My Cursed Highlander (45 page)

He rubbed his burning eyes and listened to Viviana beg God for His assistance. She prayed for Marea, for Makayla and Lily. She pleaded with the Virgin Mary to save Cora-Rose and then her whispered words turned to sobs.

"Forgive me for loving my husband." Her entreaty pierced his heart and filled his eyes with unwanted tears. The pressure in his chest built and squeezed his lungs like a suffocating vise. Unable to bear witness to her pain, he swallowed, gripped the amulet tight into the palm of his hand, and stepped into the aisle. "I would do anything to free ye of your pain."

Viviana jumped to her feet and whirled. Her hand flew to her breast, and the light pouring in through the broken stained glass window wrapped her in rainbows. Her violet eyes, wet with sadness, burrowed a path straight to his soul.

Taveon pulled his gaze from her and stared at the stone in his hand. "I want for nothing more than to be your champion, but I have failed ye." He sucked in a ragged breath.

Feeling her way passed each pew, Viviana stumbled through the aisle with her hand poised in front of her. "Taveon?"

"I'm right in front of ye." His throat dried waiting for her to reach him, waiting for her to close the gap and touch him. He should have held his tongue. He should have savored the sight of her and said naught, but he wanted her forgiveness. Yet another selfish desire.

Her fingertips fell upon his chest and the last of his guard fled him. He pulled her into his arms and buried his face into the curve of her neck. She returned his embrace without hesitation and consoled him like a bruised child. If they only lived this single day, he wanted to spend it loving her.

She pulled back, cupped his cheek, and brushed her thumb over his lips. "Let me help you."

Emotions attacked his gut and burned his face. His throat constricted, desperate to fight her... desperate to kiss her. "I will not let ye die."

She pulled his mouth to hers and dampened his dry lips with a kiss that ripped fire through his insides. He felt her love in the way she held him and tasted her sorrow in the salty tears that slipped between their lips.

She eased away far too soon. "I only wish to talk to Elise." Viviana uncurled his rigid fingers, retrieved the amulet, and draped it over her head. "Take me to the burial ground."

No.
He shook his head. "I fear for your life should ye go there." He held tight to her hand and kissed her palm, astounded by her constant bravery.

"Elise is not our enemy." A gentle tug encouraged his footing out of the kirk.

Leery, Taveon walked beside her through a weed-ridden path toward the burial ground. The air was cool and by no means cause for the sweat beading at his temples. His instincts told him not to proceed, but Viviana continued forward undaunted. An eerie sensation spread gooseflesh over his scalp. "I dinnae like this." His footing stuck.

"Elise did not inhabit your body because she knew you would take your life. Mayhap she knows more than Marea or Gillian is telling us."

"Think ye I have not tried to speak to the woman? We cannae even be certain she will appear." A fierce wind blew through the tall grasses. Taveon's pulse vibrated in his neck like a frightened rabbit.

"She is there." Viviana pointed toward the rock and urged him forward. "Come, she awaits us." Viviana's words held a hint of excitement he did not share.

His gaze narrowed and took in the perimeter of the burial ground. The grave markers formed a semi-circle on the northern side of the rock. Dark gray clouds sat on the horizon even with the edge of the cliff, but no dead spirits were visible to his naked eyes. "How in the name of Zeus is it possible for ye to see her, but I cannae?"

Now leading him, Viviana peeked over her shoulder and offered him a small smile. "I know not, but she is there as are the others."

Viviana practically dragged him the remaining steps, then stopped just short of the rock. Standing at her back, eyes wide and dry, he watched her extend her hand into nothingness.

His breath caught, waiting, anticipating.

Viviana gasped, her spine snapped ram-rod straight.

Gripping her shoulders, he spun her around to face him and wasn't nearly prepared for the change he witnessed in her eyes. The pupils contracted to small black dots surrounded by a familiar purple, but the outer ring was green.

A knot stuck in his throat while a rush of panic clutched his heart and squeezed. "Viviana!"

* * *

Viviana held tight to Taveon's arms and stared into deep blue eyes filled with fear. No overlapping ghostlike images of herself distorted her perception. She simply saw him.

A thick warm energy filled her insides and made her fingertips tingle against Taveon's skin. Viviana felt Elise's presence. She was inside her.

The heady fragrance of saffron filled Viviana's senses, then a burst of unexplained emotions flooded her eyes with tears. Viviana swiped the wetness from her cheeks and focused on her husband's handsome face. So strong and sharply cut. "So beautiful," she whispered and touched his bristled jaw.

"As braw as Zeus himself,"
Elise's comment made Viviana smile. A giggle slipped passed her lips and caused Taveon's forehead to ripple with deep set lines.

Viviana caressed his furrowed brow. "He forever worries."

"And rightly so." Taveon pushed hair away from Viviana's face. His piercing gaze bore directly into her own and nigh stole her breath. "Your eyes. They are... different. Can ye see me?"

Viviana nodded and blinked away the tears blurring her vision. She became immersed in the enchantment of being sighted, overwhelmed by the colors God had chosen to paint His creation. Bright pink and gold swelled behind fat gray clouds at the cliff's edge where the other women stood, waiting. An opaque half-moon hung low above sparkling tips of breaking waves, but the color that held Viviana rapt was the deep jeweled blue in her husband's eyes.

"Viviana?" Taveon's grip tightened. The lines around his eyes deepened.

"Do not be afraid, but Elise is here. With me. I can hear her."

Taveon bent close and brushed the side of his roughened cheek against Viviana's. "Please dinnae take her from me. I am begging you to help us."

"He loves you."

Warmth surrounded Viviana's heart, as if Taveon had spoken the words himself. She knew he loved her, but she also knew he was afraid to admit it.

"Love is a powerful thing. It aligns the stars in the sky and controls the turn of the tide. Love is stronger that any words of black magic."

The amulet hummed against Viviana's skin. She wrapped her hand around the talisman's heat and felt the steady rhythm. The beating. A pulse.

"Kael loved me much the same as Taveon loves ye,"
Elise said as a memory manifested inside Viviana's head—Kael bent on one knee over Elise's lifeless body lying in a freshly dug grave. He kissed her blue lips and wrapped the amulet around her clasped hands.
"Guard my heart, my love. Until we are together again."

My heart?
Viviana searched for the truth in his words. The amulet didn't hold Elise's heart, it held Kael's heart. Viviana felt as if she'd solved an ancient riddle. In some ways she had, but what did it mean?

"Can she help us?" Taveon's fingers dug into Viviana's back, his hopeless eyes filled with anguish. "Do ye know what she wants?"

"I want to be with my husband."

Viviana felt Elise's pain as vividly as if it were her own. She experienced her loss, her sadness. Clinging to Taveon's shoulders, Viviana watched the images unfold behind her closed eyes. A man—Kael—made love to Elise in the same bedchamber Viviana now called her own. He caressed Elise's swollen abdomen and kissed the tears from her cheeks.

Viviana felt their love. It was a love that transcended time, a love that survived a hundred years of yearning, and she didn't dare deny its power.

"Elise wants to be with Kael," Viviana answered Taveon's question, but feared the sacrifice she would have to make to see Elise's entreaty to fruition.

"How?"

"Set me free,"
Elise begged as a rustle of icy wind circled them.

Thunder made a crescendo overhead. She pushed herself out of Taveon's arms and studied her surroundings.

Gillian is coming.
The women repeated the warning in whispered chaos and gathered round them in a protective circle.

"What is it?" Taveon asked just as a woman's scream sliced through the air.

Viviana turned toward Ravenhurst to witness Keegan dragging Marea down the hillock with one hand, the other brandishing a sword. Marea's strides were not nearly as long as his causing her to stumble, but Keegan yanked her back to her feet and hastened toward them. His movements were sharp, fierce, unyielding.

"Shite!" Taveon pushed Viviana behind the wall of his body.

She searched her mind for a means to aid Marea, but her wits became deluded with feelings of hatred. Elise's desire for revenge was overwhelming. "Marea is innocent of the evil inside her," Viviana defended. "You must help her."

"Nay. I saved Gillian once. I willnae make the same mistake twice."
Elise's words were laced with regret and accompanied by another memory—the twist of a key opened a heavy wooden door. Elise eyed her twin sister inside a cell. Pale hair, green eyes, a rounded belly not nearly as swollen as her own. Elise hugged her unborn child and watched Gillian flee.

"Why would you set her free?" Viviana rubbed her temples trying to quickly decipher the chain of events.

"To protect her babe. Kael intended to have Gillian executed if I died during childbearing. I should have abided by his decision to have her burned before we discovered she was with child."

"What happened to the amulet?"

"Gillian stole it from my grave and boarded a slave ship bound for Dania."

Now understanding the whole of it, Viviana knew she wouldn't gain Elise's sympathy. To Elise, Marea was the enemy.

Viviana thought of Lily and sought Taveon's help to save Marea. Viviana dug her fingertips into his muscular arm. "You must do something to save Marea. Stop him."

"What is amiss, brother?" Taveon inched Viviana backward toward the outer perimeter of the burial ground. He glanced over his shoulder. Over the cliff's edge.

She felt him tremble.

"Cora-Rose began her labors. She is going to die." Features wrought with determination, Keegan jerked Marea by the wrist and flung her to the ground at Taveon's feet forcing them another step backward.

A pebble fell away from the edge and bounced soundlessly into the whirling air.

Viviana scrambled to Taveon's side.

Keegan pointed his sword at Marea's back, his eyes filled with insanity. "Give the soothsayer the amulet so she might end this."

"Nay, brother. 'Twas a farce. Marea is no soothsayer and ye weel know it." Taveon extended his hand to Marea.

Her head snapped up with a jerk. "Protect Lily. Do not give Gillian the amulet." Her neck swelled as duel lumps rose beneath the skin. Tears ran in rivulets over Marea's cheeks, then eight gashes split the skin from her temples to her jaw.

Marea wailed—the hoarse sound part scream, part demon. She sucked in an audible breath.

Pale-green eyes flecked with gold stabbed Viviana's watchful stare like a hot dagger. She froze, petrified.

"If she wants the amulet, let her have it."

Viviana raised the chain over her head, uncertain if she managed the task on her own or if Elise coaxed her into the act. Viviana stared at the amulet glowing purple between her fingers. She held all their desires in the palm of her hand. The stone was the embodiment of so many dreams; Viviana's eyes, Kael's heart, Gillian's immortality... life, death, love.

A blue vein of lightning splintered through the sky and a deafening hum hollowed Viviana's ears. "May God save us all." She closed her eyes and threw the talisman into the open air.

"No!" Taveon bellowed just as a body crashed into Viviana and carried her over the cliff's edge.

Chapter 35

Taveon's heart beat out of cadence.

He leaned over the precipice, eyes locked on the jagged rocks below. His gut seemed to swell with molten steel, but his fear of heights was a paltry aversion to the terror now gripping him. He refused to accept this event as final. Without thought, he dove from the cliff after her.

Mind-numbing seconds passed during his decent. Events whipped through his mind's eye in sporadic flashes; Viviana smiled at him in an ivory gown. Da jumped from the cliff. Blood dripped from the mouth of an Englishman he'd gutted in Berwickshire. Viviana made love to him in the looking glass. Makayla's birth. Nessa's death.
I am with child.

He screamed.

As if someone pushed him outward, his body seemed to bounce on a current that carried him away from the sharp rocks jutting upright from the sea. Wind and salt burned his skin and eyes, then what felt like a sheet of ice crashed into every cell of his being.

Silence.

Blackness.

Pain.

Dark murky water enveloped him. His ears popped. Pressure squeezed his head and stomach, and an inferno combusted in his chest, but he was alive and desperate to find his wife.