Spellbound Falls [5] For the Love of Magic

by Janet Chapman

  “Rana, come,” Titus said as he pulled Salt to a stop and held his hand down to her. “Now, wife!”

  She immediately scrambled to her feet and ran over while stuffing whatever food she’d been holding into her pockets, then lifted her arms to him.

  “No, behind me,” he said as he took his foot out of his stirrup.

  She clasped his wrist as he gripped hers, slipped her foot into the stirrup, and used the momentum of his pull to swing up behind him. Wrapping her arms securely around his waist as he spurred Salt into a gallop, Rana glanced over her shoulder to see Kitalanta disappear into the woods, then pressed her cheek to her husband’s back and watched the trees zooming by. Despite not knowing what they were running from, her heart nevertheless raced with hope that it was the new god or goddess, as that would mean the entity had survived the demon attack three days ago.

  “Hang on,” Titus said roughly, one of his hands dropping to clasp her thigh as he turned off the road. The horse lunged over the ditch without breaking stride and began mowing down bushes as it struggled up through the narrow clear-cutting. “Protect your face,” he added, his grip on her leg nearly bruising when they plunged into the forest and he expertly guided the horse weaving through the trees as they continued climbing the steep ridge.

  Hiding her face in his jacket again as branches slapped against them, Rana found herself wondering how much her husband was enjoying their stroll home now. Because personally, she had thought they were centuries past having to flee for their lives. Or rather of Titus having to flee for her life—and the lives of his people—as he had done countless times before they’d moved to Atlantis. Tactical retreats, he’d called them, when she knew he would have preferred to stand and fight.

  Well, that’s what he got for championing mortals.

  She didn’t quite manage to stifle a scream when Salt skidded to a stop, the horse’s sides expanding in billowing pants as Titus looked at her—one regal white eyebrow lifting over vivid green eyes shining with excitement. Rana rested her head against him again at the realization that contrary to the fact that they’d just ridden hell-bent for leather away from some unnamed threat, he definitely was enjoying himself.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Wonderful. Do you know what we are running from?”

  “That.”

  She straightened to look at where he was looking and saw a towering tree racing up the road from the south, the dark, unmistakable silhouettes of no less than a dozen demons chasing it. The tree suddenly stopped, its massive, leafless branches slicing through the air with the force of cracking whips as it turned to face its attackers.

  Titus swung his leg over Salt’s neck and slid to the ground, then helped her dismount as she continued watching the road below. “It’s the new god or goddess,” she said as he hugged her from behind. “It survived. Oh please, Titus, you must help it,” she softly petitioned when the demons began circling the tree like snarling jackals.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t,” he returned, his voice thick with an emotion she couldn’t identify. “He must want to manifest badly enough to fight for the privilege. Don’t worry. What doesn’t kill him will make him stronger.”

  “And if it’s a goddess?”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “If she can’t defeat a few paltry demons, then what good will she be to mankind?” He stopped her from turning to hide her face in his chest when the tree suddenly gave a blood-curdling roar. “No, don’t look away,” he softly commanded, dropping his head down beside hers. “Witness the birth of a god.”

  “Or its death,” she rasped as she watched the entity repeatedly lash out at the snarling demons, the roars and screams of the vicious battle echoing up the ridge. “The odds are twelve to one.”

  “Then let us hope what he lacks in strength he makes up in cunning.”

  “What do you mean? Wait, you said he. You know it’s a god?”

  He straightened away with a chuckle. “Even a fledgling goddess would quickly figure out that demons don’t have the brains of a slug, and would use their stupidity to her advantage.” He snorted. “Gods being physically stronger, our first instinct is to fight rather than think our way out of situations.”

  Rana caught her breath. “Did you have to fight for your life?”

  “I earned my place in your world.” He ducked his head beside hers again. “With the help of a wandering mortal who thankfully had more muscle than good sense when he stumbled upon a scene not unlike the one below.”

  “A mortal came to your aid?” She leaned to the side to look at him. “Is he the reason you championed mankind?”

  Her husband gave her a quick kiss then straightened. “Let’s just say that was the day I learned I’d rather have a man guarding my back than most gods. There,” he said gruffly, turning her to face the battle again. “It’s about damned time.”

  “What? I don’t see anything. Where did he go? Is . . . is he dead?”

  “No. He finally realized he has the power to stop being a large, vulnerable tree and simply turned himself into a less obvious target.”

  “What did he turn into?” she asked, scanning up and down the road and seeing only the perplexed demons running in circles and now snarling at each other.

  “Come,” he said, leading her over to Salt. “We need to get out of here before they catch our scent.”

  “But what did he become?” she asked as he lifted her onto the saddle.

  He swung up behind her, settled her onto his lap as he slid forward into place, then wrapped an arm around her waist and shrugged. “Since he appears to be an earth god, I imagine he turned into an innocuous twig or weed,” he said, reining the horse uphill and urging it into a brisk walk.

  Rana leaned around him to see the road. “Where are Kitty and the others?” She twisted to look at him. “They won’t go after the demons, will they?”

  He nudged her to face forward again. “They’re covering our back trail. Kitalanta will stay out of sight and not give away our presence.” He chuckled when his stomach suddenly gave a loud rumble, then dropped his hand from around her to pat the front of her jacket. “Did I see you stuffing food in your pockets when I came for you?”

  She pressed back against him to reach inside both pockets at the same time, her right hand reemerging with a small waxed wheel of cheese and the left with a bunch of smashed grapes, which she held up for him to see.

  “I do love a woman who thinks fast on her feet,” he said, giving her a squeeze. “Will you be very disappointed if we cut our trip short and ride straight through the night to the MacKeages’?”

  Rana lowered her hands with a loud, exaggerated, very disappointed sigh. “I suppose we must, since the wilderness has suddenly become so crowded,” she said, lapping juice off her fingers and then sucking two grapes into her mouth.

  He nudged her arm. “Feed me.”

  She reached up and pushed several of the smashed grapes into his mouth. “We can’t just drop in unannounced on Duncan and Peg in the middle of the night.” She shoved two more grapes in her own mouth. “I don’t want to alarm the children.”

  “We won’t be arriving unannounced,” he said with another chuckle, gesturing at the sky, “thanks to your son’s small army of feathered spies.”

  Rana looked up through the tree canopy to see several gulls circling overhead. She then looked at where Titus was now pointing and spotted the bald eagle perched at the top of a giant pine, its sharp golden eyes following their progress before it suddenly spread its wings and took flight—heading directly north, she noticed.

  She pushed the remaining grapes into his mouth. “I can’t imagine where your son could have picked up the habit of spying on people. Titus,” she said as she stared down at the wheel of cheese. “What happened to the man who helped you the day you manifested?”

  “I gave Lombard a hero’s burial.”

  “You . . . your magic couldn’t save him?”

  “It can only save those who choose life over d
eath,” he said quietly, “and Lombard preferred to join his slaughtered wife and children. I believe he was wandering the countryside looking for a good fight to hurry his journey to them, which is why he charged into the swarm of demons to save my life with no concern for his own.”

  “If you learned that about him,” Rana whispered, “that would mean he didn’t die in battle.”

  “I kept him as comfortable as I could for eight days.” He gave a humorless laugh. “During which time it became clear to both of us that I hadn’t manifested to be anyone’s nursemaid.” He ducked his head beside hers again. “In return for my crude care, Lombard passed the hours by giving me a glimpse into the mortal mind, and I became enthralled to find myself having candid, philosophical discussions with a learned man who had strong opinions on religion, politics, and life in general.”

  “All these years and you never told me about him.”

  He straightened away with a shrug. “Not for want of hiding anything. When I met you, Lombard was nearly a thousand years dead.”

  “But you were a young man of twenty-two when we met.”

  Her back vibrated with what she suspected was a silent chuckle. “I couldn’t very well present myself as a doddering old man to a beautiful young maiden who happened to have a well-muscled blacksmith for a father.”

  “How old were you, then?” she asked, twisting to look at him. Catching his grin before he could disguise it, she jabbed him with her elbow hard enough to make him grunt. “You were a lecherous old man!”

  “Ah, Stasia,” he said with an outright laugh, “have you not learned in the course of our magical marriage that like time, age is also a human contrivance? We are all of us as young or old as we feel.” He pressed his cheek to hers. “And the moment I looked into your scowling eyes that day at the tournament, I felt like a young warrior in his prime who also was old enough to know the difference between lust and love. And,” he whispered against her ear, “wise enough to follow you home.”

  “But you said you almost gave up on me.”

  “Zeus knows I tried,” he said with a chuckle, reining Salt to a stop when they emerged onto another, much narrower tote road. “I even made it ten miles out of town before remembering something Lombard had said about women in general and stubborn young maidens in particular.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me the harder a man must work to capture the heart of a beautiful maiden, the more of a prize she will be.” Titus lifted her right leg over Salt’s neck and turned her to sit sideways inside his embrace. “Because, Lombard said, a woman who knows her own worth will settle for nothing less than all a man has to give. And he assured me a stubborn, opinionated, irreverent wife will keep a man young, and that their marriage will never, ever be boring.”

  “I would like to have met Lombard,” she said, twining her arms around his neck, “as he sounds very wise.”

  Her husband’s deep rich eyes took on a twinkle. “I believe he would have approved of my choice.”

  Instead of being gathered closer to be kissed, Rana gasped when she felt herself falling, the blackguard’s laughter accompanying her down as he threw a leg over Salt’s neck and slid to the ground. He held her steady until she found her footing, then turned her toward the woods and gave her a pat on the backside to get her moving. “Go take a potty break,” he said, plucking the cheese out of her hand, “before our final push to the MacKeages’.”

  Rana walked into the woods, scowling and rubbing her backside, and decided her big warrior husband was enjoying himself way too much. But then she broke into a smile at the realization she was only hours away from sinking into a blessedly hot bath before collapsing facedown onto one of Peg’s blessedly soft guest beds.

  And by the gods, the next time Titus wanted to go camping, he’d better show up in a fully equipped RV bus like Maximilian and Olivia’s, or she would make sure the blackguard wished he had continued walking out of town forty years ago.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Worry was an insidious infliction, Titus decided as he lay staring up at the ceiling only a few feet above his head, in that it tended to consume all rational thought until a seemingly innocuous concern grew into an overwhelming problem. Like with Rana; her worry over what he might do upon learning she was with child had become such a huge, scary problem in her mind that she’d run away.

  And like with him now, Titus thought as he toyed with the silky, rose-scented hair splayed across his chest; for the last three days he had been consumed with worry over what Rana’s reaction would be when he told her they weren’t having a baby.

  She would be heartbroken. And considering he always turned into a blithering idiot whenever she cried, he was afraid he would start promising her the moon.

  He frowned at the ceiling. Then again, there was nothing to say he had to be the one to tell her. And anyway, wasn’t that sort of news better received from a midwife, since only another woman could truly empathize with such a deep disappointment? Because no matter what century it was, having—or losing the ability to have—children would always be the business of women. Men paced outside the birthing rooms, waiting and insidiously worrying, then rushed in when it was over and kissed their wives and babes and told them they were beautiful.

  Which had him wondering what sort of man—Roger Bentley in particular—would take on the work of doctoring women. He could understand being interested in the science of pregnancy, and he supposed men might be better able to deal with the gruesome details of modern operations. Although in truth, he could just as easily see Maude wielding a scalpel.

  Nevertheless, he would be standing right outside the door to comfort his wife when she came out of her exam with Maude, which he would insist she have today. There was no sense drawing this out any longer; the sooner Rana knew she wasn’t with child, the sooner they could get back to being a happily married couple. And, Titus decided with a sigh, if she preferred to live on the shore of Bottomless rather than looking down at it from the top of Whisper Mountain, he supposed he could move into this unpainted, crooked-roofed, overstuffed hovel with her. Although he didn’t much care that the bed had obviously been built for a gnome, or that it was tucked under an eave that left him in danger of hitting his head if he sat up without thinking.

  They’d reached the fiord two miles south of the MacKeage homestead shortly before midnight to find Duncan camped out waiting for them, thanks to Maximilian’s spies. Titus had slid off Salt with his half-asleep wife in his arms, asked the highlander to take the warhorse, and persuaded Rana that he could have her home in less time than it would take them to ride to Peg’s. She’d glanced out at the darkened fiord then gone boneless against him, mumbling something about not caring where he took her as long as it had a hot shower and soft bed. But then, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d ridden above the waves on Leviathan’s back across open water—although she usually hadn’t had a choice because they had been fleeing for their lives.

  After all these years and everything they had been through together, Rana still continued to amaze him with her practical mind, whatever-it-took resilience, and unwavering faith in him. There were also times her sense of humor left him speechless and utterly enchanted. But mostly he was humbled by her courage, emotional strength, and her innate wisdom that bordered on frightening.

  Because she had been right; he would have promised anyone anything to make sure she wouldn’t die in childbirth this time, either. Not that he could ever admit that, lest it encouraged her to continue scheming to keep him safe, as he now understood she’d run away to prevent him from selling his soul to save hers.

  Although once she realized the full ramifications of his renouncing immortality, she’d have a new and unfamiliar worry to deal with. But, he decided as he kissed her head when he felt her stir, he was in no hurry to broach that subject, either.

  “What time is it?” she asked, her voice heavy with sleep.

  “Judging by the sun shining through your window, I would s
ay early afternoon. Why?” he asked, realizing his own voice also sounded thick. “Do you have a pressing engagement?”

  “No, I don’t suppose I do.” She cuddled deeper against him like a kitten curling into a sunbeam. “Are you comfortable enough?”

  That made him chuckle. “I really can’t say, since I can no longer feel my body. Well, except for my feet sticking out through the ironwork on the footboard, as they are only half asleep. So based on the fact that I all but had to kneel in your shower to wash my face and hair, I take it Averill Latimer wasn’t a very tall man?”

  He felt more than heard her sigh brush over his chest. “I’m apparently bigger than Averill was, since I can’t even button up his welding jacket.” She began toying with his chest hair. “There’s no reason I have to sell my house immediately, is there?” she whispered, this time her voice sounding heavy with regret. “I mean, we could use it as a retreat this summer.”

  “If you sell it,” he returned just as softly, “then where would we live?”

  Her head came up, her eyes widened with surprise. That is until they suddenly narrowed. “You would live in a crooked, unpainted hovel?”

  He snorted. “Of course not. But I would live here temporarily while our new home is being built on the fiord.”

  Her eyes widened again. “Where on the fiord? Near Carolina and Alec?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said with a laugh, cradling her back to his chest. “They’re building at the northern end, which leaves us plenty of shoreline to choose from.”

  “Which side?” She lifted her head again, this time her eyes shining with excitement. “I think it should be on the Nova Mare shoreline. I don’t know how Peg puts up with lugging her children back and forth across the fiord every day, as I swear she spends more time behind the wheel of her boat than she does her truck. And she’s going to have seven children in a few months, and the older ones attend school events that often have them crossing in the dark. I have no idea how Duncan got her to agree to live over there.”