Highlander Enchanted (32 page)

He grunted in response. “’Twas a wedding gift.”

She heard his displeasure at the reminder of whose gold built their home. He had only agreed to accept the gift because it came from John and the coffers of Saxony.

“John will journey here in summer,” she murmured. “My uncle claims John is not well. My brother claims the title of Saxony but will not attend court or speak to any other noble outside of family. I fear he suffers.”

“He ‘as a brave woman at his side. Fatima will help him. In time, he will know peace, as I do now.”

She shivered again.

“Come,” Cade commanded and released her. He held out his hand. “I willna allow ye t’fall ill.”

She sighed, eyes lingering on the keep. Turning away, she slid her hand into his and gazed up at him, smiling. Cade grinned in return, his heavy features clean shaven and eyes as bright as the skies. Whenever his eyes fell upon her, warmth flooded her, and she forgot all the ill in the world and could only think of him. Mesmerized by his smile, awed by his kindness and strength, she could not fathom the idea of a life without him or how she became so blessed as to have him by her side.

“My beautiful wife,” he murmured, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek and squeezing her hand.

“My seillie husband,” she whispered.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Together, they walked back towards the makeshift village that had sprung up to support the clan until the new seat of the MacCossee-MacLachlainn land was ready.

“I have a cousin I want to introduce to Brian,” she said.

“Och not again,” Cade muttered. “D’ye no’ remember what happened last time ye tried this?”

She hid a smile. “I invited her to travel with my brother.”

Cade shook his head.

“If he can battle an army of Saracens, he can face one woman,” she pointed out.

“Nay, lass. When ye face a Saracen, ye ken yer at war. When ye face a woman, ye doona ken until she runs off with yer horse.”

“This coming from a seillie who creates tempests when he is unhappy?”

Cade snorted in response. He bent and lifted her off her feet. She relaxed in his strong arms, resting her head on his bicep to gaze at his strong, barbarian features.

“I think we need a storm,” he replied. “One to last a day or two. We’ll no’ leave our chamber.” His eyes sparkled with promise and desire.

Heat warmed her features. “Only two?”

“Verra well. Three days, perchance four, ‘til ye beg me fer sunshine.”

“I do not beg,” she returned. “Ever.”

“Then ‘twill storm until our home is ready or until our son is born.”

She laughed.

Pink gems sparkled in the air around them. The lights twirled around them before darting into the sky and blooming into clouds.

“’Tis the color of home, hearth and love,” he said, admiring the pink lanterns. “My magic has been this hue since the battle with Laird Duncan.”

“’Twill always be this hue, I believe,” she replied. “’Twill always reflect our love.”

“Yea, lass, ‘twill.”

Isabel sent a silent prayer of gratitude with the lanterns into the heavens and watched with a smile as grey-bellied clouds rolled across the sky.

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“Omega” -
For fans of “Divergent” and “Hunger Games” …

In a modern world torn apart by territorial Greek gods, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of a teen girl with incredible powers and her unlikely allies.

“Omega,” the first book in a young adult dystopia trilogy by award winning author Lizzy Ford, releases in October.

PREORDER OMEGA FROM AMAZON TODAY!

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Want to know more about “Omega”? Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt!

Chapter One: Alessandra

No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.

–
Homer

For once, Tyche, could you grant me a little luck?

I slowed before reaching my favorite meadow in the forest, my heart racing and chest heaving. A grin stretched my cheeks, and I stopped to listen for the boy I’d challenged to a race. I heard … voices. Male and at least two females.

“I guess not,” I muttered aloud.

The damn nymphs had him. My giddy excitement faded. I was the one who managed to lure a teen boy from the nearby campground into our forest and, as usual, the nymphs stole him. I couldn’t compete with the beautiful women. There were thirty of them my age, all unusually perfect, feminine and graceful. Even my guardian said they weren’t normal, and we’d coined the term
nymphs
to describe the other girls at the isolated orphanage where I lived under the thumb of strict priests. The other girls were all my age, too, each of them destined for positions befitting their beauty, according to the priests.

It was disgusting. I couldn’t stand them.

I was an athlete, uncomfortable in anything but tennis shoes and yoga pants, terrible in school and bearing a scar from childhood across one cheek. No matter how much makeup I plastered over it or how far forward I brushed my dark locks, I wasn’t able to hide it. I was always late to class, always the last to understand whatever torture the priests were teaching us, always trying to catch the first light of Aurora in the reflecting pool or scaling a hill to watch the last rays of Hersperides.

The nymphs laughed at me. I hated them for it and me for not being able to fit in no matter what I did. I couldn’t change the fact I was shorter, smaller and otherwise imperfect compared to them.

“Lose another one, Lyssa?”

“Yeah.” I heard my guardian’s approach and looked up into his scarred, ugly face. A mountain of a man with bright red hair, Herakles had never once understood why I was so disappointed to lose every guy I looked at to the nymphs.

“If a man can’t outrun you – ”

“– I can’t bring him home with me. House rules. I know.” It was a stupid rule. Surely there had to be one man somewhere who shared my deer-like agility.

My guardian chuckled.

“He was so handsome!” I whined with a sigh, recalling the gorgeous brown eyes and smile of the teenage boy I’d met today. When he had looked at me, my insides turned fluttery and warm. “He almost outran me, too.”

“Only because you slowed down.”

I rolled my eyes and spun away, headed towards the compound in the middle of a forest where we all lived. “So what? Everyone here has kissed a boy and I can’t even look at one without the stupid nymphs taking him away. They just bat their eyes and the boys fall all over them.” I made a show of shaking my hips and blinking rapidly in mockery.

“I’ve never kissed a boy.”

“You know what I mean!” Herakles was a jerk sometimes. His rules were designed to prevent me from ever having a boyfriend. My interests generally lay in martial arts and sports. If not for the nymphs conspiring to steal any boys I lured away from the campground and always taunting me about everything, I wouldn’t look twice at a boy. But I shared one sole trait with the nymphs: competitiveness. I wanted so badly to best them at something and earn enough respect not to be bullied every day for the rest of my life.

“You could try studying harder,” Herakles suggested.

“Right. Like that’s going to get me a boyfriend.”

“There is more to life than boys and whatever else it is your head is full of,” Herakles reminded me. “You don’t need a man anyway. You can take care of yourself. I’ve trained you to survive anything.”

“I know I don’t
need
one. I want one so the nymphs stop laughing at me. Just for a day, then I’d let him go like you free the rabbits I catch.”

“You noticed.”

I arched my eyebrow at him. “I figured it out after I caught the same one every day for a week when I was, like, sixteen. You know the nymphs don’t have to hunt rabbits, don’t you? They don’t have to run every day or build their own campfires and shelters on the weekends. They get to go to town, Herakles, and see movies!” I sighed, tortured by my miserable existence. “Can I be normal? Just for one weekend?”

“Normal people aren’t prepared for their world to change or to face the trials awaiting them.”

“The zombies apocalypse isn’t coming. The priests say the world has never known a time of greater peace and prosperity and the gods are happier than ever.”

“An apocalypse is not required to announce itself,” he stated.

I bit my tongue. I knew better than to argue with Herakles. He was of a singular mind and convinced the world was going to end any day. Nothing I’d ever said over the past twelve years had dented his obsession with self-reliance and survival. I learned to hunt game bigger than me, forage for berries, survive in extreme weather conditions and other skills the nymphs – and even my teachers – often ridiculed. Sometimes he blindfolded me or hobbled one leg or arm so I had to survive for a weekend alone in the forest with simulated physical impediments. He first dropped me off in part of the forest alone with no compass when I was nine. I bawled for a day until he came to get me. Instead of taking me back, we stayed in the forest, and he taught me to navigate by the stars.

No one understood why he made me do these things, least of all me. I obeyed him because, above all else, I loved my Herakles, as weird as he was. While we were accepted here, we didn’t fit in at the school filled with nymphs and priests. We had to stick together, two dented peas in a misshapen pod.

“The man you want will be able to outrun, outhunt and outsmart you. When you meet him, you can marry him. Until then, no man will do,” Herakles said.

“I don’t want to marry anyone,” I said. “I just want to kiss him.”

“Then you can kiss the man who catches you.”

His conditions for me seeing someone were impossibilities. Herakles alone was the only man who could keep up with me. It was his way of saying I’d never have a boyfriend as long as I lived under his roof.

I glanced up at the green canopy overhead. The blue sky resembled puzzle pieces from this angle, and not a cloud was in sight on this warm spring day. What torture did he have in store for me on such a beautiful Friday? I had to climb a rope or navigate whatever obstacle course he built before I was allowed to go to bed at night. Weekends were worse. I was exiled to the forest for more survival training until Sunday night.

He was conditioning and preparing me for something. I had no idea what, and I suspected he was just a little off. A former Olympian, Herakles was the toughest, most honorable person I had ever known. He swept the annual Olympics for three years in a row before he stumbled upon me, rescued me from the house fire that killed my parents and brought us here. He didn’t respect anything but physical prowess. He could barely read, and he had an almost allergic reaction to discussing anything regarding emotions.

But he was my hero in every sense of the word.

To this day, I was unable to recall what exactly happened the night I turned six except it involved Herakles catching me when I fell from the sky. Why or how I was flying, I didn’t know. I still occasionally dreamt of falling – but no fire. My life changed that night. Herakles was unwilling to talk about it even after I turned eighteen and was considered an adult by everyone but him.

Herakles tugged the sleeve I’d tucked under my bra strap back down over the strange birthmark on my bicep that looked eerily like a double omega. The omega was the final letter in the Greek alphabet, or, according to Herakles, a sign of Armageddon. “Keep this hidden,” he reminded me.

“I know.” I pulled both sleeves down so I didn’t look stupid with only one up.

Picking my way through the forest back towards the compound where we lived, I considered the topic I’d been meaning to broach to him but hadn’t quite figured out the best way yet.

“We haven’t talked about graduation,” I started. “It’s in three weeks.”

“The world might end tomorrow. You should not think too far beyond today.”

“Omigods, Herakles! I’m eighteen, and I’m graduating in three weeks! I want to go home!” Too late I realized I’d told him what I had hoped to discuss in a calmer manner. I didn’t look back at him but focused on the path at my feet.

“You know there is nothing for you there.”

“So you’ve told me every time I asked. But I have to go somewhere,” I pointed out. “College. Waitress at a fast food joint. Holy Zeus, I’d become an initiate at a temple.”