chapter Nine
It took Kylah until the next evening to gather the courage to see him. She stood for untold hours staring at her grave, at her name so meticulously carved into a marker with strange and lovely runes surrounding it.
Daroch had found her remains. He’d laid her bones to rest. He’d visited her home and comforted her mother. He’d fascinated and excited Kamdyn, who’d vigorously regaled her with every detail of their short interaction.
“You must go to him, Kylah.” After a hearty and warm welcome home, Kamdyn had rushed her out the door so fast it left Kylah slightly dazed. “He needs you.”
Needed her? Her youngest sister obviously knew nothing about the man. But even so, the pull to see him again was almost magnetic in its inevitability.
Kylah lurked in the small crevice that opened into his cave, masking herself from his notice. He wore a vest-like leather tunic that bared his arms to the shoulders and fell to his feet. It split at the waist in many different places, allowing for movement and showing the stag skin trews he wore beneath as he purposefully strode from one place to another. His skin was free of silt and glowed in the firelight like honey poured over iron beneath the ancient markings. His long hair fell clean to the middle of his back in a thick, ebony braid.
Kylah gawked as he carefully poured what appeared to be liquid metal into a clear bowl of water and marked the change in water level.
“I can see ye, Banshee,” he informed her, though he’d never once looked in her direction.
“How?” she asked, incensed at being caught staring.
“Shamrock, remember?”
Drat. Kylah scowled. She’d forgotten.
Drifting toward him, she watched as he recorded his findings on a parchment with ink and quill. Kylah wished she’d learned to read, but they’d never had the time whilst running the washhouse. Katriona learned her figures to keep track of the money, but Kylah had never been bothered to.
“What are you doing?”
He still didn’t look up. “I’m measuring mercury.”
“You’re what?”
He moved back to the clear bowl. “Everything that exists on this planet is made up of tiny, invisible particles of material,” he explained. “An object with the same mass might still have more or less of those particular materials than another. By measuring how a submerged object displaces a volume of liquid equal to the volume of the object, one can calculate the density of this material.”
Kylah studied the clear bowl and frowned. “Then I no longer exist.
“Doona be ridiculous, of course ye do.”
“I don’t have this— material. I don’t displace anything. Not air. Not water. Not even you.” She reached out and passed a hand through his thick arm to make her point. “Therefore, I no longer exist. Not really.”
He looked up at her then and his eyes widened, snagged by a major change in her appearance.
“Blue.” She held her hands out for inspection, casting her soft new glow wider against the black stone of his cave. “Your doing, I think.”
The Druid remained silent, setting his parchment and quill down and picking up a large shell from an adjacent table.
“I want to show ye something.” He walked to the fissure and disappeared into it.
Kylah barreled right through the stone. She followed him to the edge of the grotto, her light reflecting off the softly lapping water. Something about the way he fit his lips around the opening of the shell and blew caused a curious tightening of everything beneath her belly button. Two long calls and one short emitted from the shell, echoing in the cavern and yet muffled by the water. He lowered the shell and listened.
Kylah remained utterly still. What was he showing her? What was she supposed to infer?
His arms flexed as he raised the shell again, but a high-pitched whistle followed by a series of ticks exploded into the cave. A smooth grey body jumped from the grotto, glistening as it executed a perfect flip and dove back into the water with barely a splash.
Daroch turned to Kylah, his lip curling in a devastating half-smile as he waded in to the knee and greeted the dolphin who came up to him with a welcoming cry.
He ran his large hand over the smooth skin and the creature chattered and groaned in obvious pleasure.
Kylah bet her soul the dolphin was female.
Entranced, she moved to lurk just behind his shoulder and was startled to find the dolphin noticed her.
“Hello,” she whispered, awed by the rare moment. A gift from the Druid she’d never be able to return. The dolphin’s ever-present smile seemed to widen as it rolled and nodded, spouting water until she laughed.
“Impressed as I am by your animal ken, I have to admit I don’t understand what you’re trying to express to me,” she murmured, watching Daroch launch the incredible creature back into the deeper water of the grotto.
“Did ye know sound is one of the most powerful forces in the Universe?” he asked. “In fact, most of my Druid ancestors believed sound was the material by which the Universe was created.”
Kylah shook her head, though he wasn’t facing her.
“It’s actually a wave. A mechanical vibration that can travel through any form of matter,” He gestured around them. “Air. Water. Stone. It leaves nothing untouched or unaffected.” He turned and waded back toward her, his wide shoulders turning with the effort of walking through the water. “Creatures like the one I just summoned use sound to navigate and to detect danger. We all use sound to communicate. To perceive. To identify. To seduce.”
He didn’t stop until he loomed in front of her, and Kylah could only stare at his deep chest, a curious lump in her throat and an even more perplexing heat in her loins.
“Every powerful force produces its own identifiable sound. The wind, the sea, a storm… And ye, Kylah, ye are a creature of pure, dynamic resonance.”
She turned from him, her heart surging beneath her breast. Something in his words resonated, all right, and she thrummed with the power of it.
“To a Druid, the understanding of it goes even deeper than that,” he murmured.
“Deeper?” she breathed, catching her lip in her teeth.
“Every soul, every scream, every emotion leaves an echo in this world. Every conscious being is made of energy. Every heart beats with it. Every thought is shaped by it. And that energy canna be created or destroyed. Not by magic. Not by death. Not even by the Gods. It can only be manipulated or changed. Therefore, everyone who ever existed still continues to do so, in one way or another.”
Though they weren’t touching, Kylah could feel the energy he spoke of leaping off his potent, vital form and melding with hers. The sensation was like no other, arcing between them as though charged with lightning. His tattoos glowed blue in her light, seeming to rise off his skin and pulse with magic.
Kylah tilted her head back to look into his eyes and what she saw in their brindled depths caused her to jump away from him.
“You know,” she gasped. She didn’t have to clarify. He’d somehow found out about Angus, about her darkest and most terrifying shame. About the violent loss of her innocence and the hour of hell she’d endured before her death.
His eyes closed in a protracted blink, and when they opened she saw none of the pity she feared. She couldn’t feel it, either. But she did feel the anger, the sorrow, the helpless, masculine rage that burned within him, searching for the absolution of retribution and finding none. It roared at her from his aura, from his eyes, from the tension in his dangerous body.
It drew her back toward him. “You don’t have to worry about vengeance, for there is none to be had.” She heaved a great sigh. “And besides, it’s not your responsibility to exact.”
“I know that.” His demeanor darkened into something vicious and altogether frightening. “In here, I know that.” He tapped his finger to his temple. “But in here…” He pressed his fist to his heart, but didn’t finish his sentence.
Kylah reached out and put her ghostly, iridescent hand over his fist. “Sometimes, I’m sad that I cannot touch you. At first, I was glad of it, because I didn’t have to be afraid. But now…”
He shuddered as her hand passed through his to settle by where his heart beat. Kylah could almost feel the power of it, the strong, steady rhythm accelerating along with the shallower breaths he took.
“Ye should be grateful for it still,” he murmured, then blinked, as though stunned he’d said it aloud.
“Why?” she frowned.
“Ye have good reason to fear me.”
“Because you’re going to find a way to kill the Fae, possibly even me?” She met his eyes and saw something in them that transfixed and repelled her with equal force.
“That,” he said in a low, rumbling growl. “And because despite everything, I desire ye, Kylah. Just as much as that MacKay bastard wanted ye, probably even more.”
Kylah snatched her hand back, horrified. “But-but you said that beauty doesn’t matter. That it doesn’t mean anything! You told me you didn’t want me.”
A muscle in his jaw jumped and he turned his face, the tattoo flexing with the clench of his teeth. “I know what I said.”
“You lied?” she gasped. “You, who seek and regard truth above all else?”
“Aye,” he hissed, advancing on her. “But I didna lie to ye, I lied to myself, which is the greater sin.”
Kylah shrank back, forgetting that he posed no physical threat. Right now, he was the most dangerous being on the planet. How could he? How could he make her care for him, make her trust him? Lure her into a false sense of security, make her feel again. He’d delighted and soothed her with his poetic knowledge about the Universe and her place within it and then he tells her this. It changed everything.
“You would hurt me like they did?” she accused, suddenly feeling very small. Like she wanted to crawl inside of herself until the moon let go of the earth and the sun evaporated the sea. She wanted to die. Again. “You would humiliate me? Bind me? Expose me and—”
“Nay,” he rasped, reaching out like she was a cornered, skittish animal he was trying to tame. “Never. I wouldna cause he pain for the world, but teach ye all the pleasures a woman’s body is capable of.”
She squinted at him, weighing the earnestness of his expression, the desire in his voice, the veracity of his words.
Never had he looked so open. So naked.
“What do ye mean by ‘pleasure?’” she ventured.
“Och, Kylah, a woman’s pleasure is a very powerful, very complicated thing. But once attained it is… indescribable to behold.” He ran the backs of his knuckles down what would have been the curve of her cheek.
Kylah’s eyes fluttered closed and if she concentrated very hard, she could almost feel his touch.
Almost.
Her curiosity tempered her anger at him, anger that should have been stronger than it was. She had to admit that beneath the fear, beneath the dark memories and instinctive revolt, relief resided there. He’d noted her beauty, as she’d noticed his. He was not immune to her, as she was so entirely affected by him. “Where does one find it?” she whispered. “How?”
His lids lowered by half, a knowing smirk toying with the edges of lips that appeared much more full than any time previous. “The incidentals differ for every woman, but it culminates in the same place for all of them.”
Kylah had a feeling she knew which place that was, for at his low, silken words it clenched and ached with a foreign awareness. She couldn’t think of that place. She couldn’t face it. It couldn’t exist.
“I don’t believe you,” she breathlessly denied.
He chuckled. A dark, threatening sound that washed over her like a cauldron of boiling tar, scalding skin that no longer existed with a heat that was not unpleasant. “I could prove it to ye.”
“Nay, you cannot!” she quickly reminded him, holding up a hand to ward him off. “You can’t touch me.”
“Aye, but…” his brow quirked.
But what? He could not touch her. He couldn’t teach her. There was no way around it, to her immense relief. There simply was no but.
“Ye can touch yerself, can ye not?” he rumbled. “Ye can feel yer own… flesh?”
Her hand flew to her throat in absolute shock. She felt its pressure as sure as when she was alive. In response to that realization, she jerked it to her side again, and hid both hands in the flowing folds of her robes.
His face gave the notion of a triumphant smile without the slightest movement of his lips. Though his tattoo did wrinkle devilishly beside his eye. He stepped closer, bending his head so it was right next to her ear. “What do ye say, lass, are ye up for… an experiment?”