Page 46 of Duncan

Nicole didn’t try to lift Duncan from the floor, as he was far too big and heavy for her to move on her own. Dosing him with the sleeping herbs he’d given her had been risky, but luckily the cider had covered the taste. Going to the trunk where she’d hidden the manacles she’d taken from his room, she carried them over and knelt down to use them to restrain his wrists and ankles before she looked down at his peaceful face.

Gag him. The herbs might wear off before you can get away from the island.

First she had to dash away the tears in her eyes before she tore a sleeve from one of the blouses Lark had made her, and held that over his mouth. Her knees buckled, and for a terrible moment she thought that touching him had transferred the effects of the sleeping herbs to her. But no, it was because she was leaving him.

I wish I could stay. She bent over and kissed his lips before she tied on the gag. Good-bye, my wonderful love.

Nicole pulled on a cloak and made her way downstairs, where she found Connal waiting for her in the laird’s chamber as he had promised. Shaw stood by his eldest brother, and looked unhappy.

“Laird MacMar.” She tried to smile. “I’m ready to leave.”

“We’d ask your help before you do, Mistress Fairburn.” Connal glanced at the shadows on his right, and Merrick emerged from them, dragging a large, wet sack. “The king found this shifter hiding in the bay cove.”

Nicole took a step back as the aquatic emptied the sack, spilling a nude female onto the stones. She had dark hair and an emaciated body, and deep wounds in her belly and chest that appeared very serious. When she opened her eyes they weren’t human but the flat, black of a shark’s.

The piteous expression in them wrenched at Nicole’s heart.

She knelt down beside her, and draped her with her cloak, but as she reached to touch her cheek she stopped and pulled her hand back. “I don’t know what my touch will do to her. I might kill her without even meaning to—or she might kill me.”

“Please, lass.” The hybrid spoke before either man could, her voice little more than a ragged whisper. “’Tis better die here than in the sea, devoured by monsters such as me.”

Merrick met Nicole’s gaze and nodded. “She asked me end her before I carried her here. Try as you wish, my lady.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking of how she had left Duncan before coming here. He would have insisted on treating the hybrid himself, so in that sense she was glad she’d left him like that. Yet she also knew that touching this creature might end up tearing her apart.

Maybe this is why I was brought here. I’m to be a sacrifice after all.

“Laird MacMar, I drugged Duncan with sleeping herbs and left him bound and gagged in my room. I didn’t want him to stop me from leaving Caladh tonight.” She sat on the floor next to the dying hybrid. “Please send someone to get him after I’ve left.”

Connal gave her an odd look before he said, “I shall, my lady.”

“Thank you.” She shifted her gaze to Shaw. “Chieftain, if I’m not going to survive this healing, would you see to it that I don’t suffer? I assume you and Buster know how to kill a half-Fae female quickly.”

“Aye, lass, that we do.” Surprise and then respect gleamed in his eyes as they turned black, and his tattoos began to move over his skin.

Finally she regarded the Selseus ruler. “Please don’t tell Duncan you brought this woman to me, King Merrick. I don’t want him to murder you.”

He inclined his head. “As you wish, Mistress Fairburn.”

“All right.” Nicole looked down at the hybrid, who was watching her. “What’s your name?”

“Fiacail.” Some watery blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. “And you?”

She almost answered her as she would any other person, but then decided to for once use the name her mother had secretly given her.

“I’m Nicolina.” She took her hands in hers. “Now let me help you, brave girl.”

For a time nothing happened, and Nicole feared the hybrid was too far gone to be saved. Then a tiny pinpoint of light came into her head, swelling and broadening into a brilliant shaft that streamed through her. It came with no pain or discomfort; as if a sunbeam had been trapped inside her body and was trying to find its way out. The air around her and Fiacail began to glow with dappled shadows of amber, brown and green, and the hybrid convulsed as the colors grew brighter and blocked out the sight of everyone around them.

There you are. Nicole looked into her eyes, the black of which had paled to a warm brown. I’m sorry you’re in pain.

Dinnae apologize, my lady. Fiacail arched up as the lights poured over her body, throwing off her cloak and revealing her wounds, which appeared to be shrinking. You’ve saved me.

Distantly, the sound of something like wood cracking came to Nicole, who ignored it. The pain that the hybrid had suffered came through her hands and into her body, welling up inside her like a black cloud filled with scarlet lightning bolts. Along with the agony came the terrible emotions as she moved back through time in the hybrid’s memories. The horrible betrayal of being stabbed by another shifter that Fiacail had loved like a sister. The terror of being melded with the shark while near death, and before that being stabbed and dumped into the sea to drown. The revulsion of witnessing firsthand Derdrui’s sadistic treatment of the mortals she used for her pleasure. Then came the suffering from the years long before those terrors, when Fia had been beaten and abused and sometimes hunted like an animal after being abandoned and trying to live on the fringes.

As Fiacail’s memories tore at her from the inside of her body, doubt piled atop the anguish. The shifter had survived all these horrific experiences, but after a lifetime of being cherished and pampered, how could Nicole withstand such misery?

I’m here with you, lass. The shifter’s mind entwined with her own.