AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He grabbed her by the arms, hauling her roughly to her feet, his grip almost painful. What she saw in his face set her back. A glimpse of that part of him he kept chained within. Released only at peril to his sanity. It swam close to the surface. Howled for escape. “Answer me, damn you.”
She let his rage wash over her. Remained as untouchable as her heart. “You want an answer? I’ll give you one. I thought I could do this, Cam. I thought I could separate myself like an egg. A part of me for Scathach. A part of me for you. But I can’t. I need to commit with all my soul. Be it the Amhas-draoi. Or you. And I chose my path long ago.”
He stood erect as if he faced an executioner, grim-faced but resigned. As if he’d known this was coming. And wasn’t surprised.
She hardened herself to the inevitable. “I think it’s as well you seek out your own kind. We’re too different, Cam. And I’m not in the market for a man. Not even one as tempting as you.”
Her arms remained captured in his grip, his face so close that she need only lean forward to brush her lips against his. His body hummed with slow-fading anger and a tension that hel
d him rigid, his steel-blue gaze impenetrable. “I don’t believe you. I’m this close to you, and I don’t believe you.”
She frowned, wishing away the heat pooling deep within her. “My body may desire you, but my heart is my own.”
He released her, almost flinging her away from him as if he couldn’t bear to be near her now. “You can say the words, Morgan. But I know you feel it. It’s more than lust. More than the bump and grind of two people pleasuring each other. I’ve had that. Know what it feels like.” He plowed a hand through his hair. “This is more.” He let out a disgusted breath. Flung himself toward the door. “Forget it. You’ll come to your senses or you won’t. I just hope I’m still around when it happens.”
“And where would you be? Off with your high-in-the-instep London friends?” God, she sounded petty. Childish, even. What the hell was happening to her? She felt as if the old Morgan were cracking to pieces. Every new Cam-inspired emotion another body blow to the woman she thought she was. The woman she had to be if she was going to succeed before the Fey did.
He smashed a fist against the jamb. Closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. Letting it out slowly, he fixed her with a grim stare. “According to your uncle, I don’t live to see the end of this battle, Morgan. I become a creature of the sword. An Undying.”
Like a slap to the face, she came up short. Uncle Owen? “What did he tell you?”
“He foretold my death—or should I say my rebirth?—as an Undying.”
Her throat closed, her mouth suddenly parchment dry. “No. It’s a mistake. It can’t be…”
He shrugged. “I may live forever, Morgan. But I won’t wait forever. Not even for you.”
Amos bustled in, carrying a second decanter and glasses, his displeasure clear. Seeing him looking round for a place to set down his burden, Cam lifted his head. “You can put it here,” he said, clearing a place on the table by his chair, pushing the books, papers, and a hideous dish of Sevres china to the floor with a crash.
The dish survived. Too bad.
It had been one of a set Charlotte had purchased shortly after their wedding during her buy-her-way-to-happiness phase. Expensive, but ultimately harmless. A shame she’d given it up for less benign means of making him pay.
And now Uncle Josh asked him to set his foot in the trap again. With a woman he’d never met whose only appeal lay in her political affiliations and the funds she had invested on the Change.
“Thank you, Amos. That’ll be all for tonight.” Amos seemed hesitant to leave him alone, so Cam lowered his best officer’s glower on his hovering servant. “I said, good night.”
Amos knew when arguing was fruitless, part of the reason he made such a good valet. So giving a curt, wordless nod, he left. Only the firm closing of the door evidence of his disapproval.
Left alone, Cam poured out a glass of whiskey. Downed it without pause. Refilled the glass, the second one following just as quickly. After the first blast of throat-burning fire, the whiskey’s heat sang through him, relaxing muscles, loosening the taut knot in the pit of his stomach.
His uncle had him by the balls. Wouldn’t hesitate to twist if he thought it in Cam’s best interest. He hadn’t told Morgan about his uncle’s threat. Or about the woman who awaited his best all-women-love-a-uniform chivalry.
Why bother?
She remained determined to keep a distance between them—a distance that seemed laughable when they’d already shared so much. But a distance uncloseable despite his best efforts. He needed to stop tilting at windmills and accept the inevitable. He and Morgan weren’t meant for each other.
And did it matter now? Lord Delvish had foreseen Cam’s death at Doran’s hands. A living death as a creature that could never die. Could never be killed.
What Delvish had not foreseen was whether Cam lived on in defeat as one of Doran’s puppets or if the Amhas-draoi was defeated, the price being that Cam remained trapped evermore. An immortal doomed to see those around him perish as he lingered on to the ends of the world.
Could he watch Morgan age while he remained young? Could he hold her in his arms as she died? As his children died? And his children’s children?
A thought to drive anyone to drink.
Cam pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, wishing himself in the flagstoned parlor of his grandfather’s little house in Strathconon. Imagining the tang of a peat fire, his gran-da’s cheerful whistle as he sat blanketed in the Windsor chair by the hearth, his hands working in a flurry of carving.
As his dream took shape, the reality shifted until past and future melded into a single vision. Gran-da’s eyes warm with affection as he talked to the woman in the chair across from him, her red-gold hair brilliantly lit by the fire’s glow, her head resting on her elbows as she laughed at something the old man had said.
