Redeemed (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #2) (3 page)

“Hello.” Investigating it, Kylah realized it must take a small miracle for someone the Druid’s size to fit. No magic, indeed. After following it, she realized the crevice angled rather sharply to the right, and since one couldn’t turn around in the space, one simply must angle with it and change direction before being dumped into a cavern twice as large as the first.

“Wha—” Kylah gasped, her mind incapable of processing the strange and complex stone and metal tools and contraptions displayed in front of her backlit by a roaring fire at the rear of the chasm. Abruptly she was grateful she didn’t actually have to blink, or her over stimulated eyes would have surely shriveled in their sockets.

A movement to her left warned her before a rock hurtled through her and broke against the wall. “Get… the
fuck…
out!” the Druid roared. “Ye canna be here.”

“Why?” Guilt for imposing upon his solitude caused her to cringe. She’d never before been in the habit forcing her company on others, but then, she’d never had to. She couldn’t very well leave without learning more about this… this… she didn’t even know what to call the things in front of her. Kylah drifted toward a table of sorts crafted of stone and weighted with numberless round bowls of various sizes, colors and materials, avoiding the infuriated Druid. He looked more terrifying in the firelight. Menace roiled off of him. She could feel it in her Banshee way, inexplicably drawn to the strength of his rage.

Letting out a frustrated sound, he pulled chilly calm about him like a cloak. “Ye ask that question more often than a toddling child.”

Kylah didn’t like the condescension in his voice. “Well, it’s a simple question, isn’t it? I apologized for the scream, so
why
do you so passionately dismiss my presence? It’s not like I can upset anything here.” She slapped at a stone bowl and the Druid flinched, though they both knew it would remain undamaged. “Tell me the reason, and I’ll decide if it’s valid or not.” She leaned down to inspect the unfamiliar powder that glittered in her light.

“The why of it doesna matter,” the Druid countered. “My will should be deterrent enough,”

“Not to me.”

“Then I question yer intelligence.” He stalked to the table, hovering and glowering, as though warning her not to touch anything. An intimidation tactic, maybe? He was so tall as to tower over most men, maybe as tall as Katriona’s new husband. And possibly thicker, judging by the width of his robes.

Kylah wrinkled her nose and levitated to meet him at eye level. “I’m not stupid, I’m dead. What have I to fear from you?”

The Druid gave a derisive snort and shoved away from the table, “Considering what ye are, more than ye realize.”

What did that mean? Kylah looked over his shoulder to a cauldron left boiling over a second fire in the middle of the room. She looked up. The ceiling of the cave disappeared into the darkness. Where did the smoke from the fires go? How did he get the fodder for them?

She stepped around him and moved to an adjacent slab of balanced rock, ignoring his growl. This one stacked with smaller pieces of earth that varied in size, shape and color and seemed to be organized accordingly.

“You said that I’m a creature of magic, and you’re a being of power. What is the difference?”

He remained silent, but she could feel exactly where he was behind her. His body radiated so many complex, stimulating sensations that he stood as a point of reference no matter what he surrounded himself with.

“Is not magic a kind of power?” she prompted, turning to face him.

He put up a hand. “Patience, woman, I’m trying to answer in the right terms.”

“Which would be?”

“The simplest,” he said imperiously.

Kylah bristled. “You’ve yet to offer me a simple answer.”

He grunted and crossed his arms. “We’ve yet to
touch
complexity.”

She adopted his exact posture. “Well then, go on, touch it.”

His nostrils flared on a long exhale, and his eyes flared with something else, though the light was squelched as quickly as it appeared. “Magic is the manipulation of elements by creatures not bound by the laws of our plane.” His lip curled again, as though it couldn’t help itself. “Faeries, Demons, Shape-shifters, Berserkers, those who would call themselves deities and so forth. It is merely power we don’t yet understand.

“My power, Druid power, is gained by testing the elements of our Earth, our plane, through exhausting all variables and learning to control them for definitive use.”

Kylah nodded, though she wished she had swallowed her pride and asked for a more simplified answer. “What sort of uses? What do you seek from this knowledge? This… Control?”

He turned his head to stare at a row of strange tools all hung on hand-crafted hooks littering the far wall, offering what Kylah knew to be the unadorned side of his face. She yearned to uncover it. To make a study of it whilst his notice was elsewhere.

“Truth is what I seek,” he murmured. “What else is there?”

“Oh lots of things,” she ticked them off on her fingers. “Beauty, freedom, life, love, family—”

His derisive snort interrupted her. “Doona be ridiculous. Beauty is but an illusion that subjectively changes with perception and cannot be trusted.” He gave her a pointed look, but continued. “Freedom, also a perception, can be granted and taken at the whim of another, generally one with more power. Same as life, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”

Kylah flinched.

“And
love
,” he scoffed. “Love is an indefinable, variant weakness that can be used against you.” He vehemently shook his head, upsetting the braids at his temple. “Nay, I want for none of those things.”

Kylah couldn’t disagree with him on any particular point. Which unsettled her. All those “things” had been violently taken from her, by someone with a great deal more power.

Except… “What about family?”

A muscle flexed in his jaw, upsetting more of his mask. “I doona have a conception of what that word means, so I dare not speculate on it.”

Kylah thought on her mother and sisters, a stab of remorse staining their last interaction. Though she’d lived, for lack of a better word, the last year through a haze of broken apathy, she’d not taken for granted the omnipresent love and support of her family. She couldn’t always pull her mind from the constant fog to interact with them. But in life, and death, they’d always done what they could for each other. Though at times she had to admit, it hadn’t always been enough.

She closed her eyes, letting the pity she felt for the Druid overtake the welling of pain and terror that lurked below her surface, closer now that she’d called it forth in the cavern’s antechamber.

“No family?” At her words a blast of helpless tormented rage hit her with an almost physical force.

From him? Had to be.

But the Druid merely shook his head and waved a hand as if to expel the word. “But truth. Truth is constant. No one can change it. It just
is
.” His voice rose, every word perfectly annunciated. “Whether we believe it or not. Accept it or not. Whether we’re ignorant of it or able to wield it. It remains as is. When it is tested, the outcome is certain. Every time. Without fail.”

Kylah thought about his words. “If that is truth, then I believe love can be truth.”

His eyes disappeared into his lids a second time. “Aye, well, we’ve already established that ye’re a fool.”

“No we haven’t,” she corrected. “You’ve assumed that I’m a fool, but your theory has yet to be tested.”

He stared at her with a face void of expression for a long moment, and then blinked. “Let’s just agree that the evidence suggests.”

“Maybe so,” she shrugged. “But you can’t call
truth
until you have definitive proof after exhausting all the variables.” Kylah couldn’t hide her victorious smile. The first of its kind in almost a year. She thought she saw the corner of his own mouth twitch before he turned away from her, busying himself with the bowls.

She had him. But was smart enough not to say so. Which, in her opinion, was a strong
variable
in her favor.

Chapter Four

He couldn’t stand to look at her. It was too… She was so… Well, descriptive words had never served his purposes; therefore he elected to avoid them.

Ignoring alarming, unnecessary physical responses, Daroch carefully inspected the bowl of fine black powder upon which she’d demonstrated her ethereal lack of material mass. It consisted of the combustible mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and a purified solution boiled from ashes of wood. If he dropped the bowl, Cape Wrath would be leveled in the explosion. From what he could tell, the interaction with her miasma had no significant impact on either force.

Interesting. Unsurprising, but interesting.

“What are you cooking over there?” Her voice reached through his robes and touched his spine with an unwanted thrill.

He sighed. On second thought, he should just drop the bowl and be done with it. An inexplicable tremor in his hand caused Daroch to set the powder down.

“Oh I see! You’re melting copper and tin to make bronze. What are you going to use it for?”

It took Daroch several moments to process her question. Who ever heard of a Banshee with a melodic voice? Also, how was it one woman could be gifted with such— symmetrical features—and also a… dammit he would
not
use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe anything about her. Least of all her voice. Pleasing? Lyrical?

Sensuous.

He bit his lip. Hard.

“I’m fashioning a… conducting an experiment.” Gods be damned, in trying to distract himself, he’d nearly given her the honest answer, which could have meant the end of everything he worked for. A woman with a little knowledge was more dangerous than a horde of Berserker warriors. They would be the sword, the death bringers. But she,
she
would be the blood, the inciting incident. He had to get her out of here before she ruined everything.

“Would that experiment have anything to do with the raw iron on this table? Or the gold and silver? Or all these powders and tools and—”

“Nay,” he lied. It had everything to do with all of it. It was his life’s work. His reason for existence. And the greatest kept secret in the Highlands.

Until now.

“Good, because you overworked this other iron here, though it’s still too crude. It looks like the blast temperatures were too low but you still got enough oxygen in the metal to—”

“What are ye, a secret alchemist?” he clipped and turned around, forgetting in his exasperation that he’d planned on not looking at her.

“Nay.” Her glow caused metal beside her to glisten and Daroch focused his eyes on that, rather than her lithe form barely concealed in ghostly, transpicuous robes. “I’m the daughter of Diarmudh MacKay, the best blacksmith in the Highlands.”

Surprisingly, Daroch had heard of the man. “Didna he die some fifteen years hence?”

“Eighteen.” The Banshee turned from where she inspected the metal and caught his gaze with a sad smile. Damn it all, he wasn’t supposed to be looking. “But I was his favorite, and spent many hours in the smithy with him, black as a Demon, singing songs not fit for a wee girl while he worked all sorts of metals.”

“Demons aren’t black.” Daroch corrected while he studied her. “Ye’re not old enough for that.”

“I was four when he was kicked in the head by an unruly horse.” Grief shadowed her delicate features and Daroch had to clench his jaw and consider numerical figures to distract himself from a dangerous softening somewhere in the region of his lungs.

“Anyway, I remember everything he taught me. Especially about alloys.” She was coming closer, and Daroch found that he wanted to retreat from her. “You know, we turned it into a washhouse after his death, my mother and sisters. It was… burned.” This time, it was she who averted her eyes. “But the forge remains, though the bellows would need repairing. I’m certain you could use it.”

Daroch gaped at her. “Why?” The irony of his asking her the question wasn’t lost on him.

“Why what?”

“Why would ye offer me the use of yer beloved father’s smithy when I’ve been…”

“An unmitigated arse?” she helpfully supplied.

Daroch scowled at her. “Unwelcoming.”

She shrugged, setting her long auburn curls to flowing about her body as though she were under water. The effect was disturbingly lovely. “All this interests me, and I’ve nothing better to do.”

Something about her answer displeased him, but Daroch couldn’t identify it. Deciding he needed to busy his body before it betrayed him further, he snatched a tool and smothered one of the fires with loose earth, noting that the Banshee didn’t drift into that section of the cave until the flames had died.

Intrigued, he sank to his pallet by the dying embers of his cook fire and took the last of his dried fish from where it warmed on the rocks, trying to figure out how to inspect her without looking at her.

She stayed where she was, looking very young and very lost.

A cold pit formed low in his belly and he suddenly wasn’t hungry. Not for food, in any case. “Doona ye have someone
else
to torment? A vengeance to reap or some such Banshee justice to meet out on a deserving villain that will result in ye
leaving
?”

“Nay, not really.” She hugged her arms to her middle.

“I’m going to sleep now,” he informed her presenting her with his back and lying on the pallet facing the glowing coals. Wide awake.

“So early?” She sounded disappointed. And closer. “Can I… watch you?”

He bit back a savage curse. Her words reached through the layers of his robes, the silt, his flesh, and straight to his cock.

One hundred years. One hundred years since a woman had watched him. Objectified him.

“If ye stay, ye’ll watch me do more than sleep,” he ground out.

Her glow vanished, leaving him in frigid darkness but for the dying embers which he stared at for hours.

Chapter Five

He must have gone into the sea. Kylah inventoried the belongings in front of her. Freshly laundered, still-damp Druid robes and a dark pair of trews flapped in the ever-present wind, secured to the cliff’s ledge by heavy stones. Beside them, a birch staff and a pair of gigantic knee boots were neatly lined up next to an iron sword that Kylah recognized from his cave the night before.