“Many are ready to rise up. Discontented. Restless. All they wait for is a leader to unite them. The last High King. Máelodor uses it to his advantage.”
“But Arthur was a great hero. A champion. He would never—”
“He’ll have no choice, Sabrina. As one of the Domnuathi, he’ll be helpless against Máelodor’s powers. A tool to be used by the Great One.”
His words and his emotions spilled hot and laced with fury. They battered her mind, dagger-edged and desperate. He raged at fate. At the heavens. At the gods themselves for deserting him. Leaving him to face Máelodor’s evil alone.
She’d watched him ride off once to a death she knew he’d not escape. The vision of that parting and the grief that followed haunted her still. Could she do it again? Could she let him walk away? Without once asking why?
“You broke free. He doesn’t control you anymore.”
“He lives inside me, Sabrina. Always searching for a way to control me again. Until one of us is dead, that threat remains.” Ducking his head, he retreated back through the door.
She should turn now, walk away, and never look back. She’d known from the first that Daigh MacLir brought trouble in his wake. That to fall beneath the spell of that muscled body and those fathomless eyes would spell disaster. She’d known and not cared.
Not then.
Not now.
She followed him into the gloom of the low-ceilinged barn. Daigh brushed down a heavy-boned mare, murmuring to it in soft nonsensical words. “Paid barnu pob dyn ar weithredoedd un.”
“What are you saying to her?”
He ran his hand carefully over a bare patch on the mare’s flank. “See these marks on her side? She’s been used cruelly. I’m telling her not to judge all men by the actions of one.”
The mare’s ears flicked back as she shifted ominously, one leg poised. Daigh merely murmured again, his voice low pitched, more words in a rolling, lilting growl. “Rwyt ti’n brydferth. ’Dwi’n gwneud yr hyn sydd angen i amddiffyn ti.”
Sabrina leaned against the partition. “Now what are you telling her?”
Daigh smiled. “That she’s a beauty of a lass. And I mean her no harm. I only do what I must to keep her well.”
Delicious heat lapped against her insides as Daigh gentled the mare with hands and voice. The horse lowered its head, breathing deeply, the large brown eyes half closed, sides twitching at every pass of Daigh’s brush.
“Look at her,” she said. “She trusts you. Believes you.” Their eyes met, Sabrina willing him to see her heart.
A rare and sudden smile lit his face, startling her with its brilliance. Sending her heart leaping into her throat. “How long can we play this game of words?” he teased.
Reckless excitement swept her along just as it had in Dublin when the rugged lilt of his voice, the scent of his skin, the forever depth in his gaze had drawn her on when sanity told her she was mad. “How long do you have?”
“I was closer to Brendan than any of my family. Not that I didn’t love my parents, but Mother’s love was all for Father. No one else could intrude into that bubble. And as for Father, Aidan was his heir. Brendan his favorite. I, a mere daughter. Not much use. Not much trouble.” She twirled a stalk of timothy grass between her fingers. “Not until I could be used as barter.”
In heavy weather, the barn loft leaked both wind and water, but tonight only moonshine spread across the floor. A few weak stars glimpsed through broken shingles. What was it about the musty sweetness of hay and the mutter and shift of animals that made confidences possible? Or was it the company? Sabrina sat on the one and only stool. Daigh beside her upon an upturned bucket.
They’d resided thus for hours. Daigh pulling stories from her one after another like ribbons from a carnival magician’s sleeve. Never tiring of tales from her years with the bandraoi, but also teasing free recollections of the great house by the sea, of tagging after her brothers, whining to be included in their games, her parents’ distant affection. All memories she locked away when she departed her home for what she assumed would be the last time. They spilled from her in a cleansing flow, Daigh content to listen. An understanding ear. A strong shoulder to lean on. Something she hadn’t had in uncounted years.
She sought to do the same for him, but he dodged her interrogations. Answered questions with questions until she surrendered. He’d not speak of his years as Máelodor’s slave. And the dim and hazy memories of his previous life he hoarded like gold, unwilling to spend them on her when he needed all to feed the demon within him.
“Does Lord Kilronan share your father’s view? Will he find you a husband untroubled by your loss of maidenhead? An earl’s daughter would make many turn a blind eye.”
Sabrina speared Daigh with a glare though he remained focused upon the floor and did not see the agitation in her gaze. “I don’t think so. His wife surely might intervene if he tried.” She knew she spoke truth. Cat would be on Sabrina’s side, and no matter what Aidan’s feelings, the new Lady Kilronan was a powerful ally. “They may grump and despair of me, but I’m safe enough from old lechers and young fortune hunters.”
“You care about your family.” He looked over, his face shuttered, his eyes gleaming obsidian. “It’s in your voice. The way you speak about them.”
“I don’t know why I should. They never cared about me.”
“How can you say so? Lord Kilronan seemed a protective brother when I met him last.”
“Protective doesn’t equal loving.” She tossed away the stem.
“Is that why you chose to hide away here?”
She didn’t grow angry. Didn’t defend. Simply shrugged deeper into her cloak. “I’m not hiding anymore.”
His mouth twisted in a grim half smile. “Nor should you. You’re a brave woman, Sabrina. If you weren’t, you would have run the first time you laid eyes on me.”
“I did.”
He gave a gruff laugh. “You should have kept running.”
“I couldn’t. What I saw—what I felt—made me stay.”
“You can still leave. It might be better. The bandraoi will be wondering where you are.”
“Ard-siúr refuses my entry into the order. They no longer govern what I do or who I do it with.”
She leaned back, staring up through the cracks in the shingles as silence fell between them. If only this could last forever. Yet time rushed forward, carrying them onward toward treacherous shoals. She sensed it in Daigh’s slow drawing away from her. The heavy line of his brow, the hardness entering his gaze. Already the pleasure of these hours slipped away from them. She would capture what she could before they vanished forever.
As if sensing her mood, Daigh spoke. “There is not much time left. Already Máelodor’s power over me grows difficult to resist. I am being drawn back under his control.”
Her heart kicked up into her throat. “But Ard-siúr . . . or perhaps the Fey themselves. Didn’t you say Miss Roseingrave told you they could free you?” Not yet. Please, not yet.
“No. This is beyond your Ard-siúr’s skills, and I have tried summoning the Fey, but I am not of any world they understand, and so they ignore my calls. This is my battle.”
“You said memories break his hold upon your mind.”
“For now.”
“Then let’s build a wall of memory to shut him out.”
He arched a brow. “You would—”
“I would do whatever I could for the man I love.”
He sucked in a quick breath, his body tensing. “You must not say that.”
“My body is my own. I offer it freely. My love also is mine to bestow where I choose, and that I offer only to one I know is worthy of it.”
“I can promise nothing.”
“I’m not seeking promises.”
He leaned toward her, his lips warm and firm against her own. He kissed her, his tongue gliding within, the sweet drugging taste of him in her mouth. The clean masculine smell of him in her nose. His left hand cradled her nec
k as he pressed closer, probed deeper while his right skimmed her ribs, the curve of her hip.
Stomach swooping, breasts tightening and tingling in anticipation, she reached up to bring him closer. Opening to him, answering the dipping thrust of his tongue with a teasing flick of her own. His soft laugh vibrated along her bones as he pulled her into the cushioning prickle of loose hay upon the loft floor. Lay beside her, elbow crooked, head resting upon his hand, watching her with a weather eye.
“The one good in being deathless, your brother’s outrage holds no threat.”
“He doesn’t understand.”
“He understands too well. He knows the savagery lurking within because he experienced it himself.”
“What stayed your hand?”
His brows raised on a question.
“I spoke to my sister-in-law. She says you could have killed them, but you didn’t. Why not? What held you back?”
He dipped his shoulder in a quick shrug. “The only force that chains the beast inside me every time it tries to surface. You.”
“You didn’t know me then.”
“I can’t explain it, Sabrina. It was your face I saw. Your love I remembered.”
Heat stole along her limbs with the strange sensation of being borne along a swift-moving current. Tumbled out and under so that she couldn’t say where up and down or light and dark were.
Daigh’s stare anchored her, his body hard and solid beneath her fingers. His breath and his heart slow and steady.
“You’ve been given a rare gift,” she whispered. “To recapture the life stolen from you. The fate that would have been yours had you not been killed at Pentraeth with Hywel.”
“The woman who would have been mine?”
“She still can be.”
Taking his face in her hands, she kissed him on the jaw. The chin. Her breasts crushed against his chest, their hearts thundering in unison. With exquisite care, he popped button after button down the front of her gown. Eased her free of petticoats and stays until she lay exposed, her flesh pebbled against the cool air and his feather-touch. His tongue swirled and sucked the sensitive aureoles. Nipped her taut, the tingle knifing straight to her wet and throbbing center.
She squirmed against the rough splay of his palms and the sweet exploration of his lips as he rubbed and kissed his way over her body. Skimmed her stomach. Stroked her hips before caressing her inner thighs, then probing the aching core of her. She melted into him. Bit her lip against a moan, while fumbling him free of his clothes. In the dim light from a setting moon, his skin shone pale as marble, the scars glistening silver white.
She followed the path of the intersecting lines, each mark a story of soulless brutality, until he gently pulled her hands away. Drew them up over her head. Pinned her beneath him with a stare of such greedy hunger she shivered. Slanting his mouth over hers, he kissed her. Long and deep. Leaving no time for second thoughts or regrets or even a stolen breath.
She wantonly twisted and writhed against his imprisonment. Ground against him. Lifted her head to take his tongue deeper into her mouth.
He broke free first. Gasping against her seduction.
He lay between her legs, his midnight gaze burning a path over her, a devil’s smile lifting a corner of his mouth.
“’Dwi’n cofio hwn. I remember this,” he murmured, his tone wistful. “I remember you.”
She rocked against him, letting him feel her growing need. The rising power of her yearning.
And with a groan of animal need, he pushed himself inside her. Thrust deep and hard and fast.
She gasped, the excitement building and growing. The power behind their joining crackling the air between them. She lost herself in the glide of supple muscles, the hard sculpted back, the chiseled face. She watched him pleasuring her. Smiled as their rhythm brought them closer. Stars in her eyes. A deep pooling heat building between her legs. Expanding to flow up from her center. Winding her like a watch spring until, with a shuddering, swallowed gasp he kissed quiet, she peaked. Ground against him, refusing to let the glory end. Waves pulsed through her like ripples in a pool. Outward, fainter, but her body quivered with each pass until spent, she dozed.
The heavens spun overhead, shadows lengthening across the floor, Sabrina asleep in his arms.
Daigh dropped his gaze to where her hand rested upon his chest, the web of scars glowing silver in the moonlight. For a moment, he reveled in the sweet ecstasy of simply being alive. Heart beating. Blood pumping. Lungs expanding with every breath he drew.
He’d had this and lost it and gained it again. Perhaps it was a gift. The men he’d fought with and died beside—what would they trade for a chance to break free of the underworld, even for a few precious moments? A chance to gaze upon a sky vast with stars. To smell the musky sweet scent of a leaf-strewn wood. To love a woman to climax.
And how hard would they fight to hold on?
How hard would he?
Daigh sat outside the workshop door, the winter sun glinting off the chaff cutter blade propped between his legs. He worked the edge with his whetstone, even though it had long ago reached killing strength. Still, it kept his hands busy in a task as unconscious as breathing.
Sabrina had joined him, despite—or perhaps because of—the disapproving looks from the bandraoi. For the last hour they’d sat in comfortable silence, neither one needing to speak, but both deriving solace from the company.
“If you had the chance to return to Wales would you take it?” Sabrina’s question caught him off-guard.
He glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking his way. Only the curve of her cheek and the tips of her lashes visible as she fiddled with a reaping hook on the bench.
His hand tightened on the stone. “There is naught left of that life.”
“Not the people, of course. But the sea would be the same. And the mountains. The air and the sky. These things don’t change. Even over centuries.”
“No, they don’t, do they? That is a comfort.” He took up a rag. Began rubbing a polish into the blade. By the time he was done, the tool would be better suited as a weapon of war.
“Belfoyle won’t have changed either. Not the parts that matter. The beaches. The cliffs. They’ll be just as they were when I drove away seven years ago.”
“You are less unhappy about returning?”
She shrugged in a noncommittal fashion. “Resigned. It can never be what it was.”
“And what was it?”
“You know, that special place where nothing bad can happen. That magic is gone forever.”
“True. But so is the child you were. And you’ve family. Kilronan and his new wife will be there.”
She pursed her lips, picking at the edge of one finger. “They’re like Father and Mother. So wrapped in one another, there’s no room for anyone else.”
“Perhaps because they came so close to losing one another.”
He shook off the smoke and flame memory, though the hellish aftermath of his failure was harder to ignore. He wore it on his skin. A reminder of what waited in his future if he failed a second time.
“But don’t you see? There’s no room for me in what they share. It’s their family. And as long as Brendan’s on the run, he’s lost to me as well.” She sighed. “Just when I think I can leave it behind me . . . when things might be right again . . . Why does the past always ruin the present?”
“The past and our memories have brought us here. Who knows? Perhaps they will save us in the end.”
“Sabrina? May I see you in my office?” Ard-siúr stood at the fringe of women who’d collected around the fire for their morning gossip. One or two looked up from their mugs of thick coffee and blackened sausages, but most merely rendered a quick shrug of interest before returning to their own worries.
“Of course.” Sabrina smothered her rush of panic in a smoothing of her apron over her knees. Straightened from where she’d been tending to an ugly steam burn from a cook’s pot. Followed Ard-siúr out of the blust
ering December wind and into the cool, dim passage. Up the stairs. Past the ever-cheerful Sister Anne, who waved a hello before faltering under Ard-siúr’s severe gaze.
What did she want? What did she know? Sabrina’s thoughts whirled like dry leaves.
Once inside, Ard-siúr took up position behind her desk, motioning Sabrina into a chair, her expression solemn.
“Is there something wrong?” Sabrina donned a look of innocent confusion, hoping the flush of heat staining her cheeks didn’t give her away.
There followed a long, anxious pause as Ard-siúr seemed to gather her thoughts, come to conclusions lost to Sabrina. Finally, she spoke. Slowly. Deliberatively. “Sister Brigh has come to me with her concerns over Mr. MacLir’s continued stay and your continued interest in him.”
“It’s no longer Sister Brigh’s affair. I’m a guest. Not a novice.”
Ard-siúr tapped the tips of her fingers together. “But you are also a young lady of good reputation. I would hate to see you throw that away on one such as Daigh MacLir. As, I’m sure, would your brother.”
“Kilronan may control my movements, but not my heart.”
“And your other brother?”
Sabrina felt through the fabric of her apron to the note folded within. What was Ard-siúr getting at with her roundabout questions and her long, tension-filled silences?
The head of the order lifted a hand toward the window. “Those men and women out there and thousands like them grow more restless. What will be their fate be should a war between Other and Duinedon come to pass? Even after seven long years, much depends upon Brendan Douglas.”
Ard-siúr folded her hands, her features placid and patient, though Sabrina sensed the dismay and the frustration and the anxiety the priestess worked hard to suppress. Or perhaps those weren’t Ard-siúr’s emotions at all, but her own roaring in her ears, pounding like a drum behind her eyes.
“It’s not Brendan’s fault,” she argued, though her excuse sounded feeble even to herself. For in essence it was more Brendan’s fault than anyone’s. He’d been one of the mages who’d begun the nightmare of King Arthur’s resurrection. His dark magics as much as Máelodor’s had fed the murderous plotting.
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