creature, and yet you’re centuries over a thousand years! I can’t believe all this, and I’m a bloody Banshee.” She swung a slap at his shoulder, but of course it only resulted in chilly goose bumps.
“Did yer father ever tell ye Faerie stories when ye were a wee lass?”
She sobered a little, her eyes becoming wistful. “All the time.”
“Did he ever mention what happened when an unsuspecting human ventured into a Faerie ring and spent a night in the land of the Fae?”
“He said that a man would spend one night in Faerie and come back in time to meet his grandchildren all grown. That time doesn’t pass there like it does—ohhhhhh.” Comprehension dawned and her eyes went round as an owl’s.
“Imagine what a month or so would do to ye.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “In what time did you return to Scotland?”
Daroch focused on the pain in his leg so as to deny the hollow ache lancing through his chest. What time had he returned? In a time where the Druids had mysteriously disappeared leaving not a trace to prove their advanced existence. To a time where the united people of the holy emerald isles had divided into warring clans living in hovels while their English overlords oppressed and objectified them. To a time when everyone he knew and loved was long dead and forgotten and he’d taken on the clan McLeod because they’d been the first to shelter him and show him kindness. “In time to ride with Robert the Bruce against the English,” he answered darkly. “I was the mood for warfare right about then.”
“A hundred years at least!” she put a hand to her forehead in disbelief. “And you’ve been so young and…” she gestured at him with a helpless hand and Daroch found himself mighty interested as to what descriptive word she would pull out of that inquisitive brain of hers. “And… vigorous this whole time?” Her pale translucent cheeks tinged a becoming shade of pink.
She thought him vigorous, did she? Heat crept up his collar from beneath his robes and he cleared his throat. “My theory is the food I ate and drank in Faerie had properties that slowed the aging process down, though I seem to have aged about fifteen years in the last twenty, so I also theorize that the process is accelerating again.”
“Oh? So that would place you at about five and thirty, I’d wager, though your physique is far better than that of any man I know of that age.” Her blush intensified.
A niggling warmth swelled inside him and Daroch squelched it the best way he knew how. Intellectual distraction. “I find it fascinating that ye blush.” He squinted at her creamy complexion, the tinge still prominent through her ever-present green hue. “Blushing is usually a body’s reaction to emotional stimuli through the thermo dilation of blood veins. But yer heart doesna beat. Yer blood doesna flow. So how does blushing occur?” The temptation to reach out and touch her skin became so overwhelming, he passed a finger through her cheek.
Startled, she jumped back from him and batted at his hand like a wee kitten. Both of their attempts at contact were predictably unsuccessful. More was the pity, in his case. Which caused him pause. He hadn’t wanted to touch a woman in over one hundred years. Why had that suddenly changed?
“Now who is asking silly questions?” she huffed, clearly disconcerted. “It’s magic, who knows how it works, only that it does? Everything seems to work as it did before except that I don’t eat or drink anymore, of course. But when I cry, tears flow. When I spit… well it’s strange but it… happens. Mostly.”
The erotic possibilities of her admission slammed into him.
Gods be damned.
“And only lately, I’ve started to feel my heart beating. Very fast, in most cases, like it’s going to jump out of my chest.” She pressed a dainty hand to her breast and speared him with eyes the color of Irish moss.
“Do ye,” his brows lifted. “And when does this occur?”
“Only when I’m around you.”
Daroch’s own heart threw itself against his ribcage. Something had to be done about this.
She was no longer harmless.
He truly was a man out of time. Kylah studied Daroch as he foraged through the unused piles of peat bricks and coal in the ruins of her family home and washhouse. He’d been strangely quiet after her admission and his withdrawal depressed her. As he’d reapplied his layer of silt at the Allt