Ashlynn sniffed and wiped the skin under her eyes. “Y-yes. It is. I needed to know what became of my kingdom in my absence. I just didn’t expect…”
Cian pulled up a chair and sat directly across from her, their knees touching and his warm breath brushing against the skin of her face. “What? What did you think? That a war had raged?”
Ashlynn shrugged. “That was one possibility. The peace between the two kingdoms was very new and unreliable. My marriage to Brigacos would have solidified it.”
Cian blew out a breath. “Yeah, but your sister stepped in. All is well.” Then he added with a smile, “No war.”
Ashlynn lifted her head and met the man’s gaze, only inches from her own. His face was unlike anything she’d ever witnessed. Soft skin pulled taut over a sharp jaw. Thick, brown eyebrows smoothed across his brow and matched the short stubble that lined the edge of his face. But those eyes, those piercing blue eyes staring back at her…they pulled her in. Beckoning with a silent promise of something unknown. Against her will, Ashlynn leaned forward an inch, her lips parted as she stared at him in fascination.
Cian cleared his throat and stood from the chair. “Uh, you must be hungry again. I know I’m famished.” His lithe fingers ran through the dark waves atop his head as he walked toward the door.
Ashlynn tried to hide the flush of blood that filled her cheeks. “Yes, I’m quite hungry. Shall we join everyone for a meal?”
Cian laughed. “There is no everyone. My parents are away on a business trip. I can just grab us a snack from the kitchen.”
“You don’t dine with the people of your house?”
Sadness flashed across the man’s face. “No, I don’t. It’s just me and a couple of housekeepers.”
His words confused her, but Ashlynn nodded. “Very well, then. I shall await your return with…snacks.”
When Cian left the room, Ashlynn took the book once more and continued reading. She knew it had only been less than a day since she left the past, but it was only a day to her. Centuries had passed in the wake of her absence, and Gwen had lived an entire lifetime. She wondered about the woman her sister must have blossomed into and what a great mother she would have been. According to the single page about the union, the two children were the only ones she had and they’d grown up to marry and have families of their own. Finnigan had remained within the Scottish kingdom and the daughter, Margaret, had married into a rival gypsy clan. Probably to maintain peace as her own betrothal had been meant to do. That was all there was about what became of the world she’d left behind, so Ashlynn closed the book with a sense of finality and set it aside.
Part of her wanted to go back, to make it alright. To tell her parents that she didn’t run away or kill herself. Surely, that’s what Aoife had thought. That her disgruntled and stubborn daughter would rather death than marriage to the Scots. But mostly, Ashlynn longed to return home and rule her people. If she could find a way to go back, perhaps after Gwen had already married Brigacos, uniting their clans, then she’d be free to do so. After all, she did wish for peace for both clans, for everyone who lived under the protection of their magical world. With Gwen in Scotland and the Kavanaugh kingdom under Ashlynn’s rule, that wish would be fulfilled.
Now, she just had to figure out a way back.
Chapter Four
Cian climbed the stairs balancing two trays of food, two glasses, and a bottle of white wine. He'd spent almost five minutes agonizing over if he should bring wine or not while the nachos and mini quiche cooked. His Google searches hadn't really confirmed if people of her time drank water for the most part or wine. Every movie he’d seen insinuated they'd only had mead or wine. If she didn't want the wine, he had a mini fridge in his suite with bottled water and Pepsi. Cian chuckled, imaging Ashlynn's reaction to Pepsi.
She was engrossed in a book when he entered, so he took a moment to study her. She was gorgeous, that was easy enough to see. But, in the less than twenty-four hours since she'd appeared in his life, he'd seen enough to know that there was strength and vulnerability beneath that brilliant exterior. He'd met a thousand well-bred, intelligent, beautiful women in his life, but none of them had ever caused this strange stirring in his gut. He barely knew her… but he wanted to very badly.
Cian cleared his throat and laid the trays and glasses on the table he sometimes used to play poker with his cousins. “I brought a little of everything. You probably haven't tasted most of this before.” Going for nonchalant, he lifted the bottle and cocked an eyebrow, offering her a hand. “Wine or water to drink?”
Ashlynn smiled up at him and slipped her hand into his after only the slightest hesitation. She'd hesitated much longer the first time he'd taken her hand. Something Cian found himself making note of.
“Wine, please,” she pulled out a chair and sat gracefully at the table, eyeing the platters with interest. A loud grumble echoed from her stomach. The blush that rushed to her pale cheeks flooded them with rosy color as she clapped a hand over her abdomen. “I apologize. It’s just that it all smells so good.” She pointed to a pastry, “What is that one?”
“It's my mother's favorite. Fig and goat cheese in phyllo pastry.”
She lifted one to her nose and inhaled, then closed her eyes and took a delicate bite. The hum of pleasure that reverberated from her throat had Cian shifting uncomfortably as his body reacted to her moan. He sat across from her and busied himself by pouring them each a glass of wine.
“This is fabulous,” she murmured when she’d finished the first. “One time, a French pastry chef accompanied a visiting high family and he made something quite like this. Gwen and I couldn’t stop eating them. Mother said we’d turn into little pigs if we had our own chef.” She pointed to a tiny quiche. “What’s this one?”
“Egg, cheese, and ham in a pastry shell.” He watched her bring it to her lips and hesitate, then pop it in whole. Pleasure, once more lit up her face.
“The food in this time is excellent. Way better than what we normally eat at home. We have a lot of venison and wild game.” She lifted the wine glass to take a sip and made a delighted sound. “Even the wine is better.”
“Try this.” Cian lifted a piece of French bread slathered in spinach and artichoke dip and hoped she’d like it as much as she’d liked the others. Watching her experience new foods for the first time was fun. He lifted the bite to her mouth and stopped an inch away when her eyes shifted to catch his gaze.
It was an intimate gesture, he realized too late. Too intimate for a woman of her time, certainly. He began to lower his hand, but she shook her head almost imperceptibly and opened her lips in response. Cian swallowed the lump that jumped into his throat and slipped the bread into her mouth, accidentally grazing her lower lip with his fingertip.
The air thickened, or so it seemed, as she chewed the bread without breaking eye contact. Cian wondered what it would be like to happily suffocate to death, then forced himself to breathe normally, though he could see in her eyes that she was well aware of his reaction to her. Her eyes, so expressive, flashed with surprise, nerves, and awareness before glancing away.
Cian reached for a quiche and stuffed it in his mouth, buying himself time before he was expected to speak again. If he spoke now, he’d end up sounding like a pubescent boy with a cracking voice. He was the heir to his family name and a grown man, he just needed a minute for his body to catch up
“When you said you were alone here before, you looked sad. Do you wish to have your family with you?” Ashlynn’s voice was gentle, but the question hit him out of the blue, acting as a perfect distraction.
He frowned and thought about his parents, on the other side of the world, and about his younger brothers, away at university. They got to live their lives the way they saw fit, without the pressure of leadership and arranged marriages. Unlike him, they hadn’t felt the weight of the clan’s future on their head since childhood.
He felt too much about it, so he shrugged and played it off as nothing. “I’m used to i
t.”
Ashlynn’s mind wandered, lost in thought as she gazed out the window. “They’re all dead,” her voice was barely a whisper but the emotion in it made his stomach twist. “I was with them less than a day ago and now they’re dead and buried, ashes to nurture the mother.”
He hadn’t thought of it that way but the moment she’d left her time, they’d been lost to her. Still, with time travel possible…
“No.” Cian shook his head, remembering the debates he’d had over the years with his friends and cousins. “Not really. The fact that you traveled through time means that it can’t be linear. It has to be nonlinear or you couldn’t have disrupted the space-time continuum.” He scratched the stubble on his chin, grateful she’d never seen or heard of Back to the Future, or else he’d sound like an idiot.
Ashlynn leaned forward, eyes wide with trust. “You mean if I can travel forward through time and, hopefully back through time, then all time must be intertwined. Like a path. It’s all connected but you can step off at different points and then get back on.” The pain in her eyes faded.
Cian studied her, surprised that she’d picked up on the theory of non-linear time so easily. It usually took a trip down cannabis lane for him to render time travel a simple concept. She was smart, he realized, smart and quick. Only hours had passed since she’d been ripped from her era and dumped into another and yet she’d eased into it with grace. “You would have made an amazing Queen,” the words slipped from his mouth before he’d even realized they were in his mind.
Her lips curved up. “Thank you, but I’m afraid my mother doesn’t quite think so. Once we have the spell I need to go back and show her just how wrong she is about me.” She reached for a nacho chip, loaded with cheese, salsa, ground beef, jalapenos, and sour cream, and bit off half the chip. Her eyes went wide as the pepper scorched her tongue with unfamiliar heat. The red that overtook her pale skin and the look of horror in her eyes had him jumping up and rushing to his mini fridge for water.
“Here,” he unscrewed the top and pushed the bottle into her hands, “drink.”
She guzzled the water, nearly choking on it in her rush to ease the heat. Cian tried desperately to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t manage it. When his chuckles turned to outright laughter, she lifted one hand from the bottle to slap at his arm.
“It’s not funny!” she managed to gasp out before finishing off the rest of the water and her glass of wine.
“It’s a bit funny,” he replied, hiding his mouth with his hand to stop the laughter. “I didn’t think about the jalapenos. I like my nachos hot, so I just put them on without thinking.”
“Where in the world are they grown?” Ashlynn picked one off and studied it.
“South America, I think.” Cian popped one in his mouth and grinned. “These aren’t even hot. You should try insanity wings.” He eyed her, noting her still red stained cheeks. “Maybe not. They might kill you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I think it might take a bit more than that to kill me. I’m tougher than I look.”
Cian smiled. “I think you’re right.” He figured she could do anything she set her mind to. Unfortunately for him, she had her mind set on returning to the past. Once again, he swallowed down the feeling of regret that filled his stomach with acid at the thought of her going back. He frowned and looked away from those killer green eyes, which seemed to see too much. He’d studied psychology, this reaction he was having to her was probably due to the fact that she was unattainable. You want what you can’t have, especially when what you’re getting is a malicious bitch with dreams of grandeur. Ashlynn was everything Serena wasn’t; that was probably all this was.
Cian reached for the last thing he’d brought, two bowls filled with vanilla ice cream that were steadily melting. “Here,” he laid one bowl before her, “this will help cool down your tongue.”
She eyed it warily then lifted the spoon to her mouth to take a curious taste. “Oh, my goddess,” she exclaimed, licking the spoon clean then reaching for more, “this is amazing! We have nothing like this back home.” She set to work on finishing the bowl before her then nodded eagerly when he offered up his.
“I could teach you how to make it.” He had to force the smile he gave her. “For when you go back.”
“Oh, could you?” She beamed at him and his heart skipped a full beat before thundering along in his chest painfully. “Gwen would love this more than pudding and she loves pudding.” She pushed back from the table after licking the spoon clean and groaned. “I think I ate too much.”
Cian chuckled. “Well, you sampled everything I brought and devoured two bowls of ice cream. Yeah, I can see how your stomach might hurt right about now.” He rose from the table and disappeared into his bathroom, emerging a moment later with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. “Here, drink a bit of this and you’ll feel better soon.” He unscrewed the cap since it was child proof and, more than likely, time traveler proof.
She sniffed it the put the bottle to her lips and took a swig. Her face pinched as if she’d just sucked on a lemon then her whole body shivered as the medicine slid down her throat. “That was not delicious.” She glared accusingly at the bottle.
“You should try Buckley’s.” Cian covered the pink liquid and stuck it on a shelf. He turned to look at the books spread out all around the room and sighed. Now that they were finished eating, they’d get back to searching and with every moment he spent with her, the prospect of her leaving hit harder. A part of him was relieved that they hadn’t found anything yet, while another part, the part of him that had seen the grief in her eyes when she spoke of her family being dead and buried, wanted only the best for her. If that meant wishing her farewell and sending her back into the past, then so be it.
He just wondered how he’d marry Serena now that he’d met a woman that he could easily love.
Cian nearly choked on the thought. He liked Ashlynn, sure, but love? Yes, books and movies spoke of love at first sight all the time, but it wasn’t a real thing. Lust at first sight, sure, but that was biological. He wanted Ashlynn, his body had reacted to hers the moment they’d met, but that didn’t mean he loved her. Just the fact that he was entertaining this issue was ridiculous. It was too soon, too intense already, too much like...magic.
He froze in place as his brain exploded with the implications of that possibility. She’d traveled through time, there was no telling what type of magical ripples that spell had sent out. He’d been the only person nearby when she’d emerged, which meant he would have taken the brunt of her magic. What if that was why he was feeling this way?
Cian turned to see Ashlynn rise and head for the bathroom, which she’d announced earlier was the most magical thing she’d ever seen in her life, including that time her mother had clasped her hands together and made a unicorn appear in their great room. It had been Gwen’s only wish for her fifth birthday.
If it was just a shock wave of magic, then it was likely to fade with time. They’d only just met and there was every reason to believe they’d eventually find something to send her back. He had to be smart, to keep his priorities in mind. Marrying Serena would unite their two families and stop the hostilities between them. It was good politics, even if she was a shrew.
His throat filled with bile. It had been happening a lot lately, every time he thought about marrying that woman, in fact. At first, when the union had been suggested as a measure of peace between their clans, he’d outright refused to go along with it. Then, his father had sat him down with their council of advisers and had reviewed every incidence of violence between the two clans. They’d spent hundreds of years hating one another. One sacrifice could effectively stop that.
One sacrifice. It sounded like such a little thing until you realized that it meant a life, his life, in return for a political alliance. He’d spent months trying to come to terms with it and thought he had, but as the wedding grew closer and closer, he was having a harder time forcing himself to accept the inevitabilit
y.
It had been hard enough to think about before, but now…
Just a shock wave, he reminded himself as she came out of the bathroom, looking fresh and gorgeous. The dress he’d made for her yesterday was a mossy green now, the exact color of her eyes, he thought. That he knew the color of her eyes so intimately and had no clue what color Serena’s were made his heart squeeze painfully. One thing was for sure, magic or not, she was going to be hard to forget when she disappeared back through time.
Chapter Five
“So, walk me through the events that happened leading up to the ritual,” Cian said as they sat across from one another in his family’s massive kitchen.
Ashlynn popped another piece of cheese in her mouth and glanced around the room as she chewed, going over the details of her time with Fedelm in her mind as she admired the perfection of the room. If she worked together with her mother and sister, maybe they could recreate some of this kitchen in their castle. When she heard her name repeated, Ashlynn returned her attention to Cian. “Events?”
Cian finished chopping an apple and added the slices to a tray of fruit unlike anything Ashlynn had ever seen. Fruit were a rarity back home and were only available certain times of the year when the traders came to town.
“Yeah, what happened? What did you do? Describe the ritual to me, perhaps it will help me understand a little better.” He popped a juicy orange slice in his mouth and grinned widely, making Ashlynn’s cheeks flush red. The sensation startled her inside.
“I’d been wandering through the woods in search of Fedelm,” she began.
Cian’s eyes widened at the name. “One of the ancient Seers?”
Ashlynn balked. “You know of her?”
“Well, not exactly,” Cian replied. “I do know of the ancient Seers. There’s one in every generation of Travelers.” He paused thoughtfully. “Nowadays, the Seer is regarded highly and is well-known. We visit them each year on the solstice to celebrate their divinity. But,” he chewed at his lip, “back in your day, the Seers were virtually impossible to find. They remained hidden because of their connection to my people.”
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