“If that were true, love, none of this might have happened,” he said quietly.
Shaking her head, Shea reached up to hold his face between her palms. This she wanted him to know. To understand, before they set out on the last leg of this quest that would eventually unite them forever.
“It was true, Torin. With you, there was peace and passion and laughter.” Her hands dropped and she bowed her head as if subconsciously apologizing for the woman she had once been. “But when I was with my sisters, I forgot everything I had with you. I listened to the demands of my own greed and let what was really important to me slide away.”
Turning around, she leaned back against him and stared at the castle where she had found love and then lost it again so long ago. “So when I had to hide the Artifact—keep it safe—I brought it to the one place where I had known safety. However briefly.”
“Shea, you had only to reach for me,” he said, wrapping his muscular arms around her. “Then or now, I will be here for you. Always.”
“I know that,” she told him and took a quick, sharp breath, deliberately releasing memories that were as dust now. Time had moved on and she couldn’t, no matter how much she wished it, reclaim what had been lost. But if she completed this task, finished atoning for what her earlier self had been a part of, she could perhaps find what she had not cherished nearly enough in the past.
With her Eternal at her side, Shea felt strong. Capable. The threads of their mating were rapidly tying them together and that bond continued to strengthen every day.
Still, she felt something else. Something she had yet to confess to Torin. The dark pulse of the Artifact called to her, as it had so long ago. She felt its pull, like an insistent song repeating over and over again in her mind and heart. It was there, just beneath the surface, tempting, teasing, reminding her what she had felt in that moment of supreme power, just before her ancient world had crashed down around her.
And a part of her wanted it.
Shea swallowed hard and fought the feeling. Fought the instinct that had her clamoring to go into the castle ruin herself to retrieve the Artifact shard. She wanted to be alone with that darkness. To feel the sweet sweep of power rushing through her. And so she kept her secret to herself, hoping that if she ignored it, nothing would happen. Nothing would go cataclysmically wrong.
Taking her hand in his, Torin said, “Let’s go and get it. The sooner we’re back at Haven, with that thing stored away, the better off we’ll all be.”
“Right.” She nodded, took another deep breath and walked with him across the field and back into her past.
The interior of the ruin looked less picturesque.
Fallen stones tumbled on top of each other and bracken and ivy were slowly covering everything, like a rich green cloak, dotted with autumn wildflowers. Torin could have simply flashed them to the chapel wall, but there was something about this place, about this task, that had them both preferring to walk.
It was hard going and perhaps that was as it should be, Shea thought. She clambered over huge stones, and with Torin’s help, scaled a short wall that looked about to topple. The chapel was at the back of Nessa’s castle. Shea remembered the girl’s wedding day, when there were flowers gathered and hung from trailing ribbons along the castle walls. Musicians had played, voices lifted in song and whiskey had flowed like water.
Now, only the wind sang through the stones.
“There it is,” Shea said, pointing to a wall with chunks as big as her fist missing. “The chapel’s through there.”
“I remember.”
She looked around, worrying at her bottom lip. “It looks as though the doorway’s been blocked forever. There are so many stones and vines, we’ll never get through there.”
“For this,” he told her, gathering her close, “we’ll call the fire.”
She clung to him and when the flames rose up around them, they flashed from outside the walls to within the enclosure. Shea let go of Torin and stepped across the broken flagstone floor. A flutter of noise swept past her and she shrieked in surprise, ducking and covering her head.
“Just a bird,” Torin said, looking around. “Doves have built nests in here.”
She laughed a little at her own edginess and continued across what had once been a tiny, beautiful chapel. Grass and heather sprouted up from between the stones beneath her feet and the roof was gone, the sky stretching wide overhead.
“Sad,” she whispered, remembering it all as it had once been.
“It is,” he agreed in a hushed voice as low as her own.
Letting go of memory and the inevitable march of time, Shea turned to the west wall of the chapel. Her gaze landed instantly on a torch bracket. Hanging at a tilted angle because of the shifting of the stones, the black silver she had magically twisted into the shape of a simple tool, still hung where she had left it so long ago.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Torin asked the question but didn’t wait for an answer. He stalked forward and reached out one hand to grab it.
“Stop!”
He did, turning his head to give her a quizzical look. “What is it?”
How to explain, she wondered frantically. How could she tell him that every beat of her heart, every inch of her skin was compelling her to take that shard of mystical metal. To hold it once more. To feel that heavy darkness draping over her in a wild, sensuous pump of energy and power.
She couldn’t even explain it to herself.
All she knew was that she needed to touch the black silver. She had to be the one to take it from the wall.
“Let me,” she said, moving past him to reach up for the bracket she’d forged and hidden so many centuries ago. The burn of power from the Artifact reached for her, as if the metal itself recognized her and welcomed her back.
Shea’s fingers closed around it and with a twist of magic she pulled it from the wall, holding it close to her. She felt it then. A burst of black energy that swept through her entire system in the blink of an eye. In the space of a heartbeat, she tipped her head back, clasped the Artifact to her breast and smiled widely at the churning sky overhead. Dark clouds gathered in an instant and thunder rumbled like the call of angry gods shouting down warnings.
But Shea heard none of that.
She was wrapped in the silky strands of a power so immense it stole the breath away. How could she ever have given this up? How was she able to walk away from the pulsing strength slipping into every cell of her body?
How would she ever let it go again? God, the swell of power inside her was unimaginable. She hadn’t realized, hadn’t known. Her mind raced with possibilities and she smiled.
“Give it to me, Shea,” Torin said, his voice harsh and strained.
“One minute,” she said, sighing as if to a lover as the black threads unspooled through her veins.
“Shea!”
He grabbed hold of her, giving her a hard shake that brought her up out of the darkness. “What? What is it? We have it. Everything’s good,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” he told her, glaring down into her eyes. “You changed. The second you touched that damn thing, you changed.”
She twisted free of his grasp, still clutching the Artifact to her with greedy fingers. “What change? I’m still me.”
“No. Your hair, your eyes, even your clothes are turning black, Shea! It’s taking you over and you’re letting it. You must resist its call.”
No. She shook her head and stumbled back from him. But she risked a glance down and saw that he was right. Her blue jeans were now black. Her dark green sweater was also black and as she shook her head, she saw that her long auburn hair was now as black as night.
“Oh, God . . .” Fear rose up inside her, as thick and rich as the power she felt simmering inside the black silver. This was what she’d known so long ago, she thought. This battle between herself and the hunger that could corrupt a soul and twist it beyond imaginings. Her heartbeat thudded heavily in her chest as she r
ealized that she was becoming what she once was and couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t end it. Couldn’t seem to pry her fingers off the Artifact.
“History’s repeating itself, Shea,” Torin said, his voice sharp as a blade, his pale eyes locked on her face.
Shea looked into his gaze and saw her own reflection staring back at her. But this was the face of a long-dead witch. One who’d gambled and lost. One who had so endangered her soul, she’d set herself on an eight-hundred-year journey of atonement. And for what? So that she could make the same mistakes over and over again?
A battle rose up within her. A battle for supremacy.
The witch against the power of the Artifact.
Against her own hunger.
Chapter 47
Shea’s terrified gaze fixed on his. “Torin, it’s much stronger than it was in the old days. It’s as if it’s been gathering power through the centuries and the longer it was here, unused, untapped, the stronger it became.”
“You must fight it, Shea,” he told her, coming toward her, one slow step at a time, as if sneaking up on the magical metal she held so closely. “If our mating bond is shattered before completion, if you pull away from me now, both of our souls will die.”
She hadn’t known that, but she instinctively recognized it as truth. A truth she couldn’t allow to happen. She shuddered, a great, wrenching, full-body shudder that snapped her teeth together and locked her bones in a painful grip.
Lightning slashed the sky in jagged bolts. Thunder shook the ruin. Even the ground beneath their feet seemed to roll and quake with the gathering power.
“Take it,” she ground out. “Take it from me, Torin.”
He looked into her eyes and shook his head. “You have to give it to me freely, Shea. You have to willingly give away that power.”
She knew he was right. Her mind was shrieking at her to do it. To uncurl her tight fingers from the black silver. Hand it to Torin and reclaim her own soul from the darkness. But it was so hard to fight her body’s demands. Hard to fight against that rush of magic spilling into her.
Shea locked her gaze on Torin’s. She gathered herself and concentrated solely on the Eternal in front of her. In his pale gray eyes, she saw love. Acceptance. Loyalty. She clung to the strength of those emotions. She thought of her own journey. All she’d been through in the last month. Her soul felt divided, one half leaning toward the light, the other toward the dark. She was torn, literally, between two desires, each of them as strong as the other.
And there was Torin. Still standing in front of her. Steadfastly watching her with love, with trust. She nodded, reached for her own strength deep within herself and slowly she forced herself to stretch out her cupped hands to him. To painfully open her cramped fingers from around the black silver, which had shifted shape in her grasp, becoming once more a slice of an ancient Celtic knot.
She looked down at the metal lying in the center of her palms, felt herself yearn, then deliberately released it.
Torin caught the Artifact, then reached out to grab her as she dropped in a dead faint.
Shea woke up, drew a deep breath and was relieved to feel that she was her true self again. She picked up a long hank of her hair, glanced at it and sighed to see the familiar dark red. “Torin?”
She sat up, looked around the ruined chapel and finally spotted her Eternal in the shadows. “Torin? Are you okay?”
“It is . . . difficult.” His voice sounded hollow, different.
Scrambling to her feet, Shea rushed to him, drawing him from the darkness, only to see that the changes that had overtaken her were now affecting him. His familiar gray eyes were black as pitch. His hair was even darker than before and his clothing too was night black. “Oh, God.”
Had he saved her only to lose himself?
He kept one hand fisted around the Artifact and she knew the burn of power he was experiencing. She reached for him and wasn’t dissuaded when he lurched backward, away from her touch. Insistently, she laid one hand on his broad chest and let the connection between the two of them strengthen him.
“You have to drop that thing, Torin,” she told him, her gaze searching the black pits of his eyes, looking for a flicker of recognition there. “Let it go. Now.”
“One of us must carry it back to Haven,” he insisted, lines of strain etching themselves into his features. “Better me than you. We’ve already seen it affects you far more deeply than it does me. I can survive it.”
He was fooling himself. The changes sweeping through him might be happening more slowly than they had with her, but they were just as damaging. Just as dangerous.
It was as if he were far away from her already and Shea knew she didn’t have much more time to reach him. She needed to get him to listen to her, as he had her. Sliding her hand up to cup his cheek in her palm, she shook her head and whispered, “We’ll find a way, Torin. But we can’t hold it. Neither of us can.”
He closed his eyes and she felt the battle raging within him. He was drawing not only on his own formidable strength but their combined essences to fight his way back from the dark.
“Look at me, Torin,” she said softly, waiting until his eyes opened and fixed on her. The blank, empty stare was unsettling, but she refused to be cowed. He had saved her; she could do nothing less for him. “You have to drop the Artifact. We’ll solve this. But I need you with me.”
He hissed in a breath and held it, caught in his lungs. She watched as emotions flashed across his face so quickly that it was hard to identify one from the other. All she knew was that she needed him. Wanted him. Loved him.
She hadn’t once said that word. Not to him. Not to herself. She’d hidden from it, like a coward. She’d become his mate, become his partner and still had withheld that word. Why? To maintain that one last link to the self-sufficient person she had once been? Was it fear? Was it cowardice? God, she hoped not. Just as she hoped that confessing to him now would be enough to release him from the grip of dark magic.
“I love you, Torin,” she said, her eyes shining with promise. “Do you hear me? I love you. Come back to me now.”
The Artifact hit the stone-littered ground with a hard thump and Torin swayed unsteadily as the black power drained from him as quickly as it had stolen over him.
He gave a harsh, short laugh and scraped one hand over his face. Then his eyes shifted to hers and Shea released a pent-up breath when she saw the swirl of gray that she knew and loved.
“The bloody thing’s a trap,” he said, reaching for her, pulling her into him so tightly she could hardly breathe. “Carrying it back to Haven’s going to be a challenge.”
“Can we shift it, magically? Maybe use a spell to transport it back separately?”
“God, no,” he said, burying his face in the curve of her neck. “I don’t trust the damn thing one bit. Who knows how it might react to a spell? It’s so powerful, Shea. I had no idea.”
“You beat it, though,” she murmured, nestling against him.
“Because of you.” He captured her face between his palms and turned her eyes up to his. “Because of what you gave me.”
His gaze moved over her features like a caress. She felt the tenderness welling up inside him and everything in her responded.
“I felt your love,” he said, “and that was enough to draw me back from the edge. Without you . . .” He shook his head and shifted to glance at the shard of black silver lying at their feet. The green grass around the Artifact was now brown and dead. As if just the touch of that dark magic was enough to suck the life from the ground. “I understand now, I think. What you and the coven felt so long ago.”
“It’s seductive,” she whispered, her gaze, too, fixed on the knot of black silver. Even knowing what she knew, she had to fight to keep from reaching for it. From fondling it. From feeling the black rush of energy swimming through her veins again.
“More than anything I’ve ever known before.” He tucked her in close to him again and wrapped his arms around her,
seeking comfort, or offering it. “In the past, we, the Eternals, couldn’t comprehend how you could all turn your backs on what was right and just, for the sake of the promise of more power. But now . . .” His arms tightened like steel bands around her.
“I know. And a part of me still yearns for it,” she admitted at last. “I haven’t wanted to say anything to you about this, Torin. But ever since we arrived in England, I’ve felt it so strongly. The Artifact calling to me. Whispering to me. And something inside me is listening.”
His fingers threaded through her hair and held her head to his chest, as if by the strength of his will, he could keep her safe. Deny the very words she was confessing.
“But you didn’t listen, Shea. You let it go. That counts as well.”
“I hope it’s enough,” she said. “Because this thing is like nothing else on earth.”
“It devours your soul, one nibble at a time. It’s as if it’s happening so fast and yet so slowly, you can’t even see what it’s doing to you until it’s too late.”
She heard the wariness in his voice and she shared it.
“How are we ever going to carry the damn thing back to Haven safely?”
He took a breath and let it out again in a rush. “I have an idea about that. But it will still be dangerous.”
Shea squeezed him tightly, burrowing in close, as if trying to crawl inside his body completely. “It’s not like we have a choice, Torin.”
“True enough.” He gave her one last, hard hug, then released her. “Let me tell you what I’m thinking. Then we’ll go.”
Kellyn was waiting.
She hated Wales.
Hated the cold. The wet. The wind.
Frustration and fury bubbled together inside her, creating a stew of dark emotions that rose up and threatened to choke her. But her strength of purpose, her will, conquered those more intransigent emotions and beat them into submission.
She wasn’t about to let her own eagerness ruin a well-thought-out plan. This time it was her plan, done her way.
Visions of Magic Page 28