Redeemed (Heroes of the Highlands) - By Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,44
use words and platitudes that he didn’t believe in, only for lack of sufficient verbiage to describe his complicated emotions.
The previous night had become a haze of lust and sex and recovery that had only dwindled when fatigue forced exhausted, trembling muscles to sleep. Barely a word was spoken between them and those that were only served as carnal encouragement. Kylah had taken him any way he’d wanted her to. She never issued commands or made demands of him, only desperate, passionate pleas that made him feel powerful and dominant. She’d allowed him to drive their pleasure in any direction he desired it.
And he’d desired it all.
He’d taken her with his mouth. With his hands. With his body, and sometimes intense combinations thereof. And in doing so, systematically shattered any physical barrier or taboo left between them. Only when she begged him for respite did he tuck her against his sated, exhausted body and allow sleep to overtake them both.
She loved him. Or thought she did, if ever there were such a thing. She trusted him. Desired him. Stood by him here at the end and risked everything she held dear to fight for his justice despite being denied her own.
Foreign and intense emotion rushed into his throat until it was thoroughly blocked. He couldn’t have formed words if he tried.
Kylah’s hand wound its way into his and gripped it with a strength that surprised him enough to command his attention.
War braids tangled at her temple and the ancient blue war paint of their Woad ancestors marked her lovely features in a fashion very similar to his own. Dressed in a loose blue shift and kirtle, she clutched a long, deadly dirk that he’d given her this morning, coated in a substance ultimately dangerous to her.
“Do ye know how to use that?” he rasped, wishing he’d said something better, more meaningful.
Her wee face was fierce as she brought it out in front of her. “Not even a little bit,” she admitted with a wry smirk. “But the important part is, I know the sharp bit goes into a Faerie.”
Daroch’s heart swelled. Her courage put him to shame and a sudden icy fear clutched at him when he thought of all that might befall her in this endeavor.
“Perhaps ye should join yer sister in the cave,” he suggested, turning to her and taking her shoulders in his hands. “I can’t stand the thought of ye—”
“Perhaps you should hold your tongue,” her brow lifted along with her lips in a taunting smile. “There’s not a force on this earth or in the heavens that would keep me from your side.”
His heart jumped into his throat again and suddenly made him bold. “Kylah, I—”
“Do not waste your breath, Druid.” The familiar, arctic voice of the Banshee Queen froze the warm words on his tongue and his heart along with them. “It is too late to save her traitorous life and she will die screaming.”
Daroch and Kylah turned toward the Fae, who’d appeared upon the green plane behind them, trapping them effectively against the cliff. Dripping with diamonds as brilliant as the sun and robes as pure as fresh snow, they would have resembled wrathful seraphim to anyone who didn’t know better.
But Daroch knew. He knew their colors had so many facets and spectra that they could not be contained in this realm. And so they weren’t.
Despite the uncommonly warm spring sunlight, little crystals of frost swirled about them as their auras froze what moisture clung to the sea air. They were the absence of warmth. The ironic immortal antithesis of life. And an all-encompassing hatred swelled within Daroch, lent abject ferocity by the snarling wolf pack now flanking the Faeries.
“I thought ye’d bring an army,” Daroch sneered as he let go of Kylah’s hand to draw his sword. He wished like hell she were somewhere else. Somewhere safe. For, even though only The Queen, Ly Erg, and her hand-maiden stood before him, he knew they were each utterly lethal. Cliodnah and her Banshee companion could kill him with one touch. Probably with only her Banshee scream.
Cliodnah speared him with her empty eyes, and Daroch couldn’t stop the shudder of revulsion that clawed down his spine. “To gather an army, I’d have to call a council of Queens. I do not want nor do I need their permission. You humans have a charming saying about forgiveness being easier to obtain.”
“My death by your hand would be a direct violation of yer Queen’s pact,” he