Lord of Shadows (41 page)

Sabrina caught up to the aged priestess with ease. The difficulty came in forming the question plaguing her.

The aged priestess finally broke the oppressive silence. “Did you come here to pester me, or is there something you want, girl?”

“Ard-siúr told me what happened. Why did you do it?” Sabrina asked, knowing Sister Brigh understood. “You were the one who wanted Daigh to leave.”

The High
Danu
priestess paused in her ramble, laying a bony hand upon the rough gray bark of an enormous oak as if drawing strength from the ancient, sacred tree. “I told you already. I do what I must to protect the order from any
threat.” Contempt burned in the deep-set hollows of her face. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Daigh tossed back a pint. Ordered another from the doxy threading the tables in search of customers. She shot him a hopeful look, which he ignored. Sent a smile and a wink toward the man shaking the rain from his greatcoat as he entered the dimly lit, smoke-filled tavern. His clothes marked him as either lost or foolhardy. His build and expression guaranteed his safety regardless.

Another rejection and a holler from the barman, and the woman flounced back to the kitchens, leaving the newcomer to scan the crowd as if searching for someone. He stepped out of the shadows, his face revealed in the half-light of the dingy tap.

What the hell was he doing here? Daigh’s hand tightened around his pint-pot. His stomach tightened against the ache low in his gut. But he made no move as the man approached. Slid into the seat across with a look upon his face as if he wished he were anywhere but this squalid Dublin tavern.

“The shoe’s on the opposite foot, MacLir,” he growled. “Now I’m hunting you.”

Daigh scowled. Where was the maidservant with his beer? “What do you want, Kilronan?”

His Lordship lit a cheroot from the candle between them. Inhaled, before stubbing the whole onto the tabletop. His golden brown eyes never leaving Daigh’s face. “One question only—do you love her?”

Daigh’s stomach dropped from under him even as blood roared in his ears. “What the hell—”

“Answer me, MacLir. Do you love Sabrina?”

Daigh’s gaze dropped to the empty tankard. How many had he downed hoping to find solace at the bottom? How many nights had he spent beating back the desire that would send him riding hell for leather straight to Belfoyle? Too many. He pushed the beer away. What point was there in hiding the truth? “I do.”

Kilronan sat back, though whether he took joy or sorrow from Daigh’s answer was unapparent in the tension rising off him.

“If a confession was all you wanted, you have it. Now leave.”

“It’s not what I want that matters,” Kilronan replied. “It’s what Sabrina wants. And needs. A father for her child.”

Daigh started in his seat, his heart crashing against his ribs.

“She’s eight months gone already,” Kilronan added, almost as an accusation.

“That can’t—” Daigh sucked a breath through his clenched teeth. Counted back.

And understood.

But Sabrina had to have known when he’d sent her away, and still she said nothing of it. Did she really want him, or did the Earl of Kilronan merely want a husband for his sister and an avoidance of scandal when the babe was born?

“Did Sabrina send you?”

A flicker of something passed within the well of Kilronan’s gaze, giving Daigh his answer. “She doesn’t know. I didn’t want to lift her hopes in case I failed.” His fingers tapped impatiently upon the table. “I’ve wasted weeks searching for you. But if we leave tonight and ride fast, we can be at Belfoyle within a few days.”

A child changed everything. And nothing. Daigh
remained what he had been when he’d left the
bandraoi
. A man without anything of value to bring to a marriage but his love. Cheap goods, to be sure. “Surely there are men of status who would welcome an alliance with your family,” he said, rubbing at a stain upon the table. “Despite the cuckoo in their nest.”

Aidan took a moment to answer. Or perhaps it was a moment to control his temper, for when he spoke, his voice rasped hard and bitter. “So you won’t come? Not even for your own child?” He pushed himself up with a snort of disgust. “I should have known this was a fool’s errand.”

Daigh matched anger for anger. “If you tell me you’d welcome my presence as Sabrina’s husband, you’d be lying, and we both know it.” His heart beat like a galloping horse, his fingers so tight about his tankard it must crumple beneath his grip. “Knowing what I was? What I’ve done in the name of evil? You’d be right to deny me her hand. Mad to do aught else.”

Aidan shook his head, his expression grave. “No, for those crimes, you’re right, I could never lay my hatred aside. But for those things you did that saved my family. For those I could easily call you brother.”

The sea shone dull and heavy as lead beneath a sky littered with low, gray clouds. They reminded Sabrina of plunging horses as they rolled landward, their edges streaked with flashes of lightning like sparks from their hooves.

Her hike down to the beach had been met with doubt by both Cat and Jane. But then the pair of them had been watching her with varying shades of concern for weeks now. She was almost sorry Ard-siúr had allowed Jane to leave Glenlorgan to attend Sabrina’s lying-in. Double the support, but double the worry.

At least she was spared Aidan’s hovering, solicitous presence.

His response to her condition had surprised her. She’d feared discovery, afraid of both his anger and his disappointment. But upon her confession, he’d neither raged over her ruin nor threatened to abandon her to her fate, and she’d left the interview dazed and contrite. She’d been wrong about so much. But in one thing, she had sorely misjudged. Aidan’s love for her was real. Strong. And unbreakable. He had proved it to her then, and in the months following.

It was only three weeks ago that he’d departed Belfoyle without explanation, though he sent regular letters to Cat, who folded and tucked them away whenever Sabrina entered the room. No doubt it had to do with Brendan and Máelodor and the
Amhas-draoi
. Matters she’d sought to dismiss from her mind even if she couldn’t ignore her changing body. That was a constant reminder of what else she’d been wrong about. Whom else she’d misjudged.

Rain flashed upon the waves, speckled the beach, pattered against her hood. It would be a long climb up the cliff path back to Belfoyle. And she wasn’t yet ready to return to the house. Even after almost three long months here, surprises still leapt from corners, memories springing fresh with every room she entered. She’d yet to exorcize all her ghosts, nonetheless what she’d once told Daigh held true. Though much had changed in seven years, the sea and the sky and the land remained constant. And that was indeed a comfort.

What began as a light drizzle intensified as if a curtain had been drawn across the sky. Rain sheeted in torrents, scooping channels through the sand and stone on its way
back to the ocean. Dimming the long afternoon light to dusk.

Ducking beneath an outcropping of rock, she waited for an easing of the deluge. At least it was a warm April shower and not the icy lash of winter.

The child moved within her womb, its tiny fists and feet rippling across her belly. Running a hand over the bulge of her ungainly abdomen, she whispered. “Shhh, my sweet.” Sent her love out upon a soft ribbon of thought. “Mother is here. Mother loves you. It won’t be long, my darling. Soon, I shall hold you in my arms.”

But what came back to her burst against her mind like the pounding surf.

Joy. Fear. Remorse. Loneliness. Excitement. Uncertainty. Heartbreak.

They staggered her back against the sharp face of the veined granite, breath trapped in her throat, knees weak.

A fog-wrapped figure leapt the last few feet from the path to the beach, boots crunching against the rocks, greatcoat sweeping out behind him, the rugged angles of his face sharper, the hollows deeper. He approached her out of the storm like a spirit from the grave.

Or a man from her past. Both her pasts.

She braced herself against the rock face, using it both to hold her steady and to assure her she didn’t dream. But it was as solid and real as he was.

Hair plastered to his head, coat sodden through, he stopped a few feet away. His gaze traveling over her, the black of his eyes as unreadable as ever.

“What are you doing here?” She crossed her hands over her stomach as if she might protect it from that soul-stripping stare.

“I once promised you we’d welcome our child together. I’m back to honor that promise, albeit six hundred years late.”

“Aidan brought you, didn’t he?” she asked through a mouth gone dry.

“Aye. He found me to tell me of the child.”

She struggled to wrap herself in the familiar bitterness and anger of the last months. “So now that you know, you can leave again.”

His expression remained inscrutable, though shadows flickered and died in his eyes and his hands fisted closed at his sides. “If that’s what you wish, Sabrina, I’ll go.”

What did she want? Daigh could be hers, but it would be a marriage based on duty, not on love. If he loved her, he would have stayed with her. Wouldn’t he? But there was the child to consider. Could Sabrina send Daigh away if it meant consigning the baby to a life of bastardy? Oh, why did life have to be so complicated?

She lifted her gaze skyward as if looking for guidance upon the clouds. But she’d learned the hard way the gods spent little time worrying over the fates of mortals, even those who shared their blood.

“I’ve nothing to offer you, Sabrina,” he said. “No wealth. No lineage. Nothing but the strength in my hands and the depth of my love. But with these we—”

“What did you say?” A queer, fluttering excitement beat against her ribs.

“I am penniless and without family.”

“No, no after that. What was that last bit?”

He ducked his head, his lips curving in a sheepish smile. “I’ve nothing but the strength of my hands and the depth of my love, which is without end. But these I give to you
freely. I would have you for my wife, Sabrina.” When she opened her mouth, he stopped her. His voice now confident, almost defiant. “Not for the sake of the child, though that alone is a gift without price, but for you. I love you. In that life. In this. And in any that may lie in our future. Will you accept me?”

She nodded, her body at once both heavy with child and light enough she might shoot to the moon. “I will.”

“What of your vow to remain unwed and true to your gifts?”

She tipped her chin up to meet his gaze, cheeks flushed, body alive with excitement. “Would you deny me my
Other
birthright? Would you force me to choose between the parts of myself?”

He pulled her close. “If I marry you, Sabrina, I marry all of you.” His hands curved around to cradle her against him as he bent to kiss her, his lips cool and soft, his body ferociously warm.

“Then yes and a thousand times yes.” She returned his embrace, the strength in his stance an anchor against the ecstasy bearing her away. Tears mingled with the rain sliding down her cheeks.

“I’m back,
cariad,
” Daigh whispered. “For you.”

Turn the page for a sneak peek at

the final book in Alix Rickloff’s
thrilling Heirs of Kilronan series

Cornwall
April 1816

King Arthur’s tomb lay hidden deep within an ancient wood. For centuries uncounted, the sheltering trees grew tall, spread wide, and fell to rot until barely a stone remained to mark its presence.

With a hand clamped upon the shoulder of his attendant, the other upon his stick, Máelodor limped the final yards through the tangled undergrowth to stand before the toppled burial site. The mere effort of walking from the carriage used much of his strength. His shirt clung damp and uncomfortable over his hunched back. The stump of his leg ground against his prosthetic, spots of blood soaking through his breeches. Every rattling breath burned his tired lungs.

“This is it,” he wheezed, eyes fixed upon the mossy slabs. “I feel it.”

He didn’t even bother to confirm his certainty. No need. Once decoded, the Rywlkoth Tapestry had been clear
enough. Its clues leading him unerringly to this forgotten Cornish grove.

Excitement licked along his damaged nerves and palsied limbs, casualties of his unyielding ambition. The Nine’s goals had been audacious, but Máelodor had known long before Scathach’s brotherhood of
Amhas-draoi
descended like a wrath of battle crows that, to succeed, authority must be vested in a single man—a master-mage with the commitment to sacrifice all. To allow no sentimentality to sway him. To use any means necessary to bring about a new age of
Other
dominance.

He was that man.

His continued existence obscured within a web of
Unseelie
concealment, he’d called upon the dark magics to re-create life. Resurrecting an ancient Welsh warrior as one of the
Domnuathi
. A soldier of Domnu in thrall to its master and imbued with all the sinister powers that inspired its rebirth.