by Scott, Amber
“We’ll take a rest up ahead,” Quinlan called, pointing at a low hill in the distance.
Ailyn nodded.
Within minutes, they made their way from the main road and moved deep into a wood. The sun was setting, and the low light gave the white and gray spotted trees a menacing look. A clicking noise high in the boughs echoed through the quiet. Daniel led the way, and while they made no moves to cover their tracks like last evening, she guessed that the winding traverse created a bit of concealment.
He pulled his mount to a stop. Ailyn followed suit, guiding her horse closer. Quinlan and his stallion pulled up beside her.
“Just beyond there,” he pointed, directing to Quinlan. “You’ll find a suitable clearing. I’ve made use of it myself without troubles.”
Quinlan nodded.
Ailyn assumed Daniel would cover their tracks and join them. But as they rode away, he turned his mount and went in an opposite direction altogether. She pulled up on her reins. “Daniel!” she called. He did not answer. “Daniel!” she tried again, cupping her hands and shouting.
“Leave him,” Quinlan said.
“Where is he going?” she asked, worry nipping at her stomach. She watched him weave through the trees. In a blink, he and his mount disappeared.
A jolt of fear hit her in the chest. She yanked her reins, and dug in her heels. “Quinlan,” she urged. “Help him!”
“Ailyn, he’s gone. You’ll not find him, lass.” Groaning, Quinlan followed her. “He is safe as a babe, Ailyn. Stop.”
His stallion reached pace with hers. When she shook her head, refusing to stop, he leaned over and snatched her reins from her. Her mare complied, slowing, then stopping alongside his mount. Ailyn’s heart, however, only beat faster.
“Where has he gone? He disappeared. Did you not see him vanish?”
“Aye, he warned me of as much. We canno’ join him. He bade me swear it. He’s out to replace what was taken. Apparently, you’ll be needing the pages to locate the stones.”
“He told you.”
“He shared what he could and vowed to share more once he had the pages to guide him.”
Ailyn’s lingering frustration spiked. “Domineering and evasive is what you are. The whole mortal lot of you!” She took back her reins and steered her mare about. She didna need his help to find the clearing. And she certainly would not have him leading.
Behind her, Quinlan chuckled—a low, deep sound that sent prickles up her back. She gritted her teeth. Amused, was he? She clucked her tongue, urging her mare faster. Let him laugh. They’d be seeing how amused he was once he got a bit of icy silence.
Aye, that is just what she would do—keep her mouth shut unless and until he explained where Daniel had disappeared to, and exactly why. Let him rot in the meantime.
~
The clearing came into view as the last bits of day began to fade. The scent of sweetgrass and pine met his nose as he reined in his stallion and dismounted. The small pool along the north side begged for a toe to be dipped in. The pool exhibited a sacred stone statue of the goddess Brigit. Another uncomfortable similarity between their two worlds.
When Quinlan took her reins and offered a hand to help her down, Ailyn glowered at him. She refused his help, not surprisingly. He’d feel the same way were he in her position. A stranger in a foreign place, forced to accept help, and feeling in the dark. He’d do quite a bit more than shut his mouth and glare.
But females enjoyed their silent punishments. Brought up with two of the best, he could go hours without conversation. In many ways, he welcomed it. Danny had shared a lot to digest.
“I must locate those pages, Quinlan,” Danny had insisted. “We’re lost without them. My memory simply won’t hold the pieces of the puzzle on its own.”
“How can you possibly get them back? We aren’t sure who took them, let alone where the thief absconded to.” Quinlan didn’t like the idea of Danny going anywhere on his own. Aye, he was maturing, but he had so much more life to live. So much more of his innocence was still visible. He had a duty to Ailyn now, and to Breanne. This was her brother. She would want him to look after the young man where he could.
But Danny had worn him down well. To the point that Quinlan couldn’t argue the logic. Danny promised that it was a matter of returning to the originals he had copied and focusing on the essential few. Many of the pages filled in the gaps of the story itself, and now that Danny had done so much research, he could narrow down the bulk to only the most needful few.
He wouldn’t go into detail, though. Danny wouldn’t share the story itself. There wasn’t time.
Danny would return by dawn. They would then reach the Giant’s Causeway, retrieve the first of three stones, the bloodstone, and Ailyn would have what she needed to open the portal that would allow her to pass back through to her world.
The site was left for good future use. Danny had a stone-ringed pit for a fire, firewood, peat moss, and twine to spin around a stick to light a good-sized fire. Despite her silence, Ailyn immediately helped, unpacking supplies, setting out the blankets, and tethering the horses near the small pool while Quinlan focused on the fire.
The dense trees offered a deceptively safe feeling. Quinlan mentally noted to not be fooled by them. If he was to believe Danny, and he had no other recourse at this point, considering Ailyn’s demonstration, then he was at the mercy of true magick.
How could he protect her from something he knew nothing of?
He pulled the edge of twine, making the stick spin hotly on the peat. Smoke tendrils wafted upward, filling his nostrils with the distinctive scent—a scent so different from that of the rite. Had that rite drawn Ailyn into this world somehow? Had it opened the portal Danny referred to? There was a connection there. Had to be. But how?
A flame licked to life as he blew on the tiny sparks. Each breath brought it higher. He thought of Breanne’s tallow, lit in the rainstorm. He thought of dark, wet nights spent aching and numb after battling alongside his fellow northern clans for a cause he believed in, yet never felt quite enough to carry him through.
The fires set upon fallen men. Noble, aye, but to what end?
A chunk of dried meat popped into his vision. Ailyn was handing him the food. Quinlan shook off the memories and suppressed a grin over her obvious temper with him. She wore it like a mantle, letting her ire be shown in every gesture and huff.
He knew better than to take the bait.
He chewed quietly, stoking the flames and setting back on a nearby rock. He was cruel to torture her. She only wanted answers. As would he. Still, if a test of wills was what she was after, she’d lose. He’d been trained by the best—Breanne and Rose.
Ailyn chewed, too. She ate a healthy bit, keeping her eyes on the fire. Then she dusted off her hands and slowly unbound her hair. Darkness fell around them save the light of the fire. With it, her anger with him, and likely her whole situation, seemed to recede. She fingered through her hair, deep in thought and looking rather serene.
Her lips were quite pink.
Were they always so pink?
Likely the dark and the fire making them appear so lush and rosy. As though she’d been thoroughly kissed. Fae. A faerie then, was that it? And Maera. Those wings had been no Samhain garb. They’d not come from the rite at all. The blood on them had been real—nearly as much on her as there’d been in that room.
Something akin to anger crept through him. She looked so vulnerable sitting there watching the fire, worrying at her lower lip just a bit, frowning, catching herself doing so and visibly arching her brows against it.
He had the unwelcome urge to go to her. To sit next to her, to tell her whatever foe or fate arrived, she’d not have to face it alone.
He would face it with her.
Certainly if he could slash at the yoke of tyrannical rule that had yet to reach his home shores, he could align himself to her cause.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, but the desire to say something ove
rtook him. “Ailyn?”
Glittering with triumph, her eyes met his. “Marbhsháinn.”
His mind hunted for the literal translation, though he could guess exactly what she meant when her eyebrows flashed and a wide grin broke over her face. Quinlan snorted. “You win, d’you? Is that it?”
A deep, throaty laugh escaped her. Her head fell back with it and she clutched her stomach.
“Oh, aye, laugh whilst you can, love.” He tossed another chunk of wood onto the fire and gave her credit. She’d held her tongue until he’d conceded. Quinlan had to laugh as well, releasing a low chuckle. Och, but the boyish ways this woman brought out in him. “We’ll see who can hold out longest the next time.”
Ailyn wiped at her eyes. “Aye, we’ll see about that, to be sure.”
“You’ll not find me a fountain of information simply because you outlasted me, you ken.”
She shrugged. “I’d like answers, aye, but I realized you likely have none. So why waste my wits getting irked over you hoarding that which you dinna truly have to begin with?”
Quinlan gritted his teeth. She was right, of course. “Danny’s replacing the pages the thief took.”
She nodded. “He vanished into the wood.”
Drawing his eyebrows up, he nodded. “Aye.”
“To where?”
“I dinna ken.”
She looked away a long moment. “I suspect I know where.”
Understanding seeped in. “You dinna wish to be here, d’you, Ailyn? Is that it? You’d go home if you could?”
Her chin notched up. “I’d like to at least know whether it was an option.”
“Having a choice in your fate matters.”
Eyes downcast, she slowly nodded, sending an ache into his heart. Again, he wanted to sit beside her and vow things he could not vow. Quinlan stayed put, knowing better than to follow the urge. “Well, I canno’ answer that question. Only Danny can. What I can do is tell you that I believe he will rejoin us at dawn, just as he swore.”
She met his eyes, a glassy sheen in them. “And if he doesna?”
“I’ve no answer for that. But know that you’ll not be abandoned. I dinna ken magick, but I can fight to the bloody death. That I can offer you.” Compared to a portal home and capturing magick, a pair of fists and some tricks to fell a man seemed meager offerings.
Still, Ailyn smiled. “If it’s to be to the death, better to make it good and bloody.”
Och, but this bonny, Fae lass touched a deep part of him. A part he’d not known existed. “Aye. Good and bloody.”
Chapter Sixteen
Not more than a handful of hours could have passed in her slumber when Ailyn awoke to the eerie sense of someone watching her. Her skin prickled with awareness from her scalp to her toes. Nay, not quite awareness—magick. Dark magick that her body recognized.
Kristoph.
She struggled to free her legs of the blanket. She got to her feet, stumbling, dizzy in the darkness and trappings of sleep. “Quinlan!” she called, her voice hoarse.
His magick was weaving closer. It was on her, pulling at her. She fell to where Quinlan slept hugging his sword, a frown wrinkling his forehead. She nudged him, trying again to speak his name and willing him in her mind to awaken. Quinlan!
Kristoph was coming. She reached for her blade with clumsy fingers, failing to grasp it. She leaned her shoulder onto his chest and pushed. A huff of air passed from his lips. His eyes opened. He looked at her but a second, then bolted upright. “What is it, lass?”
Ailyn felt the dark magick, like fingers crawling over her body, searching. “He’s coming,” she slurred.
“Who? Danny?”
She shook her head and worked the pendant free from beneath her tunic. She wrapped both hands around it, begging Quinlan with her eyes. Kristoph could not get this pendant.
Quinlan got on his knees. “Tell me what to do.”
She didn’t know even if she could manage the words. She couldna. A sweat broke over her back. Her throat tightened as she strained to speak, as though in a dream. This wasna a dream. She could smell Quinlan’s spicy soap from when he washed before bed at the small pond. She could see the short whiskers along his jaw. This was real.
He scooped her up to stand, then turned her. “Lock your fists tight,” he ordered, and placed her elbows outward. He grabbed her dagger by one hand, drew his sword from its scabbard on the ground with the other. He stood with his back to her and worked his arms through hers, hooking elbows. Ailyn felt like a child in a game—foolish and vulnerable.
Didn’t Quinlan understand that physical prowess gave no advantage with such darkness at work? How could holding her to him stop Kristoph from searching her body with his dark art? But she could not say as much. She could hardly breathe past the cloying energy crawling over her. Kristoph’s sickly sweet smell burned her mind, dredging up memories.
He’d not always been horrific. The queen’s advisor had once been a bit of a mentor to her. Until the day he’d shown her his true nature.
Nausea swept up her throat. Ailyn swallowed against it, fighting back the numbing effects the fear and magick were having on her wits. She had to stay alert. Her eyes darted from tree to tree, shadow to shadow. At any moment, his hand would be on her throat. Quinlan’s blade would be used against him.
Her mother’s pendant would be ripped from her fists, and there would be naught Ailyn could do to stop it.
“Blessed be, O Brigit, O queen, myself and everything,” Quinlan murmured at her back in the old Fae tongue. He held his sword aloft, turning their bodies this way and that. “Make thou me safe forever from every evil wish and sorrow, from every brownie and banshee.”
Was he attempting an incantation? Ailyn would have smiled if not for the grip of darkness around her. His gesture had sweetness in it that was not lost on her. The memory of his reaction to the pendant warmed the sentiment more. This mortal had seen little magick in his lifetime. Far, far less than she. She had never witnessed such innocent awe in any man or child.
Mayhap the Fae were connected to more Source than her people realized. Palpable hope rose within her over the idea. So much could be saved.
The warmth spread through her. He intoned his words over and again, clearly improvising at points, but the act touched her nonetheless. It occurred to her that she should die in the next moments and the hope of two worlds fell to darkness, she would at least have his small gift to hold onto till the end.
In her hands, the small teardrop orb warmed as well. The invisible grip eased enough to allow her to grunt, but the sound was beyond pitiful. How could she communicate with whimpers and grunts? How could she warn Quinlan that Kristoph would sense the precious object in her hands because for some reason, it chose now to reveal itself?
The creeping feeling along her body lessened. The gem warmed further. A glimpse of light shone through her forefinger and thumb. “Nay,” she whispered, unmoved by the fact that she could speak again. The ramifications of the fact were too great to ignore. “Quinlan, you must stop at once, please.”
“Stop? Not unless you can swear on your life that the threat you felt is gone.”
If he didna stop, the stone would soon be too hot to grasp. The light would glow so brightly that Kristoph would certainly find it—if he had not done so already. “I dinna know if he is present. If you continue, he will see the stone. Please. Stop!”
Quinlan fell silent. He eased his arms from hers and faced her. His eyes searched hers in the small light the stone offered, although it dimmed by each passing second. He put his hands over hers and slowly opened them until the stone lay visible, nested in her palm.
“Is he gone?” he asked.
Ailyn mentally scanned her body for signs of Kristoph’s assaulting energy. The feeling was gone. She nodded. The stone’s light faded to a tiny glint deep within the recesses. Ailyn returned it to beneath her tunic.
“It protects you,” Quinlan said.
“Nay. Your incantation prot
ected us.”
He frowned. “Then why did it glow?”
“Perhaps your words. Perhaps my reaction. I canno’ say for certain.” The stone had not glowed so brightly or warmed so much before. Surely it was his words. Unless it was somehow reacting to Kristoph’s magick. She shook her head. She had no answers.
“We need to check the perimeter. You’re not to leave my side,” he said, his face grave.
She had no desire whatsoever to leave his side. Ailyn nodded, taking her proffered dagger. They wove through the trees, pausing, listening. But they found no signs of danger—physical or otherwise.
“We have to assume he’ll try again,” Quinlan said, digging through his leather pack. He retrieved a length of rope.
Ailyn’s eyebrows shot upward. “Do you think to bind me to a tree, then?”
He gave her a crooked smile that flipped her belly over. “I’ll be binding you, lass, but not to a tree.” He reached out a hand. “I’m tying you to me.”
An image flashed in her mind, of her wrists tied to his, of her thighs strapped to his, of their bodies pressed close, making every fidget and breath an opportunity for friction. Another belly flip. This one hitting a bit too far below the navel for her comfort. Ailyn shook her head. “I dinna see that as necessary.”
“You couldna speak, Ailyn. Thankfully, you woke me and communicated enough that I knew to protect you. I might have otherwise thought you were afflicted instead.” He took her wrist and pulled her closer. “If you canno’ speak, this way, I can at least feel you move. We’ll get a little more rest, but I refuse to leave you vulnerable.”
A trill of warmth danced through her, settling below her navel. She couldna argue with his reasoning. Truth be told, she didna want to. She wanted to feel safe. At his side, she would be safe.
He wound the rope and tied it off, and then helped negotiate their bodies into comfortable supine positions. Ailyn became acutely aware of the heat between their bodies, of the sound of his breathing. She’d never be able to sleep. Not with her heart skipping beats every few moments.