Released (9 page)

Dismissing the subject as inconsequential, the Druid addressed Rory.  “Yer man was foolish enough to come to collect me with one horse.  I left him in my residence with an assurance of
my
safe return and enough food for the appropriate time of my absence.”  His gaze touched Rory’s, glittering with untold secrets and unrepentant derision. “There’s no way out, unless one is an excellent swimmer, which he’s not.”

Rory’s temper warred with his desperation.  Yet, he forced as much diplomacy into his voice as he could muster.  “Was that necessary?” 

The Druid’s face remained impassive.  “That remains to be seen, doesn’ it?”

“Ye have nothing to fear from me if you give me yer word he willna be harmed,” Rory vowed. 

“I give ye my word as a Druid.”

“I’d rather take yer word as a man,” Rory countered.  “I know nothing of Druid’s, or their words.”

“Obviously, or ye wouldna have called upon me to rid ye of a Banshee,” Daroch sneered. 

“Lorne told ye of my curse?” Rory asked. 

The Druid shook his head, upsetting the musical shells again.  “Nay, but she lurks right behind ye.”

Chapter Seven

Kylah MacKay froze beneath the sudden regard of the entire great room.  Why had she come to this place? 

She’d felt the hollow echoes of intense pain and barely-leashed fury call to her as she emerged from the swirling grey of the cold Fae nether.  It reminded her of what she was supposed to be feeling.  What she couldn’t make herself feel.  Drifting in a span of endless numb ambivalence, the strains of this new and potent force of emotion drew her toward it with undeniable power.  So she’d followed it.

And it radiated from somewhere in this room.

She scanned those closest to her.  Lowland strangers.  They were frightened, all but one. 

Rory MacKay stood in front of them at the head of the table.  His handsome bronzed features swiftly flicking through a display of shock, hope, disappointment— then pity and shame. 

He knew what his brother had done to her.  And he felt—sorrow.   

He fed and cared for her mother, as much as he knew she’d allow from the likes of his family.  The question remained, why?

Unsure of how to process this, Kylah became abruptly grateful that Rory had been absent that night.  He stood taller and wider than all her assailants.  His powerful arms would have caused her the most pain.  His deep, heavy chest would have robbed her of the most air.  His gentle, warm brown eyes would have confused her and given her the most hope for mercy.  Indeed, she would have plead with him most fervently, cried and begged and gifted him with the loss of her dignity as well as her innocence. 

Aye, better that he hadn’t been there.  Because hope was dangerous, and Angus had taken that from her first.  Before he’d taken everything else. 

The council table, full of familiar faces from her life, sat in stunned stillness.  No one blinked.  No one breathed.  They just stared.

And Kylah wanted to scream at them all, if only to draw a reaction.

But she didn’t.  She hadn’t screamed since the smoke billowing from her melting flesh had choked off her voice.  It went against everything she’d become in the afterlife, certainly.  And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.  She didn’t have the energy to produce one. 

Then she saw
him.

Sodden, torn layers of linen robes held together by a belt of vines draped over enormous, unimaginable power, whether natural or unnatural had yet to be shown.  The relentless downpour streaked grime from his face, revealing a beauty touched by the Gods and then forsaken by them. The dark tattoo crawled up the muscles of his neck and knotted across the left side of his face drawing the eye away from his hard, full mouth to his severe eyes. 

His gaze went past observant to intrusive.

Penetrating. 

And all that keen intellect hidden by sinister markings of earth and ink concentrated on
her
. 

Kylah swore the source of the beckoning misery came from him, but she had to be mistaken.  Though his hair and tense stance bespoke an untamed element, his fearless stare revealed an indifferent petrifaction that rivaled her own.

“That’s not…”  Rory let out a loud hiss through his throat.  “That’s only one of them.”

“Never heard of a silent Banshee before,” Carraig, the fisherman breathed. 

Hugh elbowed him, though he still hadn’t blinked. 

Kylah ignored them all.  Her entire being focused on the man Rory had called to rid his clan of them. 

Could the druid do it?  Could he free them from their curse?

“Ye’ve wasted yer time.”  The druid’s voice was like the man; harsh, dark, and arresting.  “I willna help ye, MacKay.”

“If it’s a matter of payment—” Rory began.

“Nay,” the druid interrupted, his notice swinging to the Laird.  “Banshees are Cliodnah’s creatures, and I doona cross purposes with the Fae.”  After tossing her a look that should have meant something, the man gave his back to the hall and melted into the storm. 

Kylah felt released from a dangerous captivity, and she relaxed shoulders she hadn’t been aware she’d tensed before her mind snagged on something the terrifying Druid had said. 

Or rather, hadn’t said.  He’d told the Laird he
would
not help him. 

He didn’t say he could not.

Chapter Eight

“It was you.”  Katriona lurked in her usual dark corner closest to the bed, though it seemed less safe than in the past.  She avoided glancing at the soft-looking furs and imagining Rory’s tremendous body stretched beneath them.  Instead she noted the worry lines etched on his forehead had deepened to match the pinched grooves sprouting from his eyes.  They’d lost their amber fire, the irises dulled to a burnished bronze as though aged for centuries in the space of a few nights. 

A wry smile played with one corner of his mouth as he shut the door, but he didn’t look at her.  “Tell me what I’ve done now.”  He undid the clasp of his Laird’s badge and let his plaid drop from where it draped from his shoulder and fell across a sculpted chest.  “Though I have to warn ye, I’m short on apologies or offers of reparations.”  His voice lacked the bitterness his words implied, carrying instead a deep soul-weary note that tugged at her heart. 

"Why didn’t you tell me it was you who’d been leaving food and supplies for my mother all this time?”  Katriona knew she was bungling this.  She’d meant to make peace, but for some reason, everything she said still escaped her lips as an accusation.  “She wouldn’t have survived without your help.”

He found his bitterness in a dry chuckle as he bent to remove his boots.  “I thought ye knew.  Bridget has been paid to leave the supplies on her way home for months.  Did ye think it was out of the kindness of
her
heart?” 

Katriona caught the skeptical glance he tossed in her direction.  “My sisters and I are pulled into a different plane during the witching hour,” she explained.  “That happens to coincide with Bridget’s nightly journey home.  Mother doesn’t venture out of the ruins at night.  We never knew.”

He chuffed again.  “Explains why she’s not mentioned seeing ye until now.”  He discarded his sword from around his hips.  Clad in only his kilt, Rory crossed to the fire, as though knowing its proximity protected him from her nearness. 

Katriona drifted forward, drawn as always by his compelling presence and the hope of his touch.  She watched him as he stared into the flames, his gentle eyes hardened by acrimony.  His posture wary and features guarded. 

She hated to see him like this.  These were the moments that created wicked, compassionless men.  Someone at the end of their rope, exhausting all the resources of kindness and equitable integrity and still losing ground, grasping for a foothold, for another elusive option.  Often the answers that presented themselves were chained to the kind of sins that stained one’s soul.  Katriona would have given anything to know what he contemplated in the flames.

“Why?”  It was a dangerous question, but she had to ask.

“Ye know why,” he told the fire. 

She feared the knowledge.  Exalted in it.  Doubted it.  But he was right.  It was the reason she’d sought him out in his chamber, though something kept her from truly accepting it. 

“I need to hear you say it.”  She hovered ever closer, heedless of the flames. 

He turned on her then, eyes flashing back to life.  “You want me to say it was because I was a good and benevolent Laird who pitied one of the suffering in my clan, but that had nothing to do with it.”  He seized her shoulders, giving her a shake that would have rattled her bones had she still been alive.  “I
loved
you.  Gods help me but I did.  For
years.
  I rose every morning just to watch ye bring yer basket of deliveries to the village.  I rode to the loch every evening hoping to glimpse ye emptying the wash basins.  I adored yer laugh.  Yer smile.  The bossy, temperamental way ye loved yer sisters.”  He thrust her away from him, gesturing angrily with his hands.  “I was never truly allowed to mourn yer loss, but I did.  I mourned ye.  And I thought of the only thing ye might have me do if ye’d been my woman, to care for and protect yer kin.  I had Bridget deliver the goods because I knew yer mother had no love for my family, even before I knew about… what Angus had done.”

Katriona trembled.  Stunned by his unrepentant revelation.  So many questions flowed through her, they crowded on her tongue and paralyzed it until one escaped.  “You— mourned me?” 

You loved me?

Did he love her still?  It seemed impossible, after everything she’d done to him.  Tried to do.  After all the pain and death that stood between them. 

“
Yes.
”  He turned from her then, an astonishing glint of moisture clinging to his lashes.  “Ye wanted me punished, Katriona, and ye’ll have yer wish.  I’ll marry another in the morn, and promise my love to her, but the poor lass has no chance of ever receiving it.  I’ll lose ye again.  I’ll mourn ye again.  And I fear that once was already too much to bear.”

“Rory,” she begged.  Tears burned her throat and blurred her vision.  Katriona put up a hand against his turned back to stanch the flow of his words and her tumultuous feelings, but he couldn’t see it.  She doubted it would have made any difference. 

“I’m no better than my own kin,” he hissed.  “For it doesna matter how many herds are cursed, or people die, I’ll not stop yearning for ye.  I’ll be surrounded by a ruined clan and a tarnished name and still my selfish heart will beat for ye.  And because of the cruelty of my brother, the Fae, the fucking
Gods
, I’ll be forever denied.”

“
Nay.
”  The word escaped on a gasp before the torrent released by the thawing of her frigid heart clogged her throat.

Rory went unnaturally still.  Even the taut muscles of his back ceased moving with the force of his breath.  He was waiting.  He’d said everything he was going to say, and now he waited on her to redeem or destroy him. 

Katriona swallowed around the raw emotion in her throat.  “Not forever.  Tonight… Tonight, I’ll deny you nothing.” 

Nothing stood forgiven or forgotten between them.  Nor did it have overmuch to do with how he cared for her mother, though that remained a part of it. 

He’d been right, it
was
cruel.  That he loved her.  That the most beautiful, desirable man in all the highlands and beyond could pledge to her a heart so pure and true despite everything he’d been through.  That she could have loved him just as passionately had she lived, and still, she’d fallen hopelessly in her afterlife.   

Tomorrow they’d do what they must.  She’d leave him and he’d marry another in a desperate attempt to save and strengthen their clan.  Because despite what he claimed he’d always been a good and decent man. 

He was the Laird the MacKay had always hoped for.

He was the man
she’d
hoped for, and in life she’d been too blind or too afraid to see it. 

“Doona promise what ye canna give me, Katriona.”  The command escaped his lips as a plea.  “If yer mine tonight, I’ll demand much from ye, as it must keep me for a lifetime.”

Rory turned to look at her and what he saw stole the breath from his lungs.  He understood that others in his clan had often compared Katriona with her sisters and found her wanting.  But to him—tonight—as always, she shone brighter than they ever did.  The strength of her soul illuminated her features, demonstrated the lethal Fae power she wielded like a whip. 

A dark and dangerous lust speared him.  He’d barely survive the night, if luck was with him.  Remembering the feel of her magic painfully animating him, made him hard and heavy with such a feral intensity, his stomach clenched and roiled. 

Sea green eyes alight with heat and electric potency glowed from the pale incandescence of her skin.  Reaching up to undo the clasp at her breast, Katriona released his gaze so he could track her ghostly robes as they hugged each blessed curve before revealing all to his hungry eyes.  It disappeared into the nebulous mist at her feet, taking the last vestiges of his control with it.