Page 5 of Enchanted

Chapter Two

The woman rode through the madness, avoiding swords, men, and horses. As Keiran came ever closer, he could see a thin, graceful form, a riot of shining brown hair, and wide frightened eyes.

The clash of steel and the cries of men echoed all around him. Keiran tried to block out the sound as he focused on the woman in the distance. She held no weapon. Instead, she kicked out her booted feet at a soldier who had ventured too close to her horse. The kick worked temporarily, until the man came around from the back, avoiding her feet.

Keiran leaned forward, pushing his horse to greater speed. Men in red coats fell before him, but before he could reach the woman, the soldier did. He raised his sword, turned it, brought it down.

“Stop!” Keiran cried out. The soldier’s hand hesitated, but only for a second. Not long enough. He stabbed the woman, piercing her body. Keiran was too late. She tumbled to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Keiran slashed his way past two more soldiers as his gaze connected with her pain-filled hazel eyes, before the tension in her face eased and her eyes drifted closed.

“Nay!” Keiran’s cry echoed in the afternoon air. At the sight of him, the stabbing man and another of the redcoats turned their horses to the south and raced away. All the other men, her escorts and the red coats, had fallen to the ground and were dead or dying.

Keiran dismounted and raced to her side, falling to his knees beside her. She lay with one hand covering the wound in her stomach. Blood stained her long delicate fingers. Keiran placed his hand over hers and pressed down hard, trying to stem the flow of blood, to no avail. It seeped through his fingers rapidly draining from her body.

He felt the pain of her wound inside himself. Such a thing had happened before with animals who were killed in Fairyland, but never a fairy. Yet now he felt the pain and anguish of this human female. Forcing his own pain aside, with his free hand he gently brushed the hair away from her face; her skin was growing ashen, the blush of life drawing quickly away. Her eyelids fluttered open at his touch. Her eyes were no longer filled with pain, but serene. Her lips moved yet uttered no sound.

“Do not give up,” he said urgently. “You must fight. I’ll get you help.”

She raised her hand to cover his near her face. Her fingers were cold. “Kindness in the end. Thank you.” Her voice was a mere whisper of sound. A little smile moved to her lips as her hand tightened around his. Then her eyelids closed again, and the hand dropped. She lay still.

A cry began down in the pit of his stomach. When it emerged, it was as wild and untamed as the hills around him. The sound poured from Keiran’s throat as pain knotted his chest. He did not know this woman, and yet he felt a connection deep within his soul. Her chest rose as though she drew one last breath.

*

As pain overwhelmedher senses, Rosalyn watched the man before her fade farther into the distance and a chill settled into her body. A part of her essence left her body to hover above it, floating as she watched the man drop her hand, drawing a sword, dispatching one of the English soldiers who challenged him.

“Why are you defending her?” Another soldier charged. “Her blood is not pure. She is not English or Scottish like you or me. She is an abomination.”

This was no unfortunate attack. Someone had planned to kill her here in the woods.

“You killed her,” said the man who had raced to her side.

“The world is better off without her,” the soldier said.

The words could no longer hurt her as she had no body to process the pain. Who had sent these soldiers to kill her? Had her grandparents sent a regiment to Scotland to finally snuff out the taint they perceived her to be? She looked down on her body, saw the blood flow from her wound and saw her face turn grey.

The man with soulful eyes struck down the soldier and hurried back to her side, pulling her head into his lap. There was an odd sort of light around him that was not of this world. It was bright, shimmering, and comprised of all the colours she had seen in a rainbow.

As he brought his hands to her chest, what had once floated above, dove back inside her shell as if she were diving into a pool of darkness and did not know how to swim. Panic flared, as she instinctively reached out, trying to claw her way back to the surface, gasping for air that was no longer there.

And when she could not take that breath, when the world around her dissolved into swirling tendrils of darkness, she surrendered, and time lost its grip over her. Seconds stretched into eternity. She had no body, no weight, just pure consciousness adrift in a velvet silence.

Memories swirled before her. Some recollections of her youth with her mother and father were vibrant, and filled with laughter, others were dark, and evoked only pain and regret.

*

Keiran closed hiseyes, gathering from nature around him the one gift the fairies had given him. His muscles tightened; warmth gathered in his hands. He let the sensation flow through him, waiting for the right moment.

A heartbeat later, he shifted that warmth from his hands into the woman’s body. He had done this same thing to a few animals since his return to Dunvegan, surprised that Oberon had not taken away his gift of healing when Keiran had left Fairyland. Perhaps the fairy king did not see such an ability as important. Keiran had been given the power to heal only because of his own frail nature when compared to the other fairies. Could he use those healing powers to bring a human back from the edge of death? He had never tried before.

Keiran felt the warmth leave his hands and enter her body. A tinge of pink reanimated her face, but her chest remained still. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the heat leaving him and flowing into her until finally her chest rose beneath his hands.

*

Rosalyn saw aflicker. A spark in the distance, faint but insistent, pulled at her with the promise of air and warmth. Her will to survive flared as she reached, not with limb but with her essence towards that growing light.

Suddenly, the same rainbow colours crashed over her, primal and magnificent. Sensation once again flooded her body and just as quickly, pain flared, sharp and hot, only to slowly fade away.