AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We’ll toy with your lover, and slaughter everyone he loves…
Inside him, Malcolm grew impossibly thicker, hotter, his breath speeding with his approaching climax.
Conjuring his courage, Sean squeezed his eyes shut once more and whispered the words Badb had made him memorize. Three times. He had to whisper them three times and it would be over.
His life would be over. Freedom beckoned.
“Blackened blood and tainted soul, from this Druid Magick pull.
Into the nether set it free, then by darkness grant unto me—”
Malcolm’s strong hand clamped over his mouth as their movements became jerky and frenzied. The entire castle seemed to tremble with the strength of his roar, and for a long moment, Sean feared that the stones would bury them both.
Maybe that would be for the best.
Lightning singed the air and screamed through the night as it touched down close by.
Malcolm withdrew with a groan and lowered his head to rest between Sean’s shoulder blades as their breaths exploded into the silent aftermath.
They’d just entered the eye of the tornado, and neither of them had an anchor.
“They’re here,” Sean whispered, dropping his own forehead against the cold bars, his lungs seizing with despair. “They’ve come for us both now.”
Chapter Six
Malcolm gripped Sean’s delicate shoulders and turned him so they faced each other, his eyes searching for a truth he was almost afraid to find.
“Before I face them… answer me this. Why didna ye do the spell last night in the woods when we made love over and over again?” His guard had been down. He was embarrassed to admit to himself that the lad would have been successful.
Sean’s eyes dropped to his chest. “Because I’m a fool,” he gave a harsh, humorless laugh. “I’d planned to. But you touched me and everything…changed.” He blinked up at Malcolm as though trying to understand it, himself. “And I’ve given up my soul for a man, a second time.”
Malcolm seized upon that bit of information. “What do ye mean?”
Sean hesitated, but Malcom shook him as though doing so would rattle the answers loose. “Tell me what happened,” he demanded. “Help me make sense of this before I go to face my fate.”
After a long moment, Sean nodded.
Malcolm released him and took the moment to dress as Sean gathered both clothes and his thoughts, He couldn’t stop watching the way the firelight threw gold and blue hues into his raven-black hair.
“More than a century ago, I fell in love with a War Chief named Kenneth McManus,” Sean began.
Malcolm instantly hated the man, though he realized the bastard had been dead a few decades, the jealousy that swirled within him was unreasonably violent.
“The McManus and the Gregor were at war,” he continued. “And at the time, the Wyrd Sisters were summoned by the Chieftain of the Gregor and paid for their dark Magick to help win the skirmish. The price, was the soul of an enemy.”
He paused then for such a long time, Malcolm wondered if he was going to finish, until he finally gathered enough resolve to continue, his forehead crimped with bemused pain.
“I thought Kenneth was so brave. That he was a man who could unite a warring people. I was proud that he chose to love me, when all the lasses chased him. But when he fell into the Wyrd Sister’s clutches, he told them to contact me. Do you know why he did that?”
Of course, Malcolm knew, but he wasn’t about to say it.
Sean turned to him, eyes filled with such bitterness and self-loathing it surprised even him. “He knew somehow, that I was weak and gullible enough to make such a stupid offer. That I would give my soul in his stead. That I loved him almost as much as he loved himself. And when it was done, he promised to find a way to liberate me…”
Unable to stand the sadness and pain radiating from Sean, Malcolm went to him, enfolding his arms around the slim shoulders with a new sense of compassion. “He couldna find a way?” he asked.
Sean shook his head, a tear falling from her cheek to his bare chest. “He never even tried,” came the tortured whisper. “He married a—a lass, and forgot about me.”
Malcolm held him even tighter, cursing the man’s name. “If it makes ye feel better, the Gregors decimated the McManus, and took their lands.”
