I flinch. Now you know. You are a damned fool.
“Why do you think he leaves those people at my border?” Aithinne flushes with anger. “He’s telling me he’d kill them if he could. He’s provoking me.”
The Cailleach showed me some of the worst parts of Kiaran’s past, things I’ll never be able to forget. I won’t excuse what he did. Some things are so terrible that the price of forgiveness becomes insurmountable.
But Kiaran has spent two thousand years trying to atone. I have to believe that there’s still a part of him that is seeking redemption, the part of him that chose a human name. The part of him that I came to care for.
When Lonnrach kept me prisoner, Kiaran never gave up on me. I won’t give up on him, either.
Fool that I am.
“He saved my life,” I tell her. “I owe him a debt.”
Aithinne nods once, her expression conflicted. “All right.” She steps back abruptly from the cliff. “All right. When I hear back about the Book, I’ll make you a portal. If you’re right, and he is still your Kiaran, he’ll want to help.”
“And if he isn’t?”
She lowers her eyes, but not before I see the regret there. She doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t have to. I can see the answer in her features as surely as if she had spoken the words aloud.
Then I’m going to have to kill him.
CHAPTER 11
THAT NIGHT, I sleep next to the fire, and I dream of Kiaran.
We’re in a bed in an unfamiliar room, as opulent as anything that might grace a royal palace. Above us hangs a chandelier formed from teardrop pieces of dark opal, alight from within with red flame. The gleaming walls of the room are sculpted from obsidian, etched with elaborate designs like those on Kiaran’s skin. Reaching up from floor to ceiling, the pattern stretches in elaborate, pointed branches.
The bed is a massive four-poster carved from the seared wood of an alder tree. It smells of ash, smoke, and heather.
I’m tracing the scars covering Kiaran’s bare back, the intricate series of raised swirls and lines and loops that appear scorched onto his flesh, then sliced inch by agonizing inch. It represents his oath not to kill humans, his penance for the ones he murdered. Each of his victims has a place on his skin, their own separate mark.
This was his atonement. This was the vow that made him Kiaran.
“Are you still you?” I ask him. “Or are you . . .” Kadamach. Someone else. Someone beyond redemption.
He stirs beside me, his arm slipping around my waist to gather me closer. We are pressed together, skin to skin, and in that moment, there is nowhere I’d rather be.
“Sometimes,” he says. “It depends.”
“On?”
“On whether or not I can pretend, for a few minutes, that you’ll still walk into a room and ask me irritating questions.”
I laugh. “You sound like you.”
“Aye. Until I remember that you won’t walk into the room. You never will again.”
I say nothing. I just hold him tighter because I don’t want to let go of this. Of us.
“I wish I would stop dreaming about you,” he tells me in whispered words against the base of my neck. He presses his lips there once, twice.
“Do you?” When I run my fingers down the length of his spine, a slight shudder runs through him. That hint of a physical response reveals the effect I have on him, something he can’t hide. “Are you trying to forget me, MacKay?”
Kiaran looks up at me, his beautiful lilac eyes oddly vulnerable. “Say that name again.” His voice is rough with emotion. He does feel. And if he still feels, then he’s Kiaran. And he’s worth saving.
I smile. “MacKay.”
His fingers slide down my ribs. Lower. “Again.”
“Kiaran MacKay.”
His name barely leaves my lips and then he’s kissing me, long and slow. I breathe it out again, his name. A chant. A prayer. Again. Once more.
He rewards me with another kiss, another. He trails his fingertips across my skin in slow, exploring strokes that leave me aching. That make me want.
As he covers my body with his, before I forget myself, I tell him something else. “I’m going to save you.”
Kiaran goes still. “Save me, Kam?” His low, bitter laugh is cold enough to freeze my heart. His next words are whispered against the pulse at my throat. “If you were alive, you’d wish you had killed me.”
Then he sinks his teeth into my skin.
I wake with a gasp caught in my throat. The phantom pain of Kiaran’s bite is so strong that I can’t help but slip my fingers up to brush the skin above my collarbone. The warmth of his tongue against my pulse was so real. Too real.
My heart pounding, I sit up and look around—half expecting to find myself in that massive bed in my dream—but I’m still by the fire in Aithinne’s camp.
The animal pelts I had slept beneath slip down to my lap and I shiver in the cold air. The bonfire has long since gone out and now only glowing, charred wood is left. The first vestiges of predawn light peek through the forest trees.
Gavin and Daniel are on the other side of me, still fast asleep. Derrick is curled up on my coat at my feet, his hands clutching the fabric. He’s snoring loudly for such a wee thing.
Catherine and Aithinne. Where are they?
I shove the pelts aside and scramble to my feet. I don’t know what compels me to go in the direction of the cottage Aithinne showed me yesterday, but I find myself on the path through the woods, moving quickly. Only now do I notice there are no birds in the trees here, welcoming the morning light with their songs. No animals rustle in the thicket. There is only the lonely, unnerving groan of branches swinging in the icy breeze.
As I walk farther from the camp, I can still smell the fire on the air. I can’t help but think of that bed made of dark wood. My hands stroking Kiaran’s marks. His whispered words against my neck: If you were alive, you’d wish you had killed me.
I move faster, trying to put his words out of my mind. I swear I still feel his teeth breaking the skin at my neck, the blood warm down my collarbone. Faster. My boots pound against the path.
You’ll never forget what you’ve seen. Why do you want to go there again?
I don’t know why I’ve come to the cottage that houses Kiaran’s victims. I don’t know why I put my hand on the doorknob and push my way inside.
Catherine looks up in surprise when I enter—then her expression shows something else. Pity? Sadness? I can’t tell. “Hullo.” She dips a rag into the bowl next to her.
She’s sitting at the bedside of the woman I saw yesterday, still lying there with her eyes fixed on the ceiling. I wince when I notice the unsettling serene smile on her face hasn’t budged. The will-o’-the-wisp remains with its teeth in her neck, though it appears to be fast asleep. There are three marks beside its mouth. Each one of them is still bleeding.