AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hmm?”
“Ask me no more questions about myself.”
I will my body to solidify and guide his hand away from my throat. “Fine, but the topic of danger in the Veil is not off limits.”
He rubs a knuckle over his chin, saying nothing.
I sputter in disbelief. How can he lay all of this on me and then cut me off? “I’m sorry if questions make you uncomfortable, but please remember it’s you that dragged me into an insane situation. Did you expect I’d just smile and do whatever you tell me?” I growl. “Do you begin to fathom how much my mind is scrambled?”
He looks utterly wretched. “If we succeed, I’ll take you to the Hill of Tara and answer everything you care to ask, but now, you’re getting far too close to what I cannot say.”
I press fists into my thighs. “This isn’t fair. I’m supposed to heal time and be blind to the big picture? And you won’t even come clean about what awful thing might be trying to stop us.”
My trust in Sionnach Loho thins to a thread’s width. I’m so done with his merry chase. His avoidance of truths and the sting of soulmate being relegated to buddy status drive me to strike at him. He called himself a fool. Well, that makes a pair of us. I’m a fool for beginning to believe he might have caught feelings for me. “You realize I’m not doing any of this for you. It’s for the souls and to see my grandmother.”
Sionnach’s chest sinks like he’s been slugged. That hurt him and hurt him good. The verbal blow ricochets off him to me, and I’m equally breathless. I don’t do mean well. The truth is, I’m lashing out at someone with the noblest of intentions because I ache for him to feel for me the way I do for him.
Wherever Máthair is, I sense her watching me with a mix of sadness and regret at my petty emotional attack on Sion. I stare out the window. It’s not his fault I want him. Why shouldn’t he act like he cares? He believes I’ve been sent by Finnbheara, King of the Connacht Faeries, to help him throw open the gates of forever. Of course, he holds me close and makes promises.
Anamchara doesn’t mean to him what I want it to, but despite my anger, I do believe he values me. It’s damn hard to appreciate that when he doles out information to suit himself, discounting what I need to be an equal partner in our sanity-challenging journey. I want to be the compassionate person my grandmother would be proud of by sticking to my commitment to help the souls.
Sionnach Loho’s evasions don’t make that easy.
Chapter 17
The Kiss
Sion squeezes the car behind a line of oak trees. I can only imagine the upheaval if an abandoned rental in Charlie’s name is found by the roadside, and we’re nowhere in sight. That’ll cement our reputation for indulging a sex-in-the-forest fetish.
As we trek through the woods toward his traveling tree, Sionnach delivers a monologue bordering on babble with minutiae about the next soul. After my crack that I’m doing this for Máthair and not him, he’s working overtime to placate me with what he thinks I want—information.
I try to pay attention. My mind is bent, but I can’t allow it to snap. The first step in surviving our partnership is to bury any feelings I have for Sionnach. I stumble, imagining him instantly aging hundreds of years and blowing away like dust the way Oisín did in the old tale when he left Tír Na NÓg to return to the real world. I mutter to myself. “In real time, he’s my age—exactly. Is twenty-eight some numerological mythical key?”
Sion surpasses myth. He’s my reality. The words don’t do anything to help me forget I’m walking around with a potentially long dead Irish guy.
Stringy light loops through the treetops, turning Sionnach’s face an unfortunate corpse blue as we find Alfie, the fánaí tree. I look away to shore up my nerve. Then I remember Sion’s touch, his embrace, his heartbeats. The man digging through centuries of clothing between the trunks of a white poplar is anything but dead. If he were, one hundred thousand heartbeats wouldn’t matter.
I grit my teeth. With my one-way emotions, partner I can deal with, but if he calls me his soulmate again, I’ll insist he stop.
Sionnach spins his arms in circles between us. “I’m hoping this will go fast. The artifact is simple. It’s your finesse needed to help the Earl of Rosse accept the significance behind his artifact.” He tosses me a long white apron from his Mary Poppins-like bottomless satchel of period garb. “I’ve not convinced him.”
The tight-fitting Victorian maid’s uniform is scratchy against my skin. I slip my head through the neck of a floor-length white apron, and Sionnach ducks behind me to tie it. His equally solemn uniform with tails, stiff white collar, and double row of brass buttons is flattering enough to raise a sparking tease from my Veil Sprites. We’re set to step into a public television drama loaded with curtsies and “yes ma’ams.”
“I’m right giddy for you to see the Leviathan telescope at Birr Castle. Once we send the Earl on the way to his stars, I’ll treat you to such a sight.”
He lingers behind me. His breath loosens strands of my hair from under my lacey cap so they dance across the skin of my neck. I close my eyes, weary of trying to deny how much I enjoy the sensation of him. I press teeth into my bottom lip. As tempting as he is, if I give in to this want and Sion just uses me to blow off sexual steam, I’ll be wrecked.
Or will it be a sweet memory of a man who once called me his soulmate?
Ach.
To tame my misplaced libido, behind my eyelids, I conjure the silhouette I’ve witnessed of the chubby man in a finely cut suit filling the window frame of the tower I’ve learned is the Earl of Rosse. He’s next in line now that Strongbow’s squire has been freed from the soulfall.
“Sion—” I pause, doubtless we’re both aware I’ve gone back to the short version of his name. “If someone wants to screw with us in the Veil, I think it’s a necessary strategy to mix up the order of the souls we visit.”
He lays a hand on my shoulder, fingers gripping harder than necessary. “It’s a fine notion but skipping around won’t keep the friction off us.” I feel the rumble of a groan through his fingertips. “Fate knows, I’ve given that a go.”
I want to press the point we should give it another go but embrace the futility. Sion will dig in as hard as a standing stone in a Faerie circle. I lift my gaze to the horizon. “Which virtue is the Earl of Rosse missing?”
