity to nature could possess. She understood what few others could—every last one of them within the henge stood in mortal danger.
“And so, with Eros and Aphrodite present, I ask of you, Angus Shaw, to recite this eternal promise that fills your heart.” The priest laid his hand atop Isolde’s and Angus’s.
“Wait,” Isolde blurted out.
Angus shot her a sharp frown.
“I’m sorry.” Ignoring the pain that cut into her thigh where Thomas’s fingers gripped hard, she nodded at the woman. “I want her to perform this.”
As Angus’s eyes widened, hot color infused the priest’s cheeks. “She is not a high priestess. She is not trained to perform a handfasting.”
Trained or not, the woman not only knew what she was doing, but exactly how to interact with the energies surrounding her. She had called the quarters. She had cleansed the glade. Each action she executed brought with it the total fulfillment of energies that chose to respond—unlike the way they ignored the man.
“She’s capable enough.”
And judging by the flash of her brown eyes, fully aware of what Isolde tried to convey in the way she refused to look away from the redhead. The lady stepped forward, in front of the priest, pushing him aside with a gentle press of her hand to his forearm. “It’s their ceremony, John. They aren’t asking for a legal clergyman.”
No, but Isolde needed the emotional ceremony. The power of a heartfelt union.
She avoided the question in the query of Angus’s lifted eyebrow and gave him a smile as the woman set her delicate hand over theirs. Instantaneous strength rippled across the surface of Isolde’s skin. Her words altered the course of the ceremony 180 degrees.
“M
ay your lives always bear witness to the vows you make today. And through the binding of the ropes around your wrists, I bind the timeless knowledge of those who walked before us, those who walk with us, and those who will yet walk at our sides. Let it guide and lead you on the path you choose together.”
She gave Angus a soft smile. “Angus, it is your true intent to make an indissoluble union beneath these trees, as is represented by the ropes around your hands?”
“It is,” he murmured.
“And you as well, Isolde, do you share the same intentions to make an indissoluble union beneath these trees, as is represented by the ropes that bind your hands?”
Isolde closed her eyes to the surge of her spirit. Her mother’s strength filled her veins, guiding her as it always had in the ways of their ancestors. In the ancient Selgovae language, she recited, “From East, sunwise round to East, let Ancient Providence allow light to forever reign, and make this promise that I foreswear, the pledge of life eternal, protect the one innocent of heart.” For Angus’s sake, she switched to English, adding, “My love for Angus Shaw will burn everlasting.”
His eyebrow quirked, plying her with silent questions. She shook her head, telling him without words that the explanation would come later. His fingers gripped hers. Emotion rushed through her heart, sending it into a wild dance.
In the next heartbeat, an oppressive force pressed down around them. Thomas shrank closer to Isolde. The clench of Angus’s hands became painful. The priestess rushed through words, and even the false leader who had stepped aside, drew back from them, eyes wide, gaze darting. Searching for what he couldn’t hope to understand, but sensed all the same.
Recitation became rote as Isolde pushed her energies toward the terrified child at her side in attempts to soothe him without the use of her hands. Each utterance that slipped off her lips made the chore of protecting Thomas that much more difficult, for with each syllable, she felt her spirit fade. Bit by bit, Nyamah’s ritual claimed her. Taking her from this world, pulling her down into the realm of the ancients in the ultimate sacrifice.
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