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What did she want? Daigh could be hers, but it would be a marriage based on duty, not on love. If he loved her, he would have stayed with her. Wouldn’t he? But there was the child to consider. Could Sabrina send Daigh away if it meant consigning the baby to a life of bastardy? Oh, why did life have to be so complicated?
She lifted her gaze skyward as if looking for guidance upon the clouds. But she’d learned the hard way the gods spent little time worrying over the fates of mortals, even those who shared their blood.
“I’ve nothing to offer you, Sabrina,” he said. “No wealth. No lineage. Nothing but the strength in my hands and the depth of my love. But with these we—”
“What did you say?” A queer, fluttering excitement beat against her ribs.
“I am penniless and without family.”
“No, no after that. What was that last bit?”
He ducked his head, his lips curving in a sheepish smile. “I’ve nothing but the strength of my hands and the depth of my love, which is without end. But these I give to you freely. I would have you for my wife, Sabrina.” When she opened her mouth, he stopped her. His voice now confident, almost defiant. “Not for the sake of the child, though that alone is a gift without price, but for you. I love you. In that life. In this. And in any that may lie in our future. Will you accept me?”
She nodded, her body at once both heavy with child and light enough she might shoot to the moon. “I will.”
“What of your vow to remain unwed and true to your gifts?”
She tipped her chin up to meet his gaze, cheeks flushed, body alive with excitement. “Would you deny me my Other birthright? Would you force me to choose between the parts of myself?”
He pulled her clo
se. “If I marry you, Sabrina, I marry all of you.” His hands curved around to cradle her against him as he bent to kiss her, his lips cool and soft, his body ferociously warm.
“Then yes and a thousand times yes.” She returned his embrace, the strength in his stance an anchor against the ecstasy bearing her away. Tears mingled with the rain sliding down her cheeks.
“I’m back, cariad,” Daigh whispered. “For you.”
Turn the page for a sneak peek at
HEIR OF DANGER
the final book in Alix Rickloff’s
thrilling Heirs of Kilronan series
Cornwall
April 1816
King Arthur’s tomb lay hidden deep within an ancient wood. For centuries uncounted, the sheltering trees grew tall, spread wide, and fell to rot until barely a stone remained to mark its presence.
With a hand clamped upon the shoulder of his attendant, the other upon his stick, Máelodor limped the final yards through the tangled undergrowth to stand before the toppled burial site. The mere effort of walking from the carriage used much of his strength. His shirt clung damp and uncomfortable over his hunched back. The stump of his leg ground against his prosthetic, spots of blood soaking through his breeches. Every rattling breath burned his tired lungs.
“This is it,” he wheezed, eyes fixed upon the mossy slabs. “I feel it.”
He didn’t even bother to confirm his certainty. No need. Once decoded, the Rywlkoth Tapestry had been clear enough. Its clues leading him unerringly to this forgotten Cornish grove.
Excitement licked along his damaged nerves and palsied limbs, casualties of his unyielding ambition. The Nine’s goals had been audacious, but Máelodor had known long before Scathach’s brotherhood of Amhas-draoi descended like a wrath of battle crows that, to succeed, authority must be vested in a single man—a master-mage with the commitment to sacrifice all. To allow no sentimentality to sway him. To use any means necessary to bring about a new age of Other dominance.
He was that man.
His continued existence obscured within a web of Unseelie concealment, he’d called upon the dark magics to re-create life. Resurrecting an ancient Welsh warrior as one of the Domnuathi. A soldier of Domnu in thrall to its master and imbued with all the sinister powers that inspired its rebirth.
That first trial had ended in failure. The creature escaping Máelodor’s control.
But he had learned from his mistakes. It would not happen a second time. Once resurrected, the High King would serve the man who restored his life and his crown. Would obey the mage who brought forth a host of Unseelie demons to fight for his cause. And would fear his master as all slaves must.
Mage energy danced pale in the green, humid air. Mistaken by any who might stumble into this corner of the wood as dust caught within the filtered sunlight. But Máelodor reveled in its play across his skin before it burrowed deep into his bloodstream. Melded and merged with his own Fey-born powers. Growing to a rush of magic so powerful he closed his eyes, his body suffused with exhilaration. The same uncontrolled arousal he usually sought in the bedchamber or the torture chamber.
