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“They’re just trying to help,” Kenna answered back in the language of their fathers, putting a staying hand on her mate’s chest.
“I should hex them all with a pox for making changes to my keep without my permission,” Malcolm growled at Kenna, still in Gaelic.
“You’ve been locked in your laboratory for days,” Kenna argued.
“Did he just threaten you?” Niall growled in their common tongue, taking a step forward with murder flashing in his eyes.
Malcolm made a fist, ready and willing to go to blows with the interloper.
“Oh… he said that you all are, indeed, quite clever,” Kenna lied, sending Malcolm silent warnings of wrath. “And, he says thank you to you and your men for their hard work.” She annunciated every word through gritted teeth.
The Nordic giant quirked a suspicious eyebrow. “That’s not what it sounded like.”
Kenna grabbed Niall’s arm and guided him around Malcolm. “Oh, you know Gaelic, a rather harsh sounding language sometimes, isn’t it? Let’s go check on Ingmar and Bulvark, shall we?”
Malcolm watched as Kenna led her mate past him and disappeared around the corner in a hurry. He’d need to figure out what to do about these Berserker men. They weren’t even properly married to his kin, and yet they’d begun living together as though they had been in an alarmingly short time.
Turning, he stalked down the corridor, his footfalls echoing off the stones. First, though, he needed to stop the impending Apocalypse. Everything else could wait.
Going after the remaining Wyrd Sisters on his own was reckless, he knew. But he had a secret vengeance to reap.
And if Malcolm was in a forest, he had more than enough weapons at his disposal.
Chapter Two
My name is Sean. It was all he remembered. Anything else had disappeared into the nether ages ago. His memories, identity, and humanity. He knew he used to be something. Someone. That he had loved, and had been betrayed. But even those details had begun to dissipate within the cold, dank void that had been his home for centuries.
When the madness set in, when he felt as though he’d fall through his prison that was as insubstantial as air, and yet as strong as iron, he’d press his cheek to the cold floor and chant the one thing he knew for certain over and over again.
My name is Sean.
His name remained the only thing the Wyrd sisters hadn’t taken from his. The only thing he hadn’t pledged to them. His last possession.
It seemed to be the purpose of the nether, to strip one’s mind of all individuality. The longer one remained incarcerated there, the more of themselves they lost.
Though a thick mist shrouded the afternoon, and thicker trees blocked the sunlight, Sean blinked against the brilliance of the day. It had been precisely fifty years since he’d been called out of the nether that’d become his prison. Fifty years since he’d seen any light whatsoever, and before that it had been a few decades if he remembered correctly. In the hundred or so years he’d been incarcerated, he could count on one hand the number of times the Wyrd Sisters brought him forth to do their bidding. And once their objective had been acquired, it was back into the void with him. Alone and forgotten.
The dense forest shimmered with moisture. The leaves of trees, of which he’d forgotten the names, changed with the season, flaring into brilliant colors before they shriveled and fell to the earth. His eyes ached with the sight, but he didn’t dare close them, for fear the beauty would disappear. He’d need this memory to hold on to, in case the Wyrd sisters didn’t hold up their end of the bargain and sent him back once his job was finished. The beauty of this forest would keep him for decades, until it, too, faded.
The damp flora beneath his feet felt like a carpet of clouds. He didn’t even care about the biting chill, and couldn’t help but run the moss between his toes with a child’s relish.
Even the wet, cold air that reached through his threadbare cloak until he trembled with body-tensing shivers felt better than the perpetual dry cold of his prison. It was something. A sensation and, though unpleasant, it was life-affirming.
Watching his hot breath puff into the autumn air, Sean drifted forward, ignoring the strange rustlings and noises of the forest. He only had one purpose, and the Wyrd Sisters’ evil Magick would protect him from all else.
He must seduce Malcolm de Moray, and say the spell Badb had given him upon his release into de Moray’s body. With it, he would take Malcolm’s Druid Magick.
He approaches… the wind hissed with the voice of Badb, as she had dominion over the air. Be ready… be ruthless.
“Yes, mistress,” Sean whispered just as trotting hoof beats drew near. Spotting a soft bit of ground beneath the corpse of a fallen tree, Sean threw himself down and made certain his threadbare trews hung low on his hips. He’d been dumped into this realm without so much as a sleeve, let alone any garment up top but for a rag who thought enough of itself to try a life as a cloak.
A damsel in distress?
As a dark shadow formed within the swirling mist and began to solidify, Sean moaned as piteously as he could.
“Help. Please sir. Help me?”
He didn’t have to fake his open-mouthed gasp as the Shire steed obediently stopped, horse and rider peering down at him with nearly identical looks of astonished curiosity.
