it again.”
Normally, Ethan would have poked at Niall simply because the man had a fantastic sense of humor. Today wasn’t a normal day.
The door to Ethan’s room crashed open in a shower of splinters. The Druid’s Elder and the entire Arcanum, some with spouses hot on their heels, crowded the entrance, weapons raised.
For a second, Ethan’s heart swelled. They’d come to him believing he’d been in danger, intent on ensuring his well-being and ready to fight beside him or cover his back if the need arose. It floored him to realize he mattered to them, filling a vacancy he hadn’t realized existed—an emotional vacuum in him that had craved that sense of belonging and genuine camaraderie.
He was on the verge of blurting out his gratitude, a sentiment that hovered somewhere between wildly emotional and unquestionably fervent, when Dylan shoved forward and glanced around the room.
“What. The. Hell.” The leader of the Arcanum, the Assassin, gazed around the room and took in the total destruction—from the giant hole in the floor to the classroom below, to the absolute devastation of what had been Ethan’s living room. “This castle has stood for well over half a millennium. Eight hundred years, Ethan. Eight. Hundred. You’ve been here...how long? Not even twelve months. Less than a bloody year!”
“No need to shout, Dylan.” Ethan looked around the room. “I’m pretty clear on what went down, seeing as I was in the middle of it.”
“‘What went down.’” The Assassin shook his head as he gestured for everyone else to lower their weapons. “What you wrought is more like it.”
Rowan wove his way through the crowd. “Where is she?”
“Who?” Dylan asked at the same time Ethan said, “Taken care of.”
The icy-eyed assassin closed in. “What did you do to your wife, warlock?”
Before Ethan could formulate an appropriate answer, an ominous rumble sounded.
Every gaze in the room shifted to the heavy stone column that now stood near the hearth.
“Out!” Dylan shouted, and they all dove for the hallway.
Everyone but Ethan. He was on the opposite side of the room and couldn’t get across the gaping hole in the floor.
He was exposed. Defenseless.
The columnar tomb he’d created exploded, and like organic shrapnel, stone shot in every direction.
He spun and ducked. Wrapping his arms around his head, he intended to get as low as he could and protect his head.
But a large rock caught him at the base of the skull before he was down.
The last thing he remembered was the floor rushing toward him as darkness crowded out his awareness of both the moment and his concern over the simple truth.
I’m so screwed.
* * *
Pain wedded panic and scrambled Isibéal’s wits. She wanted to scream but couldn’t manage to create a sound under the deluge of pain. Everywhere he touched her, her skin burned and blistered with life’s inherent heat. Light equated to life, death to darkness, and light always ate darkness’s chilled shadows. The two were ne’er meant to mix. They were disparate things that could not coexist without consequence. For Isibéal, that consequence was immeasurable, mind-shattering pain.
Then the walls to her personal prison were up, solid and unyielding. That was when he finally released her.
She shook violently. Experience with panic told her she would ride this out. There were no other options available. Her knees gave way as she sagged against the stone before slowly sliding to crouch on the tiny floor space. How could Ethan do this to her—reduce her to shreds while he locked her inside another tomb, one his magick built? Centuries she’d spent in a cursed grave and he could do this to her without a second thought? How?
“Trapped.” A small sound of despair caught in her throat. “I can’t be trapped.” She flattened her palms against the walls and fought the constriction in her chest. Claustrophobia. It came from spending centuries buried yet fully cognizant, aware of her circumstance and unable to do anything about it.
Beneath the pads of her fingers, magick coursed and pulsed. But it was neither her magick nor any she had intentionally borrowed. This magick had a flavor so familiar she ached to dip her hands into it, to savor the sensory pleasures and memories created and shared when breath had still been necessary. Had she been able to truly experience its strength, it would have smelled earthy and rich. Organic. The taste of green grass would have rolled across the front of her tongue even as the smell of pungent soil, a loamy smell underlaid by the warmth of sunshine on barren rocks, would have tickled her nose.
Lachlan’s magick.
Yet there was something there—an undertone of thyme and sage—that created enough difference, enough unfamiliarity, that she was reminded it was not Lachlan’s power.
It was Ethan’s, and he was not truly Lachlan.
She beat at the rock like a madwoman.
Be at ease, a deep male voice whispered through her mind.
“No.” Clutching her head, she pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. “You’re not welcome here.”
Calm yourself, the voice breathed. Freedom is within reach, yours to claim if you will.
She held her head as the full-body shakes took over. “Can’t.”
Isibéal!
It wasn’t the command issued in the darkest reaches of her mind any more than it was the fathomless depth of the voice itself. That her name had been shouted was what startled her.
Break the ties that bind, woman. Shed the unnecessary fear. Then, and only then, will your way forward be unfettered. Until you choose to do so? You will be a slave to anyone strong enough to ensure your bondage.
“I am no one’s slave, nor do I belong to anyone. That includes you, Lugh.” Her upper lip curled. “And I am strong enough to do what needs be done. Stronger than you.” Funneling all her rage and fury into her fists, she drove them into the wall with unmitigated force. The moment before impact she realized she had an emotional vagabond who had stolen along, piggybacking on her riotous feelings. That letch magnified her power, increased it a hundred—nay, a thousandfold. And she was too far gone, too committed to her emotional purge, to cast the unwelcome tagalong aside.
Stone exploded outward as if compelled by a will, and magicks, that far exceeded what she could, in all reality, call her own. But there wasn’t time to question. Only act.
Isibéal rushed from the crumbling prison, clearing the wreckage in time to see Ethan whirl away and take a large stone to the back of his head. His entire body fell forward before it went lax like a marionette whose strings were severed. The man landed in a heap and began a slow slide down the sloped floor, heading straight for the gaping hole between this level and the next.
“Ethan!” The man might not be Lachlan in entirety, but there was so little difference between who he was and who he’d been that she couldn’t let the warlock go.
If this man were dead, though, he would be with you. We could both have at least some of what we have yearned for—you, your companionship.
That voice. Not hers. And it lied.
“And what of you?” she absently asked the male presence. She began to inch her way around the ledge toward the fallen man.
I seek the truest form of revenge.
The sliver of floor on which she stood rumbled. “And what is revenge’s truest form?”
Vengeance.
Ethan slipped several inches in a rush.
She bit back a vile curse.
Angry