chapter Eleven
She’d found him again. Daroch had known it was just a matter of time before her now-blue light chased away his shadow. He sat on the point of Cape Wrath in the moonless darkness, contemplating the stars through a breathtaking display of northern lights.
He’d been thinking of her. The dramatic blues and greens curtaining the sky, dancing seductively with each other just out of reach of the human scope, conjured her specter to his thoughts. Not that she hadn’t been lurking there since the previous night.
Nay. He sighed. Since he’d heard her heart-rending scream in his cave, she hadn’t left him for a moment. Like a tune tripping through one’s mind uninvited, or a desire that drove every action, there Kylah was. Unattainable and ever-present. Glowing and chattering and filling the lonely darkness.
Or reminding him of it. Every time his body hardened, remembering the glorious beauty of her pleasure, the image of her stricken astonishment while she held her robes together pricked his conscience with a thousand tiny barbed needles.
She silently settled herself on his left side, and he winced. Most people, especially women, shrank from the peculiarity of his runic tattoos. But not his Banshee. She studied them. Sometimes overtly, her rapt curiosity painfully obvious on her lovely, expressive face.
He was too much of a coward to look at her now. He’d be able to read exactly what she was thinking. And he didn’t want to know.
He knew too much. Always had.
“They’re so beautiful,” she breathed, turning her face up to watch the lights bend and snap across the sky.
There was that word. Beauty.
Kylah scooted almost imperceptibly closer to him. “My father used to say that Biera, the Queen of Winter, was a selfish and power hungry goddess. He said that she causes the storms and sea gales in January and February because she wants to prolong her reign. In ancient times the Spirit of Spring went to Bel, the Summer God, and asked for his help. In turn Bel sent the lights in March as a warning to Biera that her reign is absolutely ended. But to balance this, he also sends them in October and November to tell her that she may begin winter early in the Highlands.”
Daroch shifted, still unable to look at her, but studied his hands which were now cast in a jewel blue. “Winter doesna start until December.”
“According to legend, Crom Dubh is the powerful, carnal god of harvest and death.” Kylah repeated her father’s story with the deftness and drama of any bard. “He emerges from his underworld domain early in August and angers Bel. They compete for power and for the favor of Danu, their mistress, and goddess of all creation. Bel calls in Beira as early as he dares, hoping that winter will overshadow the debauched revelry of the harvest and send the sensual Crom Dubh back to his lonely Underworld and away from Danu’s bed.”
“Yer father told ye all this when ye were four?” Daroch chanced an irate glance at her and instantly wished he hadn’t. All he could see was her fingers disappearing into her soft mouth. Then drifting lower, obeying his commands as though they were his own hands.
He cleared his throat, smothering a groan as his cock twitched and threatened to take over the situation.
She shrugged, “He was a bawdy blacksmith, or so my mother says in the rare moments she mentions him. And I believe it. I mean, she did spend nearly three of the six years of their marriage pregnant with us.” Her voice became wistful, but he could also hear a smile in it. “I asked her once if he’d ever been disappointed that none of us had been a boy. She told me that she’d asked him that very question not long before he died, because she was pregnant with Kamdyn and was worried it was another girl. Do you know what he told her?”
Daroch shook his head, surprised by how much he wanted to know.
“He said he hoped all their children were girls so she would let him keep trying for a boy.”
He couldn’t pull back the half-hearted sound of amusement that escaped his throat. Her father sounded like someone he would have liked to know. Someone who loved his family. Took pride in his work. Cultivated a reputation for fairness and strength. A man with a life. Who knew who he was and what he wanted and worked hard for it. A man like Daroch had strived to become once. Long ago.
“Do you pray to them, the ancient gods?” she asked.
He snorted. “Hardly.”
“Why not?” She gestured to the shimmering lights flaring ever brighter in the sky. “Bal is a vengeful god. His magic is right there, closer to the earth than any other time. It is said he also holds no love for the Fae. Perhaps he would help you as you’re a Druid and all.”
Daroch looked at her then. The earnest kindness in her steady gaze shamed him, which stirred his temper. She was supposed to be angry with him, dammit. She was supposed to be here to scream and rant at him as was a woman’s way when she had been so wrongly scorned.
“Because yer father’s gods and legends are all ignorant superstitions with no basis in reality,” he challenged her.
“Oh?” she lifted one eyebrow, but also quirked the corner of her lips. “Enlighten me.”
He planned to. As soon as he could form a memory or thought that didn’t pertain to her generous mouth.
“Ah.” His eyes dropped lower, to the breasts lifted higher by her arms crossed beneath them. If he studied them very hard, he could make out the darker shade of her small pink nipples. “Um.”
“The lights?” she reminded, her voice warm with amusement.
He wrenched his gaze toward the sky, seeking salvation there. “These lights are actually produced by incredibly powerful winds emitted by a flare from the sun.”
“Well that makes sense,” she agreed. “Bal is the God of the sun.”
“No, no” he gestured impatiently. “The sun has nothing to do with a deity. The Sun is merely a star, a very close star burning so hot and so big that we are pulled toward it in our planetary orbit.”
She gave him a silent, skeptical look.
He threw up his hands, running into his biggest annoyance of the modern century. “How is it possible that we Druids, and Anaxagoras and Copernicus were discovering this more than a thousand years ago and it’s still not—” He cut of his own digression with a tight sound, rubbing at his temples. “Regardless, let me explain the lights.” He drew in a deep, slow breath. “The Earth’s core is made of molten alloy. As our planet spins around the Sun, it creates magnetic fields that emanate outward and protects us from this dangerous solar wind. When the highly charged winds flare at their mightiest, they can sometimes make their way through this magnetic field and they encounter our oxygen and nitrogen and other atmospheric elements. Thus, that interaction manifests itself in the far northern and far southern points of our world, as those are key magnetic points of opposition.”
He glanced back at her, to gauge her comprehension.
She was looking at him as though he’d lost his mind. “That seems… unlikely.” She wrinkled her nose.
He grunted. “More unlikely than deities and magic?”
“You forget,” she chided gently. “I’m a creature of magic. And so are you.”
Too exasperated to sit anymore, he stood in one fluid move. “Trust me, I havena forgotten,” he insisted. “But I doona believe that magic is mystical. Just a greater understanding of what we doona yet know. No magic is absolute and no magical creature indestructible. The laws of the Universe tend to balance such things.”
She shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Argh!” He threw his hands up and stormed away from her, angling south across the moor. She was so damned adorable. So sweet and wounded and… “What are ye doing here anyway, besides being an insufferable Harpy?”
“Not Harpy,” she corrected, keeping perfect pace with him. “Banshee. And I’m here to apologize for last night.”
He snapped his head to look at her. “What the bloody hell do ye have to be sorry for?”
“What I said—what we did— upset you.” She offered him a conciliatory smile. “And I regret it, because everything before that was…” She delicately cleared her throat and looked away from him, her cheeks tinged with that becoming heat.
“Aye, that it was,” he agreed gently. Because the lass was absolutely correct, whatever it had been defied words. The most erotic experience of his life. And he’d not even been an active part of it. How was it possible? And he’d acted like a fool. He’d tainted the experience with his own weakness. “It is I who was wrong,” he admitted. “Which is rare.” The addendum eased the peculiarity of the admission.
Her melodious laugh was a delicate explosion of delight. It rippled across the sky as remarkable as the northern lights. All the moisture in Daroch’s mouth dried and bloomed in his palms, which he rubbed on his trews.
“It did help, you know.” They skirted a marsh pond and still angled south, the only sounds other than their voices were Daroch’s heavy boots on the soft earth. “It was… I felt… Anyway, I understand more now about lovemaking versus violence. Pleasure versus pain. I know myself better, if that makes any sense.”
A tight sound vibrated in his throat. “I hate that ye ever… that it’s ever been anything other than pleasure for ye.”
She was silent a long while. So long that Daroch could hear the cogs turning behind her ears. “I get the sense that perhaps it has not always been pleasure for you either.”
He refused to discuss it. “Aye, well, not everyone’s senses can be acute.”
“Stop implying I’m stupid every time I’m right about something you don’t want me to know,” she snapped. “It’s a loathsome tendency and it reveals more than it protects.”
Daroch gaped at her. Christ, she was too perceptive sometimes. He preferred to be surrounded by idiots. They were easier to fool, to intimidate, and to control. “Ye’re right… Forgive me.”
She smiled and he was instantaneously gifted with the return of her good humor, “That’s twice in one night.” Her elbow passed through him with a few ghostly nudges. “One for the history books, is it not?”
His lips trembled with a poorly repressed smile. “Most definitely.”
“So you’ve never…” she pressed.
“Never… what?”
“Never—you know.” She waved a hand a looked away, he blush intensifying.
“I doona know,” he smirked. “I’m a Druid, I’m no mind reader.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” she elbowed at him again. “What we did! What I did.” Her hands flew to her face to cover glowing cheeks. “I don’t even know what to call it. But in all your centuries, you’ve never… done that?”
Daroch chuffed. “Exactly the opposite, I spent a great deal of my tender years perfecting the art.”
Her hands dropped to her sides. “On women?”
The sharp note in her voice didn’t escape his notice. Daroch took one look at her stricken expression and a laugh burst from him. Slowly at first, as though remembering how to abide, then with more vigor. “On myself,” he managed between spasms of amusement. He put a hand on his ribs as they subsided. “Until the lasses would let me,” he admitted honestly. “Then most of my untried efforts were focused on them.”
Her eyes had gone round and luminous, and she watched him laugh as though witnessing something rarer than the lights above them. The speed at which they narrowed with displeasure was equally astounding.
“Them?” she turned the word over on her tongue and frowned. “I question the moral character of any woman who would let you.”
“Ye did,” he chuckled.
“Don’t be ridiculous, that was different,” she insisted.
“’Tis what most of the lasses say,” he taunted.
“Most…” Her frown deepened. “How many were there?”
He grinned, thoroughly enjoying himself, and shrugged. “I was a pretty lad.”
She huffed, clearly incensed.
“If it makes ye feel better, they’re all long dead now.” He sped his walk to hide his smug smile, knowing she’d chase him, and looking forward to it.
“Oh are they? All scores and scores of them? You’re horrid,” she accused, catching him easily. “I could just kick you.”
He chortled. “Nay, ye couldna if ye tried!” And for some reason, that sent him into more fits of mirth.
She scowled. Though obviously fighting a begrudging smile. Her shoulders began to shake as small gasps escaped through her nose first. Before long, they’d stopped walking and were both bent over, holding onto their sides as humor held them prisoner. Their laughter tangled with the sea breeze and was carried across the moors by ribbons of celestial color.
Kylah straightened first, taking a sighing breath while Daroch wiped a tear of amusement from his eye.
“Our humor is dark.” Her voice was still warmed by laughter.
“It matches our thoughts,” he mused. “Our pasts.”
“Aye,” she murmured.
Their eyes locked.
She blinked.
He swallowed.
Daroch felt something very powerful sizzle in the air between them. It vibrated on a frequency that could only be found in silence, but contained untold volumes. Its language consisted of internalized desires floating upon words like “maybe” and “what if.” It was the surge of rebellion against fate that turned a fleeing man’s galloping horse in the opposite direction. It changed the courses of exploring sea fleets and sometimes, the fates of entire civilizations.
So charged with this energy, Daroch took a step toward her.
She retreated, tucking a glossy auburn curl behind her ear. “Where are we going?” she asked with false brightness, turning toward their previous course and setting off slowly, taking her glow with her. “What business have you this evening?”
He fell into step beside her, letting the moment pass with a mixture of relief and disappointment. “If you believe it, I’m on my way to finish milking my fig trees.”
“I’m sorry,” she gawked at him in utter disbelief. “I thought you just said you were on your way to milk—”
“Fig trees.” He veered left and climbed a dark hill.
“I don’t… I don’t know what you mean.” She levitated herself up the hill. “Is that a euphemism for something?”
They crested the hill and he gestured toward a neat row of short, exotic trees silhouetted against the glowing night sky nestled at the opposite base. “I chanced upon a Grecian apothecary’s apprentice some forty years ago who was exploring the Highlands as bade by his master for a certain strain of Meadowsweet herb. I was in possession of a large quantity of the stuff as I’d used it for inflammation caused by a broken foot. The apprentice traded me these saplings not just for the fruit, but for what else it contains.”
Reaching the trees, Daroch circled them and pointed to taps set into shallow bark. Beneath them, wooden bowls caught the sticky leavings.
“What is it?” Kylah bent over a bowl, inspecting the sap-like content with her usual all encompassing curiosity.
“I call it Arborlatix which, in Latin, roughly translates to tree milk.” He picked up a bowl. “This is the first year I’ve really been able to cultivate enough of it to be useful.”
“What’s it for?”
Daroch took a tightly worked leather bag from his robes and a smooth wooden scoop, and began to patiently transfer the contents from bowl to bag. “Look,” he murmured, holding up the substance that ran from the scoop a touch slower than honey. “It’s a rather complex polymer emulsion that’s made of the tree’s sugars, proteins, starches, tannins, and resin. Mixed with other elements, it can do a vast number of things, not the least of which is protecting other substances from water and erosion.” He moved to the next bowl where she crouched. “It could be of great use to me.”
Bending toward her, he reached for the bowl, bringing their faces dangerously close.
Kylah stumbled backward, as though to avoid the contact and the bowl beneath the tree behind her tipped over, the contents spilling onto the ground. She snatched her hand away and hissed, cradling it to her body.
Their gazes collided. She began to tremble.
“What just happened?” he asked very slowly, his heart rate flaring along with the fear in her eyes.
“I-It burned me,” she whispered, very slowly extending the quivering hand out to him. “It burns still.”
Daroch barely heard her for all the roaring in his ears. He knelt beside her and reached for her injured hand. He turned it over in his palm studying the effects of the substance. The soft blue glow was nearly indistinguishable now and the pink, irritated flesh of her dainty hand was as corporeal as his own. It seemed as though she’d immersed the entire thing in the Arborlatix. On any other matter, the substance would have stuck like a glove, but not Kylah. When she’d snatched it away, none of the stuff adhered to her hand, but the result was extraordinary.
He could feel her skin. It was as soft as he imagined it to be. He ran a thumb across her palm and, though it was cold, it was real.
She gasped and tried to jerk it away.
“How bad does it pain ye, lass?” he asked.
“I-It’s not like fire, but it burns and stings fiercely… and itches.” She flexed her palm and affixed her worried gaze on him. “What will it do to me?”
Daroch had no idea, and he tried to keep the concern from his features. “Is it getting worse or better?”
She waited, wiggling her fingers. “Better, I think.” Her mouth was touched by a tremulous smile. “You touched me.” Kneeling closer to him, she lifted her hand to his face, brushing her feather-light fingers over that tattoos on his cheek. “I can touch you.”
Daroch closed his eyes. He’d thought any touch from Kylah MacKay would go straight to his cock, but it didn’t. It settled in the empty chamber of his chest and lodged there.
“Do you know what this means?” she whispered.
He knew what he wished it meant. “But wouldn’t dipping ye in the entire lot be exquisitely painful? I very much doubt ye’d like—”
“Nay, Daroch.” Her eyes glimmered with bleak sadness and unshed tears. Her chin quivered and her breath caught on a silent sob. Not one of wonder, but of dread.
The knowledge knifed through his lungs, rendering them useless. This discovery changed everything.
“It means that now you can kill me.” Her trembling intensified. “You may claim your vengeance.”
“Stay here,” he gently commanded. “I’m going to get ye something that might soothe yer skin.” Daroch’s mind raced through the possibilities and his blood thrummed with excitement as he turned and followed the line of the hill to the mossy swamp where he would find what he needed.
After all these years.
Kylah wasn’t exactly a full blown Fae creature yet, only a specter of their magic. If the Arborlatix had this strong of an effect on her, then he could only imagine what it would do to an actual Faerie. If contact with the stuff created such a reaction, then a weapon coated in it could do incredible damage. It would cut through them like their weapons sliced through humans during the great hunts millennia ago, before the pact had been struck.
His lip curled. One hundred years. He’d thought of nothing but revenge and justice. He’d been close to despair when the wee Banshee had startled him with her invasive wail only a few short days ago.
It was because of her that he would be granted his vengeance.
Plunging his hands into the marshes, he gathered mud and herbs to soothe and coat her skin. If the sensation was, indeed, improving, he hypothesized that the ghostly part of her, the part that was still human, protected her from long-lasting complications with the Arborlatix. The thought of her in any pain or discomfort displeased him greatly and a part of him still strove to reject the soft feelings that any thought of her produced.
Now you can kill me.
Daroch very much doubted it. She was still technically dead. He probably couldn’t truly kill her until she’d been turned into a Fae. He froze. Kylah was frightened of him now. She’d trembled while she touched him. At first, he’d assumed it was because she realized the scope of the meaning of their discovery to him… but she couldn’t, could she? He’d never shared with her his reason for hating the Fae so intensely. Not in its entirety.
From the beginning, he’d never posed a threat to her. He could not touch her and therefore could not do her violence. But all that had just changed hadn’t it? In three short months, she’d become a true Banshee. Not just a creature of finite power for reaping their own personal vengeance, but a soldier of the Banshee Queen. An assassin.
Daroch closed his eyes, a peculiar desolation settling in his gut. He couldn’t let that happen. If he could release her from her curse, even by exacting a final death, would that be a killing or a kindness? Could he look at her face, so intensely lovely and so inquisitive, and plunge a weapon into her flesh? This one would burn. It would penetrate her delicate skin and likely kill her.
He’d be no better in her eyes than Angus MacKay.
Daroch growled. Faeries used Banshees to exact harsh and excruciating punishments on those deemed worthy by them and the gods. Innocents would suffer at her hand, and she’d have no say in whom she killed. In who lived or died. She would merely be a creature of death and blood and torment. Her innate curiosity would be warped and twisted into something perverse and lethal.
Daroch stood, a grim despondency settling into his chest, smothering the light and warmth her touch had ignited there.
He had a decision to make.
Turning back with the poultice he’d made, he trudged out of the swamp and climbed the hill toward his tiny fig orchard. The witching hour had fallen upon the night. New and devilish shadows writhed in the light cast by the north. All traces of laughter and softness vanished.
And, he discovered as he crested the rise, so had she.