The Immortal Highlander (23 page)

“Grand promises from such a powerless Fae.”

“Would you make of me a liar?”

“You do that often enough yourself.”

Adam bristled. There’d been no need to say that in front of Gabrielle.

Silence stretched. Then the queen exhaled softly, a silvery sound. “Reveal this traitor for me and I will uphold your promise to the human, but I warn you, make no more,
Amadan
.”

“Then you agree she should remain here. On Keltar land.”

“I said that I will uphold your promise. But she goes with you. Darroc might wonder at her absence and not show his hand. If he has betrayed me, I want proof and I want it now. Before he acts against me and makes those in my court think it possible.” The queen moved in a swirl of radiant light. “I will be watching. Lure him out for me and I will come. Show me Hunters at my Elder’s side and I will restore you to your full power. And let you decide his fate. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Adam jerked his head once in a tight nod.

A rush of sound spilled from her lips in Tuatha Dé tongue. Beside him, Gabrielle shivered intensely.

“You will wear the
féth fiada
until this is done, Amadan.”

“Bloody hell,” Adam muttered savagely. “I
hate
being invisible.”

“And, Keltar,” Aoibheal said in a voice like sudden thunder, with a glance up at the balustrade. “Henceforth I would advise against tampering with my curses. Perform the Lughnassadh ritual now or face my wrath.”

“Aye, Queen Aoibheal,” Dageus and Drustan replied together, stepping out from behind stone columns bracketing the stairs.

Adam smiled faintly. He should have known no Highlander would flee, only retreat to a higher vantage—take to the hills, in a manner of speaking—waiting in silent readiness should battle be necessary.

Gabby went limp beside him with a soft
whoosh
of breath.

The queen was gone.

22

Early the next morning, Gabby and Adam packed to leave Castle Keltar and catch a flight back to the States.

As Adam was invisible again, they would be traveling cloaked, and Gabby was surprised to realize she was rather looking forward to it. There was a certain intriguing impunity one felt, concealed by the
féth fiada
. There was also the fact that it meant they’d be touching constantly, and she simply couldn’t get enough of touching him.

Immediately upon the queen’s departure yesterday, Dageus and Drustan had performed the ritual of Lughnassadh. Once the walls were again secured, they’d sat down and rehashed the afternoon’s events, with Gabby serving as Adam’s intermediary.

She’d been surprised by how wired with excitement Chloe and Gwen had been to see—sort of, out of the corners of their eyes as well—the queen of the Tuatha Dé. It seemed Chloe had felt quite cheated that Dageus had encountered her once before and had failed to take a complete accounting of her.

Their reaction—one not of fear but of interest and curiosity—had served to solidify her new slant on things. Yes, the Tuatha Dé Danaan (as Gabby was now calling them) were otherworldly, different, but not the heartless, emotionless creatures she’d been raised to believe they were.

As Gwen had said, they were another race, a highly advanced race. And though the inexplicable could be frightening, learning about it went a long way toward allaying one’s fears.

Further toward that end, the MacKeltars had taken her, with the once-more-invisible Adam in tow, to the
other
Keltar castle last night, where Christopher and Maggie MacKeltar lived, and shown her the underground chamber library that housed all the ancient Druid lore, dating all the way back to when The Compact had first been negotiated.

Gabby had gotten to see the actual treaty between the races, etched on a sheet of pure gold, scribed in a language no scholar alive could identify. Adam had translated passages of it, emphasizing the part about
Sidhe
-seers: that “those who see the Fae belong to the Fae,” yet they were not to be killed or enslaved but permitted to live in peace and comfort in any Fae realm they chose, their every desire met, except, of course, for their freedom.
I told you we didn’t harm them,
he’d said.

On the way back to Dageus and Drustan’s castle, while Chloe and Gwen had been talking about the queen again, Adam had insisted Gabby convey his irritation with them for leaving by the front door and circling straight around to the rear entrance of the castle to sneak back in.

I told you we expected you to have our backs if the need arose,
Drustan had reminded him through her.
I also told you that we would be having yours.

And when Gabby’d passed on those words, she’d glimpsed a flicker of emotion in Adam’s dark gaze that had made the breath catch softly in her throat.

How could she have ever thought that Adam Black felt no emotion? Even the queen had displayed emotion.
That
was a fallacy in the O’Callaghan
Books
she’d be swiftly amending. Along with about a zillion others.

Still, she could understand how her ancestors had gotten it so wrong. If she’d had to go on the mere appearance of Queen Aoibheal, or of the Hunters, or even of Adam, without ever having interacted with them, without having come to understand so much about their world, she’d have thought the same things.

But she knew so much better now.

She’d spent another scorching, delicious, decadent night in Adam’s arms.

He was the kind of lover she’d never imagined existed, not even in her most heated fantasies. And she’d had some pretty darned heated ones.

He was inexhaustible, alternately tender and wild, playful, then staring into her eyes with deadly intensity. He made a woman feel as if nothing existed but her, as if the entire world had melted away and there was nothing more pressing than her next soft gasp, her next smile, their next kiss.

He’d still spoken no words of either feelings or future. Nor had she.

Though the queen herself had guaranteed Gabby’s safety when this was through, she was having a hard time seeing past their date with Darroc. She knew she’d not be able to truly draw a deep breath until it was over.

Then
she would face her future.

Then she would try to decide—assuming she had any decision to make, that he didn’t simply abandon her once he was all-powerful again—how in the world a mortal and an immortal could have any kind of life together.

“Promise you’ll come back. I mean it, and
soon,
” Gwen demanded, hugging her tightly. “And you have to call us and let us know the
minute
Darroc shows up and this is over. We’re going to be worrying. Promise?”

Gabby nodded. “I promise.”

“And bring Adam back too,” Gwen said.

Gabby glanced at her tall, dark prince. The day had dawned swathed in a thick white fog, and though it was already ten in the morning, none of it had burned off. And how could it? If there was a sun anywhere in the sky, she certainly couldn’t see it. Above her, the world had a solid white ceiling. Beyond Adam, who stood a dozen feet away, near the rental car they’d arrived in, was a white wall.

Adam. Her gaze lingered lovingly on him. He was wearing black leather pants, a cream Irish fisherman’s sweater, and those sexy Gucci boots with silver chains and buckles. His long, silky, black hair spilled to his waist, and his chiseled face was unshaven, dusted with a shadow-beard. Regal gold glinted at his throat.

He was heart-stoppingly beautiful.

She glanced back at Gwen and was horrified to feel a sharp sting of tears pressing at her eyes. “If he’s still in my life, I will,” she said softly.

Gwen snorted and she and Chloe exchanged glances. “Oh, we think he’ll still be in your life, Gabby.”

Her meticulously erected defenses on that very topic trembled at the foundation. She stiffened mentally, knowing that if she wasn’t very, very careful, she could turn into an emotional basket case. If she let herself feel even the tiniest of the many fears she was suppressing, they would all break free. And there was no telling what she might do or say: The Banana Incident, case in point. Emotion did unpredictable things to her tongue. Bad, bad things.

Despite her resolve to keep her fears at bay, she heard herself say plaintively, “But
how
? For heaven’s sake, he’s going to be immor—”

“Don’t,” Chloe cut her off sternly. “I’m going to share something with you,” she said with a glance at Gwen, “that a wise woman once told me. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. Just do it. Don’t look down.”

“Great,” Gabby muttered. “That’s just great. It sure seems like
I’m
the one having to do all the leaping.”

“Somehow,” Gwen said slowly, “I think before all is said and done, Gabby, you won’t be the only one doing it.”

“Turn left,” Adam instructed.

“Left? How can you even
see
a left in this pea soup?” Gabby said irritably. She could barely make out the road ten feet past the hood of the compact car. But it wasn’t just the fog that was aggravating her; the farther they got from Castle Keltar, the more vulnerable she was feeling. As if the most magnificent chapter in the Book of Gabrielle O’Callaghan’s Life was coming to a close and she wasn’t going to like what she found when she turned the page.

She understood now why her friend Elizabeth, with her near-genius, analytical mind gave wide berth to murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror stories, and read only romance novels. Because, by God, when a woman picked up one of those steamy books, she had a firm guarantee that there would be a Happily-Ever-After. That though the world outside those covers could bring such sorrow and disappointment and loneliness, between those covers, the world was a splendid place to be.

She glanced irritably at Adam. He was looking at her. Hard.

“What?”
she snapped belligerently, not meaning to sound belligerent but feeling it to the core.

He said softly, “You aren’t falling for me, are you, Irish?”

Returning her gaze fixedly to the road ahead, Gabby clenched her jaw, incapable of speaking for several moments, her stomach a stew of emotions, a veritable pressure cooker about to blow. She muttered a few choice words Gram would have shuddered to hear.

“
Why
do you keep asking me that?” she snapped at last. “I’m really
sick
of you asking me that. Do I ask you that? Have I ever asked you that? That is
such
a patronizing thing to say, like you’re warning me or something, like you’re saying, ‘Don’t fall for me, Irish, you helpless, weak little woman,’ and what’s with this frigging ‘Irish’ bit? Can’t you call me by name? Is that one of those depersonalizing touches? Like it removes you a bit from the immediacy of the moment, somehow makes me less of a human being with feelings? I’ll have you know, you arrogant, overbearing, thickheaded, underdisclosing, never-ask-me-any-questions-because-I-sure-as-hell-won’t-answer-them-to-
you
-O-mere-mortal prince, that I took my fair share of psychology courses in college, and I understand a thing or two about men that applies to ones who aren’t even of the human persuasion, and
if
I were falling for you, which I’m here to tell you I’m not, because falling implies an ongoing action, an event that’s taking place in real time, here and now—”

She broke off abruptly, on the verge of revealing too much. Too wounded, too uncertain of herself, of him, to go on.

Inhaled. Puffed her bangs from her face with an angry breath.

Long moments unfurled and he said nothing.

Gritting the words slowly, she said, “Why didn’t Morganna take the elixir of immortality? I
need
you to answer this.”

The silence stretched. She refused to look at him.

“Because immortality,” he said finally, slowly, as if each word were being forcibly pried from his mouth and was paining him more deeply than she could possibly know, “and the immortal soul are incompatible. You can’t have both.”

Gabby jerked and looked at him, horrified.

He slammed his fist into the glove box. Plastic exploded as his hand went right through it. Half the little door dangled for a moment on one hinge, then fell to the floor. His lips curved in a bitter smile. “Not what you expected to hear, eh?”

“You mean, if Morganna had taken it, she would have lost her immortal soul?” Gabby gasped.

“And Darroc thinks humans aren’t very bright.” Dark sarcasm dripped from his voice.

“So, er . . . but . . . I don’t get it. How? Does a person, like, have to hand it over or something?”

“Humans have an aura surrounding them that my kind can see,” he said flatly. “The immortal soul lights them from within, makes them glow golden. Once a human takes the elixir of life, that soul begins to burn out, until there is nothing of it left.”

Gabby blinked. “I glow golden? You mean, right now, as I’m sitting here?”

He gave a bitter little laugh. “More intensely than most.”

“Oh.” A pause while she tried to collect her thoughts. “So, do they change, the humans who take it?”

“Ah, yes. They change.”

“I see.” The utter lack of inflection in his reply made her deeply uneasy. She suddenly had no desire to know
how
they changed. Suspected she wouldn’t like it at all. “So then, that means our
Books
were right about the Tuatha Dé not having souls, doesn’t it?”

“Your
Books
were right about many things,” he said coldly. “You know that. You knew it when you took me as your lover. You took me anyway.”

“You really don’t have a soul?” Of all he’d just told her, she found that the most unfathomable. How could it be? She couldn’t get her brain around it, not now that she knew him. Things that didn’t have souls were . . . well, evil, weren’t they? Adam wasn’t evil. He was a good man. Better than most, if not all, she’d ever met.

“Nope. No soul, Gabrielle. That’s me, Adam Black, iridescent-eyed, soulless, deadly fairy.”

Ouch, she’d said that to him once. Seemed a lifetime ago.

She stared into the fog for a time, driving on autopilot.

And she tried not to ask it, but she’d just begun to believe that maybe the Tuatha Dé weren’t quite so different from humans, only to find out that they were, and she couldn’t stop herself. She had to know
how
different. Precisely what she was dealing with. “Hearts? Do the Tuatha Dé have hearts?”

“No physiological equivalent.” Bored-now voice.

“Oh.” Upon discovering how erroneous so much of the O’Callaghan lore was, she’d pretty much ejected the bulk of it from her mind, tossed it out with her many preconceptions. But parts of it had been right after all. Big parts.

More driving. More silence.

You’re not falling for me, are you, Irish?
he’d said.

And she’d had a minor meltdown because that was precisely the problem. She wasn’t falling. She’d
fallen
. As in, past tense. Way past tense. She was hopelessly in love with him. She’d been building a dream future for them inside her head, embellishing it with the tiniest and most tender of details.

Gwen and Chloe had been absolutely right, and Gabby’d known it herself, even then. Just hadn’t wanted to admit it. Just as she hadn’t wanted to admit that the reason she’d wanted so desperately to know why Morganna had refused the elixir was because Gabby had been secretly hoping that he would fall in love with her, too, she could become immortal, and they could love each other forever. They could have an eternal Happily-Ever-After.

But she wasn’t stupid. Ever since he’d told her about Morganna refusing the chance to live forever, she’d known there had to be a catch. Just hadn’t known what a whopper of a catch it was.

Immortality and the immortal soul are incompatible.

Though she’d never considered herself a particularly religious person, she was deeply spiritual, and the soul was, well . . . the sacred essence of a person, the imprint of self, the source of one’s capacity for goodness, for love. It was what was reborn again and again on one’s journey to evolve. A soul was the inner divine, the very breath of God.