Beyond the Highland Myst(559)

"You? So did I!"

More frantic kisses, deep and hungry. She locked her hands behind his neck, savoring the solidity of him, the warm press of his body against hers—a thing she'd thought she would never get to feel again.

Finally, Dageus murmured against her lips, "How did you get here, lass? How did you get back from Scotland so quickly?"

"Quickly?" Chloe drew back and gaped at him. "Dageus, it's been three and a half weeks since you disappeared." Just thinking about those awful weeks was enough to make her start crying again.

He gazed down at her, stunned. "Three and a half—ah! So that's what the queen meant," he exclaimed.

"The queen? What queen? What happened? Where have you been? And why were you picking the lock? Why didn't you just—oh!" She broke off and gazed deep into his exotic, sensual golden eyes.

Golden.

"Oh, Dageus," she breathed. "They're gone, aren't they? You're not just alive—you're free, aren't you?"

He flashed her a dazzling smile and laughed exultantly. "Aye, lass. They're gone. Forever. And as for picking the lock, since they're gone, I no longer know their spells. I'm afraid my thieving days are over, lass. Will you still be having me as little more than a man? A simple Keltar Druid, naught more?"

"Oh, I'll have you, Dageus MacKeltar," Chloe said fervently. "I'll have you any way I can get you."

It took dozens of kisses before she was finally calm enough—and convinced enough that he was real—that she let him pull her down onto his lap on the sofa and tell her what had happened.

*****

When Silvan regained consciousness and stirred in his chair, the queen was sitting across from him, watching him intently.

"You're real," he managed to say.

She looked mildly amused. "It was recently drawn to my attention that perhaps we should not have left you so completely unguided. That perhaps you'd begun to think we weren't real. I wasn't convinced. I am now."

"What are you, precisely?" Silvan asked, abjectly fascinated.

"That would be difficult to explain in your language. I could show you, but you didn't fare so well with this form, so I think not."

Silvan stared at her, trying to commit every detail of her to memory.

"Your son is free, Keltar."

Silvan's heart leapt. "Dageus triumphed over the Draghar? Did he succeed in reimprisoning them?"

"In a manner of speaking. Suffice to say, he proved himself."

"And he lives?" Silvan pressed. "Is he with Chloe?"

"I gave him back to the woman who chose him as her consort. He can never return to this century. Already time has been altered more than is wise."

Silvan's mouth opened and closed several times as he tried to decide what to say. Nothing remotely intelligent occurred to him, so finally he settled for a simple, "Thank you for coming to tell me this." He was utterly flummoxed that the queen of the legendary race had bothered to come tell him.

"I didn't come to tell you this. You appeared weak upon awakening. I thought to increase your strength with glad tidings. We have work to do."

"We do?" His eyes widened.

"There is the small matter of a broken Compact. Broken in this century on the Keltar side. It must be resealed, here and now."

"Ah," he said.

*****

"So you did take the knife from my neck," Chloe said, sniffling and wiping her eyes with a tissue. He'd told her everything: how the sect of the Draghar had drugged him with a potion that had made it impossible for him to control the use of magic, how he'd realized when they'd brought her in that he had only one choice left.

As she and Drustan had both suspected, Dageus had been honorable to the last—he'd tried to kill himself. "You were going to die and leave me," she hissed, thumping his chest with her fist. "I could almost hate you for that." She sighed gustily, knowing she loved him for it too. His honor was an integral part of him, and she wouldn't have him any other way.

"Believe me, lass,'twas the most difficult thing I've ever forced myself to do. Bidding you farewell nigh ripped my heart to pieces. But the alternative was releasing something that might ultimately destroy—not only the world—but you as well. Think you I didn't suffer a thousand deaths fearing what the Draghar might do to you if I failed to die before they took me over? Verily, I never want to endure such fears again." He ran his hands up her arms, swept them into her hair and kissed her hard and demanding, his tongue gliding deep.

When they were both breathless, she said, "So what happened then?" She traced her fingers over his face, savoring the feel of his rough, unshaven jaw, the softness of his sinfully sensual lips. And oh—the sight of those clear, golden tiger-eyes with no shadows!