Visions of Magic

Chapter 12



Sounds echoed softly in the cavernous prison as the women settled in for the night. Sighs and sobs and whispered prayers were a constant murmur that sounded like the rush of wind through trees. The darkness was alive. With the fluorescent lights off, the only illumination came through each prisoner’s narrow window. The glass was dirty and beyond the pane were heavy bars that Shea suspected were also coated in white gold. But at least she had one small slice of the outside world to cling to.

Alone in her cell, she did her best to shut out the murmuring, the despair. With her bed made, she lay on the hard mattress and stared out that window, wishing she were anywhere else.

Somewhere out there Torin was looking for her. She was convinced of that. No man who had promised a mating ritual with the seriousness he had would allow her to escape him. And now that she was praying he’d show up, the question was, would he be able to find her?

She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the tall man with the fierce gray eyes. He’d called himself an Eternal. Her Eternal. Why did that sound familiar? That one word seemed to resonate with her. She brought his face into her mind and concentrated with everything she was.

How odd, she noted absently, that only hours ago, he had been the enemy. Now, he was hope. Before, she’d worried that he was somehow connected to the strange dreams and visions that had been haunting her. She no longer cared. She’d take the dreams. Whatever he had planned for her had to be better than this.

With his image firmly in her mind, she finally slept and the dream came.

She was at home, in a small cottage on the edge of a thick wood with a stream rushing nearby. A peat fire burned in the hearth and herbs hung from the ceiling rafters. There was a wide window overlooking a garden that looked lush even in the moonlight. Everything was in its place. Warm throws and pillows rested on the pair of chairs drawn up to the crackling fire. Pots and jugs lined shelves where several precious books were carefully stacked. The bed was wide and lumpy, covered with a quilt she’d pieced together herself.

In her dream, Shea recognized this place. She was herself and yet at the same time she was someone else. Someone in a different time. The woman who lived here. Worked here. Loved here.

She turned and caught her reflection in the shiny bottom of a copper pan. Familiar, yet strange. The green eyes she recognized, but the thick black hair was different. Her face was heart-shaped and her lips were red and full. She was . . . another.

In a dream that was so real, she smelled the peat smoke, tasted the warm, earthy scent on her tongue. Even in sleep, she felt flustered, as confusion spiraled through her mind. How could she be so at home in a place and time that wasn’t hers? How could she know that there was a village just a mile or so away? And that the herbs hanging over her head were for medicinal uses?

She rubbed the forehead that wasn’t really hers and yet was, and tried to make sense of things.

Then the door behind her crashed open, slamming into the wall. Heart racing, Shea spun around to face the giant of a man filling the open doorway. His long black hair was braided at his temples. He wore a simple homespun shirt and brown leather pants tucked into heavy brown boots.

His gray eyes locked on her and her still-frantic heart leapt in her chest. She knew those eyes. Had known them, she now thought, through countless lifetimes. Something inside her loosened as even in the dream she felt pieces of a puzzle slide inexorably into place. Then she wasn’t thinking at all. Every inch of her body burned with a hunger that she recognized. Embraced. An icy wind slid through the room to caress the flames and send them dancing and writhing, making twisting shadows on the rough-hewn walls.

“You weren’t waiting in the village,” he accused.

“Do I look like a woman to take orders?” she asked, but her voice was flirtatious.

“You look like my woman,” he told her and slammed the door closed, shutting out the world.

Shea felt the thrill of that simple statement whip through her like a stray lightning bolt. Her gaze met his for a long minute; then she rushed to him, throwing herself against him.

His hard, strong arms came around her, lifting her off the floor. The scent of him filled her senses, as his heat seeped into her bones and kindled fires inside her that seemed on the brink of eruption. Carrying her, he stalked to the bed in the corner and dropped her to the mattress. She tossed her hair back out of her eyes, licked her bottom lip and tugged up the hem of her floor-length skirt, showing him her legs, loving the glitter in his eyes as he watched her.

“Is it a battle you’re in the mood for, Torin?” she asked on a sigh. “Or is there not something else you would find more pleasurable?”

“There is at that,” he said and tore his clothes off, tossing them to the floor.

Shea inhaled sharply, letting her gaze slide over his muscular, battle-scarred body. He was a warrior like no other. She couldn’t imagine her world without him in it. She ached for him. For his touch. For the taste of him. Every time he came to her, it was as the first time.

Magic.

She shivered as that word danced through her mind with a surety that felt natural. As if that word were as much a part of her as her eyes, her breath. Not for the first time, she felt as though there was. . . something she should know. Remember. A flash of an image rushed through her mind and was gone in an instant. High cliffs. A cave. With a fire caged within.

Frowning, she tried to grasp the image. Instead, it niggled at the edges of her brain, teasing a memory that refused to be born.

“What is it?” he asked, reaching for her, pulling her up to sit beside him.

“Nothing. ’Tis nothing,” she whispered, not wanting him to think her mad, and unwilling to waste cherished time with him on foolish ramblings. And yet . . . “’Tis only that I feel sometimes as though there’s a part of me lost somewhere.”

He stared at her for a long minute, then ran one hand over her breast in a slow caress. “Seems to me that all the parts are where they should be.”

She sighed and arched into his touch, craving that sizzle of heat that slipped from his skin to hers. He had become as necessary to her as breathing and she wanted nothing more than to relish his hands on her body. Still, she said softly, “You laugh, but there’s something amiss, Torin. Something I must—”

“Hush now, lass,” he said, laying one finger across her mouth. “Don’t fash yourself over this. When the time is right, you’ll know. You’ll have it all. That time is not now.”

His pale gray eyes stared into hers and Shea could have sworn she saw shadows moving there in those depths. Shadows of things that had been, things that would be. Her breath stilled while her heartbeat quickened.

She shook her head, embarrassed by her foolishness and wild imaginings. And when she looked again into his familiar eyes, she saw only her own reflection staring back at her. Smiling, she asked, “What do you know of it, you great beast?”

He grinned at her, one corner of his mouth lifting as he pulled her off the bed and onto his lap. Pushing her skirts out of the way, he had her straddle him, her bare thighs atop his.

“Beast, am I?” he asked, slipping one hand beneath the fall of her skirt to slide his fingers up the length of her leg and toward her hot, damp center. She shivered in his arms and sighed out his name.

“Beast is what you are,” she said then, “if you don’t give me what we both need.”

“Then name me Torin,” he said, lowering her onto his gloriously hard body. “For a beast I won’t be.”

He pushed himself home and she welcomed the invasion of his body into hers. She groaned and arched her back, swiveling her hips to take him higher, deeper. The thick fullness of him claimed her completely, as if he had been made to join his body with hers.

His fingers at her hips, he gripped tight and urged her to move on him and so she did, because it was all she wanted, needed. Her body sang under his touch, her blood burned and her soul shattered. Again and again, she took him deep, hard, rocking on him, setting a rhythm that he matched and controlled.

Their eyes locked and when the first of the pleasure ripples coursed through her, she looked into her beast’s eyes and almost—almost—found what she was searching for.