The Immortal Highlander

Page 34

And still he’d done it.
There’d been no reason for him to. Dageus MacKeltar had clearly defied his most sacred trust and deserved to be punished. He’d broken The Compact between their races by using the time-traveling power of Scotland’s standing stones for personal reasons—to save his twin brother’s life—an action punishable by any means the queen so chose.
And she’d chosen, at the demand of her High Council, to subject him to trial by blood, which meant the Hunters would be sent to kill those closest to him, and if he used even the slightest amount of forbidden magic to save them, the Hunters would carry out a systematic destruction of the Keltar clan from the sixteenth century forward.
Long had the MacKeltar preserved the peace between their races, upholding The Compact and performing the feast rituals on Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnassadh, and Samhain that kept the walls between Man and Fae realms intact. Now they were to be destroyed for breaching the ancient treaty.
And something inside Adam had reared its asinine head and opened his mouth, and the next thing he knew he’d been bargaining for the mortal’s life at any cost. Irreverently, flippantly, wagering it all.
He’d been spying on the MacKeltar clan for millennia; the queen’s edict forbidding any Tuatha Dé to go within one thousand leagues of MacKeltar land in the lush Highlands of Scotland had only tempted him all the more (and as ever, she’d granted him leeway; she’d not liked it, but she’d tolerated it).
He’d watched the petite, brilliant physicist Gwen Cassidy on her journey through time as she’d fallen in love with Drustan MacKeltar. He’d spied upon sensual, eclectic, and not-quite-ethical-when-it-came-to-artifacts Chloe Zanders as she’d lost her heart to Dageus, despite the younger MacKeltar twin being possessed by the evil souls of thirteen dark Druids at the time.
And the thought of watching them all die had filled him with a dark restlessness akin to one he’d not felt since the ninth century.
Name your price, he’d coolly told Aoibheal.
And then, when Dageus MacKeltar had lain dying, she’d named it. And Adam had placed his hands on the mortal’s heart and given of his immortal essence to restore him to life. He’d thought that the temporary sapping of his immortal strength and power, which would have left him weak for centuries, was to be his price, but she’d taken it even further and made him human, powerless, and cursed.
“So what makes you so sure she’ll just forgive you?” Gabby asked, jarring him from his thoughts.
He shrugged again. “She always does. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to stand eternity without me.”
She snorted and shook her head. “Oh, I see. I keep forgetting how irresistible you are.”
“No you don’t,” he said easily, flashing her a grin. “I see the way you look at me.”
“What I don’t understand,” she pressed hastily on, cheeks pinkening faintly, “is why you don’t just talk to one of the other fairies hanging around. The féth fiada doesn’t work on them, does it? Or don’t they want to help you either?”
For a moment Adam was so astonished that he thought he mustn’t have heard her correctly. “What—other—fairies—hanging—around?” he enunciated each word tightly. Surely Aoibheal hadn’t taken that from him, too, had she? Made him no longer able to even perceive his own kind? The féth fiada alone wouldn’t have done that to him. It rendered its wearer invisible, but it didn’t render anything else invisible to the wearer.
They’re not your own kind anymore, an inner voice reminded. You’re human. They’re Tuatha Dé, and humans—except for the Sidhe-seers—can’t see the Fae.
Bloody hell, he could be so stupid sometimes! He’d thought the reason he’d not seen any others of his kind was because she’d forbidden them to spy on him. But no, it was because she’d made him human through and through.
They’d been watching him all along, no doubt endlessly amused by his humiliation. “I said, ‘what other fairies?’ ” he gritted.
Gabby blinked at his tone. “All of them. Any of them. There are oodles—” She broke off abruptly. “Oh, God, you didn’t know, did you?”
“How many Tuatha Dé are in this city besides me?” he growled.
She took a step back. “Well, really just a few, hardly even half a dozen, maybe not even that many, and actually, come to think of it, I haven’t seen any at all in over a week, which makes sense because one of them said a while back that they were all planning to leave—”