’Tis too dangerous, Drustan had growled.
’Tis the only way, brother, he’d replied.
The Draghar knew this for a certainty?
Aye.
Too many things could go awry, Dageus. You have no way of controlling what happens.
Dageus hadn’t bothered arguing. It was a long shot and he knew it. He was doing little more than setting the stage, and hoping his instincts about the actors involved would prove true.
Drustan had been reluctant to agree, until Dageus had assured him that no matter what happened, Trevayne would not pass the tithe through. That he would stop him himself if necessary. But not until the last possible second, he’d added in the privacy of his mind.
A few dozen yards away, mounted on the wall of the landing, high above the great hall hung the Unseelie Dark Glass.
It was flat silver.
He imagined his ancestor inside it. Was Cian stretched out on his stone floor, arms behind his head, staring up at the stone ceiling, waiting for death?
If so, he knew the mere waiting was killing his ancestor a thousand times over. ’Twasn’t in a Keltar’s blood to accept death. Especially not once he’d found his mate and given the binding vows. Dageus knew. He’d been in far too similar a position himself.
Indeed, it was the similarity in their positions that had given him this idea to begin with.
He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes to midnight.
Expect deceit, he’d told Jessica. Expect last-minute treachery. It will come.
What he’d not told her was that ’twould come not from Lucan but from him.
_______
Cian had been listening to the clock in the great hall below him chime the passing hours all evening.
’Twas now but mere minutes to midnight, and he was as prepared as he would ever be to draw his final breaths. He’d conjured a perfect mental vision of Jessica’s face in his mind hours ago, and he intended to die holding it there.
It was jarred slightly by the sound of approaching footsteps. She’d promised not to watch, he’d thought, stiffening.
Then he jerked ramrod straight and pushed up from the floor as another sound reached his disbelieving ears.
The hated sound of Lucan Trevayne’s laughter.
Nay! ’Twas not possible! There was no way the bastard could get inside Castle Keltar! Not without someone helping—
“Och, Christ, nay, lass,” he whispered. “Tell me you wouldn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
But he didn’t need to seek visual confirmation of what he’d just heard to know she had. And the truth was, he couldn’t blame her. He’d not have let her die, either. He’d have moved mountains. He’d have battled God or Devil for his wife’s life.
She’d betrayed him.
He smiled faintly.
And in so doing, she’d honored him beyond measure. His Jessica loved him enough to break all the rules for him, enough to damn the whole world just to save him.
He’d have done no less for her. He’d have kept her alive by any means possible.
“Highlander,” Trevayne’s voice rang out triumphantly in the great hall, “you’re mine for another century.”
His smile faded. Unfortunately, her actions changed nothing. “Over my dead body,” he murmured. Which, as he’d always known, was the only way.
_______
Jessi gazed up at the landing, high above the hall where, for the past two weeks, she’d slept every night unless Cian had been free to sleep in a bed with her.
Framed in the mirror, he stared down at her as she stood arm in arm with his enemy. He closed his eyes briefly, as if trying to cleanse the image from his vision. Then he said softly, “Call me out, lass. You doona wish to do this. You must let me stop him.”
Jessi glanced at the tall grandfather clock in the alcove to the left of the staircase. Five minutes to midnight.
Biting her lip, she shook her head.
“Jessica, you’re not just keeping me alive, you’re letting him live. We’ve been through this. You must summon me out.”
Spine straight with resolve, she shook her head again.
When the mirror blazed brilliantly and the hall was suddenly skewed by that odd sense of spatial distortion, for a moment Jessi simply couldn’t make sense of it.
Then Dageus stepped from the shadows behind the balustrade and she realized he must have murmured the chant to release Cian—the chant she herself had told him that first night in the library—softly enough that only Cian had been able to hear.
But why?
“Dageus—what are you—why did you—oh!” she cried. He was moving protectively toward the Dark Glass, making his intentions all too clear.
She was too stunned by Dageus’s betrayal to register the danger she was in until it was too late.