“I refused to let you be bound to a dead man, lass,” he said grimly. “Nor was I willing to miss the chance to pledge my heart to you forever. Even if it meant I would have to be reborn again and again, and serve as naught but your protector from afar, while you loved another. To ken you were alive and well would have been enough.” He paused a moment. “Not that I wouldn’t have done all in my power to steal your heart from whoever the bloody bastard was,” he added in a fierce growl. “I would have.”
Tears of joy misted her eyes and she laughed aloud. Oh, yes, she could see her ferocious Highlander doing battle for her heart. He’d easily have won it in any lifetime. “But you didn’t die, so don’t try to stop me now,” she said softly, taking his hand and putting it over her heart, pressing her palm to his. Speaking with quiet reverence, she echoed the words he’d given her that day in the chapel.
The moment the vow was said, the final pledge echoing in the stone hall, emotion crashed over her so intensely, her knees buckled. Love for him filled every ounce of her being. It was the most incredible sensation she’d ever felt. They were inextricably linked now, for all eternity. Cian caught her and crushed his mouth to hers, kissing her passionately. She clung to him, savoring the strength of his hard, powerful body against hers, the raw, carnal heat of his kiss.
“But wait a minute,” she said, frowning up at him a few minutes later, “how are you still alive? I don’t get it. What just happened?”
It was Dageus who replied. While she and Cian had been otherwise occupied, he and the other MacKeltars had hurried down the stairs and joined them in the great hall.
Now he guided them all away from the fallen sorcerer and the three couples moved to stand near one of the hearths.
“I didn’t quite tell you the truth, lass,” he said. “The truth was, we could find no way to free him. Our only hope lay in trying to void the Unseelie Indenture. The Draghar believed that, much as a Seelie Compact can be voided by an evil deed, an Unseelie Compact could be voided by a selfless act. Not broken, breached, nor violated. Voided. Both parties released from the binding and returned to their normal state.”
“Believed?” Drustan exclaimed. “You told me they knew.”
“They believed it very strongly,” Dageus amended hastily, slipping an arm around his wife and drawing her close.
“Wait a minute,” Chloe protested, “wouldn’t the fact that Cian had been willing to die to stop Lucan from getting the Dark Book have counted as a selfless act?”
“Nay,” Dageus said. “A selfless act cannot be tainted by personal motive. Cian was driven for centuries by hunger for vengeance. ’Twas in his voice every time he spoke of Lucan, of dying in order to kill him.”
Cian nodded. “Aye, ’tis true. I didn’t want to die. I never wanted to die. I wanted Lucan dead, and there was only one way I could accomplish it. Though I wanted to keep him from getting the Dark Book, I hungered for revenge even more.”
“But he was ready to die for you, Jessica,” Dageus told her softly. “ ’Twas what I was wagering on. That he would die for you selflessly. At the moment he threw that mirror, there was no thought of vengeance in his heart at all. There was only the desperate, pure self-sacrifice of unconditional love. And it voided the dark indenture.”
“You had no way of knowing ’twould work,” Cian growled.
“You’re right. I didn’t. But I was once in a like position, kinsman.” Dageus gazed down at Chloe. “I thought it safe to wager on your feelings for your mate.”
“You shaved it damn close. Mere seconds!”
Dageus arched a brow at Cian’s rebuke. “ ’Twas our only hope.”
“You placed my woman in danger.”
“At least you have her,” Dageus pointed out. “Christ, doona be tripping all over yourself trying to thank me for saving you, kinsman.”
“You didn’t save him,” eternal-physicist-and-human-calculator-of-odds Gwen pointed out matter-of-factly. “Not really. You just set up the circumstances. He saved himself.”
“Bloody good thing I didn’t do this for thanks,” Dageus said dryly.
“Doona be looking to me for thanks. You put us all at risk,” said Drustan.
“I’ll thank you, Dageus,” Jessi said fervently. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll thank you a hundred times a day for the rest of your life if you want me to, and I’m sorry I hated you there for a minute when I’d thought you’d betrayed me.”
Dageus nodded. “You’re welcome, lass. Though you might have kept the hating me part to yourself.”