The Highlander's Touch

Page 103

“Never take anything I say or do at face value, Circenn. It was never about that. You needed to break some of your ridiculous rules. I merely put you in a position where you would be forced to question them. Had you truly killed her, I would have been vastly disappointed. You never understood what I was really after.”
Circenn shook his head, muttering beneath his breath. All his angst about breaking the vow had been for naught, because Adam had never wished it fulfilled to begin with. “And I doona understand now, so why not explain it to me?”
Adam circled around him, studying him. “Why don’t you put down that sword?” He shuddered. “We gave it to you so we wouldn’t be tempted to fight among our own kind. We trusted you.”
“You coerced me into the guardianship and well you know it,” he said bitterly. Still, he let the tip dip toward the floor, although he kept his hand firmly on the hilt.
Adam relaxed. “The way I see it, you have several choices. You can go join her where she is. In my world,” he added smugly. “Or you may bring her back here. Or you may go fix her future and then send her back. She is safely out of time while you decide.”
“Why do you mock me, Adam? You know I doona know how to accomplish any of those things. Are you offering to perform such magic for me?”
Adam looked pained. “I cannot. Aoibheal has clipped my wings, so to speak.”
“Then exactly how do you expect me to dart about through time? Morar is not accessible by mortal means. You have trapped my woman on a fairy isle to which I have no means of traveling,” he said, growing angry again.
Adam eyed Circenn challengingly. “Yes, you do.”
Circenn flung a hand up in the air. “I cannot sift time—if I could, I would have offered to return her when I discovered what she’d lost and how much it pained her.”
“You can sift time. You know that. You know also that there was a time recently when you would have given anything to have long ago accepted my lessons. You refused to let me teach you, but you know you have the power—it seethes within you. It begs to be freed. You would learn quickly. It would take me mere days to teach you how to sift time. We can practice with short jaunts.”
Circenn regarded him, saying nothing. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Circenn, I have been telling you for five hundred years that I can teach you how to move through time and place. You have always sneered and walked away. Now I offer again: I can teach you how to sift time, weave worlds, how to change her future so her parents don’t die. I can teach you enough that you can prevent the car wreck, perhaps even prevent the cancer, and return her to her future with her memory of you intact. When it is done you may join her there, or bring her back. Or split your lives between the two places. You can do anything you want, Circenn Brodie. I’ve always told you this.”
“And what price for such knowledge, Adam? What price for my woman back?”
“Oh, it’s so simple,” Adam said gently. “It’s all I have ever wanted, all along.” He nodded encouragingly. “You know what I want. I offer you a trade. Let me teach you. Let me take you where you belong. Let me show you my world. It is not evil.”
Circenn grunted and rubbed his eyes. Five hundred years ago he’d sworn to avoid this moment at all costs. Throughout the centuries Adam had tempted him repeatedly with anything he could think of, and failed each time. Apparently Adam had realized that the trap would have to be more cunningly laid, and this one had succeeded brilliantly. That which Circenn had refused for five centuries had now become inevitable. The ninth-century man within him shrugged, stepped down, and ceded defeat. Was it evil? Were Adam and his race evil? Or had Circenn simply never forgiven Adam for slights inflicted long ago?
His choices were painfully simple: Be with Lisa, or not be with Lisa.
The latter was unacceptable, and Adam knew that. Circenn felt bitterly manipulated by Adam, and anger burned within him. This situation had been designed and orchestrated by Adam Black from the onset.
But then he thought of Lisa. What existed between them had nothing to do with Adam. Adam may have cleverly manipulated events, but Circenn alone had fallen in love with Lisa. He would have loved her no matter where he’d found her. His anger melted away.
If he accepted what Adam was offering, he could change her life: He could slip to the future and save her parents and return to her everything she’d ever wanted, and be with her again. And hadn’t he been toying with that idea for some time now? When he’d asked her to tell him everything about her life, when he’d listened and taken mental notes—aye, even then he’d been analyzing possibilities in the back of his mind. His bitterness over Adam’s making him immortal five hundred years past had caused him to violently reject everything about the Tuatha de Danaan. But perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all.