Beyond the Highland Myst(762)

Tears burned the backs of Jessi’s eyes. And she’d thought she’d cried herself out yesterday. She’d wondered the same thing—how he’d stayed sane. But then she’d realized he was a mountain.

Yesterday had been the most awful day of her life. If she could have collected together all the tears she’d ever cried, beginning with that first wailed protest at the shock of being born, through childhood pains, adolescent indignities, and womanly hurts, they’d not have made a drop in the bucket of tears she’d wept yesterday.

When Dageus had explained to her what Cian meant to do, she’d raced from the library as fast as her feet had been able to take her. She’d tried to flee the castle, as well, but Dageus had caught up with her and stopped her, gently rerouting her upstairs to the chamber they’d readied for her.

She’d locked herself in and collapsed across the bed, weeping. Eventually she’d sobbed herself into a deep, exhausted sleep. The worst of it was, the whole time she’d been crying, hating him for making her care about him, knowing he was going to die, and not telling her, every ounce of her had nonetheless ached to go back downstairs and sit as close to his damned mirror as she could possibly get. To regain that intense, tender intimacy they’d just shared. To touch the glass, if she couldn’t touch him. To settle for anything at all.

To beg for crumbs.

She’d thought of what Gwen had said, herself, yesterday. She’d had the occasional lucid moments in her self-pitying and furious delirium.

Yes, of course she could see how he would not just be willing to die, but might actually be ready to embrace death after an eternity in a cold stone hell all by himself.

Understanding didn’t make it any better.

She’d read once, in one of those magazines like Woman’s Day or Reader’s Digest, about a nurse who’d fallen in love with one of her terminal patients, a man who had no more than ten or twelve months left to live from some disease or another. The article hadn’t been her cup of tea, but she’d gotten sucked into it, victim of the same morbid fascination that made rubberneckers of people passing the scene of a gruesome car wreck splashed with blood and strewn with body bags. She’d thought how incredibly stupid the nurse had been to let it happen. She should have transferred his case to someone else the moment she’d started liking him, and fallen in love with a different man.

At least the nurse had gotten nearly a year.

Her terminal patient had a mere fourteen days.

“Go away, please,” Jessi said.

“Jessi, I know we don’t know each other very well—”

“You’re right, Gwen, we don’t. So, please, just leave me alone for a while. You can tell him I won’t watch. I promise.” And she meant it. She would respect his wishes. Moving woodenly, she closed the window, flipped the latch, and let the heavy damask drape fall over the mullioned panes.

There was silence behind her.

“Please go, Gwen.”

A few moments later there was a gusty sigh, then the chamber door clicked softly shut.



Lucan threaded his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back from his temples. His palms were hot, the flesh singed, his nails blackened.

No matter. In a moment, the lingering traces of Hans’s misfortune would be gone.

He stepped over the charred body dispassionately.

It smelled and needed to be removed from the pub.

Wending his way through the posh, paneled bar with its high-backed wooden booths cushioned in tufted leather upholstery, Lucan murmured a series of spells beneath his breath, concealing from the pub’s animated patrons both the man he’d just scorched to a cinder, and his true appearance.

Centuries ago, tattoos had taken what remained of his face, including his ears, eyelids, lips, and tongue, making him far too memorable to observers. Even his nails had been removed and tattooed beneath. His eyes had changed shortly after he’d finished scoring the final black-and-crimson brands inside his nose. He’d ceded his dick and testicles long before his tongue, his eyelids in advance of those sensitive inner nasal mucous membranes, though by then he’d suffered no pain. People often had a strongly unfavorable reaction to the face of a sorcerer.

He shouldn’t have agreed to meet Hans in a pub. Lately, several of his employees had displayed a preference for public meeting places.

As if that made any difference.

Cian MacKeltar had indeed returned to the Highlands. As Lucan had known he would. The bastard wanted to die in Scotland. As Lucan had known he would.

According to his late employee, the castle the ninth-century Highlander had once lived in was now occupied by Christopher and Maggie MacKeltar and their children.