Lucan dropped a silken cord over her head and had it cinched tightly around the slender column of her throat, the choke handles twisted before she even knew what he was doing.
“You son of a bitch, let her go!” Cian roared, bursting from the mirror.
Rather than releasing her, Lucan turned the choke handles just a bit.
Jessica went stiff and still. She understood the use of those handles, she was familiar with the garrote as an ancient weapon. One twist and she was dead. She didn’t dare move even the few inches necessary to try to use the dagger Dageus had given her.
Expect anything, he’d said.
Now, she thought bitterly, she knew why.
Three minutes to midnight.
Lucan had his wife hostage, a garrote about her neck.
“Get back in the mirror, Highlander. Return to it willingly and I’ll let her live. Move. Now.”
Cian stretched his senses. He should have felt it earlier, but he’d had no reason to suspect anything. Aye, the wards barring Lucan from the castle were down.
But the wards preventing Lucan from using sorcery were still up. Which meant Cian could use a spell on the bastard and Lucan wouldn’t be able to counter it.
He opened his mouth, and just as he did, Lucan hissed, “Say one word in sorcerer’s tongue and she’s dead. I won’t give you the chance to bespell me. If I hear one wrong syllable, I’ll snap her neck.”
Cian closed his mouth, a muscle working in his jaw.
“And that goes for you too,” he barked at Dageus. “Either of you start a spell and she dies. Get back in the glass, Keltar. Now. I’m coming up to pass the tithe through.”
Centuries of hatred and fury filled Cian as he stared down at the man who’d stolen his life so long ago and was now threatening his woman.
Vengeance: ’Twas what he’d lived and breathed for for so long, he’d nearly lost his own humanity.
’Til his fiery, passionate Jessica had come along.
Once he’d hungered for nothing more than to see Lucan Trevayne dead. No matter the cost. In truth, it hadn’t been so many days ago that he’d hungered for it above all else—twenty-six days ago, to be exact.
Now, staring down at his ancient enemy holding his woman captive, something inside him changed.
He no longer cared if Lucan lived or died. All that mattered was getting the bastard’s hands off his wife long enough to save her. Nothing else. Just that his woman live. That she see another dawn, be granted another day. She was his light, his truth, his highest aspiration.
Love for her filled him so completely that, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, eleven centuries of hatred and lust for vengeance were burned out of him as if they’d never been.
Trevayne was no longer his problem. Only Jessica was.
A quiet resolve, an unexpected serenity filled him, unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
“I would have bargained with the devil for you, too, lass,” he said softly. “I’d have done anything too. I love you, Jessica. You are my one true mate, lass. Never forget that.”
“Back in the glass, Highlander,” Lucan snarled. “Or she dies. I mean it! Now!”
“You want to pass the tithe through, Lucan? Fine. Be my guest. I won’t stop you.”
In one smooth, fluid motion, he turned, lifted the mirror from the wall, spun about, and tossed it into the air, casting it end over end, out and over fifty-odd stairs, down to the hard marble floor below.
“Catch.”
For the second time in her life, events unfolded for Jessi as if in slow motion.
With Cian’s admission that she was his one true mate ringing in her ears, she watched the only thing that could keep him alive plummet to virtually certain destruction.
She knew why he’d done it. To save her. Trevayne could not both hold her and go after the mirror. Cian had forced him to choose.
Her husband knew his ancient enemy well. Of course he’d go after the mirror. Survive now, live to kill another day.
The rope slackened around her neck as Lucan released the handles and lunged forward.
She tugged the garrote from her throat and dropped it to the floor, watching, heart pounding.
If, by some miracle, Lucan managed to actually catch the man-sized looking glass, she wouldn’t be surprised if the ancient mirror shattered merely from the impact of him stopping its fall.
Eyes huge, she tipped her head back and up. Cian stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at her. Love blazed in his eyes so fiercely, so intensely, that it took her breath away.
She stared at him, drinking him in. She knew she’d never make it up the stairs in time to touch him. To hold him. To kiss him just one last time.
Lucan was almost beneath the glass.
Almost.
She caught her breath and held it. Miracles sometimes happened. Maybe he’d reach it, shove the tithe through, and they’d all live to fight another day.