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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.
