by Carmen Caine
Published by
Bento Box Books
Edited by
Louisa Stephens
Cover Art by
Lind
Copyright © 2016 Carmen Caine
Ebook Edition
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Dedication
To Winston
You brighten my life
Table of Contents
Latchling
Destiny’s Arrival
The Root of Evil
A Stone from Hell
Allies
Betrayed by a Curse
Highlander of my Heart
Winterbound
A Taste of Love
Heartbreak
Loss
A New Dawn
My One Regret
Woe
One Last Kiss
A Latchling Most Powerful
About the Author
Other Books
Latchling
Northern Scotland, fourteenth century
My wedding ceremony took place at the tender age of five. I remember it well. My weeping mother crowned my brown braids with a wreath of summer roses and slipped a newly woven plaid over my shoulders before leading me out of the croft to my waiting father. My father, a mountain of a man, stood motionless, grim-faced, and with his silvery eyes locked unseeing on some far-distant point over the windswept moors. He’d clenched his jaw so tight I thought it might break.
When he failed to acknowledge my presence, I stepped up and laced my tiny fingers through his. “I’m ready, Da,” I said.
Slowly, his head turned and his eyes narrowed. “Never forget what you are, Elizabeth,” he ordered in a low, gravelly voice. “Never forget what’s in your blood. You’re a Stonehenge Druid latchling. Remember that.”
A latchling. Yes, I was a latchling. Latchlings occur once every seven hundred years or so. In the Charmed world, the powers of warlocks and witches are sex-linked traits, with warlocks inheriting their father’s abilities and witches their mother’s—except in the rare case of a latchling. Latchlings disturb the pattern by ‘latching’ onto their opposite-sex parent’s abilities, but they do not inherit them. Nay, ‘tis far worse. Upon the moment of conception, the latchling drains their parent dry of all magic, commandeering the fully developed powers upon which the latchling then expands. A latchling’s own offspring, however, is often weak—except in the even rarer case where the parent’s power lies dormant for another seven hundred years, waiting for the next latchling to latch on and unlock it in its full form.
In my case, I’d usurped my father’s extraordinary powers. As a direct male descendant of the Stonehenge Druids, he’d been one of the most powerful, formidable forces ever to exist in the Charmed world. Even then, powerless as he was, I’d never seen him in my short life, bow to the will of another—until that day.
“I’ll never forget, Da,” I assured him. Squeezing his fingers, I added, “I’m ready.”
His wide shoulders deflated, and slowly, he mouthed a single word, “Aye.”
Grasping my mother by the hand, I pulled my parents forward, knowing I must be their strength. Together, we entered the village, walking straight through as the curious inhabitants peeked out from behind drawn curtains and doors opened no more than a hairline crack.
I didn’t mind the villagers. Common Folk. And I didn’t mean the term condescendingly but as a mere observation that they lacked Charmed abilities. While many tales existed of witches, warlocks, vampires, werewolves and the like, the Common Folk thought them all just that—fairytales.
That day, the Common Folk—and even the Charmed—didn’t understand the true significance of the wedding taking place upon the stone kirk’s steps. Aye, all thought the event strange, to be sure. A mysterious, wee lassie of five appearing from the Isles to wed a highland lord and a man well past his prime.
They didn’t know that it was I, alone, who’d orchestrated the entire affair, bending those who’d resisted to my will. Even my own proud father had finally submitted and had bowed his powerful head—but only after I’d shared with him the visions of what would come if I did not follow the urging etched deep in my soul.
My mother? I couldn’t tell her. It would only exacerbate her suffering. Alas, I could do nothing, save watch her weep, knowing in this case that ignorance truly was a gift.
We walked through the village. I listened to the sound of my father’s boots scraping on the cobblestones, interspersed with the pounding of the waves and the gulls wailing on the wind. Slowly, we ascended the hill to the stone kirk perched on the edge of the sea.
There standing under the spreading boughs of an ancient oak, my destiny waited: my soon-to-be husband, a hawk-nosed nobleman with silver already peppering his black hair.
The Common Folk saw him as their highland lord, a renowned knight of the realm and cousin to the King of England himself.
My parents and other Charmed folk knew him as Lord Brian Rowle, Grand Master of the Advisory, Sovereign of the Charmed, and a ruler who governed his magical subjects with the heaviest of hands.
And me?
I knew him to be a callous man with a shriveled heart, a man with the most disagreeable of natures, and a man most wicked … but I also knew him as a stepping stone, the next step I must take to accomplish the purpose for which I’d been born.
Yes, Lord Rowle was evil, but he was only the harbinger of something darker still to come. And even at the tender age of five, I knew destiny had tasked me to stop them both.
Destiny’s Arrival
Wales, twenty-three years later
“Lady Elizabeth! Open your eyes!”
I opened my third eye first, sensing the mana, the magic, rushing into the room close upon the heels of my frantic lady-in-waiting.
A shiver rippled down my spine and I caught my breath.
Could it be? At last?
I cast a quick counter-spell, reinforcing my protective wards even as I studied the dark, curling fingers of mana trying their best to slip under my chamber door. Yes. I held my breath, suddenly alert on every level. Yes, this time, something else lurked within Lord Rowle’s particularly dark brand of magic. A new thread of darkness. One I’d never sensed before, but one I’d always known existed.
Had the evil I’d anticipated since the tender age of five finally arrived?
“Your husband has returned,” my lady-in-waiting hissed. A frown wrinkled her forehead as she jerked her head towards the door. “And not alone. He’s brought company, my lady, and even one as untalented as I can sense these men are blacker than black.”
Lord Rowle’s mana struck my wards with a resounding blow before subsiding to search, to seek for the smallest vulnerability, the tiniest of cracks in my protective shielding. Twenty-three years. For twenty-three years, I’d deflected his attempts to breach my defenses. Fool. With practiced ease, I once again spun my spell, misleading him to believe he’d succeeded in cracking my ward to find little skill or power underneath.
Satisfied, his spell began to recede.
My husband knew nothing of my trickery and deceit—or just how I used these attacks against him. Almost absently, I bound a single strand of my own mana to the tail end of his. A Trojan Hors
e, if you will. For the past two decades, I’d patiently crafted a slow-binding spell, a spell simply waiting for me to trigger it. Already, I’d robbed him of the vitality to father a child, guaranteeing his line and particular brand of maliciousness would end. But one day, I would do more. One day, I’d rip every last shred of mana he possessed in his dark soul and shatter each and every spell he’d ever cast.
But today? Today was not that day. In fact, today wasn’t about Lord Rowle at all. No, today was about that newly detected darker strand of mana. A mana that took me further down the path I’d waited over twenty years to tread.
Willing myself to remain calm, I rose from my bed and ordered my lady-in-waiting. “Fetch my blue gown, Marie, and my cloak.”
Marie drew her lips into a thin line. Marie. My loyal, trusted companion. As a witch, she possessed only minor water skills and as a human, she stood on the frail, delicate side, but inside that bony body graced with red hair and deep-set blue eyes lived a heart of gold. I trusted no one more.
She crossed my chamber to the dark, oak wardrobe before finally giving voice to her concern. “Not your cloak, my lady,” she objected softly. “’Tis too dangerous. I may not know much, but even I can sense an unusual strength in Lord Rowle this night. Whatever he’s been doing of late, he’s gained an extraordinary strength from the doing of it.”
I raised a curious brow and turned my attention once more to his probing fingers of mana still lurking by the chamber door. True. There was a renewed energy there, but not enough to cause concern.
“He’s still much weaker than I am,” I judged, shrugging her concerns aside. “Lord Rowle does not interest me. It is his companions I would see.”
As I joined her to slip into a close-fitting gown of fine Italian wool and a blue, bejeweled bodice, she disagreed, “His companions are dark, my lady. The leader, a vampire of a sort I’ve never before encountered. Do not take the cloak. Even if Lord Rowle does not, this vampire or his companions may sense your use of it.”
A vampire. A shiver rippled down my spine. Could my long-sought quarry be a Chosen One? It defied logic. As creatures of death, vampires couldn’t house mana in their unholy bodies. They couldn’t produce that malevolent thread I sensed in Lord Rowle’s probing fingers of mana.
Curious, I lowered my protective wards, just enough to examine the mana once again. Yes, the new mana was still there, a mana of pure evil, an evil even darker than Lord Rowle’s.
My senses thrilled with the certainty that my years of waiting were now over. But I had a cherished friend to placate first. “Very well,” I said, bowing my head in acceptance. “I will leave the cloak here—for now.”
She smiled in relief and grabbing a fine ox-horn comb, moved to dress my hair.
I joined her at the mirror, smoothing my gown over my hips, letting my hands glide slowly, absently over the material clinging to my curves. As she brushed and arranged my long brown hair, I surveyed the reflection thoughtfully staring back at me. Flashing eyes as blue as the cloudless sky, a small, heart-shaped mouth in a delicately boned face with a pointed chin, pouty lips, and a pert nose—a face often described as pixie-like, even though I stood slim and tall as any man.
At the age of twenty-eight, the Common Folk considered me well into my middle age, but the realm of the Charmed Folk knew otherwise. With a projected lifespan of several hundred years, they considered me quite young. Undeveloped. Untried. Certainly not a threat.
Their blunder.
I played it to my advantage.
When Marie gave my braids the final pat, I straightened my shoulders and with a deep breath, moved to my jewelry box and reached for my locket. I could still see the tears on my mother’s face as she clasped the necklace around my neck that day, the day Lord Rowle arrived to escort me to his home, Castle Llewellyn. It was the last time I saw her. She’d died shortly after, never understanding just why her only child had been sacrificed to the dark Lord Rowle.
I sighed and fingered the long, silver chain with its single white pearl embedded in a heart-shaped pendant. Thinning my lips, I slipped the necklace over my head. The beautiful trinket lent my long neck an air of grace, but it was the heart shape that I cherished the most. It reminded me of my father’s last words: “Use only your head to plan, Elizabeth. Never your heart.”
Wise advice. I lived by those words.
With a cold, measured calculation, I lifted my head and announced, “I am ready.”
The Root of Evil
I melded with the shadows at the top of the stair and surveyed the scene spreading out beneath me.
It was late and for the most part, the castle’s great hall stood shrouded in darkness. Even the crackling fire spitting in the fireplace, and the circular, iron chandelier with its tallow candles failed to pierce the deep gloom of the midwinter night.
Lord Rowle slouched before the fire in an exquisitely carved, walnut-stained chair with an embroidered cushion of Hunter’s green. He looked imperious, every inch the king of the Charmed, clad in a fine black, square-necked, velvet tunic embellished with the Rowle wolf in gold thread. With one leg thrown over the arm of his chair, he propped the other on the small game table hosting his most prized possession: an intricately carved chess set. Strategy. Tactics. It was all the dreaded warlock lived for. The fire’s golden glow flickered over his face, revealing a stern man with a high forehead, a prominent patrician nose, and brows slanted in a permanent frown. His black, silver-threaded hair fell long and straight over his broad shoulders. He’d changed little over the past twenty years. Most Common Folk thought him a middle-aged man of forty-five even though he stood closer to one hundred—but with a warlock lifespan of over two hundred years, they weren’t really that far off.
I glanced at his companions, seeking the source of the evil I’d sensed in my chamber.
Three hooded men, already steeped in drunken pleasure, sat at the great hall’s head table laden with steaming platters of fish and fowl. The red cross emblazoned on their white tunics and their tattooed hands announced them as Knight Templars. Dangerous men, and from an Order thought to have been disbanded nigh on a hundred years ago.
From where I stood, I could sense their collective mana as startlingly black—yet still not the malevolence I searched for. Scanning the vast chamber, my eyes quickly locked on the shadows behind my husband’s chair.
There it was. A dark energy, radiating a unique power I’d never before encountered and even as I sensed it, a tall form wearing a long, dark blue cloak stepped into the circle of firelight.
A vampire, an ancient one, and without a doubt, the source of the evil I’d sensed over the years, an evil so strong it instantly demoted my malicious husband into the ranks of the mildly distasteful. Clearly, this creature masquerading as a vampire held vast power far beyond Lord Rowle’s—and now that I stood closer to its presence, I wondered if perhaps it surpassed even my own. I shivered, and as my skin crawled and my stomach began to churn, I forced myself to look upon him.
From my position, I saw only the color of his skin—a dark olive—and the outline of high cheekbones with a fierce set of jaw. As his voice snaked through the hall, I held my breath and tilted my head to listen.
“You must awaken the portal, Rowle,” the vampire hissed. “Rapidamente. I tire of waiting.”
Lord Rowle snorted in contempt. “Destiny is harsh, Emilio. Often, it rips from us what we want most.”
The vampire turned and I saw classic Italian features framed with dark hair. I found his eyes odd. Brown? Gray? Green? I couldn’t tell.
After a distinct pause, the vampire opened his lips. “In my hands, destino—destiny—bends, Rowle,” he promised in a tone walking the line between a statement and a threat.
“Mayhap it bends,” Lord Rowle replied, his expression hovering somewhere between indifference and disdain. “But it most definitely waits, Emilio.”
Emilio drew his lips back, exposing his fangs. “Why the delay? Uno ritardo dopo l’altro. ‘Wait’ is a
ll I hear from you.”
I arched a curious brow.
Oddly, the vampire’s shoulders tensed and he turned. His sharp, piercing gaze focused on the shadows where I lurked as if he’d heard that silent muscular movement. Perhaps he had.
At the very least, he clearly sensed my presence.
I could not afford to be ‘caught’. Not by him. He would read it as weakness. Gathering my skirts in my hands, I lifted my chin and boldly descended the stairs.
All eyes found me at once.
Lord Rowle straightened in his chair to perch over his chess set like a bird of prey. His eyes explored me with a bold familiarity. For all of his disdain, he sought my bed often. I didn’t care. I felt nothing for the man.
I approached him with a heart of stone and a will stronger than iron, and as I arrived, the men rose in greeting. “Good evening, my lord,” I murmured, curtseying low.
A slow smile curled my husband’s lips, a smile holding lust and little more. “My queen,” he acknowledged.
“Ah, a most exquisite specimen,” the vampire observed, moving to my husband’s side.
I straightened and, at last, met my enemy face to face. So, this was the evil I had waited for over twenty years to meet. A creature, part vampire and part something else. As I studied him, his colorless eyes narrowed and his gaze turned all at once unreadable. And in that moment, I knew he saw me as great a danger as I saw him.
Without hesitation, he flashed forward and taking my hand, pressed it against his cold lips, saying, “I recognize the Gifted, Highness. The child you shall bear will astound the Charmed Reaches.” His ambiguous words seemed meant for Lord Rowle, but I knew he spoke only to me.
I lifted a calm brow, reading the naked intent in his now strangely dark gaze. My future child. From his expression, there was little doubt he fancied none other than himself, the proposed father. Curious. What manner of creature was he?