It mattered not, for all his hopes were gone, all his dreams crushed, his life worthless. Death promised to be an easier path than life was now. He lifted his head and saw the moon rising and felt its pull in his blood.
He turned his head and gazed into eyes he knew, that gaze he’d never thought to see again. He breathed her name.
“Katla.”
She remained standing above him, surrounded by the glittering stars as they made their appearance in the growing night sky above her. Her hair floated around her, reflecting the light of those stars, and he heard her voice, piercing through the tumult in his mind, for he heard it with his heart.
“Gavin,” she said, and his heart raced at the sound.
His blood pounded through his veins, and he felt his body stir to life. Pushing himself up off the ground, he blinked to clear the dizziness away and looked around them. The circle filled with wisps of light that swirled around. But the touch of her hand on his face made everything else disappear.
“I…” she began.
He placed his finger on her mouth and shook his head. “No words,” he pleaded. “I have too many in my head.”
“No words then,” she said, nodding in agreement with his request.
He’d had this dream before, and so he let it flow again, reaching out to touch her face and kiss her mouth. Not certain what was real and what was fantasy and blind hope, Gavin held her close, afraid she would disappear as quickly as she’d appeared before him. As he lifted his lips from the possessive joining of their mouths, Gavin began to hear her body.
The joy and sheer pleasure of those sounds pushed all others away, and his body responded to her nearness, to her touch, and to her scent. His heart sang in response to the music her body made as they undressed each other. The overwhelming desire that shot through him when he held her naked in his arms nearly took away his control. Then, something else took over, and he was carried away by it as he loved her, loved her for the last time.
Soon there was no beginning or end to either of them; their bodies and hearts merged in the passion that spun out around them and through them. They breathed as one, they moved as one, they felt pleasure as one. As they pursued that moment of satisfaction, of joining, of completion, Gavin knew he would always love her.
If only they had more time.
That thought flitted through his mind while their bodies exploded together and passion overwhelmed them. It was a long time before either one could move, and so they lay, still joined, still in the euphoria that such passion created, ignoring the force that would pull them apart. Katla was the first to speak, and he listened, still surprised that he heard only her voice and no other.
“I need to tell you something, Gavin,” she began.
He sat up, shaking his head to stop her. The moon rose over the line of trees, and he could feel the power beginning to flow. There was little time and he wanted to tell her so much.
“Katla, there are things you must know,” he said. “Things I could not tell you.”
She stood then and stepped back. Reaching for her tunic, she pulled it on quickly. Godrod was out there somewhere and, just as before, she thought she saw someone walking outside the stone pillars.
“I lied to you, Gavin.” She needed to tell him the truth about her actions. He needed to know. “I lied to gain your cooperation. I dragged you into my plot knowing you would suffer. I…” She stuttered then, unable to say the words.
“I know you lied.” His words stopped her. “You have no knowledge of my past.”
“You knew?” She frowned at him. “Then why did you agree to help me?”
“I am the Truthsayer, it is my task to hear the truth.”
She sensed that he was still avoiding the complete truth. She could hear it in his voice. She could feel it in her heart. “Why did you help me?”
“Because you have given me so much, I wanted to repay you.”
“I gave you pain. I gave you lies. I kidnapped you, Gavin.”
He smiled, and the sadness of his look touched her heart. “You gave me moments of peace and silence such as I’d never felt before. You gave me moments of hope that let me see a possible future for myself. You gave me yourself time and time again to ease my pain, even when you had every reason not to.” He laughed then. “Even now when you should hate me for speaking the words that damned your father and your brother, you feel pain for me.”
Tears gathered in her eyes and spilled over her cheeks at his words. She’d thought he’d only sought the pleasures of the flesh from her. She’d thought only her body was of interest for the passion he could stir within her and the satisfaction he could find with her. But it was the emotions created by their joining that he treasured.
“I wish I could give you what you need most, Gavin. Godrod will search out more knowledge and we will find…”
“There is no time, Katla,” he said, his voice changing as it always did for the truthspeaking. “This will be my last ritual.”
She looked around, searching for the person who would hear the truth and saw no one. “Your last ritual? I do not understand. Who, Gavin? Whose truth will you speak?”
His eyes changed next, glowing from within and losing all the color until only light shone forth. His face seemed to melt, and another’s took its place. When he grabbed her hand and she felt power surge into her body and her mind, she understood.
“I hear your truth, Katla Svensdottir,” the voice said.
He pulled her forward into some place that she’d never seen before. Even though their bodies did not move, their minds seemed to travel through the air around them. Lights flickered around them, and so many voices surrounded them that she felt dizzy.
“I hear your truth, Katla.” Gavin’s voice spoke alone in her thoughts. “Too many other voices have told part of it, though none have told it all. Hear it now,” he ordered, and she could do nothing but listen as voices shouted out at her from all sides.
Her father’s anger at the earl. Her uncle goading him to take action. Her brother pleading with her father to give him a role. Gavin speaking of his love for her. Harald offering a place in his household and more. It went on and on and on until she thought she would scream. Every aspect of her had taken on a voice, and the manipulations of all the players had been exposed by the Truthsayer’s abilities.
The last thing she heard was Gavin telling of his coming death. She screamed then, not wanting to hear of it and not wanting it to happen before she admitted her true feelings to him.
“I lied,” she called out, though she was uncertain he could hear. “I lied to you, Gavin. Hear me!”
Suddenly he was gone from her mind, from her thoughts, and she was alone with so many facts now known. She felt his hand slip from hers and opened her eyes to see him sinking to his knees before her. His face became his own, and his voice returned.
“You lied to me, Katla,” he whispered, and then he collapsed at her feet.
She knelt down and called out for Godrod. Leaning Gavin back, she placed her hand on his chest and felt his heart slowing under her palm.
“No! Gavin!” she yelled, and she shook him. “You cannot die now.” She screamed as his chest stopped drawing breath. “Gavin!” His sightless eyes stared back at her. She clutched him to her and whispered against his skin. “’Twas not only a bargain, Gavin. I lied when I said that. It was more than that between us.” She cried, tears pouring down her face, knowing he would never hear the one thing, the most important thing she needed to say to him now.
But she said it anyway.
Leaning close to his ear, she whispered the words no one had ever said to him. The thing he needed most. The thing she had not realized until she’d heard the truth he spoke to her.
“I love you, Gavin. I love you.”
Silence reigned around them; nothing moved; no one spoke. Only Katla’s sobbing breaths broke into it and echoed across the circle. So, when it happened, it was loud enough for both Katla and Godrod to hear.
>
An indrawn breath. And then another. Then Gavin’s heart began to beat once more under her hand. Katla looked at his face and he stared back.
Alive! He lived!
She touched his face and his skin, and he was alive. Gavin lifted his hand and touched her face, wiping away some of her tears with his thumb. He slid his hand into her hair and pulled her face to his, kissing her mouth and whispering words against it.
“I love you, Katla Svensdottir. I will always love you.”
She kissed him back with all the love she had within her, all the love she’d denied feeling for him. Then she helped him to his feet.
“Can you hear me, Gavin?”
“Aye, love. I hear you, though I do not understand how. My ears do not burn and there is no pain.” He paused for a moment and then laughed out loud. “And no thoughts, either!”
“How? How can this be?” she asked as Godrod handed Gavin his tunic and he dressed quickly.
Before either of them could offer any ideas, sounds began around them. First laughter like the tinkling of bells filled the air. Then whispers from near the stones. Katla watched as figures moved in the shadows. Clutching Gavin’s hand and afraid to let him go, she nodded as one figure, a man, separated himself from the circle and approached them.
Unlike any man she’d ever seen, this one was too beautiful to look on for long. He looked regal, wearing the long robes of nobles, his face pale yet lit with some strength from within. His gaze met hers first, and she realized that his eyes were the same as Gavin’s—during the ritual! Every step he took toward them echoed through the circle, and when he stopped before them and smiled, lights glimmered around them like fireflies of every color. Katla stared at his face and recognized it, too, for it was the face that Gavin took on during that time.
Was this the creature, the being, who took Gavin over, the one responsible for the power he had?
“Who are you?” Gavin asked, pulling her close to his side and away from the man.
“We are Sith,” he answered in a voice that was filled with many and sounded like music in the air around them. “You are Sith,” he said to Gavin.
Gavin shook his head in denial. “It cannot be.” Gavin looked at her and repeated, “It cannot be.”
The being laughed and the stars above flared brightly. He approached them and reached out his hand. Katla cringed, but he laughed again in that magical voice. “Fear not, human. Our touch harms you not.” The Sith placed his hand on theirs and whispered without his mouth moving.
“Hear your truth, Truthsayer.” Katla heard it as well, shocked again by the power that surged through her from just the touch of the Sith’s hand and Gavin’s. “Learn how you came to be.”
The words flowed into her mind, and then a vision was revealed there in the circle.
“Many years ago as humans count time, I discovered a woman in the western isles. Her beauty drew me and I came to her in the day and the night, giving her my love.”
Gavin realized that this Sith told the story as a human would, now referring to only himself alone. He watched with Katla as a young woman appeared in the circle near them, beautiful and filled with life.
“I took her to my lands through an entrance like that one,” the Sith said, nodding at the rise in the center of the stones, “and we spent many months there together. I gave her everything,” he said fiercely, “but she was not happy and asked to return to her mortal world and the man she’d been betrothed to before I found her. She refused my love and found her way back here on a Samhain night twenty-and-eight years ago as you count time.”
The Sith turned from them then and nodded at the place before them, and Gavin saw it as it had happened. He thought only he was seeing the vision until he heard Katla’s gasp and felt her hold tightly on to his hand.
The young woman appeared again, this time pushing her way out of the fairy hill. She was huge with child as she stumbled out of the ground, holding her belly and moaning against the pain of impending birth. She kept looking behind her to see if anyone followed, and then she began to run toward the path.
But she did not make it, falling to the ground as her pains struck. When she looked over her shoulder before gaining her feet once more, the Sith stood there on the fairy hill.
“Do not leave,” he said. “I gave you my love.” Gavin had not supposed this creature capable of such mortal emotions. But his love and pain were clear as the Sith spoke.
“Come back with me now.” He held out his hand to her but she turned away, trying to run.
“I cannot live with you. I do not love you,” she said, gasping for breath as another pain struck. She howled in pain but still turned away. “Let me go!” she screamed.
The Sith’s rage and pain exploded then. Flashes of light and waves of heat pierced the night sky as he lashed out at the woman who’d betrayed him. Katla shook at Gavin’s side.
“They are mine,” he said, pointing at her huge belly. “They are gifted.” Something flashed from his hand to the woman’s belly, and she screamed in pain. “But they will be cursed for your betrayal. When they use their Sith powers, their mortal lives will suffer. Their powers will grow and their mortal bodies will suffer. When their powers peak and end, they will wither and die.”
“No!” she screamed. “Please! Do not make my bairns carry the punishment for my sins against you,” she cried out, pulling herself up onto her knees and reaching out her hand to him. “Spare them, I beg you!”
The Sith approached her and crouched down in front of her then, placing his hand on her belly for only a moment. Gavin stared at the scene and watched some indescribable emotion fill the Sith’s face as he felt the bairns inside her womb.
“They will be taken from you, for you are not worthy to raise them. They will not know of their powers or the source of it, and you cannot tell them or the Sith will strike you all down,” he commanded.
She began to crawl away as though to escape his sentence, but he shook his head at her and waved his hand. Four others appeared around her, holding her and keeping her from running.
“Unless they find true love, given and spoken by one called enemy or betrayer, their Sith nature will destroy their human one and they will live in our world forever. If they find that true love, given and spoken, before their powers end, their mortal nature will control their Sith side.”
Gavin could not move as the story explaining his life unfolded before them, like a vision. The scene sped up, and Katla grasped his hand as they watched the woman give birth to three bairns, all boys. As each was born, one of the other Sith took the babe and disappeared. When the birth was complete, the last Sith faded away, leaving only the woman and the first Sith alone.
The Sith shook his head at her. “You will not find what you seek with him. You will suffer this loss and more by refusing what I offered you. Only one of the three can help you find the happiness you seek.”
“No,” the woman keened out. “No more!”
“I do not curse you, Aigneis,” he said softly now. “I only see what the failure of your mortal heart will cause.”
Gavin could not speak as he watched the Sith walk to the fairy hill and fade into it. The vision of that Samhain night faded, too, until it was the present day and the moon shone high in the night sky overhead. Katla wiped her face and turned to him. Finally they understood the power that had controlled his life and the reasons behind it.
The Sith’s eyes glowed as he turned to face them once more. “That was your past, born of betrayal, half Sith, half mortal. Destined only to survive in this mortal world if you could find the one thing that I could not.”
“And my mother? Does she yet live?” Gavin asked him.
The Sith, his father, smiled then. “She lives.”
“My brothers?” He turned to Katla and smiled. “I have brothers,” he said. The sadness in her eyes was fleeting, soon replaced by happiness for him. “Where are they?”
“I cannot tell you that. They face their own chall
enges, just as you did.”
“Can I find them?” he asked.
“Your powers are just beginning,” he explained, calling Gavin by another name then, one that floated in the air around them. “You can find them with her help.” The Sith glanced at Katla then and smiled.
“My help?” Katla shook her head. “I have no powers.”
“Ah, but you have the most potent of powers within you. You saved his life with it.”
Gavin understood. “Your love for me, Katla. I heard you calling me back from the darkness when my heart stopped.”
The Sith’s gaze softened then as he smiled. “’Twas a piece of your heart and soul left behind in him that saved his mortal life this day. Your love, given over these last months and then spoken today, freed him from the curse laid on him in anger.”
The Sith moved away from them then, walking and floating toward the small hill where the entrance to his land was, but he stopped and stared back at them.
“I would see my son’s son when he is born.”
Confused by the words, Gavin frowned. “What do you mean?”
The Sith floated back to Katla and reached out, touching only a finger on her belly. She startled, and then her face filled with a glow of her own.
“She carries your son in her womb. He is gifted.”
Gavin lost his breath with those words. His eyes filled with tears as so many dreams and hopes spread out before him. Instead of meeting his end this night, he’d received the chance to live his dream with the woman he loved.
“Summon me when he is born,” the Sith said only to him, speaking in his thoughts as he revealed the name he was called. Then before either could say a thing, the Sith faded until only the stars sparkled above them.
Gavin grabbed Katla and held her tightly, swinging her around him in a circle again and again until she screamed. They laughed for a long time, in joy, in surprise, and in love. He still could not believe what had happened, but he finally knew how he had come to be and what his future held.
A Storm of Pleasure Page 19