Highland Sorcerer (3 page)

Or it could be that he was clean and
sleekly muscled and naked and he'd traveled across space and time
to seek her gift as a Healer Enchantress… Plus she knew him. She’d
felt all the things that were important to him. And frankly, she
hadn’t been sure guys like him really existed.

She turned the water back, moving his
head under the spray to the best advantage to rinse out the
shampoo.

Toren's eyes flew open and then
tightened. He curled over. His hand splayed across his
stomach.

She slapped off the spray.

"What is it? Are you hurt?"

Had she missed something during the
healing?

His jaw clenched. "She's pulling me
back."

"What? Now?" Charity grabbed onto his
arm as though that could keep him there. "Can't you stop it? Close
off the rift somehow?"

He shook his head tightly as though the
smallest movement caused him great pain. His hand gripped the rim
of the tub.

Charity clutched her own fingers over
his to anchor him to the here and now. The thought of him being
yanked back to that witch's clutches terrified her. But he was
spelled to those bands. Did that have something to do with it? Just
because he could slip out of them traveling to time, they were
still spelled to him. "Just hold onto me. Stay here."

Agonized eyes locked onto hers. "'Tis
not possible." His hand flexed beneath her palm, rock hard, riding
out the terrible pull on his body.

How much could one man go
through?

She didn’t want him to go back to that.
Not to a woman who would just hurt him all over again. He didn’t
deserve that. He was too kind. Too honorable and protective.
Protective. He endured the torture for someone else.

"Yes it is. Anything is possible. Just
fight it."

His hand slipped from beneath hers and
he brought both palms up to her cheeks. They were callused and wet,
but Charity didn't care. Her head pounded. There was a rawness to
Toren's voice that scattered shivers across her arms. "Ye've helped
me, Charity. Ye've given me a blessed reprieve so I've the strength
now to keep fighting. D'ye understand?"

Her throat closing, she couldn't
answer. She didn’t want him to go. She wanted to help him. She’d
never wanted anything more in her life. Nothing seemed as
important. She nodded, his hands moving with her movements, fingers
curled in her hair. His jaw clenched, his chin lowered to his
chest, bearing down on a wave of pain. His form flickered in and
out like an old television on the fritz.

"No, no, Toren, stay. Hold
on."

He was losing. His lips were clamped
tight. The veins in his neck and forehead bulged.

Charity grabbed onto his wrists, sought
deep within her center and pulled. She dived for every ounce of her
healing power, everything that made her who she was, the divine
feminine within her—her gift and her strength. It roared through
her with an intensity born of desperation—blistering and
feral—which she clamped down on and controlled, riding the current
like a wild animal that she flung out, releasing everything she had
to pour into the man.

If she couldn’t keep him here, she
could at least give him the last bit of her magic to give him the
strength to endure.

A surge of wind tunneled through the
bathroom, whipping the shower curtain and hanging
towels.

Eyes wide, Toren's head jerked back.
"What are you—?" He gasped, every muscle in his body went rigid,
chest expanding on a pain-filled inhalation, dark wet hair lifting
in the frenzied charged atmosphere.

"Charity—" he screamed on a gush of
breath, his form blurring.

He disappeared beneath her grasp and
her hands whipped out, closing around air.

The wind died. Water poured out of the
faucet. Throbbing pain pounded inside her head.

Sapped of strength, Charity slumped to
the floor.

Chapter Three

Toren hurdled out of the spiraling time
rift back inside the dungeon. He dropped to the floor, hands
splayed across the grainy stone. The hated bands materialized
instantly around his wrists, the bespelled symbols he had so
painstakingly unraveled for days to make his brief escape, glowed
even more brilliantly than before—strengthened in tri-fold measure.
He would not be able to so easily slip their bonds
again.

The swirl of soft fabric rustled near.
The hem of Aldreth's white gown whispered across his fingers as the
witch crouched near his shoulders.

"Clever, clever sorcerer."

Slender fingers stroked his wet hair.
"You've bathed." She caressed the back of his shoulders. He
stiffened, vowing when he had these bands off, he'd wrap his hands
around her dainty little throat. "And have endured a healing. I
see. Ye fled to a Healer Enchantress then? And was it worth the
cost, young Limont? To have your perfect bones rejoined that I
might have the pleasure of breaking them all over again? Mended
flesh that I might once again slice? Ye believe with this healing
ye've gained the strength and will to endure, but I remind ye how
long I've lived, how patient I can be. You will break and I will
have what I seek."

Though it took every reserve he had in
him, Toren lifted his head in challenge. "Ye need my acceptance to
retrieve it." He grinned. "I'll die before giving you
that."

She cupped his chin between her palms
and frowned. "I suppose ye will." Abruptly she removed her hands
and let his head fall. Toren barely caught himself before his
forehead hit the stone.

Aldreth rose and paced away. The hem of
her gown swept along the dirty floor. "'Twould not be my favored
outcome. Ye know I prefer you to yer brothers."

Every muscle in Toren's body stiffened.
She had used the threat to his family before, yet it still punched
a hole through his gut every time. He prayed Shaw and Col remained
safely shrouded and didn't try anything stupid—like coming after
him.

Toren pushed up on his
hands, arms shaking. Aldreth was a fool if she thought threatening
his younger siblings would have the desired effect. It only
strengthened his resolve to hold out longer and give them time to
make it to the standing stones of
Reolin
Skene
and remove their magic from Aldreth's
reach permanently.

Aldreth clapped her hands together. "I
wonder if Shaw will hold out as long as ye. So young, I cannot
imagine he'd endure more than a sennight. Shall we
wager?"

Toren roared, pulling himself to his
knees. "Witch. Ye will not touch my brother."

Skirts swirling, Aldreth crouched near
again. Her finger stroked down his nose. "This doesn't have to be
difficult. We could be powerful together. Ye'll see. I'm not evil,
Toren. I will not harm yer people. That is not what I seek for
them."

"The very essence of what ye propose
will harm them."

"Nay. 'Twill make them free. 'Twill
give them more power than ye've ever considered. Think on this—yer
brother, the shifter—"

Toren froze.
Col.

"If ye gave in to the full potential of
the magic we could wield between us, it would flow through the
entire clan, as yer clan’s magic flows to you. Yer brother could
hold another form for several nights on end, not groveling just to
hold shape for the mere hours that exhausts him. All the shifters
could. And think of the attributes for yer seers and summoners, the
water-called and moon-touched. Notwithstanding the power ye'd
acquire yerself unrestrained as a sorcerer. Do ye not desire to
feel that strength run through ye? I do not understand why ye
resist our blending of magic. 'Twould make us both stronger, more
potent. ‘Twould make the clan stronger. ‘Tis a blessing that should
not go to waste."

"Which would become a curse and well ye
know it. There’s too much darkness in ye."

"Coward. The lot of ye. An entire clan
of cowards. Reach out and seize what's yours. I offer you
that."

"Ye offer naught but madness and death
for all of Limont. We've seen this before. We know what happens to
those who take upon too much magic that isn't inherently their own.
Darkness, Aldreth, like the darkness that rides upon your
soul."

"What ye call dark, I call
liberation."

"Aye, the liberation of all
oaths."

That hit a nerve. Aldreth yanked his
head back like a striking serpent. "Oaths are meant to be broken.
Think on that, sorcerer. My grandsire had the courage to challenge
the Fae and free the magic upon the land."

"Magic that was given freely from those
he challenged. The Fae are right to have guardians to balance what
they have given. 'Tis an honorable oath and blessing bestowed upon
our kind. Your grandsire was mad to believe that magic has no need
of protectors."

"Then protect magic. With me. Who
better suited than a daughter of Alduein blended with the son of
Limont?"

Toren closed his eyes. A daughter of
the clan first deemed as magic protectors whose sorcerer chief
turned on the Fae as a hound turned on its master. 'Twas a
sorrowful day to all magic born when Burnes Alduein fell and the
entire clan was banished. And these centuries later, the wee
granddaughter returned grown to take back what she believed was
rightfully hers. A powerful witch in her own right, but her magic
was tainted. All could feel the underscore of darkness skimming
across her essence. Should Toren or any of his siblings join their
magic with hers, the scale between light and dark would be
unbalanced, throwing their world into an unimaginable night where
darkness overshadowed everything.

He could not give her what she sought
without severing his oaths and dooming all earth magic to the
balance of darkness. The world would be overrun by creatures best
left skimming the shadows.

"Nay, Aldreth, joining with you would
be the breaking of all I hold dear."

She hissed and slammed his face into
the stone floor.

She swung away and threw the dirty
plaid at him. "Then rot here until ye've changed yer
mind."

Her clipped steps marched across the
floor just before the heavy wooden door creaked and banged shut,
splashing him in darkness.

Chapter Four

"I can't believe it. One of the fabled
sorcerers of Limont came to you. In the flesh."

"In nothing but his flesh." Charity
helped her sister haul the ancient tome down from the second
highest shelf. As self-appointed keeper of their family's
knowledge, Lenore's dining nook-turned-library was wall-to-wall
flea market book cases cramped with books, texts, even scrolls,
that museum curators would give their eyeteeth for.

Together they carried the heavy tome
between them and laid it on the table that took up the center of
the room.

"You sure it's in here?" Charity eyed
the large book dubiously.

"Oh yeah, I remember reading about it
when I first convinced mom to let me look at the book."

"You were ten."

Lenore shrugged with one shoulder. "It
was a romantic story. An entire clan, every individual gifted with
some form of magic as long as they remained the protectors of
man…And then all of them vanished. Poof. The village must have
fallen to ruin because no one knows where it once was." She opened
the little ornately carved box she kept sitting on the table and
pulled out the white gloves she kept in there. Lenore was
meticulous about not letting the oils in her fingers damage any of
the ancient books.

"That's so weird." Charity sat down and
leaned over the large velum pages that Lenore turned with delicate
reverence. "What does that even mean? Protectors of
man?"

"Got me. Something about the innate
balance of magic. As long as the Limonts kept the dark side of
magic from overtaking the good, the entire land would prosper.
Magic would remain abundant and the flip side of magic, like the
dark fairies, ghouls and vampires wouldn't get much of a foothold
in the world. Here it is." Lenore tapped a page and slipped her
black reading glasses on.

Charity scooted her chair closer so
that their heads were side by side. Celtic writing wasn't exactly
her forte. Their grandmother had insisted that as practicing
healers, both girls at least know enough to pick out runes and
symbols for spells and incantations in several nearly dead
languages. Charity could get by, but her younger sister's huge
brain excelled in it.

She scanned down what looked like a
listing of names—genealogical records with years and, wow, magical
abilities. Her heart jolted when she came to his name. "Toren
Limont," she whispered, making her encounter with him seem that
much more surreal. "High Sorcerer of Limont, born in Crunfathy."
Her breathing stilled, frozen in her chest. An ancient wounded
Highlander really had flung himself through time to seek her aid,
and then he was gone—to a place she couldn't reach him or help him.
The urge to somehow help was damn near overwhelming. After she came
to by the tub, she hadn’t been able to sleep all night. Her
thoughts replayed everything that had passed between them and the
more she thought of him, the more urgent the feeling to help him
grew. "Have you ever heard of Crunfathy?"