Cassian (The Immortal Highland Centurions #2) - Jayne Castel

PROLOGUE

ETCHED IN MY HEART

Lothian

Alba (Scotland)

Spring, 1001 AD

THE TIME HAD come to say goodbye.

Like a doomed man awaiting his execution, Cassian had dreaded this moment.

But now it was before him, and there was no hiding from it.

Lilla was dying.

It was dark and smoky inside the cottage, despite that bright spring sunshine bathed the world outdoors. The glow of the hearth a few yards away cast a ruddy light over Lilla’s face, softening the lines of sickness and age. Her grey hair, once the color of ripe wheat, fanned out around her upon the pillows.

Staring down at Lilla, Cassian could still see the lass he’d swept away to live with him in the hills of Lothian. Despite that she was now aged and gravely ill, to Cassian, she was as bonny as she’d been the first day he laid eyes upon her.

Lilla had been barely twenty when they met. She hadn’t cared who he was, or that they could never have a normal life like other people.

“Cass, mo chridhe … don’t look so sad.” Lilla’s voice, weak and raspy, filled the gentle silence.

“I can’t help it, love,” he whispered back, his fingers tightening around hers. Her hands were so thin and frail these days, the skin papery. “I wish I could have given you the life you deserved.”

“Ye have,” she replied, offering him a weak smile. The expression pained her, and she sank deeper into the nest of pillows supporting her head and shoulders.

Cassian shook his head. His throat was now so tight it was difficult to swallow, to speak, to breathe. Yet he forced himself on. “I couldn’t give you children.”

His voice choked off then. He wanted to say more—that she should have left him while she was still young, should have returned to her kin and found herself a man who could give her a normal life.

But instead, she’d remained with him.

“Fifty years,” she whispered, her sunken gaze fixing him with a surprisingly fierce look. “All this time together and ye still think that matters to me?”

“But doesn’t it?”

Her thin fingers clutched at his hand. “Ye have given me everything, Cass. I only wish that I too could live forever.” Her chest rattled now, making it hard for her to finish the sentence, yet she managed. “So that we may never be parted.”

Tears blurred Cassian’s vision.

The Lord of Light strike him down. He’d known this moment would come, yet he was utterly unprepared for how awful it felt. The agony of impending loss crushed his chest with a pain that was hard to bear.

Lilla had remained youthful and vibrant for so long, he’d almost believed that nothing would change. Even when the first signs of age came upon her—stiff joints in the morning and the appearance of lines around her large blue eyes—he still denied it. But time marched on, relentless and cruel, and when she became bent and frail, he could no longer lie to himself.

The Grim Reaper was coming for his wife, and he was powerless to stop it.

The other two who’d been cursed along with him all those years ago—Maximus and Draco—knew that it was foolish to give your heart to a mortal woman, or to live with one as long as he had. They’d warned him this day would come. But he’d shrugged off their concerns.

Neither of them had met a woman like Lilla MacKenzie.

“I wish that too,” he whispered back, his voice breaking. “I’d give anything to make it so.”

“Tell me a story, mo ghràdh,” she murmured, her eyes flickering shut. “My favorite one … about how ye became immortal.”

Cassian swallowed hard. She’d always enjoyed that tale, despite that it wasn’t a happy one. In the past, he’d tease her by refusing to tell it, until she tickled him under his arms and he finally relented.

He wouldn’t refuse this morning, even if he wasn’t in the mood for storytelling. Lilla liked hearing about his past, and he wouldn’t deny her, especially now.

“I was once part of the Imperial Roman army’s Ninth legion,” he began softly, one hand clasping hers while the other gently stroked her face. “‘The Hispana’ it was called, for the bulk of its force was made up of men from Spain … like me.”

He sucked in a breath, digging deep to remember those days. “We were once a proud legion, but centuries of campaigning in Britain had weakened us, and when I found myself stationed at Eboracum, near the northern frontier, morale was at its lowest point. Emperor Trajan wanted the uprisings in