Gift of the Realm (12 page)

She
took a step back.

“That’s
not the way of it, lass,” Owein intervened, speaking to Keely for the first
time. Sympathy and guilt competed in the green eyes that met hers. “In her
bitterness, Fiona attributes the shabby behavior of one man to all of us.”

Electricity
crackled in the air as Fiona spun on Owein. “Not one. All! Fairie and human
alike, men deceive, taking what they want until there is nothing left for a
woman
but
bitterness.”

“What
the hell is she saying, Keely?” Colin demanded. His growing frustration was
evident in his raised voice.

Keely
ignored both Colin and Owein to ask Fiona, “What did they know? How is the
curse broken?”

“Your
lover has only to accept his destiny, and give his heart to his one true mate.
Two Halflings joined in love can stand against any power, human or fairie. Once
heart and soul join, the curse would be broken. You need only stand together as
one unit for your will to be done.”

Pity,
tinged with smugness, filled her blue eyes. “Your mate knows this, and yet he
searches for some other way to break the curse. He means to deny you
your
destiny, Halfling. He’ll take his pleasure with you, to be sure, and leave you
broken when he’s had his fill. The heart you’ve given so freely will be
trampled beneath the heel of his fleeing boots!”

Keely
clamped down on the spiral of hurt and disappointment threatening to buckle her
knees. Fiona’s prediction was nothing she hadn’t expected all along. But
hearing her fears spoken so plainly, and of Colin’s omission of the facts for
his own agenda, it felt it was as if the process had already begun. She could
almost feel that first crushing pressure of Colin’s heel on her compressing
heart.

“Pay
her cruel words no mind, lass,” Owein persisted, gently. “She cares nothing of
your destiny, or that of Saraid. If she did, she wouldn’t deny an innocent
woman her fate by holding her captive.”

“Not
captive,” Fiona hissed, “guest.”

“Guest?”
Owein bellowed. “When you’ve held her locked in your raft for three hundred
years?”

Fiona
glanced at the rosebush at her feet, and her eyes were blue ice when they
lifted to meet Keely’s gaze once more. “Though they would have you believe
differently, ’tis an act of kindness I’ve done you this day, as I’ve done for
Saraid. My actions have saved you both from the deceit of a man.”

As
Keely watched, the fairie princess scored both Owein and Colin with a slicing
glance, then closed her eyes and flung her arms out at her sides. “
Baile
,”
she said softly, and was gone.

Frustration
shimmered around Owein in visible, ice blue waves as he stared at the rosebush.
Keely watched, fascinated, as his hand reached out—and passed through the bloom
as if it were an apparition.

Keely’s
eyes stung at the overt despondency of the fairie king’s stance as his
shoulders slumped and his head fell forward to hang between his shoulders. As a
child, she’d witnessed his heart-wrenching search for his soul in her dreams.
Now, she knew Saraid
was
his soul, stolen from him by a fairie
princess’s twisted bitterness.

Her
gaze flicked to Colin who was also watching Owein with interest. Like her,
Colin had been caught up in a battle that had begun long before he’d been born.
But unlike her, he chose to reject his role in their epic drama. That choice
was his to make, but he wouldn’t be the only one affected by his denial of
their mutual destiny. His eventual rejection would break her, as Fiona had
said.

And
Saraid and Owein...

Colin
may deny her his heart, and she would have to find a way to live with the loss,
but she couldn’t tolerate knowing Saraid and Owein continued to suffer. She’d
have to find some other way to break the curse.

“You’ll
be thinking now I planned for the girl to learn the solution of the curse,”
Owein said to Colin, and drew her attention. “I didn’t. Not this way.” He
turned to Keely and reached out a hand.

Unearthly
heat raced through Keely’s cheek as he brushed it with a long finger. “’Tis
sorry I am, lass.
Baile
,” he said quietly, and repeating the same
process as Fiona, he disappeared.

Keely
wished she could disappear as well, especially when Colin grabbed her arm to spin
her toward him.

“Damn
it, Keely,” he snarled and gave her a jolting shake. “What just happened? Tell
me what Fiona had to say.”

Her
own anger grew as she beheld the fury in his eyes. If anyone had the right to
be furious, it was she.

Okay,
fine, so he had no interest in anything more than a temporary fling. She’d
known that going in. But she’d spent her entire life feeling like a freak. He
could have saved her a whole lot of self-recrimination by simply explaining
what he’d known all along.

She
tore her gaze from his to stare at the empty spot where Owein and Fiona had
stood.

What
the hell,
she thought,
it couldn’t hurt to try.

She
jerked her arms free of Colin’s gripping fingers and stepped back. Flinging out
her arms, she closed her eyes and shouted, “
Baile
!”

A
moment later, her legs buckled beneath her, and she slid to the floor in a
numbed heap.

Three
feet away, a quivering Donovan stood wide-eyed in the center of her kitchen. Her
one hundred and fifty pound, ferocious looking dog promptly peed on the aged
linoleum.

Chapter
Fourteen

“Oh.
My. God. It worked!”

Donovan
scrambled to squeeze himself beneath a kitchen chair like a puppy attempting to
avoid a rolled-up newspaper. The result of his attempt was disastrous. The
table scraped across the floor, knocking over the vase of wildflowers it held,
and the crack of the chair toppling to the floor sent Keely into a slightly
hysterical round of laughter.

“Come
here, baby,” she giggled. Combat crawling, he inched his way toward her until
she could wrap an arm around his neck. She gave him a jubilant squeeze. “Did I
scare you? I scared the crap out of myself.” Soulful brown eyes blinked up at
her and she sobered. “I’m a Halfling, Donovan,” she whispered, unsure how she
felt about acknowledging her heritage.

On
the one hand, she could forget all about her lifelong desire to be like
everyone else. She was pretty sure being a Halfling didn’t fall into the
category of normal. And she knew, even if she found a way to break the curse
and managed to put an end to the dreams at last, she would still be an oddball
freak, her fairie blood setting her apart from the normal world the way the
dreams always had.

On
the other hand, she’d just managed to zap herself more than a mile by doing
nothing more than speaking a word. How cool was that?

“
Baile
,”
she whispered considering the word. Shoving Donovan aside, she scrambled to her
feet and raced to the den and Gran’s copy of the Gaelic dictionary.
Baile
,
it appeared, translated into home, and she realized what a chance she’d taken,
following the fairies’ example without having the slightest clue of what she
was doing. She was lucky she hadn’t ended up somewhere uninhabitable to human
life—like the center of the earth.

Still,
it appeared, in addition to the dreams, she had at least one more of those
gifts Kathleen and Colin had mentioned. And as gifts went...wow! Who needed to
fly when they could zap themselves wherever they wanted to go? Okay, flying
would be awesome too, and who knew? Maybe she could do that as well!

She
rifled through the dictionary, searching for the words for all the rooms of the
house. Bedroom first. She repeated the action she’d taken in the ring, and
zap
,
she found herself standing beside her bed. She zapped herself back to the
kitchen, then back to the bedroom again. Back and forth, up and down, she
zapped throughout the house without taking a single step. Other than the
noodle-like quality of her legs upon each arrival, she was having a blast.

Donovan,
on the other hand, was apoplectic.

She
let him outside and shut the back door, then zapped herself to the garden,
laughing when he gave a doggie yelp as she appeared by his side. The coarse
hairs on his back stood on end, and taking pity, she dropped to her knees to
hug him tight.

“Oh,
Donovan,” she laughed, “I’m sorry. But can you believe this?” Donovan whined.
Whether he believed it or not, his lowered brows and pitiful whine said he
didn’t like having her pop in and out of his sight.

“I
wonder if there’s a limit to how far away I can go?” she mused aloud. She’d
have to test that. Being able to zap herself anywhere she wanted to go would be
a handy tool. Of course, she’d have to be careful not to pop in anywhere
someone might see her. That type of thing would be a little hard to explain.
She laughed out loud.

“Keely!”

Startled
from her musings, her head spun around to find Colin several feet away.
Immediately, she closed her eyes, and stuck out her arms. She’d lock herself
inside the cottage. Her brow puckered as she tried to think of the word for kitchen.
Unfortunately, his hands were on her before she managed the exercise.

“Oh,
no you don’t.”

“
Cistin
,”
she muttered as the translation popped into her mind. When she opened her eyes,
her kitchen was nowhere in sight. Instead, Colin crouched in front of her, his
angry face inches from hers.

“Cut
it out,” he demanded. “You’re not going anywhere until we’ve talked.”

“Then
let go of me,” she demanded right back. Surprising her, he did. She closed her
eyes and repeated the process, with the same results. Opening them again, she
shot him a withering glare. “Why didn’t it work?”

“You’re
not the only one with gifts, Keely.”

He
straightened and she attempted to rise to her feet, but found she couldn’t
move. Not an inch. Frozen in place, her knees remained on the ground and her
arms hung out like a scarecrow’s, refusing to answer her brain’s demands.

“Hey!”

Hip
cocked, he crossed his arms over his chest and stood looking down at her.

“What
did you do to me?”

His
smile was smug.

“Let
me loose, you jerk.”

“Not
until I have your word that you won’t be disappearing again.”

She
wanted to tell him to go to hell. She growled her assent instead. Her arms
immediately dropped to her sides like stones.

“Don’t
do that again,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I don’t like it.”

“And
I didn’t like being left behind, not knowing where you’d disappeared to.”

“Too
bad.”

His
sigh was deep and long. “Tell me what was said, Keely.”

“Why
don’t you ask your good friend, Owein?” she sneered.

“Because
I’m asking you!” he roared.

“You’ve
known about the curse all along,
and
how to break it,” she shouted.
Bristling with resentment, she took a step toward him and poked him in the
chest with a stiffened finger. He reached for her hand and she jerked it away.
“All this time, you’ve been talking to Owein, you’ve known about Saraid. For
ten years, I lived believing I was some kind of nut job, and you said nothing.
You sat with me and watched me go through your mother’s papers like some kind
of second rate detective, and all along you knew the solution.”

“I
was told of one possible solution, Keely—an unacceptable solution. And before
you fry me with those sorceress eyes, that was not meant as an insult. You know
damn well I’m attracted to you. If ever I were going to accept a woman as my
destiny, you’d be the one. But I’ve seen the wreckage blindly accepting one’s
destiny can leave behind. My mother never recovered from Michael Sterling’s
fateful choices, and I’ve battled the bitterness of having been denied by my
own blood my entire life.”

His
reluctant admission succeeded where his arrogant bullying failed. Her anger and
disappointment were no match for the wounded pride shining in his eyes. Keely
may have suffered embarrassment and self-doubt because of the dreams, her
oddball life shaped by Fiona’s bitter machinations, but Colin’s family had been
ripped apart, as had Owein’s.

She
reached out a hand to rest it against his chest in sympathy. “Your father was
as much a victim in all of this as the rest of us, Colin.” He stiffened, and
she let her hand drop away.

“My
father
made his choice,” he said cynically.

“With
a little added incentive from a pissed-off fairie princess. Fiona admitted to
using enchantment on him. He didn’t abandon you and your mother, Colin. He was
sent away.”

“The
results are the same,” he said stiffly.

Not
quite, but she didn’t argue his point. He’d have to come to grips with the
reality of Michael Sterling’s actions on his own. She had her own future to
consider. A future that wouldn’t include the man she loved.

“This
all goes back to Fitzgerald Quinn. It seems our colorful ancestor used Fiona to
gain his fortune by making a deal with her fairie father. He broke her heart in
the process. She should have just turned him into a jackass and been done with
it. Instead, she embarked on a mission to save Fitzgerald’s daughter, and now
me, from the deceit of men.”

Noting
the stubborn tilt of his chin, she grumbled, “At the moment, I’m not sure I
disagree with her twisted logic.”

Though
she knew it wasn’t smart, she didn’t step away when his palm cupped her cheek.
Regret softened his eyes and was in his voice as well when he spoke.

“I
didn’t set out to deceive you, Keely. I’m simply not capable of what Owein’s
solution requires. We’ll break the curse, and free you from the dreams, but
there has to be some other way. We need only find it.”