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The Immortal's Unrequited Bride
Kelli Ireland
A love that endures beyond death itself…Ethan Kemp is a healer, not an assassin. But he's found an unexpected home in the Irish stronghold that houses the Assassin's Arcanum – men who will kill to protect their Druid brethren. Too bad there's a ghost that won't give him peace.Centuries in the grave, Isibéal Cannavan has longed to be reunited with her beloved. Finally, he's returned to her. She'd recognize Lachlan anywhere, even as an American warlock called Ethan. But her path to reuniting with him in the land of the living runs through hell itself, and she'll have to take Ethan with her…


A love that endures beyond death itself...
Ethan Kemp is a healer, not an assassin. But he’s found an unexpected home in the Irish stronghold that houses the Assassin’s Arcanum—men who will kill to protect their Druid brethren. Too bad there’s a ghost that won’t give him peace...
Centuries in the grave, Isibéal Cannavan has longed to be reunited with her beloved. Finally, he’s returned to her. She’d recognize Lachlan anywhere, even as an American warlock called Ethan. But her path to reuniting with him in the land of the living runs through hell itself, and she’ll have to take Ethan with her...
“Isibéal.” Ethan’s voice rang with power. “Isibéal Cannavan.”
She slowly opened her eyes and met his blazing gaze. “I am.”
He slowly dropped his hands to his sides. The connection was broken then between the men’s hands, and the blended magick separated with a sharp crack.
The sound was a tangible whip that lashed through Isibéal’s abdomen. Clutching her stomach, she staggered.
Ethan lurched forward, hands outstretched, but it was too little, too late.
She faded out of sight, returned to the miserable existence of a monochromatic world punctuated by bone-crushing cold. But not before she heard him. Two words—the most powerful two words she’d heard since she’d been bound to the grave.
“I remember.”
KELLI IRELAND spent a decade as a name on a door in corporate America. Unexpectedly liberated by fate’s sense of humor, she chose to carpe the diem and pursue her passion for writing. A fan of happily-ever-afters, she found she loved being the puppet master for the most unlikely couples. Seeing them through the best and worst of each other while helping them survive the joys and disasters of falling in love? Best. Thing. Ever. Visit Kelli’s website at www.kelliireland.com (http://www.kelliireland.com).
The Immortal’s Unrequited Bride
Kelli Ireland


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is an epic love story, one that transcends the bounds of everything we claim to know with certainty about the hard lines of time and space.
Turns out we don’t know so much. It is with intense joy, immeasurable love and the understanding he’s my One Thing that I dedicate this book to Mr. Kelli Ireland. You’re my always and I’m your forever.
Contents
Cover (#u79c62e6c-073c-5550-8b49-13472236360a)
Back Cover Text (#u9a77e82d-f6ff-5c3d-b5cb-328cca7bd5b0)
Introduction (#u348612ae-a65a-5640-9f39-b152b0dd9182)
About the Author (#u5f444e26-b7f4-57c8-b369-854bfcc1f83c)
Title Page (#u2c548f27-6299-5580-a860-62deae5baeca)
Dedication (#ua532d84c-e4d8-5b5a-8e70-02d4660110d6)
Prologue (#ulink_43773cb4-ca58-5dd5-a005-76a5b9fb0f12)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_020b35f2-3d5e-537c-91a7-1b240b5a8258)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_92dce1d7-f332-5325-b120-e10e553f448f)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_f09724ce-e308-58e1-829e-ad80e42ead9a)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_231fe95b-974c-5560-9d2d-dd07c6d9c2f4)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_c587c654-ded9-55b5-a3ed-01f447023732)
The Year of Our Lord, 1485
“Your personal powers of destruction paired with your sense of justice may yet bring about the end of the world.” Isibéal Cannavan, wife of the Druid’s Assassin and powerful white lady in her own right, crossed the great hall and stopped beside the massive oak table, shaking her head in wordless censure. “In the time it took me to gather fresh herbs and root stock for the infirmary, it seems you have agreed to mediate a grievance between a god and two demigods while in the presence of the All Father, Daghda. Quite the morning you’ve had, husband.”
Though nothing compared to mine.
She gripped handfuls of her skirt, and her heart seized as Lachlan Cannavan—dark blond, thoroughly sensual, immensely powerful—slid low in the large, ornately carved Tuam chair situated at the head of the table. The worn leather protested his movement with a sharp creak. Indifferent, he folded his hands over his abdomen. The dark phantom of negotiations—his and hers alike—hovered between them, a divination she alone could see. Again Isibéal thanked the gods that it was she who held the power of visions, not her husband. For if he knew what she’d done...
She’d had no other choice, though. Not after the vision had struck her unannounced, revealing that the strife brewing between divine beings would rip her husband from her grasp.
Lachlan was engaged in an authentic struggle. This was no training exercise or sparring session. This was a battle where those who had lifted sword or fist would either claim victory and, as such, live, or they would suffer the highest loss and make restitution in death.
The fight grew more brutal with every passing second. Men shouted and metal blade beat against metal blade so that the whole of the battle was reduced to harsh sounds that stung the ear. But it was the two men in front of her who claimed the whole of her attention. The swing of the men’s blades whistling through the air, steel impacting steel and making her teeth ache, the harsh declarations of extreme effort as each combatant hoisted his respective weapon—each sound was horrifying when singly wrought. Together? They overwhelmed her mind and shouted at her to flee.
Sweat slicked Lachlan’s arms and trailed down his bare chest. He gripped his sword hilt so tightly his knuckles appeared skeletal beneath his sun-kissed skin.
A vicious blow and he knocked his opponent back, down, and afforded himself a brief advantage. But that small triumph changed neither the tenor of the fight nor its probable outcome.
The strength and valor of the honorable could not hold its ground in the face of malicious deception and heartbreaking betrayal.
Lachlan would not, could not, fight an opponent who was possessed with such disregard for honor, but this particular opponent hurt him on a deeper level than any other. The blood tie between them demanded as much. And that, Lachlan’s inability to double-cross the man who would have his head before he’d even hear his brother’s plea?
That would be the cost of Lachlan’s pride and a brother’s love.
Lachlan would lose this fight.
His attacker rose from the ground and charged. Swords clashed. Men shouted unintelligible words. The battle raged. These two men were pitted against each other, a violation of nature’s intent. Their animosity was so strong it fouled the air even as it clung to them, a sticky cobweb of hatred that spun from one and bound the other, back and forth as they moved through the steps of death’s dance.
Lachlan’s opponent lunged at him, and, with what could only be described as willfulness...nay, willingness, Lachlan stepped into the man’s blade. It struck true, the resulting sound disturbingly similar to a butcher’s meat cleaver striking the thickest part of a mutton’s leg—heavy, viscous, dense.
Lachlan stumbled back and the damning sword slid free with a wet, sucking hiss. Eyes bright in a fast-paling face, Lachlan grinned with grim satisfaction. He coughed once. Twice. “I will thank you for this.”
“Then you are far greater a fool than I believed,” his attacker, killer, said, voice muffled as though he spoke with a rag over his mouth.
Lachlan shook his head. “I said I will, not that I do. Not yet.”
“And what, then, is the difference?” came the arrogant reply.
Lachlan lifted his long sword in his dominant hand, stealing his opponent’s attention. Then, his nondominant hand yielding his short sword with untraceable speed, he raised his weapon and swung down as hard as he could. The blade was smaller but not lesser, proving sufficient to near cleave the man’s head from his neck in one blow.
The man dropped his sword and fell to his knees. Defeat fouled the air around them.
“The difference,” Lachlan said with cold indifference, “is that I will thank you for striking my deathblow, as it afforded me the opportunity to reciprocate and offer you the same, save one significant difference. The wounds I bear will end me, but they’ll send me into the welcoming fields of Tír na nÓg. The wounds I deliver shall not afford you the same. They will carry you straight to the Shadow Realm.” Gritting his teeth, Lachlan yanked the shorter blade from deep in his adversary’s neck and then swung again. This time the man’s head separated cleanly, hit the ground and rolled free. “You cannot escape your fate,” Lachlan said as sweat ran freely down his brow and into his eyes. Swaying, he blinked rapidly. “It did not have to be this way...brother.”
Lachlan’s fingers straightened spasmodically, his swords clanging off each other as they fell. The grass muffled the metal’s impact with the earth. He clutched his side, breath wheezing. His eyes lost their intense, sharp look, growing unfocused between blinks.
Isibéal screamed at him to hold on, admonished him to fight, threatened to see that his cherished knarr—the long boat his Viking great-grandfather had sailed—was used as his funeral pyre should he die. All to no avail, for the living held no dominion over the dying, and Lachlan was dying.
Without acknowledging her, Lachlan slipped sideways, caught himself with one hand and, in fits and starts, eased himself to the ground.
Then it was done. The headless body of Lachlan’s enemy lay mere feet from where the Assassin had fallen. Both men’s souls had been set free with their last breaths.
Isibéal knew with absolute certainty that Lachlan’s soul had begun its journey to the heavens. It was no consolation.
She fell to her knees at his side. And while she alone seemed to hear the impact of her husband’s death, hear it she did.
Her heart broke with a thunderous crack, much like a heavy foot on thin ice.
Life as she knew it was over.
Desperate to hide the tear that burned her eyes, Isibéal spun away from the hale and healthy man who watched her now.
She could not, would not, stand by and watch Lachlan enter into a conflict he wasn’t slated to walk out of. She’d seen his death and held suspect one man who should never have been suspect at all. Still, it seemed he would strike the blow that would rob her of her heart’s blood.
How? How could he do this to me?
This vision was the first to reduce her to a shivering mess of skirts and tears. Throat too tight to scream her refusal of what she’d been shown and now revisited, she locked her knees and forced herself to remain standing. The original imagery and consequent sounds had left her a collapsed heap of emotional devastation. One truth had separated from the thousand questions she’d been left with. That truth?
Isibéal wouldn’t survive losing Lachlan. Therefore she’d do whatever was necessary to stay with him. If it meant sacrificing herself so he carried on and met her in the afterlife? So be it. Where he went, she followed.
The affirmation wasn’t based on the melodramatics of a weak-minded woman, but rather a simple, if brutal, truth recognized by her as one of the realm’s most powerful witches. Should she be forced to take matters into her own hands, should she be required to end her own life, she would do so. And gladly.
To that end, she’d sought out a solution in the early-morning mists that silently rose from the floor of Cahermurphy Forest. It meant she’d had to break her geis—the oath she’d taken to honor her magick’s gift and never use it to try to change fate to suit her—but it mattered not.
Isibéal would follow Lachlan into this confrontation.
She had set aside the convictions of her faith that bade her not interfere in the workings of free will or destiny’s machinations. That done, she’d set her circle in place, retrieved a small bowl she carried in her pack and then filled it with water. Settled in her circle, she cast it and worked the deep magick required to scry. She would use the reflection of the water’s surface to look into the future with intent and the belief she could secure Lachlan’s safety.
What had appeared had not been foresight. Yes, the answer to her initial summons had appeared on the water’s surface...but as a reflection of the man who stood behind her.
Lugh, God of Vengeance and Reincarnation and one of the aggrieved parties at the meeting slated for Lachlan’s involvement, had sought her out.
Discussions resulted in a bargain struck in the forest’s ominous hush, sans the whisper of the wind through the trees or the subtle rush of wings fluttering between branches...a bargain that had not settled well, given Lugh’s reputation for trickery. But if it saved Lachlan’s life?
“Isibéal?” Laughter colored Lachlan’s deep, charming voice. “Where did your bonny thoughts take you, my love?”
She forced herself to turn around and face her husband, swallowing repeatedly. Her regrets were far too many, the memories she’d count on to see her through far too few. Worried he’d recognize something amiss, she arched an eyebrow and waved him on. “Out with it, then. Tell me what I know.”
“And why would I?” he asked, humor flashing through his eyes.
“To spare yourself the tongue-lashing you’d receive should you think to withhold information from me?”
Lachlan grinned, his dimples flashing. “Lucky am I that you’re not inclined to harp. Now, this tongue-lashing...”
She snatched a mushroom from her collecting basket and hurled it at him playfully. “Lecherous wretch.”
He fielded the mushroom and absently tossed it back into her basket. “These premonitions of yours are helpful only in that they tend to save me having to repeat myself in order to keep you informed.” He reclined again, resting large hands over his muscled abdomen. His eyelids fell to half-mast, and what little she could see of his irises’ color deepened. “You realize, wife, that we finally have a few moments alone. Surely you wouldn’t waste such a boon discussing politics.”
She pulled the pins from her hair and let the mass tumble to her waist. “I’d rather not talk at all, and well you know it, but you’re the Assassin and these are dire times.”
“When discussions of the War of the Roses, the Tudors and the gods’ petty differences come between, or before, my sworn duty to see to my wife’s needs?” He grinned. “Dire times, indeed.”
All those who recognized this man as leader of the Assassin’s Arcanum, the elite group of men the Druids selected within their own to protect all they revered, knew well enough that his lazy slouch was for effect. Isibéal understood this better than any other.
Her husband was dangerous in a thousand ways that were visible and a thousand more that were decidedly not. Deadliness didn’t render the man entirely immortal, though. A killing blow would take him as it would any other. His skill sets only ensured the blow would be more difficult to deliver. More difficult did not translate to impossible.
And he thought to bargain with gods and demigods alike.
Foolish man.
And how are you any better? her conscience whispered.
Perhaps she wasn’t better, but there was a difference. Lachlan’s service to the Arcanum meant that, should she die, he would have to go on without her. Obligation necessitated his leadership, even in the face of unassailable hardship. She had no such requirement. If she were to lose him, she would be less than the shell of the woman she was. There would be no living. Breathing in and out would not constitute life. Her only choice would be to follow him through the Veil into eternity. The end result would be two deaths on the side of Light instead of one.
The gods would never condone such a thing.
Staring at Lachlan now, she felt an ache in her chest with the sense of loss too vast to comprehend. He never had realized the charm he wielded or what a beautiful man he was. Instead, he forever seemed unaware of his appearance or the effect he had on people, particularly women. She would always appreciate that about him. Like now, as he lounged in the grand chair, his blond hair tied back with a leather thong, his everyday clothes fitted and fine but far from formal. Restrained violence settled around him like a cloak, but the teasing laughter never left his face. How he managed to rein in both was beyond her.
Her heart raced and her breasts tightened with arousal.
What she wouldn’t give for an hour alone with him.
And had he not just said they had time to themselves?
Her very soul sighed, the rush of relief highly tangible for all it was inaudible. She would steal that precious time with him—experience his mouth on hers, his hands in her hair, the weight of his body pressed against hers, the way he moved within her with control and purpose. She would seek, and take, everything he offered, and all with the crushing knowledge that this turn of the wheel was nearly over for her.
She laid the back of her free hand against her cheek. Gods save her from her thoughts, both carnal and mortal. They’d been married more than four years, and the overwhelming desire she had for him had never faded.
Memories teased the corners of her mouth, coaxing a smile like a daylily, its bloom fading as soon as it was born. Laying her fingertips over her lips, she pressed the sensitive skin against her teeth until it hurt, all in an effort to allay the pain and fear of choices made.
“Iz?”
Her eyes snapped into focus and she looked at him, blinking rapidly. “Yes?”
Lachlan pushed out of his chair and closed the distance between them with purposeful strides. “You’re far too canny a woman to allow your good conscience to be fraught with worry over political machinations.”
“Mankind has no idea what they’ve wrought upon themselves.”
Stopping before her, he cupped her face and dipped low for a swift kiss. “You and I are well aware that things are rarely as they seem. I’ve been asked to be on hand to apply that wisdom to a group of men who bicker like six children given five marbles to share. History will record these events justly, provided mankind does not gloss over the outcome. Either way, we must do our duty to the gods. Then?” He traced a thumb along her cheek. “Justice will surely prevail.”
“Is there no other way? No way for us to refrain from becoming involved?”
“You know there is not, Isibéal.”
She blinked through an unwelcome sheen of emotion.
The corners of his eyes tightened as he thumbed away a tear from her cheek. “What’s this, my lady?”
Her throat burned as if she’d gulped down a flagon of raw alcohol. “What has been set into motion cannot be stopped.”
But what if she was wrong? What if her vision was flawed? What if she’d been led false? Or...what if the bargain she’d struck this morn did, indeed, change this man’s free will? Could she save him?
She gripped her husband’s forearms, fingernails digging into sun-kissed skin pulled taut over defined muscle. “You must cancel the meeting, Lach. Please.”
“It...and I...will be fine, mo chroí.”
“You call me your heart and ask me to have faith, but what of you? Have you no faith in my gift of seeing? Of knowing? I am certain this will not go well, Lachlan.” She gripped the back of his neck and pulled him down until their foreheads touched. “Would you declare me naught but a foolish wife and incompetent witch in this matter?” she breathed.
“Neither is true, and I would take to task any man, woman or child brazen—and ignorant—enough to speak such nonsense.” His gaze bored into hers. “You must trust me in this, Iz. Daghda himself has ordained that this meeting is both just and necessary. By the gods’ own laws, this is the appropriate venue for the parties to issue their grievance. Yet he cannot preside over a hearing involving his own kin. They asked for my time and opinions, and I’m of the belief that this is right and fair. The Arcanum is, and always has been, the gods’ sword arm to justly wield.”
Isibéal shook her head slowly. “Neither you nor the Arcanum should ever be ordered to strike out in revenge, particularly on the gods’ behalf.”
Lachlan stilled his caress. “I have not been called to fight but, instead, to listen. To mediate. The All Father would no more lead me blindly into harm’s way than he would manipulate my service to render it unjust. I’ve served him more than a mortal lifetime, and he has seen the Druids through the worst of Ireland’s troubles.”
“So far,” she interjected.
“So far,” he conceded. “But if he has done so thus far, what grounds do I have to deem him unwilling or unable to continue on this path he’s forged?”
“You cannot believe... I never meant... It’s only that—”
He kissed her quickly, shushing her sputtering objections. “You love me just as I love you, and that makes life a wee bit harrowing at times, yeah?” Then he turned away and started for the Elder’s Library. “Rest easy, wife. I will see this handled and return to you.”
An idea struck her. “Promise me, Lachlan. Please.”
He spun and walked backward. “I give you my word that I will see this handled and return to you, Lady Isibéal Cannavan.”
With a nod, she turned and took a couple of steps forward before glancing back and finding that her husband had already passed through the library door.
Perfect.
She reached up to smooth her furrowed brow even as anxiety, weighted with irrefutable knowledge, settled over her. Lachlan was not meant to meddle in the gods’ arguments, be they petty or just. And while he might feel obligated to participate in this hearing, she held no such compulsion. Her first duty, now and always, was to look out for her husband and see him safely returned to her. It would have been so even had her heart’s mate been a shepherd and not the Assassin.
She would do what needed to be done to ensure that she did not lose Lachlan in this, or any, lifetime.
Bowing her head, Isibéal threw open her ties to the elements and the magicks they heralded. Threads of color whipped around her with dizzying speed, colors only she could see. The magicks were as bright as they were ethereal, raw power drawn into her hands and shaped to her will alone. Few witches had come before with more power than she wielded even now, decades before the zenith of her power was forecast to arrive.
Lachlan’s parting words were still so new that the memory of them would be strong enough to cast and weave around, and she would do both, and more, if it meant tying his promise to her intent.
With few movements and naught but whispered words, Isibéal created a sphere that raced across the deepening shadows of time that grew between his words and the present. The sphere reached back and retrieved the promise Lachlan had made her, captured the words and then sealed them inside the crystalline ball. Threads of color wound around the exterior at ever-increasing speeds until the motion was a blur. Colors fused in a bright flash of light that made her eyes water. Magick receded with very little in the way of a dramatic exit. Shimmering inside the orb was the essence of the words Lachlan had gifted her with.
Isibéal cradled the sphere between her cupped palms, one above the globe and one below, the strength of her magick suspending it. Dipping her chin, she spoke over those harvested words—words that represented her future, her hope—and infused her voice with both her will and power. “Protect these words, heartfelt promise man to wife, keep the promise alive for me, that we might again share a life. His spirit shall not cross to its final resting place, but will remain in limbo, affected by neither time nor space. My soul shall serve as sacrifice, to bind us where we fall, only love’s inherent power will be enough to break the thrall. Hear me now and mark my plea, for wait I shall, across years or centuries.”
The bespelled orb flared bright. A flash of heat passed into her hands and made her gasp, but she managed to hold on to it until the heat dissipated. Then, with a subtle glance around the stairwell, she tucked the living spell into the depths of her basket and bade it reduce in size until it was no larger than a small stone from the streambed.
Peace warred with fear at what she’d done. It was unnatural to bind a single soul, let alone two, to this plane when their physical bodies died. Their souls could go on indefinitely, though whether madness would take their minds had yet to be seen. To be freed would have to be an act of love. Nothing else would suffice to bring the two souls back together. That didn’t bother her, though. Their relationship was, and always had been, ripe with love and heavily decorated with lust. If two souls were ever to find their way back to each other and reunite, their souls would.
Gathering her basket of naturals, she resumed her trek up the broad staircase that would take her to the third-floor infirmary only to pause at the first landing, her hand on a newel. She could not let him go. Not without knowing him one last time.
There was no shame in her request, no remorse or hesitation when she said, “Join me, Lachlan. Steal that wee bit of time we’ve tripped over, time alone to...” She looked down demurely only to glance up at him through lowered lashes. “There will be plenty of time to see to the intricacies of mediating under Thranewyn’s Law after I’ve had my way with you.”
She started up the staircase again, swaying her hips back and forth suggestively.
Booted footsteps closed the distance between them and sounded as if they took the stairs two at a time. Hard hands wrapped around her upper arms and pulled her back against an even harder chest. “The deepest prisons of the Shadow Realm couldn’t keep me away.”
“Never in a thousand lifetimes will such keep me away from you, husband. Never.”
He followed her up the stairs then, to her room, where he loved her as passionately as she loved him, and with almost as much manic fervor.
Almost.
For Isibéal knew what he did not. This would be the last time they would lie wrapped in each other, loose-limbed and sated.
She stayed as long as she dared, watching the late-afternoon sun paint Lachlan’s skin in warm colors as he drifted into a deep, quiet sleep. Then she rose, wrapped her robe about herself and crossed the hall to her infirmary, where she set about gathering a basket full of fresh bandages, salves and healing ointments she’d made. They would be needed on the coming morn when mediation turned to war.
Dressed and packed little more than an hour later, she tried to leave. Truly, she did. But she craved one last look at her husband’s face, peaceful in sleep, long lashes fanning over his cheeks. This was how she would remember him, always and forever.
Emotion welled, filling her chest until she could not breathe.
“From my very first breath until time ceases, you have been and will always be the heart of me. I love you, Lachlan Cannavan.”
Isibéal shut the door and then headed down the stairs and toward the stables. Pausing at the keep’s huge front doors, she swung her traveling cloak about her shoulders and raised her hood against the misting rain.
She had a long ride ahead if she were to die before the sun’s zenith as agreed.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_32ca5a2c-e627-50e6-8f5c-00f2a540e035)
Ethan Kemp forced himself to keep his pace slow as he made his way down the castle’s long, forever-chilled hallway. He’d been called a lot of things over his thirty-four years—warlock, physician’s assistant, American expat, friend, lover and, on occasion, fighter—but he’d never been called a coward. That was a moniker he refused to sport. So he would not allow himself to walk faster, speed up or, gods forbid, run. He would not curse. He would not look over his shoulder. Again, anyway. Why bother? He knew what would be there. What had been there for the last several months. Always following him. Always just out of reach, that shapeless smudge on the air. Nothing tangible. A mirage.
Hand at his side, he held the dirk with apparent disregard. Looks could be deceiving. He was under no illusion the blade would help him fight something he couldn’t see, but the weight of the weapon was better than nothing.
Besides, if the Assassin’s Arcanum—the biological outcome if 007 met Highlander and had unprotected sex with Practical Magic—found out he was running from shadows and tricks of light? Gods save him. He’d rather have his balls waxed than take the endless ribbing he’d receive from those five men.
While the heart of Druidism centered on a high regard for life and peaceful existence, the Assassin’s Arcanum, protectors of the Druidic race, were an entirely different breed. The Arcanum was composed of men who did whatever was deemed necessary to ensure that their brethren could live within their chosen—peaceful—parameters. But the assassins? From manipulation to murder, they were the things that went bump in the night. No mark would ever take notice of an assassin’s approach any more than he would the assassin’s departure. Dead men don’t hear a thing.
And while Ethan had developed a deep appreciation for the assassins’ mad skills with both weapons and elemental magicks, he wasn’t part of their inner circle. Not really. They’d gone so far as to jokingly label him their mascot—or resident pain in the ass. The moniker depended on whom he’d either helped or irritated at the time of conversation.
There were places Ethan had found he fit better than others. When the Assassin, Dylan O’Shea, had made the decision that compelled Ethan to participate in both weapons and hand-to-hand combat training, no one had been more surprised at the outcome than Ethan himself. He’d done well. No, not well. He’d excelled in a way that defied logic. That was when Dylan had begun involving Ethan in some of the Arcanum’s less risky ops, inviting him along as an extra set of hands to manage the element of earth, since none of the other men possessed that skill. But it didn’t change Ethan’s status among them. He was an outsider, a man without legitimate purpose, and it bothered him far more than it should.
A weighted stare settled between Ethan’s shoulders, and he clenched the dagger handle tighter. Last time he’d experienced something like this, assassins—junior assassins—had bagged and tagged him, hauling him from Atlanta, Georgia, to the Irish countryside in County Clare. That still irritated him. The purpose for his warlock-napping had been legit, though. His closest friend, Kennedy, had asked for the chance to say goodbye before the assassins or, more specifically, the Assassin, killed her. Ethan had arrived in time to see her beat the odds, and the gods, and then marry the man she’d fallen in love with.
That her new husband, Dylan the Ass, had been her appointed and questionably willing executioner?
“‘Love is blind’ and all that crap,” he muttered as he rolled his shoulders. “More like it encourages perfectly sane individuals to perform in certifiably insane ways.”
After the dust finally settled from that little magickal brouhaha, Ethan hadn’t wanted to leave her.
At least, that was the public version of events.
Privately? There was another chapter in his play-by-play living memoir. One he hadn’t discussed with anyone.
Ethan hadn’t been able to leave.
He’d tried.
Sure, he could pack his bags and buy his airline ticket and make noises about going back to the States. But when it came time to go? He would stand at the largest window in his small suite and stare out over the cliffs as the clock ticked past his boarding call, past his departure and well past his scheduled arrival.
He would stand there listening. Looking. Waiting. For what, he didn’t know.
Then he’d unpack and start the cycle over, trying to live until he could manage to leave.
No one said a word to him about the number of times this had happened. The Arcanum simply carried on as if he’d be there. The Druids’ healer and surgeon, Angus, never moved Ethan’s supplies or the medical files he kept on each patient he’d treated. His place setting was always laid out on the dining table. And the tyros, or assassins-in-training, never questioned him as he moved throughout the castle or across the grounds. He wasn’t one of them, but he had become part of the familiar landscape. They’d accepted his presence if not him.
None of that was what kept him ensconced in the Arcanum’s inner circle, though.
Truth? All he knew was that his heart was here. Not in Kennedy, although he’d suffered a moment of sheer panic right after she’d married, wondering if he’d unwittingly fallen in love with her. The revolting idea was too close to incest, though, and he’d been relieved. Yet that relief hadn’t translated to anything near understanding.
He’d had to accept that knowing his heart was here and understanding what that meant were two unrelated things. He had no idea what it meant that he couldn’t make himself go back to his former life. Didn’t understand how this drafty old castle, known among Druids as The Nest, had somehow become the GPS location labeled “Home” on his phone. Couldn’t explain how, after only days here in this foreign land, it wasn’t foreign at all. There was no logical explanation.
Despite his gifts in magick and his intimate ties to the element of earth, Ethan didn’t appreciate things that defied logic. Not like this. And definitely not when the heart—his heart—was involved. He loved this country, this keep and the very land beneath his feet. Loved it with absolutely no reserve. It was as if Ireland was his, and he was hers, logic be damned.
A touch, colder than a thousand-year-old grave, skated across the nape of his neck. Despite his conviction to stay focused and reach his rooms, he spun and staggered as he ripped at the shimmering form with his short blade.
“Show yourself,” he demanded, chest heaving.
The visual disturbance winked out, leaving behind record of neither its presence nor its passing. Innocuous dust motes danced on the air where the thing had been.
Like every other time he’d demanded a confrontation with whatever it was that followed him, he experienced a moment of awareness, a sense of soul-wrenching despair, before abject solitude wound its way around and through him, strangling limbs and organs and emotions without differentiation. Every bit of him was put through the wringer and left feeling crushed.
As he rubbed his sternum, Ethan’s wild gaze skipped around the hallway, floor to ceiling. “If I trip and fall and get murdered, I’m filing a grievance with management.” Irritation saturated his mutterings as he whirled away from the emptiness and resumed the trek to his rooms.
That he’d been reduced to what felt like the sacrificial starlet doomed to be the first one taken out really pissed him off. Sure, he loved a good slasher flick as much as the next guy, but he strongly preferred fiction to fact when personal threat was involved. This real-life emotional-torture-cum-horror-fest was messing him up. All he needed to round out his physical retreat was a tension-building score filled with haunting piano music accompanied by ominous strings. Maybe pipe organs...
“Organs.” He snorted. “Bad word choice.”
A huge shadow rose in his peripheral vision.
Ethan’s lungs seized as if a massive, invisible hand had gripped the pair and squeezed them like they were the leather bags on a bagpipe. A choked wheeze of alarm was the most he could manage. Whatever was stalking him had never rematerialized so fast and with such density. Intent on rending that shadow in two, Ethan swung out.
His short blade met the heavy metal of a proper sword, the shock singing up his arm until his nerves vibrated like a tuning fork. His hand spasmed and his dagger fell to the stone floor, striking with a metallic clatter.
“Shit!” He cradled his numb arm to his chest and glared into the shadowy alcove. “You scared the ever-living hell out of me.”
“The gods of light and life will be glad to hear it.” A dark looked passed over Rowan’s face. “If you intend to strike out at a larger man carrying a much bigger sword, you need to either arm yourself better or get faster. Preferably both.”
Ignoring the chastisement, Ethan let a slow, wicked grin spread over his face even as he fought to bank the fury he knew filled his eyes. “Frankly? I’m more interested in what you’re doing tucked away in a lovers’ alcove with nothing but your sword than I am in hearing you criticize my mad fighting skills.”
“It’s not a lovers’ alcove, witchling. It’s an archer’s lookout.” Rowan stared down the hall in the direction Ethan’s mysterious stalker had disappeared. “As for the other, I was doing exactly as you asked—trying to see if whatever it is that you claim is following you might be visible to me in the spirit realm.”
“Tell me you finally saw it.” Coarse and strained, Ethan’s demand sounded like it had been squeezed through a vise.
Rowan’s nostrils flared. Then he gave a single, sharp dip of the chin.
Hope warred with terror. Ethan wanted—needed—to know what was going on. With the banished and damned gods rallying as the Shadow Realm’s power shifted, the appearance of this otherworldly stalker had him unnerved. He waited on Rowan to speak.
Nada. Nothing. Niet.
The assassin just continued to stare down the hall, his eyebrows drawn together.
Ethan scooped up his dagger and, to hide his trembling hand, gestured with the blade as he spoke. “Tell me, or the next time you end up in the infirmary, I’ll set up an account and profile for you on www.hotmenofDublin.com and tie the account to your phone so it posts your location...no matter where you are.”
He fought to keep from flinching when the man’s arctic-blue gaze refocused and landed solidly on him. The vacancy in those eyes made it seem like Rowan was no more than a husk of a man. A shell. Soulless. His response did little to dispel the impression. “I’d refrain from referring to the being as an ‘it.’”
Ethan tried not to grin and failed. “You’re telling me I’ve picked up a...what? A ghost? As in, an incorporeal stalker?”
“Of a sort.”
Grin fading, Ethan couldn’t stop the sudden buzzing in his ears. “What ‘sort,’ exactly? And how do I get rid of it?”
“‘It’ is a woman,” Rowan answered softly. “And I’m not sure you want to be rid of her.”
“Why?” The buzzing grew louder as something heavy pressed against the corners of Ethan’s mind.
“Because it would seem she’s your wife.”
* * *
Isibéal Cannavan quite literally hovered around the corner and out of sight of the assassin with the terrifying eyes. The man had seen her. Could see her. But that wasn’t what had scattered her so and left her suffering with uncontrollable palsy. She’d touched the man now known as Ethan. The man she knew as Lachlan. And the terrifying man who could see her had either heard her or read her lips when she uttered that cherished yet damning word. “Husband.”
Nor was her admission what had sent her careening down the hall. All she had wanted was to touch Lachlan. Nothing more. So, after summoning every ounce of will she possessed, she had concentrated on Lachlan’s bare neck. And she’d done it, had felt him. But the very second the sensation registered, an excruciating pain had ripped through her and torn an involuntary, albeit soundless, scream from her throat. Nothing, not even the sword strike that had taken her life, had ever hurt so badly. She had been catapulted away from him as if she’d taken a far more violent blow to the midsection. Even now her hands hovered over the sight of the original deathblow. She looked down, half expecting to find blood staining her gown.
There was nothing there.
Isibéal rubbed one thumb and forefinger together, still convinced it should be blood-slicked. Her other hand she held clamped against her side. Despite the fact that she didn’t need to breathe, her chest heaved. Pain still ricocheted through her, pinging about like a maddened hornet trapped in a jar. It was of no consequence, seeing as she refused to regret her actions. She wished with fierce intensity that she’d been able to retain the sensation of Lachlan’s warmth. A fitting reward that would have been worth the lingering pain. Such was not to be. Touching her husband had taken every ounce of available concentration and more than that in bravery to master her form and create the brief connection. To retain it would have taken the very thing she did not possess.
A mortal body.
That she would never again realize the intimate feel of Lachlan’s form sliding beneath her hands, stroke the stubble along his jaw, experience his lips against hers or his arms cradling her... The realization, both compounded and comprehensive, had been enough to do what the pain had not done, driving her from the keep.
She raced to the cliffs, teetering to a stop inches from the edge.
Wind whipped through her.
Her simple gown did not so much as move.
If her sacrifice had not saved her husband’s life, it had, at the very least, saved his soul. She must remember that. Never would she regret her choice. How often had she sworn from her cursed grave that she would suffer a hundred eternal damnations to simply be able to see and hear Lachlan...now Ethan...after all these centuries? Someone had heard her fervent prayers and granted her this boon. If that single touch meant she was forever removed from Lachlan, so be it. It was a price she would pay a thousand times over to know he lived once more.
She pressed her fingertips to her lips before whispering his name in reverent invocation. “Lachlan.”
Recognizing her husband on sight had been a matter of no regard. Even now her heart called to his, just as it had the first time they’d met. Lachlan Cannavan looked much the same as he had before her death. He who had once led the Assassin’s Arcanum had been an attractive man with dark blond hair, a strong jaw and merry blue eyes more inclined to shared laughter than somber weight. Broad-shouldered with muscle layered over muscle, he had commanded any room. She had watched him long enough in this life to know that he still did. His modern clothes struck her as odd, but he looked so similar to those around him that she had to assume what he wore was fashionable. None of this was truly relevant, however.
What mattered most was that, after an innumerable number of centuries, she had touched him, touched the man she’d thought lost to her for eternity. Her hand dropped from her lips to hover over the quiet at her breast. She might not possess a heartbeat, but she still possessed a heart. Of that she was certain. Otherwise, her chest wouldn’t ache with such vacancy.
A soft but persistent tug behind her breastbone drew a small gasp from her.
“I will not,” she snapped. “You do not command me.”
Though she spoke to the air, she had hope that he heard her—the God of Vengeance and Reincarnation, once known for far greater things than cold-blooded murder.
Lugh.
He summoned her yet again, this pull on her being stronger as his will forced her back a step.
Pressure in her chest eased.
She so was not ready for this.
After she’d risen from her grave, nearly a moon’s cycle passed before she understood what the pull meant. The more insistent it became, the more certain she was that the curse Lugh had laid on her at death had been consequent.
The wordless command intensified.
She resisted giving in and doing as bade, instead stepping forward. The summons caused her limbs to ache as it evolved into a silent demand. No matter. She was not his to order about. Not now. Not ever. Still, the sensation grew.
She set her jaw and leaned forward.
When the pull finally stopped, the release nearly drove her over the cliff. Not that it would hurt her, but it still unnerved her when she ended up hovering in midair.
There was no way to predict how long Lugh would leave her be this time. Every day she remained free of the grave, the god grew stronger and more insistent she answer his summons. He fed from her freedom, siphoning it like a leech. She resented his presence, despised the fact that she had no control over what he took from her. That resentment was nothing compared to the vitriolic hatred she harbored for him, though. His death curse had stolen more than her life. To say she had suffered through the centuries would be like saying a blacksmith’s forge burned hot.
“Understatement.” She huffed out a sharp breath, at the same time absently tucking a loose curl back into the hair piled on her head.
Not once had she ceased her pleading with the gods of light and life, beseeching them to find mercy and release her from the hell to which she’d bound herself. She’d had no idea what that spell would mean long-term. Darkness had blinded her. Her corporeal and incorporeal bodies had been trapped in her grave. But by some small grace—damnation?—she’d been able to hear everything that happened in the castle. It had nearly destroyed her mind even as it shredded her heart, hearing that Lachlan had died despite the bargain she’d struck and the subsequent sacrifice she’d made that summer night.
Her life for his.
She swiped at the tears that tracked down her cheeks at the memory of hearing that Lachlan had perished, the heartache as fresh as ever. “Fickle gods have no care for those whose lives are destroyed by their impetuous choices.”
And now both her sacrifice and Lachlan’s death would amount to naught. With the disturbance of Isibéal’s grave, the very grave to which Lugh had linked his binding to the Shadow Realm, Lugh’s confinement to the underworld would begin to deteriorate. While she had been bound to her grave, so had he been to his. But now that she was free? That freedom would empower the god to begin his own resurrection process. Once he manifested, she had no doubt he would rain vengeance on those he deemed enemies, past and present.
And Lachlan, nay, Ethan, would be at the very top of his list.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_e025d6b2-cd67-5050-9027-b1454e8c6710)
Thoughts raced willy-nilly through Ethan’s mind as he crossed the threshold into his room. Wife. Mine? No. Married. Me? No. No, no, no, no. Crazy-ass ghost. Rowan’s wrong. No other explanation. And then he was back to Married. Me? No. No, no, no, no. At some point in what had evolved into a mad dash down the hall, his feet had gone inexplicably numb. With a little luck and some staunch medicinal Irish therapy, the rest of his body would follow within the half hour.
He shoved through the door to his rooms and crossed straight to the small bookcase with the bar on one end. With the tip of his dagger, he performed an impromptu game of eenie-meenie-miney-mo. The blade landed on an unopened bottle of Midleton Very Rare. Ethan grinned without humor and pulled the bottle off the shelf. No glass needed.
“Waste of fine whiskey.”
The deep voice nearly drove Ethan out of his skin. His knife clattered to the floor, and he fumbled the expensive whiskey. Sunlight flashed through the bottle’s rich amber content as the decanter went end over end, its impact with the stone floor forecast in horrid slow motion. Ethan lunged for the bottle. His knees scraped the uneven floor, the burn advertising that he’d taken the first layer of skin off. But by the gods’ grace, he snatched the bottle out of the air before permanent damage—the kind that involved curses and broken glass and bandied accusations—occurred.
Rounding on the intruder and light-headed with a wild cocktail of anger, adrenaline and something too close to fear for comfort, Ethan gestured with the neck of the bottle. “Stop sneaking up on me!”
Rowan shrugged and, with his heel, shoved the door to the suite closed before zeroing in on the bookshelf. He plucked the Very Rare from Ethan’s hands as he passed. “I realize you’re not Irish and, therefore, are arguably ignorant, so I’ll tell you once. You don’t get fluthered on Midleton’s. It’s too fine a drink for that. Choose a bottle of Jameson’s, Blended.”
“What? Why?”
Rowan placed the Very Rare on the shelf from whence it came and selected a nearly new bottle of Jameson’s Blended, handing it to Ethan without pomp or flourish. “Why?” He blinked once. Twice. “Easy. Midleton’s is a rare whiskey made for sipping, not drinking. It’s a whiskey for celebration, not obliteration. And while Jameson’s is also an admittedly fine whiskey, it’s half the cost. Your guilt won’t be so pricked when you’re puking it, and your toenails, up come sunrise.”
Ethan blinked at Rowan. “That was a speech.”
The muscular man rolled first his shoulders and then his head, rocking the latter back and forth until he paused to stretch and his vertebrae made a popping sound. “Made my point, didn’t I?”
“Sure, but it seems there were extra words in there. Some might even say they were compassionate words.”
Rowan shot Ethan a bland look before plucking a glass off the shelf. “Shut up and pour.”
“You too good to drink from the bottle?”
The larger man didn’t respond, simply held out the highball glass. When Ethan didn’t move fast enough, Rowan snatched the bottle and poured a solid two fingers of whiskey. Neck corded and hands trembling, he passed the glass to Ethan, picked up a second glass and poured again.
Ethan swirled his drink, staring at the play of light against fine crystal. “I’m not sure what to think, seeing as the ghost got to you. You. She must have been terrifying, horrid even. Dude, I bet that was it. She’s a hag, isn’t she? Proof she’s not my wife. I mean, looks aren’t everything, but when you take your marriage vows? That’s it. You’re waking up to that mug for the rest of your life.”
Rowan lifted his chin and locked his stare with Ethan’s. “Did you just call me ‘dude’?”
“Maybe?” He shrugged. “Okay, fine. Yes. But it was my second choice. First would have been Special Agent Supernatural—SAS for short—because of all the freaky shit that goes on around here. ‘Dude’ slipped off the tongue easier.” Sure, Ethan could have been a little more couth, but it would have been wasted effort. Besides, he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to worry about offending the centuries-old Druid. Let Rowan turn him into a toad. With any luck, Ethan could counter-curse the other man on the way down. Gulping down the contents of the proffered glass, Ethan took the last swallow and gasped as powerful fumes rushed out his nose, cauterizing the tender skin. “I’d turn you into a gnat.”
Rowan’s eyebrows drew together for a split second. “A gnat?”
“Well, you’re turning me into a frog.”
“I am?” Rowan shook his head and tossed back the two fingers he’d poured. “I haven’t had enough to drink for you to make sense.”
“I always make sense,” Ethan countered. “Sometimes.”
Rowan grunted as he poured himself a second shot.
“So, let me be blunt.” Ethan set his glass down, commandeered the bottle and took a long draw, his breath exploding from his lungs as if he were a mythical fire-breathing creature. He wondered that the room hadn’t been incinerated. Voice raw, he managed to wheeze, “Why are you here?”
Rowan shrugged and sipped at his glass. “Personal reasons, I assure you.”
“And here I thought you cared,” Ethan murmured before taking a less aggressive pull from the bottle’s mouth.
“Don’t think that my presence here is any type of indicator that I give a personal damn about what you do or don’t do.” The barked response bore an accusatory tone. “I don’t leave my friends in trouble.”
“By your own admission last Thursday after sword practice when I cut you like a little bitch, I’m not your friend. And as far as my troubles go?” He lifted the bottle in toast and took another pull. “The only one I have involves a crazy-ass ghost-hag-stalker no one but you can see. Soon as I banish her? Life’s golden.”
Rowan stepped closer to Ethan. “You won’t banish the woman until we’re sure she’s not your wife.”
Ethan’s temper snapped like a mousetrap. The victim here, though, was his common sense. Pushing into Rowan’s personal space, he glared at the Druid. “Get it through your thick, geriatric skull, dude. I’ve never been married. Won’t ever get married. So the only thing I know for sure is that the woman wants something bad enough that she’s motivated to lie in order to get it.”
Rowan pushed Ethan back with enough force that he stumbled.
“Asshole.”
The bigger man set his glass down and, moving faster than thought, closed his hand around Ethan’s throat. “Leave it be.”
Simple words issued with such hostile overtones didn’t steal the underlying truth. Rowan gave a shit about him on some fundamental, purposeful level.
Wrenching free of the assassin’s grip, Ethan spun and stalked to the window. He braced a hand against the casing and leaned into it, pressing the pads of his fingers into the rough stone. He watched the waves rolling into the cliff face and took a drink.
This time the whiskey burned slower, spreading through the middle of his chest before radiating down his legs and along his arms. Lingering surprise at Rowan’s roundabout admission stole Ethan’s sarcasm. His fingertips twitched around the glass. Shoving off the window’s frame, he forced himself to face the man who inexplicably considered him a friend. “What do we do to get rid of her?”
Rowan retrieved the bottle of Midleton’s and poured himself a clean shot.
Ethan’s eyebrows drew together and he absently rubbed his furrowed forehead. “I thought that wasn’t the whiskey you drank to get drunk.”
Ice-blue eyes met his. “You’re getting drunk. I’m only here in a support role. Plus, you drank from the bottle. I prefer to keep my glass to my person.”
“Whatever.” Ethan took another sip, appreciating the ease with which the strong alcohol now went down. “Why are you so supportive of my intent to get blotto? You don’t even like me.”
“If you’d been paying attention to the gossiping hens around this place, you’d have heard I don’t like anyone or anything.”
“Gossip is for little girls and old women. Oh, and doctors. You wouldn’t believe how doctors gossip around their computer monitors in a hospital.” He shook his head. “Crazy.”
Rowan snorted. “Don’t be a fool. Gossip is limited only by one’s ability to communicate, be it by mouth, hand or other method.” Lifting his glass to his lips, he paused. “So, how long are you going to avoid the specter in the room?”
Ethan’s hands spasmed and the bottle he’d claimed fell to the floor, shattering on impact. “Where?” He glanced around wildly. “Where is it? She? It? She’s here, isn’t she?”
Rowan watched him through those notoriously shrewd, dispassionate eyes. “I haven’t seen her since she took off down the hall.”
“You said she was here. You said, ‘How long are you going to avoid the specter—’”
Rowan interrupted with a sharp look. “It was a question similar to ‘How long will you avoid the elephant in the room?’”
With a ragged curse, Ethan picked his way across the glass-strewn floor and back to the bookshelf where he blindly retrieved a third bottle. “And if I’d been an elephant handler traumatized by a crazed elephant, I’d have reacted the same.”
“Lucky for us you don’t have any elephants in your past.”
“It’s far more likely there’s an elephant—maybe even two—hanging around in my past than there is a woman who can claim with any legitimacy that she’s my wife.” Ethan pulled the cork free of the new bottle with a sharp pop. He took a long draw and coughed, his response as harsh as if the words had been run over a coarse cheese grater. “Trust me.”
* * *
Isibéal slipped unseen through the doors of the castle. That she could pass through walls of glass and stone, doors of wood and iron, still bothered her. For all that she’d been dead for centuries, she’d been trapped in her own personal hell. This? Moving free in the world? It would take some getting used to.
Wandering across the massive foyer and toward the stairs, attention wandering as she stepped from stone to stone, she didn’t see the man in time to keep from passing through him. She shuddered as she emerged, a sick sensation stealing through her middle even as a muffled whump had her looking back.
The man she’d passed through had collapsed and now flopped about like a flightless chick cast from its nest too early. The paroxysm he suffered proved severe as he smashed his head against the stone again and again, his arms and legs alternately flailing and stiffening as straight and rigid as an arrow’s shaft.
Isibéal moved to kneel at his side. She wanted to help him, to ease whatever pain he suffered, but without a body?
She sat back on her heels.
Useless. I’m entirely useless.
Men rushed to the foyer and headed straight for their felled brother.
Isibéal scrambled away, determined not to touch another soul until she was sure what the consequences were—for both parties. Summoning her focus and touching Lachlan...Ethan...had cost her mightily, but it was a pain she would gladly pay if only to touch him again. Yet this particular discomfiture proved powerful enough to sway her from any desire to touch any other human being. The consequences were a bit unnerving.
Moving like the wraith she’d become, she climbed the broad flight of stairs that would take her to the guests’ quarters in the northern wing.
Ethan’s quarters.
She remembered this castle as it had been before her death—stones rough from recent hewing, glass smooth in the windows that had been afforded such luxury, peat smoke already marring the hearths, and what had seemed like miles of hallways.
The stones were smoother now.
Glass, even resplendent stained glass by the most skilled artisans, filled every window and overhead opening.
Hearths were generally cold, replaced by strange flameless stoves.
Yet not everything was different, thank the gods. The floor plan had remained largely the same, from dining hall to observatory to sleeping quarters. She knew these halls. Remembered them. Had spent the last several months rediscovering nooks and crannies all around the castle as she observed Ethan.
Husband.
She couldn’t believe she’d laid claim to him in such a forward, arguably brazen manner, let alone in front of another assassin.
He’s mine.
Her heart’s objection to her mind’s reserved behavior coaxed a smile from her. She’d always had a bit of a problem with what men deemed appropriate for women to say and do. Seemed death hadn’t changed that.
Perhaps Ethan would still find that part of her as appealing now as he had done all those years ago. He used to tease her, once even threatening to do away with her dresses and make her wear men’s breeches after he found her riding astride her horse, voluminous skirts tucked around her legs. She’d stumped him when she begged him to follow through.
A soft laugh escaped her.
Gods, she had loved that man. That he might not be the same man he’d once been terrified her. Fear didn’t change the fact that simply seeing him had elicited from her the same response as in their previous life together. Being in Ethan’s presence made Isibéal want to be more, do more, rise to any challenge, fight harder—all the same feelings, emotions and reactions Lachlan had roused in her.
Not all, silly woman.
“Silly woman, indeed,” she murmured, pressing the back of one hand to her cheek.
Honesty, then. The other emotions Ethan roused in her were the very same Lachlan had discovered. Longing. Fervor. Lust. Passion.
“Love,” she amended for no one save herself. “All based in love.”
The emotions were there, regardless. She wanted Ethan as a woman wanted a man. No, not just “a” man. Her man. For that was who he was, and would always be, to her.
“Husband.”
She trailed unfeeling fingers along the stone walls out of habit, pausing when she reached Ethan’s door. She heard two voices. One belonged to her husband. The other could only be the large assassin who’d seen her. The latter gave her pause.
She laid a hand on the door and took a deep, unnecessary breath. “No matter what you’ve heard over the years, Isibéal, no matter that you know bits and pieces of his...Rowan’s...history, he’s given you no cause to fear him.”
That didn’t mean her inanimate heart wasn’t lodged in her throat. Some physical reactions, it seemed, were unaffected by death’s strict parameters.
Tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear, Isibéal drifted forward, through the door and into Ethan’s personal space.
Luck was with her as she found Rowan with his back to her. That allowed her to enter unseen. She’d take whatever boon the gods deemed appropriate, particularly if such resulted in her being able to observe Ethan without fear of discovery.
The men were in a hushed but heated conversation. Like as not, she wouldn’t have paid them any mind, would have simply watched Ethan, had she not heard the word ghost.
She shifted her attention to her husband, and what was left of her heart seized on his next words.
“I don’t care if the woman claims she’s my wife any more than I’d care if she claimed she’d once been the patron saint of sheep shit and goat cheese.”
Sheep shit and goat cheese? She shook her head, irritated but equally amused. His next words stripped the amusement away in mere seconds.
“She goes, Rowan. She’s out of the castle. I won’t have her here.” He shoved the fingers of one hand through his hair as he lifted the whiskey bottle with the other and took a hearty swig.
“You’d use your magicks to cast her out of this realm without knowing if her claim holds even an ounce of truth?”
“Our magicks. It’ll take us both, as I’ll need you to open a path into the spirit realm. I’ve more than enough magick to handle casting my...her...the woman—” Ethan’s eyes narrowed and his body swayed as he leaned into Rowan’s space “—out. And I’ll say it one more time, since you’re obviously deep enough in your cups to no longer make easy sense of the English language. I’m. Not. Married. Never have been. Never wanted to be.”
Rowan crossed his arms over his chest. “And just what have you got against marriage, then? What is it that scares you? The commitment, I’m guessing.”
Isibéal moved around the men and into Rowan’s field of view. She knew she had to look a sight with her temper up and her tenuous claim to her magick flaring. Strong emotion fueled her response and afforded her the wherewithal to rein in the wind that swirled around her. Not entirely, though. Her hair crackled and popped and her dress whipped about as her temper brewed.
Ethan carried on, totally unaware of Rowan’s raised eyebrows and the cause for the Druid’s response.
Her.
“I have no issues with committing but every problem letting the Fates take control when the heart gets involved and logic is replaced with emotion. And to do marriage right, you have to set logic aside. You have to allow yourself to fall. You can only hope the landing doesn’t break something critical.”
“It’s not like falling in love leaves you with broken bones, you gobshite.”
“It’s not broken bones I was referring to, but rather irreparably mangled hearts.” Ethan grinned, but the affectation was so dark as to be disturbing. “Love is for children and fools, Rowan, and I’m neither.”
The Druid’s shoulders stiffened even as he lowered his arms to his sides in a controlled move. “Tread lightly, darkling, seeing as I, myself was married and yet never counted myself a fool.”
“Why don’t you talk to your wife, then?” Ethan shot out. Rowan flinched and Ethan’s shoulders hunched. “Forget I said that—that was out of line. But know this, Rowan. I’ll not ‘tread lightly.’” Ethan’s lips thinned into a hard line even as his jaw took on a familiar, mutinous set that made Isibéal long to stroke the skin just there. “It’s been hundreds of years since you lost your wife and you still suffer with the mangled heart I referred to. You’re as dead inside as the incorporeal stalker who’s mistaken me for someone who would have ever said ‘I do’ to her or anyone else.”
Isibéal fumed at the thought that there would be someone else for her husband. The man she’d known would never, ever have operated with such blinders on, let alone have even joked about forsaking his vows to her, his wife. This man, Ethan, might have been the spitting image of her lost husband, but she wondered if she’d misjudged his character. Worse, had she mistaken his soul for Lachlan’s simply because she so desperately wanted it to be so?
She sagged, and Rowan caught her eye with a sharp move of his hand. Glancing up, she met that cold gaze and couldn’t help shivering. Then he gave a sharp shake of his head and laid his hand over his heart. Isibéal was lost until he mouthed the word patience as Ethan rambled on.
“The only time you’ll find me wearing the one suit I own and standing at the end of any aisle is right after Easter and Halloween when the grocery stores put the good candy on sale. I take my Toblerone acquisitions seriously, man.”
“Ethan.” Rowan dragged the name out, clearly a warning.
“Rowan,” Ethan mimicked, irreverent as ever. Then he held up his free hand, palm out. “The psycho-stalker came after me. That makes her mine. As such, I reserve the right to have the final word in this. She’s to be banished, dúr, caorach-grámhara duine cac.”
“And when, exactly, did you pick up the Irish?” Rowan asked quietly.
Ethan paled and shook his head, mouth working silently.
His shock at having spoken the old language fluently didn’t settle Isibéal’s ire. Ethan had done far too good a job at ensuring she was...what was the common vernacular? Ah, yes. Pissed off. He’d ensured that his words had enflamed her temper and pricked her pride. She knew she should step outside, give herself time and space to settle, but damned if she would. Ethan couldn’t be allowed the time necessary to create the banishing spell that would send her away. Permanently. For an unanchored spirit neither belonging to nor claimed by Tír na nÓg or the Shadow Realm, banishing her meant her soul would splinter. He would cause it—her—to splinter. The result? She would be little more than a recorded birth and death. She would have no more substance than a dandelion’s head blown into the wind by a temperamental child, its fluff carried a thousand different directions by the mercurial wind.
So, yes, while she should have stepped outside and centered herself, should have done whatever it took to subdue her wrath, she didn’t. Not even hearing Ethan slip into the Irish and call Rowan a “stupid, sheep-loving shit face” tempered the violence brewing in her.
Ethan could say what he would and call her whatever names soothed his black heart. None of it hurt like his explicit objective. If he thought she would sit around and passively wait, hands folded in her lap like a simpleton, while he gathered the means to banish her? He had another think coming.
By the gods, she’d survived this long. She wouldn’t give up the fight not only to carry on but also to make her way back to her husband’s side because of one imbecile’s unencumbered conscience. Even if that man was her husband. For all that she wanted to doubt, she’d seen too much to believe otherwise. Period. If it took her a thousand lifetimes of fighting her way back to him to convince him that that was, in fact, his role? So be it. But there would be more than a little hell to pay for his ridicule.
Isibéal looked at her luminescing hands and basked in the stinging power that traced her nerves. Skills long bound by the grave crackled to life, her long-neglected senses sputtering.
Holding her arms away from her body, she let her power run unchecked for the first time since she’d died. She pulled on her cursed tie to Lugh, the god who had bound her thusly. For the first time she was glad she could summon more power from her tie to the god than what now seemed such a paltry sum at her immediate disposal. She felt him stir, felt his interest in her wrath. So be it. If teaching Ethan a little respect meant she had to draw on the damned god’s strengths? She would do it, and without apology.
For if delivering a little retribution would feel good, certainly raining undiluted hell would be grand.
Isibéal raised her hands above her head.
Her hair whipped in an incorporeal wind.
And she called the brimstone and rain.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_f517e3c9-503e-5c72-bf3f-d87d82b2f0af)
Ethan had no idea where the native Irish language had come from when he insulted Rowan. Had no idea why he’d called him a “stupid, sheep-loving shit face,” either. It had to have been a fluke. Something he’d heard before. Surely...
Intent on terminating the conversation and getting Rowan out of his rooms, Ethan opened his mouth to speak. And stopped. Gooseflesh decorated his exposed arms as the temperature in his living room dropped from comfortable to for-the-gods’-sakes-someone-light-the-fire cold. His breath condensed on the air, small clouds chugging from between his parted lips. He lifted the whiskey bottle, intent on drowning the last of his urge to argue. A scattering of light caught his attention, and he paused. “What—” he tipped his head toward the door “—is that?”
Rowan turned with great care. “It seems ‘that’ would be your hag-stalker-ghost-wife. You probably shouldn’t leave off the moniker of ‘witch,’ though. It seems rather relevant. Particularly now that you’ve pissed her off.” He inched around the flashes of pale orange light that cascaded like a Fourth of July sparkler from roughly four feet off the floor. “You’re the one who pissed her off, so you’re the one responsible for settling her down.” He reached the door and slipped out, peeking back around the door frame to deliver his parting shot. “Preferably before she does something like, what was it you so randomly accused me of? Oh. Right. Turning you into a frog. Good luck.” He ducked into the hallway then, pulling the heavy door closed with an authoritative boom. A split second later, the iron latch dropped with an ominous clank.
“Coward,” Ethan called.
Interpreting Rowan’s muffled reply proved impossible.
Sure, Ethan could have gone after him, asked the man to repeat himself. He could have argued a bit more. Or he could even have...found one of a thousand more ways in which to avoid the inevitable confrontation with the invisible woman.
He sighed.
Avoidance was no longer an option. Intentional evasion would only allow things to escalate and leave Ethan hiding behind the Druids’ proverbial skirts. And Ethan did not hide behind anyone’s pleats and folds, maxis or minis, round gowns or kilts.
Taking a deep breath, he focused in the general direction he thought the woman stood.
Or did she hover? Crouch? Float? Whatever.
“This is going to be awkward, seeing as I can’t—” he gestured at the cascading sparks “—you know, see you. So I’ll just talk in your general direction and hope for the best.”
A book flew from the shelf and careened off his shoulder. “Ow!”
He spun away from the next book only to be pelted across the abdomen with the contents of the slag bucket from the hearth.
Ash billowed around him and created ephemeral clouds, the dark mass ballooning as it was pushed toward the ceiling, driven by an unnaturally pernicious wind. The gritty residue destroyed his white shirt and khaki pants, covered his exposed skin and burned his eyes. Racked with chest-rattling coughs, he covered his mouth and nose as he tried to steal even a single deep breath.
He needed to shut Sparky here down. Now. Her sparkler display had evolved from orange to a deep crimson. Ethan couldn’t envision a situation where that could possibly bode well.
Pulling his shirt up over his lower face, he squinted through the worst of the fallout and moved forward. The gritty stuff was everywhere. That wasn’t what had his ire up, though. It was the idea that she’d come into his space in what had become his home and wrecked his stuff that thoroughly pissed him off. Not only that, but now there was this monstrous mess to contend with. He coughed, and the ash in his throat seemed to congeal. A second wave of ash rushed over him as the winds stirred with more aggression, whipping against his skin.
Who the hell does this ghost think she is?
Oh. Right.
My wife.
Ethan’s temper spiked. He’d reached his limit with this nonsense. Whipping his free hand out, he cupped his palm and made a scooping motion toward the ghost’s colorful display. He felt her. Felt the shape of her bare feet and ankles. Felt the grave’s chill countered by the hum of elemental magick coursing through her form. Felt the electrical charge that made her twitch and jerk in his grip. Felt the slight weight that powerful magick always carried, that touchable, tangible thing. And it was that weight, that substance of understanding, that confirmed she knew what havoc she could wreak and with minimal effort. His acceptance that she had to be sentient forced him to rethink how he approached her.
Forcibly shedding the cobweb-like strands of temper that had woven around him and now clung with what seemed like pernicious intent, he tapped into the last of his tolerance. “I will afford you one chance to control your temper, woman. That chance is now.”
The mirror above the fireplace gave an ominous, otherworldly groan, bowed outward and then shattered. Shards bounced off each other, the tinkling sound eerily similar to that of a thousand crystal flutes simultaneously toasting a single event.
“Enough!” he bellowed. Tightening his ethereal hold on her feet, he nearly lost his tenuous control over her when the urge to caress her ankle stole over him. “Magickal manipulation,” he spat, “not authentic feelings.” A harsh twist of his hand to the right and he pulled her down, anchoring her where she stood. Holding his other arm out parallel to the floor, palm down, Ethan let loose the barriers he kept in place, barriers that held his earth magick at bay so he could live, think, breathe, even just exist without bringing about destruction. He was beyond thinking now, driven to respond. “Rise!”
The stone floor, an extension of the element he controlled, responded by cracking and shattering in such rapid-fire succession his room sounded like a war zone. Rock and mortar heaved and blew apart, only to reform to Ethan’s will. He commanded the floor upward, drawing more and more stone to encase the unseen woman where he had pinned her struggling form.
“Bind and hold,” Ethan breathed, infusing the word with intent, with elemental magick, as he curled his fingers into his palm. Made a fist. Melded the rock together to form an impenetrable, airtight, inescapable prison created by his will and his element. He wouldn’t have her waltz out of here without consequence.
Materials continued to fly toward the column he created, exposing the castle’s wooden support beams as the rock adhered to Ethan’s orders and reformed, horizontal floor to vertical prison. And then a room appeared below—a classroom by appearances. Its occupants, students and instructor alike, could be seen through the dust. Shouts resounded as the young assassins in training—tyros—scrambled to avoid falling stone and other debris even as they adhered to their instructor’s shouted instruction to “Get out!”
The instructor, Niall, was one of the Arcanum. Controller of the element of air, he thrust his hands out and used his element to deflect a large rock that had broken away and careened toward him. The assassin’s eyes narrowed and his lips began to move in what was, Ethan assumed, a summoning spell wherein he called his element to heel.
Invisible though it was, the physical barrier the air created could be seen because of the thick dust on this side of the boundary and the clear space surrounding Niall on the other side. The world behind the artificially created wall shifted, papers blowing all about, as Niall commanded the air to lift him straight up and deposit him at Ethan’s side.
Cool. The first of the cavalry has arri—
Niall’s fist connected with Ethan’s jaw. The impact sent him lurching across the wrecked floor, where he slammed into a damaged stone wall. Bracing one hand against the windowsill, he shook his head and tried to clear his muddled thoughts.
Didn’t see that coming.
His concentration broke and the stones he’d been directing began to fall, creating a deadly shower. Rock ricocheted around him. Chunks large and small plummeted into the room exposed below. Larger stones took out the ancient wooden tables the tyros used as desks as well as the hodgepodge of both archaic and modern lab equipment, the podium Niall had lectured from and the computer that had been open atop it. Niall’s computer.
Oops. Again.
Smaller stones, mortar and personal flotsam from Ethan’s living room continued to fall through the floor and fill in voids until the classroom below looked as if destruction had rained, and it had been a torrential downpour.
Ethan worked his aching jaw back and forth as he slowly straightened.
Niall crossed arms sleeved with tattoos over his chest. “Ask me why I hit you and I’ll do it again.”
Normally, Ethan would have poked at Niall simply because the man had a fantastic sense of humor. Today wasn’t a normal day.
The door to Ethan’s room crashed open in a shower of splinters. The Druid’s Elder and the entire Arcanum, some with spouses hot on their heels, crowded the entrance, weapons raised.
For a second, Ethan’s heart swelled. They’d come to him believing he’d been in danger, intent on ensuring his well-being and ready to fight beside him or cover his back if the need arose. It floored him to realize he mattered to them, filling a vacancy he hadn’t realized existed—an emotional vacuum in him that had craved that sense of belonging and genuine camaraderie.
He was on the verge of blurting out his gratitude, a sentiment that hovered somewhere between wildly emotional and unquestionably fervent, when Dylan shoved forward and glanced around the room.
“What. The. Hell.” The leader of the Arcanum, the Assassin, gazed around the room and took in the total destruction—from the giant hole in the floor to the classroom below, to the absolute devastation of what had been Ethan’s living room. “This castle has stood for well over half a millennium. Eight hundred years, Ethan. Eight. Hundred. You’ve been here...how long? Not even twelve months. Less than a bloody year!”
“No need to shout, Dylan.” Ethan looked around the room. “I’m pretty clear on what went down, seeing as I was in the middle of it.”
“‘What went down.’” The Assassin shook his head as he gestured for everyone else to lower their weapons. “What you wrought is more like it.”
Rowan wove his way through the crowd. “Where is she?”
“Who?” Dylan asked at the same time Ethan said, “Taken care of.”
The icy-eyed assassin closed in. “What did you do to your wife, warlock?”
Before Ethan could formulate an appropriate answer, an ominous rumble sounded.
Every gaze in the room shifted to the heavy stone column that now stood near the hearth.
“Out!” Dylan shouted, and they all dove for the hallway.
Everyone but Ethan. He was on the opposite side of the room and couldn’t get across the gaping hole in the floor.
He was exposed. Defenseless.
The columnar tomb he’d created exploded, and like organic shrapnel, stone shot in every direction.
He spun and ducked. Wrapping his arms around his head, he intended to get as low as he could and protect his head.
But a large rock caught him at the base of the skull before he was down.
The last thing he remembered was the floor rushing toward him as darkness crowded out his awareness of both the moment and his concern over the simple truth.
I’m so screwed.
* * *
Pain wedded panic and scrambled Isibéal’s wits. She wanted to scream but couldn’t manage to create a sound under the deluge of pain. Everywhere he touched her, her skin burned and blistered with life’s inherent heat. Light equated to life, death to darkness, and light always ate darkness’s chilled shadows. The two were ne’er meant to mix. They were disparate things that could not coexist without consequence. For Isibéal, that consequence was immeasurable, mind-shattering pain.
Then the walls to her personal prison were up, solid and unyielding. That was when he finally released her.
She shook violently. Experience with panic told her she would ride this out. There were no other options available. Her knees gave way as she sagged against the stone before slowly sliding to crouch on the tiny floor space. How could Ethan do this to her—reduce her to shreds while he locked her inside another tomb, one his magick built? Centuries she’d spent in a cursed grave and he could do this to her without a second thought? How?
“Trapped.” A small sound of despair caught in her throat. “I can’t be trapped.” She flattened her palms against the walls and fought the constriction in her chest. Claustrophobia. It came from spending centuries buried yet fully cognizant, aware of her circumstance and unable to do anything about it.
Beneath the pads of her fingers, magick coursed and pulsed. But it was neither her magick nor any she had intentionally borrowed. This magick had a flavor so familiar she ached to dip her hands into it, to savor the sensory pleasures and memories created and shared when breath had still been necessary. Had she been able to truly experience its strength, it would have smelled earthy and rich. Organic. The taste of green grass would have rolled across the front of her tongue even as the smell of pungent soil, a loamy smell underlaid by the warmth of sunshine on barren rocks, would have tickled her nose.
Lachlan’s magick.
Yet there was something there—an undertone of thyme and sage—that created enough difference, enough unfamiliarity, that she was reminded it was not Lachlan’s power.
It was Ethan’s, and he was not truly Lachlan.
She beat at the rock like a madwoman.
Be at ease, a deep male voice whispered through her mind.
“No.” Clutching her head, she pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. “You’re not welcome here.”
Calm yourself, the voice breathed. Freedom is within reach, yours to claim if you will.
She held her head as the full-body shakes took over. “Can’t.”
Isibéal!
It wasn’t the command issued in the darkest reaches of her mind any more than it was the fathomless depth of the voice itself. That her name had been shouted was what startled her.
Break the ties that bind, woman. Shed the unnecessary fear. Then, and only then, will your way forward be unfettered. Until you choose to do so? You will be a slave to anyone strong enough to ensure your bondage.
“I am no one’s slave, nor do I belong to anyone. That includes you, Lugh.” Her upper lip curled. “And I am strong enough to do what needs be done. Stronger than you.” Funneling all her rage and fury into her fists, she drove them into the wall with unmitigated force. The moment before impact she realized she had an emotional vagabond who had stolen along, piggybacking on her riotous feelings. That letch magnified her power, increased it a hundred—nay, a thousandfold. And she was too far gone, too committed to her emotional purge, to cast the unwelcome tagalong aside.
Stone exploded outward as if compelled by a will, and magicks, that far exceeded what she could, in all reality, call her own. But there wasn’t time to question. Only act.
Isibéal rushed from the crumbling prison, clearing the wreckage in time to see Ethan whirl away and take a large stone to the back of his head. His entire body fell forward before it went lax like a marionette whose strings were severed. The man landed in a heap and began a slow slide down the sloped floor, heading straight for the gaping hole between this level and the next.
“Ethan!” The man might not be Lachlan in entirety, but there was so little difference between who he was and who he’d been that she couldn’t let the warlock go.
If this man were dead, though, he would be with you. We could both have at least some of what we have yearned for—you, your companionship.
That voice. Not hers. And it lied.
“And what of you?” she absently asked the male presence. She began to inch her way around the ledge toward the fallen man.
I seek the truest form of revenge.
The sliver of floor on which she stood rumbled. “And what is revenge’s truest form?”
Vengeance.
Ethan slipped several inches in a rush.
She bit back a vile curse.
Angry and terrified as she was, a whole new emotion stole over her, one that trumped what she’d only just called fear. This? This was fear. And it demanded she either act or react. Whichever would save her husband from the potentially deadly fall.
“Don’t you dare let go, Lachlan Cannavan,” she bit out, considering every option that would get her to his side faster.
Lachlan Cannavan.
Her husband’s name was a smear across her mind, the caustic acknowledgment so heavy and full that she instinctively cradled the crown of her skull for fear it would crack under the pressure.
Then she realized what she’d done.
She’d named Lachlan in front of Lugh, confirming her husband’s return.
Oh, gods, what have I done?
She couldn’t have been so stupid as to hand her husband over to the god who believed he’d been betrayed, and damned, by Lachlan.
Ethan slipped another fraction, and she lunged forward, teetering on the unnatural crevice’s edge.
She had no time for this, no time to dally with might-have-beens, empty promises made in the heat of the moment and new threats based on a mythology that had been rewritten so many times over the centuries that there was no one still alive who knew the unbiased truth. No one but Lugh and, to a point, Lachlan. She wouldn’t allow the god to ruin Lachlan’s...Ethan’s...best chance at finding his way back to her.
“No,” she responded aloud.
The thread between her and the god who had damned her was severed so abruptly that Isibéal collapsed. Throwing out the hand nearest Ethan’s body, she strained toward her man, willing the earth to shift with everything she’d ever possessed.
It wasn’t enough.
His limp body slid faster as he inched his way toward the floor’s edge and a fall that would, at the very least, leave him broken of body. At worst? She couldn’t fathom the outcome where she would lose him again. The spell she’d bound their souls to had been released. If they died now, they would move on, though not necessarily together. And she’d just been returned to him. If anything more than the plane of life and death were to separate them? Well, that would be her version of humanity’s Purgatory. But if that separation were to last an eternity?
That would be her version of hell.
Driven by a new kind of madness, one that demanded she save her husband’s life, Isibéal launched herself across the expanse.
A spectral hand shot out of the bowels of the damaged classroom. Skeletal fingers widened and smoke roiled around them, leaving a vaporous but inconsequential mist. Snatching Isibéal midflight, the hand encompassed her waist with the speed of a viper’s strike. Translucent and yet as solid as the confines of her grave, those bony fingers curled into the soft flesh of her belly. She might have been a ghost, but to this thing she was as tangible, as malleable, as she’d ever been. The hand clamped down. Squeezed. Flexed. Tightened further still.
Something within her torso, something that would have been labeled “Fragile: Handle with Care” if she were still alive, gave with an internal snap.
Excruciating pain scored not only the heart of who she was but also who she had been—child, daughter, wife, friend, witch, lover. It was as if every nuance of life that had ever wounded her—from minor bruises and scrapes to the final and fatal blow that had taken her life—now reoccurred, and she experienced the pain of each one all over again. The reality of the moment transcended everything she thought she’d known about pain across the centuries, from birth to mere moments ago. This, this breath-stealing, heart-stopping, soul-breaking torture that amplified every nerve’s response one hundredfold? Everything else was reduced to a precursor to this.
This was pain.
She bucked and flailed, desperate to break free.
Something else snapped.
A sound eerily similar to gale-force winds erupted from lips parted in a scream.
Her lips.
Her scream.
Windows shattered.
Glass rained, creating pinpoints of light that sparkled brilliantly against the inverse sky.
The hand that held Isibéal flexed, relaxed a fraction and then began to withdraw from Ethan’s primary room. Though her mind was hazed with pain and her stomach had lodged in her throat, she still made an effort to strike at her bizarre assailant. She didn’t want to go anywhere this thing would thrill to take her. Yet nothing she did—fists, kicks, curses—slowed her macabre abductor. She had the strangest sensation of being cradled and crushed, unsure which experience would prove most accurate as she was hauled through the gaping hole in the floor.
She flinched as piles of debris fast approached, not convinced she wouldn’t hit them with a firm form. But as she flew through solid materials, she had to accept that whatever physical attributes she’d temporarily assumed when “the hand” snapped pieces of her were now gone, the changes temporary.
The speed of her descent increased.
Isibéal sagged in her captor’s grip.
Who would see her through this? Who could intervene on her behalf? The answer was redundant. She had no one. Not really.
She passed through the familiar into the unfamiliar, leaving behind wood and stone and dirt, descending at an ever-increasing speed. Topography changed. Nothing was recognizable any longer, and she was oddly grateful because this new land was terrifying. She moved beyond what human geologists knew and into the birthplace of every mythological tale ever told.
None of it mattered. Not when Isibéal realized what was happening.
“Stop this. I said stop!” she shouted, verbally at first. Then she let the objection rage through her mind. Nothing she said, no threat she made, carried the weight or consequence to slow her abductor’s retreat. No magick she possessed was enough to halt this.
Absolute darkness wrapped itself around her. She fought not to panic as memories of being entombed threatened to steal her sanity. She couldn’t go back to that, to the silence and unyielding isolation with only her voice to keep her company, not without losing the tenuous hold she had on her sanity. Straining to listen, she heard nothing. There were no voices from the keep. No shouted curses from the god responsible for this mess. No benediction from the gods of light and life. She heard nothing, saw nothing and yet felt everything.
Her struggles renewed and she fought viciously but to no avail.
The hold she had on her sanity, precious and revered, slipped. It was arguably an incremental move, but, for all that, it made her feel as if there were fathoms between the woman she was now and the woman she’d been so long ago. Never had she thought to lose her mind. Never had she considered it to be the remotest of remote possibilities. Isibéal had always been the sound one, the reliable individual, the practical woman. No longer.
Anguish that she had survived so long on the fundamental hope she might see Lachlan again, that she might know his touch even once more or hear him call her name, blew through her like a caustic wind. The emotion scoured her throat. Tipping her head back, she opened her mouth and loosed the most raw, animalistic sound ever to cross a woman’s lips.
The cry went on and on until she was jerked upright and set on her feet with more force than finesse.
“By the gods, woman. Enough already.” Clothing rustled. “You weren’t this difficult the day your soul was bound.”
Chest heaving on the tail end of the scream, Isibéal dropped her chin and opened her eyes. Blinked in the small room’s low light. She turned in a slow circle, fighting the fiery opposition in her ribs.
So the damage had been real.
Her gaze landed on a man whose appearance was hidden in the room’s shadows. Propped as he was in the corner, she was only able to make out the quick flash of his smile.
“Welcome to the Shadow Realm, Isibéal Cannavan.”
He leaned against the wall behind him, his face hidden deeper in shadows.
She’d heard his voice, though, and it was enough. Unless judgment had been severe, he would still be far more than fair of face. His beauty would be so undiluted that he would be hard to look upon, a god among mortal men. She didn’t need bright light to confirm that he possessed hair that mimicked the complex colors of a fox’s pelt and eyes so green that their very existence would challenge the spring grasses to grow brighter or forever look dull in comparison.
His body would be that of a warrior’s—honed and hardened. Wide hands. Smooth knuckles. Broad, heavily muscled chest. Gods, he had been lovely to look at, his full lips curling with seductive intent he used to aid powers of persuasion. He’d also been cunning—would still be cunning if centuries in the Shadow Realm hadn’t tipped him over the edge from lacking any identifiable conscience to malicious insanity.
She’d learned all this the first time she faced the red-haired, bright-eyed Lugh. That meeting had cemented her preference for blond-haired, blue-eyed men. Rather, one such man in particular. Lachlan. Beautiful this cast-off god might be, but he would never be more attractive than her husband, nor would Lugh ever overrule Isibéal’s all-consuming love for the man she’d pledged her life to. This god, discarded by the heavens for one violent act and cast to hell for subsequent carnage delivered, hadn’t understood her sacrifice centuries ago. And she knew time wouldn’t have changed his ability to understand or even accept that she would willingly die a thousand painful deaths, suffer century upon century of maddening incarceration, if it meant her husband would live on and find his joy. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to secure that payoff.
Lugh startled her when he chose that moment to break the silence. “It is admittedly good to gaze upon your fair face after all this time, witch.”
She opened her mouth to speak but had to close it as she cleared her throat and fought to keep her wits about her. Histories, both written and oral, had warned those dealing with Lugh to tread lightly. She had once boldly tromped into the bog of negotiations with gods and mortal men, believing herself capable of managing their trickery. She’d promptly sunk to her neck.
The god shifted enough in the shadow’s depth that he regained her attention. “I have a proposition I’d present for your consideration.”
“I have no desire for anything but a severance of the ties that bind us,” she said evenly. “Let me go.”
“Not yet.” He rose to his full, impressive height, his head approaching what had to have been a nine-foot-tall ceiling. “I would that you hear me out.”
“You would dare to ask me for, what? A favor?”
“I intend to see myself out of this prison and settle the score that landed me here, but the act of breaking free will require the assistance of one already tied to the mortal plane.” The cast-out god dipped his chin. “I would ask for your help, though not as a favor. I’m fully prepared to compensate you for your efforts.”
“‘Compensate’ as if I’m some two-bit floozy whose ‘services’ you can buy on a whim?” Hands curling into fists, Isibéal shook with unfettered rage. “Should you ask, I would vehemently decline...right before I cursed you to hell.”
The smile that had been convivial darkened, Irish-green eyes turning blacker than an ironmonger’s tongs. With precise movements, Lugh stepped toward her, the shadows hovering around him like vapor to a hot spring. “Would you like to know what being damned truly looks like, Isibéal? Are you strong enough to see what it is to be cursed to an eternity in the Shadow Realm? Would you like to know what it is to crave the heat of a single taper as one burns with a cold impossible to replicate in any other realm? Would you be able to stomach the truth of damnation, fair lady, and will it upon me again? Aye, again. For I am already there.” The subtle threat in his words provided the only warning she received before he dropped the little glamour he’d held as a shield to his vanity.
Hardly an outline of the man she remembered remained. Still tall, he was more cadaverous than brawny, more specter than solid form, and far more nightmare than dream. Semitransparent from head to toe, his skeletal form flickered beneath translucent skin that had taken on a hideous gray color, a color seen in those for whom death was imminent...or had already called. Most of his scalp was revealed, and what hair remained hung in thin, brittle clumps. But the vacancy of his eye sockets, the fathomless pits of misery that were exposed when his skeletal form flickered over the ghastly remains of his human countenance? She dared believe she could close her eyes ever again and see aught but that terror.
Lugh grabbed her wrist before she could move. “Tell me, witch, that you could, in good conscience, damn me to this existence for a crime I did not commit.”
“I—” A cry of sheer agony escaped her when he tightened his grip. Cold burned through her where their skin touched, the experience excruciating in its severity.
“I live with this every day, Isibéal. Every. Day!” he roared. Looming over her, those vacant eye sockets arrested her attention once again. “Every day,” he repeated, this time in little more than a whisper. “For a crime I again assert I did not commit.”
He released her, and she stumbled back, clutching her wrist to her breast. “You killed me.”
“I did not strike the blow that ended your life.”
Isibéal’s gaze snapped up and she searched his face, disturbed to find no sign of prevarication. “If not you, then who? For no one else stood at my back.”
“And that, my dear woman, is the point of contention, is it not? For how would you have known, how would you have seen, if anyone else approached you from behind?”
Chapter 4 (#ulink_46ad09df-def4-5bbf-812b-71eb9b094a57)
Ethan pressed the heels of his hands against his temples in an effort to silence the brutal noise in his head. It was like a band of drug-addled musicians had been released to tear through his gray matter with the goal being total annihilation. Whichever maniac was hammering out the drum fill was doing a hell of a job. The thrash-metal rhythm filled his head until the sound pulsed behind his eyes. He would give anything for silence. Anything.
Blinking rapidly as he fought to bring the room into focus, Ethan glanced at the group who hovered around him. “Fifty euro to the man who shuts down the noise,” he slurred.
“What noise?” a familiar, feminine voice asked.
“Kenny?”
Kennedy Jefferson, the woman who’d been his best friend for years, moved close enough that her thigh brushed Ethan’s bare arm as she settled the covers over him, pulling them up to his chin.
He rolled toward her, craving the comfort and compassion earned through years of friendship. Unfortunately, his stomach opposed. The movement sent it flipping over again and again, bouncing from one side of his belly to the other. Easing onto his back, Ethan closed his eyes. “The noise—it’s like amplified drums played by a nine-year-old boy hyped up on gummy bears and Gatorade. And the child has no musical talent. What he does have is a hell of a lot of time on his hands. And enthusiasm. Did I mention he’s nine? Nine. And he’s in my head.”
Kayden laughed. “Sorry, mate, but there’s neither music nor drummer. We just aren’t that posh a place to offer live music to our recovering patients. Budget cuts and all.” He winked. “Sure an’ ye understand.”
Niall clapped his hands before rubbing them together briskly. “Your head’s no place for children. I, however, am willing to chase the little criminal out for the money. Hand over the euro and we’ll talk. Sure and ye understand this is business and all.”
“Doing my best to understand,” Ethan said around his thick tongue. “Recovering?”
“How hard did you hit your head, mate?” Kayden moved into view and winced as he looked down at Ethan. “You’re in the infirmary. With any luck, your vanity will be preserved and you won’t scar.”
Infirmary. What was it about the infirmary that made him want to lie down and be tended to?
You’re injured, you idiot.
The quick, subconscious answer was true, but his conscious self rejected the idea that a singular truth could serve as such a comprehensive explanation. There was more to his desire to seek out the location of the old infirmary and discover the comfort that lived there—a bone-deep comfort that superseded anything offered via simple first aid.
There was an answer there, and he intended to find it.
Clearing his throat proved pointless. It was raw and swollen and refused to give any quarter. Regardless, he managed to scratch out a few words. “The infirmary upstairs. Is it still in use?”
“There isn’t an infirmary upstairs.” Dylan’s cold voice and sharp enunciation were unwelcoming at best. “How hard did you hit your head, warlock?”
“Not hard enough to convince myself I’m fond of you,” he responded with saccharine sweetness.
Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “You try my patience.” A slow grin spread over his lower face. “But you’re entertaining enough.”
Gareth, second in charge of the Arcanum, moved into Ethan’s field of view. “Anyone know how to knock this bowsie out just a wee bit longer so we might tend his injuries? You die now and you’ll ruin our survival statistics.”
Ethan huffed out a semblance of a laugh. “I wouldn’t trust you to keep Sea Monkeys alive, Gareth, so hands off my person.” Eyes squinted, he flipped the covers back and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The room swam.
I had to choose Sea Monkeys.
His stomach surged, and he swallowed convulsively at the rush of bile that pushed up the back of his throat. The effort wasn’t enough, though, and the fraction of control he’d held disappeared. Without his consent, his stomach rejected the little bit of lunch he’d managed to get down before the showdown with the ghost. Someone appeared at his side sans commentary. The figure, male by form and aura, offered a bucket and settled a cold rag on the back of his neck.
Moments later, when Gareth was confident there was nothing left to offer, he sat up. The washrag slipped, but he managed to snag it before it fell out of reach. He wiped his face and then set the rag and can aside with a soft “Sorry. Thanks. Both.” He gently shook his head. “You know what I mean.”
With the men hovering and shifting to keep an eye on him, Ethan wiggled his way back into bed. The whole third-floor-infirmary thing was still nagging at him. He knew there had been another infirmary, but he didn’t know how he knew, only that there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that he was right.
He needed irrefutable proof. What he would do with it, he didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure what difference it would make.
A sharp stabbing sensation deep in both ears made him shout, surge to a sitting position and grab his head.
“Ethan?” Kennedy appeared at his side and slipped an arm around his waist.
Her voice rang in his head, tinny and unnatural. Scooting forward, Ethan swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Every muscle protested and he swore he heard his joints creak. “If I don’t start moving, I’m going to freeze in place. I...” He glanced at Kennedy. “I need to get out of here.”
The Druid’s Elder and Dylan’s father, Aylish, stepped into the room and, seeing Ethan sitting there, crossed to him with long, strong steps. “Rowan sent for me.”
Ethan scowled at the room in general before his gaze rested on Rowan’s. “Thanks, mate.”
“Seriously, don’t mention it.” The large warrior didn’t smile. “Ever.”
Aylish raised a hand between the two men. “Something is happening here, and the puzzle is ours to piece together. Rowan, give me some space.” Aylish turned to Ethan. “Warlock, tell me of the infirmary you referred to.”
Ethan managed a small shrug. “Not much to tell. I just wondered if it was still used.”
Aylish laid his hands on Ethan, one over his heart and one around the back of his neck. Soft but persistent power pushed into him, through him, and rendered him mute as it filled him, searching, seeking.
“Not to worry.” Aylish’s eyes drifted closed. “This will only take a...” His brow furrowed and then, without warning, he whipped his hands away and stumbled back from Ethan. “Oh, gods.”
Ethan couldn’t help looking over his shoulder. Nothing there. Spinning with infinite care, he faced the Elder again. “Based on your reaction, I’m going to assume what you found is more significant than an emotional hangnail, bigger than the proverbial bread box and more lethal than Conan over there—” he glared at Rowan “—without his double espresso shots in the morning.” He tried to smile—might have—but his lips were so numb he couldn’t feel them. When Aylish said nothing, Ethan stood and rolled his shoulders, ignoring the pervasive drumbeat still hammering through his head. “If no one is inclined to tell me what the hell is going on, I’m going to my room, stripping to my unmentionables and catching some z’s. This cat’s nine lives are shot.”
Aylish grabbed Ethan’s arm just above the elbow and turned him around. “You won’t make light of this, warlock. It impacts each of us on some level.”
Ethan started to ask how the cacophony in his head could affect anyone other than him, but the riff grew louder. The drumbeat burrowed deeper, a parasitic sound he couldn’t shake. Each note was hammered out before burying itself deep in the center of who he was, into his very psyche.
Panting through the excruciating headache, Ethan bent forward, rested his forearms on his knees and dipped his chin to his chest. “How does it affect... How?”
Aylish stepped closer, gently shushing everyone with a wave of his hand. No magicks but rather absolute authority. “Ethan, you are not as removed from us as you, and we, have believed.”
His heart tripped over the hope he’d carried without comment—hope that he might one day find his place and identify that piece of him that was forever absent. That it could be here, in Ireland? In a country that sang through his blood? His heart lurched. Was it possible that there was more to him than his bland history? More than a middle-class American kid who went to college and did everything he’d been expected to do? More than...this? All of this? Because he wanted to be more. Craved it. Needed it in the worst possible way. He wanted an identity that thrilled and challenged him, a reality that pushed him to be better and do more. When his last breath came, he needed to take it knowing he’d made a marked difference in the world—a difference somehow more significant than the practice of medicine afforded him.
And your stalker? his subconscious whispered. Where does she play into this?

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