“What kind of game is this?” Eyes narrowed, he drove his shoulder against it, yielded nothing. Snarling, he circled the walls, testing each opening, finding each blocked.
“Bryna!” He pounded the solidified air with his fists until they ached. “Let me in. Goddamn it, let me pass!”
From the topmost turret, Bryna faced the sea. She heard him call for her, curse her. And oh, she wanted to answer. But her pride was scored, her power teetering.
And her decision made.
Perhaps she had made it during the sleepless night, curled against him, listening to him dream. Perhaps it had been made for her, eons before. She had been given only one single day with him, one single night. She knew, accepted, that if she’d been given more she might have broken her faith, let her fears and needs tumble out into his hands.
She couldn’t tell him that her life, even her soul, was lost if by the hour of midnight his heart remained unsettled toward her. Unless he vowed his love, accepted it without question, there was no hope.
She had done all she could. Bryna turned her face to the wind, let it dry the tears that she was ashamed to have shed. Her charge would be protected, her lover spared, and the secrets of this place would die with her.
For Alasdair didn’t know how strong was her will. Didn’t know that in the amulet she wore around her neck was a powder of poison. If she should fail, and her love not triumph, then she would end her life before she faced one of bondage.
With Cal’s voice battering the air, she closed her eyes, lifted her arms. She had only hours now to gather her forces.
She began the chant.
HUNDREDS of feet below, Cal backed away, panting. What the hell was he doing? he asked himself. Beating his head against a magic wall to get to a witch.
How had his life become a fairy tale?
Fairy tale or not, one thing was solid fact. Tick a woman off, and she sulks.
“Go on and sulk, then,” he shouted. “When you’re ready to talk like civilized people, let me know.” His mood black, he stalked back to the house. He needed to get out, he told himself. To lose himself in work for a while, to let both of them cool off.
One day, he fumed. He’d had one day and she expected him to turn his life around. Pledge his undying love. The hell with that. She wasn’t pushing him into anything he wasn’t ready for. She could take her thousand-year-old spell and stuff it. He was a normal human being, and normal human beings didn’t go riding off into the sunset with witches at the drop of a hat.
He shoved open the bedroom door, reached for his camera. Under it, folded neatly, was a gray sweater. He pulled his hand back and stared.
“That wasn’t there an hour ago,” he muttered. “Damn it, that wasn’t there.”
Gingerly he rubbed the material. Soft as a cloud, the color of storms. He remembered vaguely something about a cloak and a charm and wondered if this was Bryna’s modern-day equivalent.
With a shrug, he peeled off his shirt and tried the sweater on. It fit as though it had been made for him. Of course it had, he realized. She’d spun the wool, dyed it, woven it. She’d known the length of his arms, the width of his chest.
She’d known everything about him.
He was tempted to yank it off, toss it aside. He was tired of his life and his mind being open to her when so much of hers was closed to him.
But as he started to remove the sweater, he thought he heard her voice, whispering.
A gift. Only a gift.
He lifted his head, looked into the mirror. His face was unshaven, his hair wild, his eyes reflecting the storm-cloud color of the sweater.
“The hell with it,” he muttered, and snatching up his camera and case, he left the house.
He wandered the hills for an hour, ran through roll after roll of film. Mockingbirds sang as he clambered over stone walls into fields where cows grazed on grass as green as emeralds. He saw farmers on tractors, tending their land under a cloud-thickened sky. Clothes flapping with whip snaps on the line, cats dozing in dooryards and sunbeams.
He wandered down a narrow dirt road where the hedgerows grew tall and thick. Through small breaks he spotted sumptuous gardens with flowers in rainbows of achingly beautiful colors. A woman with a straw hat over her red hair knelt by a flower bed, tugging up weeds and singing of a soldier gone to war. She smiled at him, lifted her hand in a wave as he passed by.
He wandered near a small wood, where leaves unfurled to welcome summer and a brook bubbled busily. The sun was straight up, the shadows short. Spending the morning in normal pursuits had settled his mood. He thought it was time to go back, see if Bryna had cooled down—perhaps try out the darkroom she had equipped.
A flash of white caught his eye, and he turned, then stared awestruck. A huge white stag stood at the edge of the leafy shadows, its blue eyes proud and wise.