Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (27 page)

“Faye…”

My name echoed on the waterfall’s soft, cool breeze. Was it Dayne’s voice calling me? I craned my neck up, taking a few steps backwards as I swept my eyes to the top of the towering fortress. Painstakingly carved into the solid rock face, the castle both welcomed and tormented me.

Twelve stories of windows, cutting thick black rectangles into the glistening pink walls, rose to meet the sky. For all I knew the entire Sidhe army hid behind those walls waiting for me. But, I also knew in my bones that Dayne was behind those same walls. If getting him back meant facing the Sidhe too, I was ready for them. They didn’t know who they were dealing with anymore.

Just for reassurance, I stuck my hand in my back pocket and felt the coal still burning there.

On either side of the castle’s facade, gurgling waterfalls rained down and splashed into the mote. Just visible beyond the tree line of the flowering vine tangled forest I had been lost in before. If I didn’t know how deadly the Sidhe could be, it would have been a breathtaking sight. A storybook castle as magnificent as I had thought Ennishlough was once upon a time.

Only, I knew how dark their magic was. I knew what might be waiting for me, which made the whole scene feel like some alternate reality where my life was hanging in a precarious balance. The old Faye Kent would have hidden in the shadows waiting for Dayne to save her, to afraid of what lay inside the castle walls to chase what she wanted.

Fear was no longer my master.

I was my only master now, and the castle had something I wanted.

Slowly, I approached the massive double doors, ones that mimicked the doors I passed through in Ennishlough, carved vines and all. Listening, watching, waiting for my superhuman senses to alert me to the danger that might be waiting.

Nothing.

I reached out a hand for the heavy metal latch, feeling the pitted metal that had been worn by an eternity of use slide past my fingers. It was cold and solid and unmistakably enduring in my hand.

Just as my fingers curled around it, the latch was snatched from my hand. I jumped to the side as the door swung wide, arms coming up, ready to fight my way to him if I had to. When the foyer came into focus, I laughed disbelievingly at who greeted me. No way was she looking for a fight.

On another day, the girl standing before me could have been Christine—warm smile, innocent eyed and fresh as the dew. She wore a gown of the Sidhe, fanciful and grand, with embroidery and fine heavy cloth. But her eyes were normal, not glowing like radiant jewels in her head, which told me she was a prisoner of this world. The two thick bracelets on her wrists confirmed my suspicion.

Her placid brow furrowed ever so slightly when she noticed my unusual dress—jeans and a modern shirt—clothes she would have been wearing if she were still living the life she was snatched from. I knew immediately my strange appearance triggered something in her memory. Her tiny pink lips parted as if to as a question, but quickly closed again, her thought obviously washed away by the spell she was under.

“May I help you?” She asked, bowing slightly in a show of a respect. Now it was time for my brow to furrow, once-overing the girl, knowing this had to be some sort of trick. She shuffled from one foot to another, waiting for me to answer her. When I said nothing, she stepped back and waved me inside with a grand sweeping gesture.

Scuttling around her sideways, as if she might stick a knife in my back, I hurried past.

“I’m afraid everyone has gone hunting. Master Dayne is the only one home,” she swept into a low bow as I passed.

“Dayne.” My voice was low and breathy, all emotion draining from my face, unable to believe how close I was to him.

“Master Dayne,” she nodded as she rose.

My thoughts scattered as I nodded my head frantically.

The castle was a blur. Rugs of woven vines lined the hallways I followed her down. Sconces of fire protruded from walls carved with such ornate detail artwork would have been utterly useless. Great swathes of blooming vines hung from overhead, growing along the inner shaft of a spiraled staircase that I hoped led me to Dayne.

The girl stopped at a darkened door, bowing as she showed the way with a sweeping hand. I nodded and followed, the prickle of uncertainty stinging my belly as I reached for his door. My hand stilled on the latch as I looked down at the empty wrist that had once held his gift, his promise that he was mine forever. It was gone. Given as a gift of love to someone who had needed it much more than I had. But even if it had served a greater purpose, that didn’t erase the fact that it had come off. A fact Chassan constantly reminded me of. A fact that, until that moment, I hadn’t wanted to believe.

Softly, I landed a single knuckle against the solid wood door.

“I already told you, I’m not going hunting!” Dayne’s voice barked from the other side.

His berating tone stole every bit of air from my lungs. I inhaled sharply, loving to hear his voice fill my ears again, but hating the harsh tone. It was a tone all too familiar to me—menacing and hissing, warning of the danger that lurked at his core.

How could he not know it was me? Hadn’t he called me since I crossed into the garden at Ennishlough and entered his world? Now he chastised me like I was some forgettable servant?

The unsettling fear of uncertainly bubbled back up from where ever it had been hiding, putting my nerves on edge as I grasped the latch firmly in my hand and pushed the door open, holding my breath as it swung wide.

The room was empty on first glance, nothing but an oversized, carved wooden chair, an equally massive desk and heavy velvet drapes hanging from thick metal rods over two windows that faced the waterfalls framing the castle’s facade. It was a large room. Stone walls lay cast in shadows at the far ends. A carved wall panel to my left depicted a towering Celtic cross covered with vines. It all seemed safe enough. I stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind me.

“Dayne?” I whispered his name, unsure of what waited for me.

A sudden scuffle of movement from behind me caused me to lurch forward, and spin, crouching low, steeling myself for attack. From the shadows he appeared, just as strong and beautiful as I remembered. Mahogany hair flowing down to his shoulders, emerald eyes wide with shock. The same deerskin breeches and loose white embroidered shirt he always wore in this world.

Dayne! Alive and in the flesh, but hesitating as his eyes cautiously drifted over me, clearly unable to believe it was really me standing before him.

My poor heart beat so heavily in my chest it felt as if it might fly away. I had to feel him. To touch him. To know he was real. My feet started flying in his direction without a word of encouragement from my brain. I ran to him, leaping into his arms as tears began to flow down my cheeks.

A dam had broken inside me. A dam I didn’t know I had built until that moment. All the feelings I had kept bottled up inside me—all the longing, all the need, all the desperation, all the angst. It broke over me, stealing the strength I had forced into my limbs, rendering me a lovesick fool in his arms. It felt as if I had been starved the months we had been apart. He was the only thing I truly needed to live. Finally, he was with me again and the breath I drew into my lungs was somehow made sweeter by his presence alone.

I pulled him to me so forcefully it would have broken a normal man, but not him. He was solid under my touch, hard as stone yet soft as a sigh. My body so inconceivably drawn to him it was beyond either one of our controls.

I laced his body with my arms, leaning up on my tiptoes to place a kiss on the soft skin near the bottom of his neck, breathing deeply the rich woodsy scent of him. A scent that quelled my raging emotions like hard drugs. Dayne was back. He was back in my arms and I no longer cared what I had been through to get here, or worried over the evils that had chased me into his world.

But something wasn’t right. Something I sensed in my bones, not in my head. Dayne’s reaction to me hadn’t been right. It was stilted and awkward, as if I was a stranger in his arms. His body was ill at ease so near to mine, holding me, yet not throwing himself freely into the unbridled passion our love had awoken in me.

I pulled away from him, looking into his dark green eyes as if they might hold some sort of answer. An answer I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know.

He didn’t try to hold me to him, to prolong our embrace. All to willingly he let me go, and I slid down the length of his body to find my own feet again.

Nothing.

Cold, blank nothing registered on his face as his jade gaze followed me down to the bare stone floor. None of the enraptured, dumbstruck, puppy dog love that so plainly painted itself clear as day on my own face. None of the overwhelming relief to be reunited after too long apart. None of the irrational bliss that tumbled from me like the waterfalls outside his window.

This wasn’t
my
Dayne.

“Dayne?” I asked, my hands lingering on his enormous biceps and shaking him ever so slightly in hopes of waking him from whatever dream he was obviously in.

“What are you doing here?” He shook his head in disbelief as he moved to free his arm from my hand.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? You’ve been calling me since I stepped into Ennishlough’s garden.” I laughed as I said this, hoping it was some sort of joke. My eyes were so wide they were straining with the effort of trying to take him in, trying to figure out what was going on.

“No,” he furrowed his brow as he looked to the floor. “You haven’t called to me since you left. I thought…” his words broke off, and he refused to look at me. Even when I ducked into his line of vision to try to force him to see me, he simply turned away and stalked to the window, hands dragging through his thick hair as they always did when he was deep in thought.

“What did you think, Dayne?” I followed him, not willing to let him escape me.

“It doesn’t matter. Why are you here?” His voice was rough, almost as hard as it had been earlier coming through the door.

“I came to get you. To bring you back, or stay with you. We’re going to be together. I’ve seen our future.” Standing at his broad back, I chanced a hand on his shoulder, resting it gently along his solid muscles, needing to feel him.

“Pfft!” Dayne spewed his sardonic dismissal and stepped away, sending my hand falling through the empty air where he had stood until it slapped against my thigh. The sound rang in my ears like a shotgun blast. “Futures change, Faye. Maybe you saw what our future
would
have been. But that’s no longer what it
will
be.”

“No,” I answered adamantly, shaking my head and following him to where he leaned on his desk. “Not the futures I see. They always come true.” He wasn’t going to make me doubt myself.

He nodded his head in a mocking way as he looked at me, a gesture that made anger stoke in my belly.

“You’re forgetting one part of that. It’s not just your future you’ve seen. It’s mine. Whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, I still have the power to make my own choices concerning my future. And in case you forgot, I already let you go.” His words hit me like a wrecking ball, sucker punching me in the gut with a force that made bile rise up my throat. He slid a hand down my arm to where his bracelet had once lived, and pulled my hand up in between us. “See? Looks like you’ve already forgotten that promise, too.” His eyes flashed dark and wicked, making him look like a total stranger.

As if I had lost all control over my body, my hand fell weakly to my side when he released it. Inside, I was searing hot with rage, yet oddly numbed by his indifference. This wasn’t my Dayne. How could he dismiss me so easily? How could he say what we had wasn’t real? It had to be some kind of trick, some kind of test I had to pass.

“Why are you doing this, Dayne?” My voice sounded weak and faraway to my own ears. I was split right down the middle and in no way capable of finding center at that point—half of me raging, the other half wounded beyond repair.

“Why?” He sneered as he crossed his arms and puckered his face in impatient annoyance. “We had a great summer, Faye. That’s all. Our worlds are way too different and way to dangerous for each other. There was no way this ever could have worked.” He waved a dismissive hand in my direction. “I should have learned that lesson by now, but I always seem to forget.”

The implication that I wasn’t the first non-Sidhe he had sworn his love to burned into my core and ignited the flame of rage that had been smoldering there. Gone was the wounded little puppy begging at his master’s feet.

“You lied to me!” I yelled through clenched teeth. He sucked in a sharp breath and turned an evil glare in my direction.

“I never lie,” he hissed, his eyes narrowed in a menacing way. “At the time, I meant every word I said to you. But things have changed, Faye.”

“Yeah, things have changed. Do you not see me standing here? Would the girl you
loved
last summer ever have willingly walked into this world to save you?” I jerked my head sarcastically at him when I said
loved
, hoping there was some fragile part of his heart left to wound as badly as he had mine.

At this, his eyes opened infinitesimally, stepping back as if he were trying to get a better look at me. With his arms still crossed over his chest, he let his eyes wander over the length of me, void of any emotion whatsoever.