encompass the hulking skeleton of a once-fortified, lovely place. “The Mackay built it for one of his daughters, Nessa. We came to her wedding here one spring. And it was here we first—”
A slow smile curved his mouth as he ran one hand up and down her arm. “I remember now. It was the first time you came to my bed.”
“Yes, but it was more than that, Torin—it was the first time I felt completely safe. In your arms, I didn’t think about witchcraft or power or knowledge. There was only you.”
“If that were true, love, none of this might have happened,” he said quietly.
Shaking her head, Shea reached up to hold his face between her palms. This she wanted him to know. To understand, before they set out on the last leg of this quest that would eventually unite them forever.
“It was true, Torin. With you, there was peace and passion and laughter.” Her hands dropped and she bowed her head as if subconsciously apologizing for the woman she had once been. “But when I was with my sisters, I forgot everything I had with you. I listened to the demands of my own greed and let what was really important to me slide away.”
Turning around, she leaned back against him and stared at the castle where she had found love and then lost it again so long ago. “So when I had to hide the Artifact—keep it safe—I brought it to the one place where I had known safety. However briefly.”
“Shea, you had only to reach for me,” he said, wrapping his muscular arms around her. “Then or now, I will be here for you. Always.”
“I know that,” she told him and took a quick, sharp breath, deliberately releasing memories that were as dust now. Time had moved on and she couldn’t, no matter how much she wished it, reclaim what had been lost. But if she completed this task, finished atoning for what her earlier self had been a part of, she could perhaps find what she had not cherished nearly enough in the past.
With her Eternal at her side, Shea felt strong. Capable. The threads of their mating were rapidly tying them together and that bond continued to strengthen every day.
Still, she felt something else. Something she had yet to confess to Torin. The dark pulse of the Artifact called to her, as it had so long ago. She felt its pull, like an insistent song repeating over and over again in her mind and heart. It was there, just beneath the surface, tempting, teasing, reminding her what she had felt in that moment of supreme power, just before her ancient world had crashed down around her.
And a part of her wanted it.
Shea swallowed hard and fought the feeling. Fought the instinct that had her clamoring to go into the castle ruin herself to retrieve the Artifact shard. She wanted to be alone with that darkness. To feel the sweet sweep of power rushing through her. And so she kept her secret to herself, hoping that if she ignored it, nothing would happen. Nothing would go cataclysmically wrong.
Taking her hand in his, Torin said, “Let’s go and get it. The sooner we’re back at Haven, with that thing stored away, the better off we’ll all be.”
“Right.” She nodded, took another deep breath and walked with him across the field and back into her past.
The interior of the ruin looked less picturesque.
Fallen stones tumbled on top of each other and bracken and ivy were slowly covering everything, like a rich green cloak, dotted with autumn wildflowers. Torin could have simply flashed them to the chapel wall, but there was something about this place, about this task, that had them both preferring to walk.
It was hard going and perhaps that was as it should be, Shea thought. She clambered over huge stones, and with Torin’s help, scaled a short wall that looked about to topple. The chapel was at the back of Nessa’s castle. Shea remembered the girl’s wedding day, when there were flowers gathered and hung from trailing ribbons along the castle walls. Musicians had played, voices lifted in song and whiskey had flowed like water.
Now, only the wind sang through the stones.
“There it is,” Shea said, pointing to a wall with chunks as big as her fist missing. “The chapel’s through there.”
“I remember.”
She looked around, worrying at her bottom lip. “It looks as though the doorway’s been blocked forever. There are so many stones and vines,