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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.”
