Incarnate: The Moray Druids #3 (Highland Historical) (5 page)

Vían turned her shackled wrists this way and that, testing the security of the iron and her ability to slip out of it.  Of course, it would figure that Malcolm’s chains would hold fast, that his dungeon would be as absolute as the void had been.  It was almost worse, because she could mark the passing of time through the narrow barred window at the top of the tall stone wall. The sunlight crept in a moving square across the floor, and every moment it passed was a moment she could mark her failures. 

It had taken some considerable reworking of the wards to allow her into the castle, and still keep the Wyrd Sisters out. The power of the de Moray Druids was nothing like the dark workings she’d seen from her captors.  Their spells were lyrical chants and prayers and even songs.  Their runes pulsed with light instead of darkness, and their Magick was fortified with love rather than hatred. 

But the wrath in Malcolm’s eyes had been dangerous and terrifying.  More frightening than any of the atrocities she’d witnessed as a captive of the Wyrd Sisters.  In fact, it was the dark-haired, black-eyed Berserker, Bael, who’d shackled her and whisked her to the dungeon.

Because Malcolm couldn’t bear to look at her, didn’t trust himself to touch her without causing her harm.  He’d said as much.

And who could blame him?  He’d offered to make her his queen, and she’d betrayed him.

The irony weighed on her chest like a load of bricks. 

As the shadows grew long, and the meager light from the outside began to dissipate, Vían fought an encompassing, paralyzing panic.  Her chains became heavier, the stones colder and more unforgiving.  The scuttles of vermin, unseen or just imagined, were more frightening than the complete isolation of the void. 

You’ve failed us, Vían.
Badb’s voice hissed on the wind. 
We’re coming with the Grimoire, and if you don’t take what we bade you when we break the wards, then you’ll be returned to the void for eternity.  But first we’ll make you watch as we toy with your lover, and slaughter everyone he loves…

“No,” she whimpered, dropping to her knees.  Even in this dungeon she wasn’t safe from their evil.  The darkness always found her.  That was her curse.  She’d traded her soul to it, and now had to live with an eternity of tormented regrets.

The sound of the heavy bolt and the scrape of the door against the stones brought Vían to her feet.  Never let it be said that she faced her fate on her knees. 

Never again.  Not even before Malcolm de Moray.

His climb down the dungeon steps was long, as though he didn’t want to reach the bottom any more than she wanted him to.  Golden light from his torch spilled over the stones from the entry a moment before his wide frame filled the archway.

Vían’s heart leapt into her throat and stayed there, rendering her mute, as she watched him mount the torch in its sconce.

Gone was the gentle, patient lover of the prior night.  Gone was the noble, beloved ruler of the Pictish people.  The man who stalked into her prison trembled with a fury that covered wounds.  Wounds that she’d created.  Scars she’d ripped open.

As he loomed over her, a creature of cold rage and hot blood, one word ripped from his lips that surprised them both. 

“
Why
?”

The question encompassed so much, and yet Vían didn’t know where to start.  He had such control, and such power.  She realized now that the Wyrd Sisters, as potent as their dark Magick was, underestimated this Druid. 

“You have no right to ask me that,” she answered, cursing the tremor in her voice.  “My reasons are my own.”  And they were many. 

“I have every right!” he exploded, the walls of the prison trembling with the force of his emotion.  He captured both her shoulders in a brutal grip, and pulled her to him so his eyes burned down into hers.  “But I wasna asking why ye’re a minion of those evil hags.” He gathered a cold, lethal calm back into his voice.  “I was asking
why
I still desire ye as desperately as I do. Even after everything ye’ve done.”

Vían didn’t have time to process the question as he crushed his lips to hers in a punishing kiss.  He didn’t plunder or explore, didn’t give her time to respond, but instead kissed her long enough to bruise her lips and then ripped his mouth from hers with a sound of aggravation. 

“Damn ye,” he forced through gritted teeth, and bent to kiss her again. 

“No!” Vían cried out, her chains scraping the earth as she lifted her hands and pushed against his chest.  “Damn
you
,” she spat.  “Damn you for making me care!”

They circled each other like suspicious wolves, but her shackles restricted too much movement.  Emotions swooped and flew about them like bats in a cave, blindly searching for a safe place to rest and finding none. 

“You know what it’s like as their prisoner,” she accused.  “Can you blame me for doing anything they asked to escape their wrath?”

“Ye could have told me.  I would have protected ye.”

His words both touched and angered her at the same time.  “How can you be so arrogant?  They threaten me even now, within these walls.  I am not their prisoner as you were Malcolm, I am their
possession
.  They own me, body and soul.”

Malcolm froze in place, his eyes daggers of emerald fire within the sharp planes of his masculine face, his chest lifting and falling as though he’d run a league at full speed.  “The only way that could be is if ye…”

“
Yes
,” she hissed, a bit of her soul flickering and dying like a candle in a storm at the disgust and disbelief in his eyes.  “Yes, I made a deal with them.  I sold my soul, more than a century ago, and I became one of their
minions
, as you call it.”

He took a step toward her and opened his mouth, but Vían backed away, holding a hand up against him. 

“Don’t you dare ask me why,” she warned.  “It doesn’t matter anymore.  Just comfort yourself with the knowledge that whatever happens here tonight, whether you win or lose this battle, I’ll be thrown back in the dark void that has been my personal hell for the rest of eternity.”  Her voice wavered on that last sentence, so she kicked her chin up a notch.  “You’ll be done with me forever.”

“I’m not done with ye,” he growled. “I’ll
never
be done with ye.”  Tearing off his shirt, Malcolm tossed it to the stones.  This time he stalked her like a predator, reaching out and dragging her against his hard, corded torso with punishing force.  “Ye’ve bewitched me, somehow,” he accused, giving her a shake for emphasis.  “Ye canna belong to them, Vían, because ye are
mine
.”

Oh, how she wished that could be true. 

Even if her soul were to be set free, she’d instantly die. “Malcolm—”

His fingers pressed against her lips.  “Doona speak,” he commanded as his lips descended once more.  He had to know.  The tension in his muscles, the bruising desperation of his lips told her that he realized the futility of their connection, but refused to accept it. 

It was the anger of a man who was a Druid in his spirit and a King in his land.  He was used to controlling his environment.  To bending others to his will. 

But she was something he could neither control nor possess. 

With a frustrated groan, he shoved her tattered shift above her waist, baring her sex.  In an astonishingly graceful maneuver, he turned her to the bars and forced her to cling to them as his kilt hit the stones at their feet. 

His body was a muscular mass of coiled strain behind her as he gripped her ass with bruising fingers and maneuvered his erection to her entrance. 

She went wet for him, panting as alarm and shock heightened the blood and lust racing through her veins.  His growl of possession drowned out her whimper of submission and he surged inside her with a powerful stroke.

Pleasure rocked her, flooding her limbs, and she threw back her head with a moan. 

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, as he thrust forward again, harder this time.  Deeper. 

“Shut up.”  He wrapped her hair in his fist and secured her neck in place as he shoved inside her with such force, her teeth clacked together.

“Forgive me,” she panted. 

“
Never
.” He thrust forward again and again, his hips bucking against her ass with jarring force.  It took all her strength to brace herself against the bars, so the power of his body didn’t crush her against them.  Her arms trembled and burned with the effort, and sweat bloomed on her skin. 

He thrust so deep he evoked sensations she’d never before experienced.  Her body wanted to thrust back, to seek release and to meet his need.  But his relentless rhythm was too brutal and too fast, so Vían helplessly took what he gave her.  His growls became groans, and the friction intensified. 

“Come for me, temptress,” he commanded against her ear, tugging on her hair in a way that caused her inner muscles to clench with a spiraling pleasure.  “Scream my name as ye knew it all along.”

She obeyed.  Pleasure seized her in its unrelenting hold and his name poured from her lips again and again.  First as a plea, then as a prayer.  And at last a worshipful gasp as wave after wave of bliss pulled her from the void and lights exploded even in the darkness behind her eyelids. 

When the climax began to fade, the Wyrd Sister’s cruel threat permeated her pleasure with a raw pain.

We’ll toy with your lover, and slaughter everyone he loves…

Inside her heat, Malcolm grew impossibly thicker, hotter, and his breath sped with his approaching climax.  Conjuring her courage, she squeezed her eyes shut once more and whispered the words Badb had made her memorize. Three times.  She had to whisper them three times and it would be over. 

Her 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—”

His strong hand clamped over her mouth as his movements became jerky and frenzied.  The entire castle seemed to tremble with the strength of his roar, and for a long moment, Vían 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 her back, running his cheek along the rough fabric of her shift 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,” she whispered, dropping her forehead against the cold bars, her lungs seizing with despair.  “They’ve come for us both.”

Malcolm gripped Vían’s delicate shoulders and turned her to face him, his eyes searching hers 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 she would have been successful. 

Vían’s eyes dropped to his chest and her chin wobbled in such a way that it tore at his heart.  “Because I’m a fool,” she gave a harsh, humorless laugh.  “I’d planned to.  But you touched me and everything…changed.”  She blinked up at him as though trying to understand it, herself.  “And I’ve given up my soul for a
man
, a second time.”

Malcolm seized upon that bit of information.  “What do ye mean?”

She hesitated, but he shook her as though doing so would rattle the answers from her. “Tell me what happened,” he demanded. “Help me make sense of this before I go to face my fate.” 

After a long moment, she nodded, so he released her and she turned from him, only able to speak her truth to the stones. 

Malcolm used the moment to dress as she gathered her thoughts, watching the way the firelight threw gold and blue hues into her raven-black hair.

“More than a century ago, I fell in love with a War Chief named Kenneth McManus,” she 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,” she 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.”

She paused then for such a long time, Malcolm wondered if she was going to finish, but he remained quiet while she gathered her words. 

“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.

Vían turned to him, her 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 her, Malcolm went to her, enfolding her in his arms and tucking her against his body.  “He couldna find a way?” he asked.  

She shook her head against him, a tear falling from her cheek to his bare chest.  “He never even tried,” she whispered.  “He married another lass, and forgot about me.”

Malcolm held her even tighter, cursing the man’s name.  “If it makes ye feel better, the Gregors decimated the McManus, and took their lands.”

She gave a short laugh, and then a sniff.  “It does help a bit,” she said fondly pressing herself closer to him.  “Since I’ve been in the void, Malcolm, I’ve suffered every form of madness imaginable.  I’ve prayed to every God and Goddess known, and they’ve all abandoned me to the darkness, just like Kenneth did. And so, you see, I made a vow that if I ever had the chance to escape the void, I would take it, no matter who became a casualty of the circumstance.”

In that moment, Malcolm not only understood her choices, he sympathized with them.  His anger drained away, and he was left with a helpless sympathy that unsettled his very soul.

“But ye didna, lass,” he murmured.  “Here I still am, in command of my people and my powers.”

She made a bitter sound, but didn’t pull away.  “Like I said, I’m a fool.  I promised myself that I would never again sacrifice my interest for a man or his cause.”

“I doona blame ye.” Malcolm stroked her hair, thinking that he ought to take the shackles from around her wrists.  She didn’t deserve them.  She’d been imprisoned enough.

Lifting her chin, she rose on her toes to press a kiss to his jaw, her lips seeking his own.  Malcolm tilted his head down to cover her mouth with his.  The kiss was soft and achingly sweet.  Malcolm drew his lips over hers again and again, the tenderness passing between him blooming to life against his soul.

She pulled back, her lovely eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “I lied,” she whispered.  “I lied to myself.”

“How do you mean?” Malcolm brushed her hair away from the pale perfection of her cheek.  She was such a beauty.    

“Your cause is to save humanity from the Apocalypse.  That is a cause worth giving my soul for.”

“Vían,
no
.” Malcolm panicked, clutching her to him with all his strength.  “Doona do anything foolish.”

A tear slid down her cheek, but her features were serene.  “And you, Malcolm de Moray, are a man worth the sacrifice, because it’s one you’d never ask me to make.”

He gasped her name, but in the next instant he was only clutching her thin, empty garment as the manacles that had once shackled her wrists clattered to the stones.

The inhuman sound that ripped from him shook the entire castle and brought his family storming into the dungeon. 

“Malcolm!” Kenna gasped, her amber eyes wide with astonishment.  “What’s happening?”

Malcolm turned to them slowly, shaking with the force of his rage and loss, trying to summon the cold wrath of which he knew himself capable. 

“Arm yourselves,” he ordered his Druid family, and their Berserker mates in a dark voice he’d never heard before.  “We’re going to war.” 

Even Bael and Niall stepped out of Malcolm’s way as he stalked toward the stairs, aiming to make preparations for the battle to come.  First, he was going to defeat the Wyrd Sisters and stave off the Apocalypse.  Then, he was going to fetch his woman, even if he had to claw his way through the depths of hell to do so.