Page 52 of Dorchad

The enchanted tattoos had kept Cath alive when he was younger and defenseless, not that he could make her understand that. “They’re my friends.”

She looked up at him with her big eyes. “I’m your friend, too.” She flung her arms around his neck and gave him a noisy kiss on the mouth.

No one had ever touched Cath in such a way, and the shock of it made him go still. In that moment he knew he would kill for her.

He couldn’t keep her in Elphyne forever, but it had nearly ended him to smuggle her back to her world. Forcing himself to set her free had been like gouging his heart from his chest. He’d also taken care to ward her so that the dark Fae that preyed on young mortals could never again find her. He’d then put her to sleep before returning her to her world through the time portal used by the dullahan to raid different eras. He’d then destroyed the hollow, denying the horseman the chance to ever again use it to steal another bairn.

Unlike him she deserved to live in the light.

Cath suspected he would always be tormented by thoughts of her, no matter how many eager mortal wenches he bedded. Everyone believed he didn’t know how to laugh or smile, but the truth was he no longer could. All the joy and hope in his life had gone when he’d sent his lovely wee lass back to her time. At least now he understood why he’d fallen for Amanda from the first moment she’d touched him.

My weakness, ’tis to take on the emotions of females I touch.

Even now that he understood the formerly inexplicable urge to save her, Cath didn’t suffer any bitterness. Had it not been for Amanda, he would still be trapped in the dark Fae otherworld, likely carrying out assassinations for the queen, or perhaps serving as yet another of her pets.

Never accept an invitation to visit the queen alone, Rune had warned him. You shall spend the rest of eternity in her menagerie.

He heard shuffling footsteps, and opened his eyes to discover the boat had drifted to the mainland and become caught in a stand of tall reeds, which also concealed his presence from whatever had awakened his skinwork on the mainland. He sat up slowly, narrowing his eyes against the first beams of sunlight as he saw something too large and dark to be mortal or beast moving out of the trees. For a moment the half-moonlight showed its monstrous hideousness, and he stopped breathing.

Dark Fae.

Slowly Cath drew his dagger, climbing over the side and soundlessly sinking down into the cold water before he moved deeper into the reeds to conceal his presence. His skinwork grew even more restless, making the water surrounding him ripple, and despite being immersed the smell of his flesh grew thick and hot. In another moment he would not be able to control what he wore on his body, and closed his eyes as he reached out to their primitive minds.

Wait and watch with me. We must learn what the dark Fae does here.

Slowly the disturbance of the water subsided as his flesh calmed. Looking through the slender shafts and leaves of the reeds, he could just make out the silhouette of the immortal, and the manner in which it prodded the ground with an impossibly long black crystal rod. It was methodically searching the bank beside the water, sinking and raising the huge stave it carried to stab the ground over and again.

Does the thing imagine the cluet remains buried?

When the dark Fae disappeared back into the woods Cath climbed into the boat and began to row quietly back toward the island.

Chapter Fourteen

Dorchad woke to the wash of an icy wind, which brought the stench of otherworldly power with it. Something had intruded into his bed chamber, and he sensed it was not of this realm. He sat up to protect Rebecca with his body, and became astounded to see they lay outside of the stronghold, in the center of a meadow at the other end of the island.

As he looked down, the coverlet bunched around their legs turned dark. Although not sure if he was awake or dreaming, he tried to grab the thing, but it evaporated like smoke through his fingers.

The facking rag toys with us now?

The stink grew more intense, so he scanned the meadow for the cause. On the far side from where they lay a rift had opened in the soil like a wound, pouring dark power out onto the soft green grass and withering it to gray ash. All the animals in the forest had gone silent, as if fearing to draw attention to themselves.

“How did we get out here?” Rebecca whispered, huddling close against his back. “What is that?”

“Dark magic.” He pulled the tartan from his shoulders and covered her with it from head to toe. “Stay here and dinnae show yourself.”

Dorchad rose, the grass cool on his bare feet as he strode toward the rift. He stopped when a fountain of blood red and viscid green light shot up from the tear in the soil, swirling and coalescing into a being twice his height. As silver and black liquid rolled over the giantess’s flesh to form garments, it covered her enormous breasts and wide hips before forming a skin-tight seal from her neck to her ankles and wrists. Behind her monstrous things stepped out of the dark power, each heavily armed and dressed in battle armor that matched the giantess’s liquid garment. The features of the guards’ faces appeared so misshapen and unlike anything of this world that his stomach turned. They also told them who the towering female was.

She’s the dark Fae queen, come to demand something more from us.

“You,” the queen said, and beckoned to him. “Attend me now.”

Dorchad continued on toward her, stopping a respectful distance and bowing deeply. He said nothing, for Cath had already warned everyone about her after she’d appeared to the laird. The wrong word might prompt the evil monarch to set fire to the world before they had a chance to appease her. He also needed to find out why she had come again to the island.

“Why do you hold your tongue?” she demanded. “Does your fear of me choke you so much?”

The dark blood in his veins had come from the likes of her, and in that moment he wanted to curse her with every vile word he knew. She and her kind were the reason his màthair had abandoned him and Sgathan. The queen shared the same sickening blood as Rune, who by abandoning his sons after siring them had left them to die as well. He might hate himself for all the darkness that had tainted him since birth, and kept him from living as other men did, but at least he’d fought against its poison all his life.

She gloried in her blood and malevolent ways, for she could only be the ruler of all eternal evil.