Hot air seared her lungs. She fought to breathe. Hands steadied her as a flask was held to her lips. She spluttered against the burning liquid.
“Careful, Ruan. She’s waking.”
A voice cracked her skull like an egg. She moaned. What had been in there? Pure blue ruin, by the way her eyes felt as if they’d been sucked from her sockets. The rest of her left for the crows. She moaned and pushed it away.
“Bloody hell, I think he’s done it,” the voice said again.
“Done what?” she croaked, struggling to sit up. To open her eyes that seemed glued shut by a film of mud and dust and filth. The confining hands fell away.
She looked around. Not the Peninsula. This was England. Cornwall. Ilcum Bledh.
Jamys knelt beside her, an arm still propping her up, the vicious flask in his hand. Ruan watched, relief and worry mingled in his quick, appraising eyes. He glanced to where Morgan stood, stern and unforgiving, staring down the hill. Recent memories washed past the older. Now she remembered. The reliquary. Asher—she ignored the sick churning in her stomach—Conor.
She grabbed Jamys’s coat, her fingers trembling. “Where is he?” She swallowed. “Tell me he lives.”
“It was he saved you. I’ve never seen the like.” Awe colored his voice, and he shook his head in disbelief. “You were all but dead, and Conor brought you back.”
He looked up, past Morgan to where someone else stood. Alone. Head down. And she realized that not all the stomach heaving, whirling-head queasiness was due to her injuries. Conor reeked of fey magic, raw and unrefined and instantly recognizable now that she knew how it affected her.
“It’s too late,” Jamys said. “He doesn’t know any of us. Barely knows his own name.”
She rose with Ruan’s help to her feet. “He’ll know me.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he answered. She shot him a look, but he put up a hand. “I’m only warning you. He’s not…he’s not Conor anymore. He’s someone—something else.”
She shook off his arm, took two staggering steps before she regained her equilibrium. Walked gingerly down the slope to where Conor stood.
Approaching him, she slowed. Suddenly unsure of herself. Afraid that Ruan was right. That this wasn’t Conor. He still carried himself with the sinewy self-control of the Heller, and his torn shirt exposed the cold marble of his skin, his mage marks lit with an unearthly silver glow. This was the Conor Bligh who had killed her father. Uncaring. Callous. Single-minded. How much had he lost while she lay unconscious? And what could she do to draw him back?
“They tell me…” Her voice came out shaky, and she cleared her throat. “They tell me you saved my life.”
He swung around, and Ellery reeled back, his empty, flaming gaze like a slap in the face.
“I did what was necessary.” His voice was as hollow of warmth as his eyes.
She squared her shoulders. “That’s not true. If you’d done what you ought to from the start, I’d be dead, Asher would be imprisoned, and you’d…you’d be Conor.”
A flicker of emotion passed over his face. Then his gaze shifted to the reliquary. Ellery hadn’t noticed it at first. But it lay where she’d last seen it, discarded in the grass. Only now the restless buzz of impatience had ceased. The brothers were quiet. It was just a box.
“The demon fey was reckless. That was his downfall,” Conor explained.
Ellery rubbed her arms up and down, not all of her goose-bumps coming from the chilly spring dawn.
“We’d have done things differently. Not so hard, really, when you think about it. And instead of a creature with a heart of brimstone and death, you could have a sorcerer with the power of the ancients guiding his steps.” His smile was as mocking and cruel as Asher’s had been.
It tore at her heart. “You don’t mean that, Conor. You fought so that no one would hold dominion over the worlds, Faery or human.”
He frowned. “That’s a name I remember from somewhere.” A shift, barely noticeable, but it had been there. And for a moment the fey had given way to the man. There was hope then.
Ellery recalled Lowenna’s words. With Ysbel’s death had come a viciousness and a temptation to use his gifts to hurt as he had been hurt. But he’d pulled back from that road. She’d pulled him back. Somehow. Could she do it again? “You’re Conor Bligh,” she stated firmly.
His eyes went dark, his voice harsh and stiff as if speech was unnatural. “No longer. He traded that life for another. He has passed beyond names.”
A spark of anger fanned to life. She’d gone through too much to be thwarted by some primeval fey with delusions of grandeur. “Look, you. I want my husband back. His vows to me come first. And I expect him to live up to them. Better. Worse. Sickness. Health. Does any of that sound familiar?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze returned to the reliquary. He squatted, putting out a tentative hand as if he meant to lift the lid. “It could be ours,” he purred. “They would serve us.”
She lurched to push him away. “Are you mad?” Knocked him back into the grass before sliding between him and the casket. “Damn you, Conor. We just rid ourselves of one monster. Are you trying to start this horrible mess all over again?”
He raked her with a gaze that could strip paint. “Do you dare touch us?”
“Damn right I dare.”
Anger didn’t begin to cover the burn that lit her like a torch. She’d been to hell and back. She ached head to toe from a hundred different hurts. She’d lost her father, her sister-in-law, and now her husband to Asher’s ambition. This ended here.
She dropped down beside him. Ignored the almost incapacitating wretchedness that came with being so close to such concentrated fey magic. Ignored his hard, stony gaze and rigid muscles. Took his face in her hands. And kissed him.
She was so close every freckle across her nose stood clear. The flecks of steel in her blue eyes. The scent of her skin. Her mouth moved slowly over his in a queer tangle of lips and tongues and teeth. Her breath sweet and soft in his lungs. Images flashed into focus. The woman, drenched and shivering in a long, baggy coat, yet still offering him a brave smile. And in his arms, a lithe strength hidden beneath the generous curves. Feelings slashed through his armored heart. Concern. Gratitude. Pride.
He gripped her shoulders, started to push her away. She clung like a burr, refusing to release him, her hands upon his chest, her body uncomfortably close. More images. Her hand in his surrounded by smiling people. Weeping for him on a rock-strewn beach. More feelings. Desire. Affection. Need. Love.
He threw her off. Broke away, breathing hard. “That wasn’t the response I got on our wedding night,” she quipped.
She was too pale. And she shivered. He felt her trembling, though they barely touched. Was she ill? Was she wounded? He put out a hand, wanting to brush her cheek, bring some warmth to that ghostly white skin. But a voice stopped him. Bound him to a chilly indifference.
“You’re Conor Bligh,” she repeated, force behind her words. “My husband. And if you think I’m going to let you go now, you’re mistaken. I love you, you great lumpen bullock.”
“Love is a weakness,” the voice said, though it came from his lips. Did he really think that? He couldn’t recall, but it didn’t sound right. The voice fought him. Warned him. So much could be his if he only accepted them. Became them.
“Bullshit.” Her slap snapped him from his whirling thoughts. He frowned, though laughter boiled up through him. Leave it to her to resort to violence to make her point. The voice faltered, began again, but now Conor knew its game. Could fight back. Pressure built inside him as if too many shared too small a space. Pain returned. And the familiar itchy tingle of healing. Both he’d lost when the Fomorii took hold.
“Love is a strength,” she urged. Her eyes shone with tears.
“Look around you. You have cousins who risked their lives to get here to help. You have parents. A grandmother. An uncle. You have a family who love you. That makes you stronger than any
moldy, ancient power ever could.”
Breath squeezed out of his lungs. Tremors shook him. “And you love me. You wouldn’t have saved me if you didn’t.” The tears that had gathered now slid down her face, merging with the dirt. Curving into the corners of her mouth. “You wouldn’t have brought me back. The Fomorii wouldn’t care.” Her words broke to a whisper. “Conor would.”
The voice splintered into hundreds of voices. Thousands. All howling in anger, then understanding before melting back into the ground, spreading out to be lost among all the magics running beneath the earth. No longer focused into a conscious being. No longer him.
Without the will of the ancients, the injuries he’d suffered—his by right as well as those taken from the woman—exploded through his body like shrapnel. He doubled over, his lungs filling, his body a splintered mess.
Crying out, she grabbed him. Screamed for help.
He reached up, his fingertips grazing her shoulder. As she dropped her eyes to his, he smiled. “Ellery.”
Then the black pulled him under.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ellery had never felt more useless in her life. Useless and in the way. Jamys and Ruan between them had carried Conor’s limp body back to Daggerfell. Morgan had led her as if she were made of spun glass and too fragile to walk on her own. She’d tried shaking her off once, but the young amhas-draoi in training was as pig-headed as her cousin and refused to relinquish her death grip.
“You’ve been almost killed at least half a dozen times since sundown,” she scolded.
“You’ll let me help you, or I’ll heave you over my shoulder.”
This was no bluff. Ellery knew Morgan had the power in her slender frame to do just as she threatened, and so she submitted, gritting her teeth, and praying to any god listening to keep Conor alive until they could get him home.
Gram and the Blighs had met them at the door, and from then on it was a blur of snapped orders, closed doors, whispers, tears, questions, and the fog of unreality overlaying all.
She’d fought off the concerned offers of assistance to get as far as Conor’s bedchamber—what did she care about baths and clean clothes at a time like this—but once there she’d been halted by Conor’s father who paced restlessly up and down outside the door. “Heavens, child. Hasn’t anyone seen to you?” His voice was somber, his eyes shaded with exhaustion.
She glanced sheepishly down at her ruined gown, her grime-encrusted hands. “Morgan tried.”
A glimmer of amusement broke through the worry. “If you can wrestle with the will of Morgan and come out on top, you’re stronger than any among us.”
“Please, sir. Please let me go to him,” she pleaded. She needed to see Conor. Touch him. Know that he still breathed. That she hadn’t killed him by bringing him back. Had she been wrong to do so? Should she have just let him go? Let the Fomorii have him? Each question only brought more pain with it. And more doubt. And more questions. A death spiral.
A scream ripped the air, slamming her heart into her throat. The chamber door buckled, light flaring beneath the jamb, through the keyhole. White. Scorching.
She pushed past Mikhal, but he was quick, grabbing her arms. Holding her back. “Omdhiserri,” he coaxed. “Calm yourself, child. Omdhiserri. It’s for his own good.” He gentled her like a new-broke colt though she resisted, weeping and struggling. “Trust to Lowenna and Jamys. They fight Annwn for Conor’s soul no less fiercely than you did on Ilcum Bledh. They will bring him back—again.”
She collapsed on his chest, sobs tearing her in two. Her nose running, her throat sore from the wrenching grief that only now found its outlet.
Mikhal held her, smoothed her hair, and let her snivel all over his shirtfront. “It will come right in the end,” he murmured. “Shhh, my daughter. You’ll see.”
The comforting words of a father. The strength of a family that loved her. What she’d told Conor was right. Love was a strength. Family was a strength. And she had found both.
It would come right in the end. She believed that now.
The door opened. Lowenna’s silver-gray gaze glowed like moonlight, her smile wide. “He lives. And he remembers. It is truly over.”
The room was just as it had been, though it was full night, and only a candle cut the darkness. He’d walked here under his own power, an accomplishment of sorts after weeks of lying flat on his back. But even now, echoes of a pain too impossible to describe set his teeth on edge and sent spots dancing in front of his eyes. He ignored it. He’d not be coddled any longer. One more solicitous glance, and he wouldn’t be blamed for any violence that followed.
A drifting curtain sent him to the window. The lawn was a blanket of shadows. Trees, shrubbery, pathways, all shades of black and gray and silver. Just beyond the hill, a corner of the folly roof speared the night, picked out in brilliant white by a disc of a moon.
A familiar warmth settled across his shoulders. Comforting words whispered in his ear.
He spun to catch her before she disappeared, but the room was empty. Just the feeling of Ysbel stayed. Laughed at his fear.
He pulled the ring from his pocket. “I’ve kept it. Never let it out of my sight—” Amended his words. “Well, except once or twice. And if you knew Ellery, you’d understand what I was up against.”
He sensed that Ysbel listened and was highly amused. “What do you think of her?” He smiled as words took shape in his mind. Highly expressive words with a few idiots thrown in for emphasis. “You’re right. I should have told her a long time ago.” There was another long pause when he felt the soft-spoken iron will that had marked his sister in life, felt it telling him what he must do. And because Ysbel asked it of him, and because he knew—as usual—she was right, he would.
He stood at the water’s edge, skimming pebbles across the wave tops. The bandage wound tight across his ribs hampered his distance, but his aim remained true. He picked another from the rocky strand, flipped it in his palm before letting it fly out across the water. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Before it sank.
“Not bad,” came a voice as familiar to him as his own. Ellery rounded the point, wind whipping her skirts, her dark hair blowing free of its bonnet. “But I’ve been practicing while you’ve been laid up.”
“Then you should be the world’s best stone-skipper. You’ve had plenty of time to train.”
She wrinkled her nose at him, her spray of freckles hidden in her sun-browned face. “You don’t sound convinced.”
He bent to gather a handful. “Let’s say, I’m skeptical.” Dropping half in her open palm, he stood back. “Challengers first.”
She stepped up to the edge of the waves, her light summer gown a tease of veiled curves and exposed flesh. His whole body throbbed with suppressed desire. It had been much, much too long.
“Ready?” she asked over her shoulder, shocking him back from the imagined indecent scene tightening his groin.
He cleared his throat, changed position. “Proceed.” Whipping her arm out, the pebble shot out across the water. Bounced five times then sank.
“Damn,” she muttered.
He smiled at the easy profanity. So Ellery. Mother had told him of at least two proper matrons who’d been scandalized already by Ellery’s lack of airs. But one had been Mrs. Bushy who’d lost a potential husband for her daughters so she didn’t really count.
She stalked back up the shingle, her hem soaked and dripping. “Your turn, but I get another chance. The wind was wrong. And the stone was too light. And I slipped during my release.”
He laughed. “Excuses. Excuses.”
Taking his place at the water’s edge, he planted his feet in the prints left by her shoes. “No advantage. I’ll toss from the same spot.”
June storm clouds gathered to the southwest. His gaze was drawn to their soft, feathered underbellies. To the misty rain already falling out across the water. And he knew now was the time.
He dropped the pebbles. Dug into his pocket. Pulled out Ysbel’s
ring.
“What have you got there?” Ellery shouted.
He held it up, rolling it between thumb and forefinger, his eye moving steadily between the rain showers, the ring, and the sea.
“Conor.” She started toward him, the gravel crunching loud beneath her feet. His focus never wavered. “What are you doing?”
Her steps came faster as his arm drew back. She was almost running by the time he flung the ring out over the waves. Grabbed him before it had even hit the water.
“What the hell are you doing? That was Ysbel’s.” He tore his gaze from the spot where the ring had disappeared. Settled it on Ellery. “She doesn’t need it anymore.” He took a deep breath. For the first time since Ysbel’s death, it felt easy. Sweet. Without shame or guilt to sour every lungful of air. “I don’t need it anymore.”
Ellery remained staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. He offered her a lopsided smile. “She asked me to let her go. Told me I had too much to live for to stay tied to a ghost.”
Twisting his wrist in a clever move, he put his hand to her ear. Brought it back down with another wolf-head ring rolled between his fingers.
She shook her head. “You didn’t throw it.”
He moved the ring so the sapphire eyes gleamed bright in the fading sun. “I’d not lie to you.”
She gave a quick, stunned gasp.
Just the reaction he was hoping for. He took her hand. “Ysbel’s ring is gone. Like its wearer, to a better place, I hope.” He slid Ellery’s gold band from its place on her finger, replaced it with the symbol of her new life, his new hope. “This ring is yours by right.”
She twisted it on her finger. “Why?”
He stepped back. “Why?”
A strange, waiting expression settled over her features. And, understanding, he suddenly laughed.
Ignoring the restrictive stretch of bandage, he grabbed Ellery round the waist and swung her up into his arms. Her mouth was cool and soft and moved under his with delicious invitation. He lowered his lips to her neck where her pulse beat bird-like while her breathing quickened. They were alone. It wouldn’t take anything to have her beneath him. Calling his name. A name he kept only by her courage. By her love.
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