by Kat Bastion
Brigid gasped and broke contact, flattenin’ her hand to her chest.
But her gaze clashed with his at the sound of his gasp.
The charge surprised him.
Excited him.
Taken aback by the growin’ intimacy between them, she spun away and strode a dozen paces toward the perimeter of their protective shelter. A gnarled yew tree stood just within their boundary, and she stopped under its low canopy. To catch her breath. From so verra many things.
The heat of Skorpius’s nearness pressed in from behind.
But she dinna turn. Nor did she flee.
“You like old-growth trees.” Low tones soothed over her senses, slow and sweet, like warmed honey.
But greater than the sweet, Skorpius’s bite of wild danger prickled through her, even more tantalizin’.
“Aye. The ancient ones call to me.” Brigid hovered her hands over the trunk’s rough bark. Then she leaned her weight against the mighty conifer, angled her head back, and stared up into curvin’ boughs that sprouted the slender spears of its evergreen leaves. “Trees are our kin. Strong but quiet. Earth’s silent guardians. They offer much. But take little.”
On a deep inhale to bolster her courage, she turned to face him.
Skorpius stood an arm’s length away. A respectful distance. But hot energy sparked in that gap between them. From him. From her. And it had naught at all to do with magick.
Deep comprehension shone in his otherworldly eyes. “A great example for all.”
The trees. And more. Purpose and understandin’ brightened within her. “Aye.”
On a shaky inhale, she examined his unmarred body. “You wished me to share.”
“How you healed me.”
“Aye.” Words failed to express how she’d spun the verra elements to life. How she’d known how to rebuild him from his tiniest roots, which she’d failed to see, outward to the glorious rest of him, muscles, wings, and…all. “’Twas the work of the magick.”
Unrelentin’ eyes narrowed at her. “Not magick.”
“More than magick,” she admitted. To herself. And to him.
In truth, she’d been overcome by the destruction of her magnificent angel. By her rash foolishness.
Heartbroken and angry at seein’ him torn apart over the ground, hoverin’ near death, Brigid had willed him back to life, into the glorious creature she knew.
Piercin’ eyes searched hers as he lifted a hand to her cheek. “Strong emotion.”
“Aye.” Brigid sighed. Her brow furrowed at the frustration she felt.
But then, his brow furrowed as well. To her surprise, his conflicted expression mirrored her own.
“Mayhap, there’s more to the tellin’.” Her need to confess ran deep.
Skorpius’s head tilted, confusion washin’ over his face. “There is?”
“Aye.” She drew in a steadyin’ breath. “You dinna stitch back together with ease. Once I’d woven you back to where your heart beat and your lungs expanded, you fought me.”
“Sounds about right.”
“And you…mistook me…for another.”
Skorpius’s expression fell, darkenin’. “Ah. I see.”
“You remember?”
“Some.” He gusted out a heavy sigh. “That was…another lifetime ago.”
Brigid gave a hesitant nod, then glanced over her shoulder at her satchel. Toward the bottom, where it bulged a wee bit. Where the leather-covered story of a man’s journey had been chronicled. “A human lifetime.”
When she glanced back up at him, he tore his gaze from the same bulge, from the knowin’ of what lay within. “Yes. Before I’d gone dark. Before I’d become Guardian of Time.”
“Before wings of black. Before feedin’ from the shadows.”
“Yes.”
“You were a guardian then. Her guardian.”
Skorpius gave a short nod, gaze holdin’ fast to hers. A proud male, but honest, holdin’ account for his actions. “In charge of her safety.”
“For she needed your help. Escort to safe harbor.” When he nodded again, she continued, well-versed in Arthurian legend from the bards, but also the private tellin’ of it in the pages she’d spirited away. “And then you both…fell in love.”
Skorpius’s brows furrowed. Fierceness glinted in his eyes. “Against honor and code of angelkind and humankind. In betrayal of a king, a friend.”
“But not her. You dinna betray… Guinevere.” The romantic queen had been a fable before. But the bards had regaled their clan with a tale far different than within the pages in that leather-bound book. “’Tis by your hand, the tale I’ve read.” The knowin’ of it rang true as she cast another glance at her satchel’s bulge where it lay.
“My personal account of the events, yes.”
When she glanced back at him, Skorpius’s eyes searched hers. Not in judgment of her possessin’ his book. Not upset of her knowin’ his most intimate thoughts in a past life. Nor questionin’ her ability to read at all, secreted from Clan Brodie’s kind priest who’d shared a valuable skill with a lonely lass. But with unmistakable hope that shone bright in his eyes, that she’d understand. “From the framework of a Christian world, it served as penance for the sins of a tortured man. Chronicles of mortality’s flaw: the fleeting joy of selfish love and its consequences, regret and pain.”
“Lancelot,” Brigid whispered, starin’ him straight in the eyes. For the truth of it astounded.
“Once upon a time. Long, long ago. All of it.”
The love. The heartache. The humanness. All had been written. Brigid had been profoundly touched by the depths of the sorrow that had bled onto those pages. His sorrow.
“And now?”
“I am no longer that man. No longer human. No longer capable of weakness.”
“Love,” she murmured, understandin’ his admission: his limitation. The emotion had proved a weakness for her in the past as well. A yearnin’ to be deeply connected to someone else. Even if that someone had…disappeared.
As Brigid hardened her heart anew, for both their sakes, his eyes softened.
One corner of his mouth curved up. “Perhaps. Not quite the human notion of love. But it appears”—he curved his hand and brushed the backs of his knuckles over her cheek—“I have a minor weakness I’ve recently been made aware of.”
Hope sprang warm and bright in her chest, in spite of the armorin’ of her heart. “Toward one who no longer remains mortal.” Even she sensed the world as she’d once known it had been forever altered.
Velvety wings encircled her. Sparklin’ eyes searched hers. His face lowered, hoverin’ close. “Two immortals. No human rules.”
“Mayhap, then, no weakness at all,” she whispered over his mouth, so verra close.
“Precisely,” he murmured.
The slightest brush of contact charged electric against her lips, then throughout her body. Warmth sizzled and sparked, a bonfire flarin’ to hungry life.
And then, at once, ’twas gone. A cool breeze brushed into the space as he pulled away.
A hard gaze bored deep into hers. “Have care with this, Brigid. Be certain.”
Head swirlin’ from unbelievable events that had transpired in two days’ time, heart achin’ for an angelic male she’d known for but a moment, yet had come to understand better than any soul she’d known before, she sucked in a shaky breath. Weariness tugged at her. The kind from expendin’ too much magick. And mayhap the kind from the quickened heartbeats of a lass who’d anticipated a breathtakin’ kiss.
“Aye.” She exhaled to a forced count of five. For slowin’ their romantic pace amidst all the wild adventure and danger seemed wise. “In truth, I’ll be needin’ to rest a wee bit.”
“And eat. First.”
Behind Skorpius, through a sparklin’ shadowy mist, manifested the most sumptuous feast she’d ever laid eyes upon.
Scents of cooked meats and sweet desserts made her mouth water. “Och! Such a gift.”
Skorpiu
s gestured an arm and wing toward her flattened plaid, pinned on one corner by her satchel and the others by her quiver, bow, and daggers, somehow removed from her. “Your long-awaited supper, goddess.”
A relieved exhale gusted from Brigid’s lungs. And as the heated pressure of his nearness abated, the comfortin’ glow of his protection replaced the erotic tension.
But when Skorpius’s heated gaze traveled down the length of her body, she recalled the golden gossamer gown that had manifested unto its own when she’d been immersed in healin’ magick to save him. She visualized a bolder color—a thicker less scandalous material—and wore the emerald gown once again, the verra one he’d fashioned and she’d grown to like.
But Skorpius frowned and gave a quick headshake. “I like the gold better. It suits you.”
In a flash, she reversed the action, emboldened by his honest flattery.
While she folded her legs beneath her, then swiped a finger through a favorite of hot stewed cherries, the heated fire in his gaze smoldered down into warm embers.
Skorpius moved to the opposite corner of her plaid, but before he took a seat, he glanced up at her layered protective sphere. With a narrowed gaze, he magickally burned a section of the inner shadowy layer away to cast her section of the plaid into the warmth of sunlight. The altered effect concentrated solar rays onto her, but her alone.
Two sides of the same plaid, one hot and bright from the sun, the other cast in shadow, cool and dark. Day’s energy for her, night’s magick for him.
“Do you sense any force trying to break through?” His narrowed gaze searched the horizon.
“Nay.” For the moment, their many-layered shield kept them hidden from detection.
For the next span of silent minutes, Skorpius appeared content to watch her while she consumed succulent roast pig, devoured varied soft cheeses, and sampled crusty herbed breads.
But after Brigid slowed, while she savored a spiced apple tart, she cocked her head in question at his confused expression. “What plagues you?” The personal question felt strange after all that had happened, yet not so strange at all, since he appeared unfazed by their confessions.
“You did shockingly well with your first time-travel.” He handed her a heavy wineskin.
“Leadin’ us through.” She took a few swallows of the bittersweet drink. “Aye.”
“How did you know what to do?” His brow twitched down. The mystery truly puzzled him.
“I doona know.” She licked a dusting of sugary cinnamon from her lower lip, then gave further thought on how to describe the gut feelin’. “When you’d swept me up the first time and flew toward the barrier, then through it, ’twas as if I saw an inked line on one of Iain’s maps.”
“Impossible,” he breathed. Then he shook his head. And a wee smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
She huffed out a laugh. “Into the realm of verra possible, with me.”
“Apparently. Because the only way you could’ve detected my line of travel would’ve been to have willed it yourself.”
“Mayhap, I did.”
“Describe what you thought when you led us through. Begin from the moment I took your hand.”
A heated thrill had coursed through her at that innocent touch. “I imagined this glade. But I saw the glade at first large, like now”—she gestured an arm wide around them—“then as a wee green speck”—she drew in her hand and pinched a finger and thumb together to almost touch—“as if I’d peeked through the keyhole of our larder from across the great hall, then grasped your hand, and loosed an arrow of magick from my core through the glade’s keyhole.”
“Well done.”
Growin’ weary, Brigid reclined on her side and propped a hand under her head to keep from fallin’ asleep in their protected glade. Talkin’ to Skorpius, being in the presence of one who safeguarded her, and cared enough about her to ask, caused an effect not unlike a full tankard of Iain’s mead. “Is that not how you time travel?”
“Arrowing through a keyhole?” Amusement danced in his sparklin’ blue-green eyes. “Perhaps that’s how it would seem to a master archer. Although I do visualize where and when I want to go, with my internal chronometer, it’s more precise. I lock in to the exact time and place I want before I go.”
“How is that different?”
Skorpius gave a slight headshake, the ends of his black hair swayin’. “You aimed then manifested there, by magick alone.”
“’Tis not typical?”
“Time travel is itself atypical. I’m the first, as Guardian of Time, and with an internal chronometer. Isobel is the prophesied Traveler. An apprentice of sorts to me. But she travels through time in a different way, connected to time rifts, events that need to be remedied.”
“Only us three?”
“Without practicing and mastering the dark arts? Yes.”
“Like the druids.”
Skorpius nodded, expression grave. “Yes. Druids are masters of all magicks, natural and dark. Capable of time travel with enough gathered power and the motivation to expend it.”
To steal mine.
He dinna reply. Simply stared at her.
Another thought struck, spikin’ energy through her veins, racin’ her pulse. “What of the other energy…whose presence tasted of ‘envy’?” Skorpius had held a dire expression before they’d departed the battleground with the druids. “’Twas as if you recognized that angry foreign power…”
“I did.” His wings flared as he stood. While scannin’ the perimeter of their glade, he paced. Then he cast a glance at her with a resigned expression. “You met him as the young-old man at the castle. He goes by many guises.”
She pushed upright, brows archin’ in surprise. “You know of him?” The eerie presence who not only hunted her, but had been hauntin’ her bedchamber.
“Yes.” His face hardened into an unreadable mask. “I knew him as Merlin.”
Speaking their hunter’s name, revealing what Skorpius realized he’d suspected on some level all along, had a cathartic effect.
But Brigid cast no judgment. She had no reaction to the epiphany at all. In the silent seconds that followed, she only stared at him with stark intensity, as if seeing through to his very soul.
Silvery eyes sparking with golden fire, her penetrating look of knowing, stripped him bare. Laid waste with its raw power. Yet enveloped with soothing warmth. Magick hummed at its core, energy unlike any other. But woven throughout the rare scrutiny glittered her essence, good and pure. Inviting. Enriching.
Forgiving.
Accepting.
Without a word, she stood and crossed the plaid to her satchel. She stared down at that incriminating bulge at its bottom.
The material deflated, its contents vanishing.
At the same instant, the worn leather-bound book materialized in her hand.
“The same Merlin described in this journal?”
His journal. But she’d chosen to skip that detail.
A heavy feeling swelled in his chest, warm and somewhere near that fracture in his heart. That the woman he’d been tied to, had begun to like, respect—and perhaps even a bit deeper—saw him only for the angel who stood before her. No more. No less. Separate from his past.
“The same.” Honest. No point in holding back. She didn’t stand in judgment of the tortured soul who’d penned those pages. And he had no need to color them with emotion. Hadn’t for eons.
Brigid glanced at the journal in her hand then up toward her magick shield and the bright blue sky beyond. “’Twould seem more than happenstance.”
“Yes. It would.” What Skorpius had thought, after she’d leveled the druids, by the conspicuous absence of a particular one—the most powerful of all.
Her astute gaze landed back on him. “Mayhap my touchin’ this book set our course.”
“Perhaps.” They’d never know for sure. Timelines had a trickiness to them where cause-and-effect blurred. And with Brigid’s prophesy-charged birth, unfilled de
stiny had drawn her into fate’s grasp, no matter the details.
“Do you have attachment to this?” Brigid tipped her head at the artifact.
“Not even a little.” Strange that he didn’t, yet had kept the object. A human construct, sentimentalism. Penance from a human time. But the past bore no imprint on his present.
“Verra weel.” She stared at the book she held with a magick-heated glare. It combusted into golden dust, infinitesimal sparkling particles catching on a gentle breeze, then wafting away.
Skorpius watched the dust dissipate and felt…nothing. Aside from a sense of liberation in a second cathartic moment. “I wonder if that’s how he’s been tracking us.” The mystery had been perplexing him.
As the last words left his mouth, Brigid swayed on her feet. Skorpius lunged forward and caught her limp body as she collapsed.
Concerned, he bent his legs and lowered himself to the ground with her. While resting her head on his thigh, a quick check of her vitals and their internal tether verified she remained alive. Exhaustion had dragged her under, saving her from another all-systems shutdown.
“Ah, sweet girl,” Skorpius murmured against her temple as he smoothed a hand over her wild copper curls. “You’ve expended too much magick again.”
Brigid had gathered all the excess power she possessed to erect the magick shield to hide them from view. And she’d created a spectacular and unique form of energy architecture. The dome, perfect in its arching form and fueled by solar radiation, sustained itself. But because of its demanding self-feeding nature, only a negligible amount radiated down to reenergize her.
The problem he faced now? Due to Brigid’s ingenious fabrication and laudable self-sacrifice, she alone held the key to unlock it. Skorpius was unable to alter the genetic makeup of the shield where it mattered for her benefit. Brilliant coding made its essence impenetrable from the outside, where most of the layers existed and were comprised of her golden magick. He’d only been able to burn away the dark of the inside earlier because it consisted of his energy.
“It’s just as well. You need your rest.” Still mending on the cellular level from his horrific crash landing, he needed some uninterrupted healing time as well.