She stared down at the delectable brew Thaetus brought her each morning. Three months and they all still treated her like a delicate porcelain doll. If Taggart had his way about it, he would probably put her in a bubble so not even a speck of dust could settle on her. And phenomenal sex after such a long dry spell was worse than no sex at all. Now she ached for him every night. He had reawakened everynerve ending she possessed, and she craved a repeat performance. She drummed her fingers on her cup. “Damn you, Taggart.”
A scuffling sound behind her interrupted her fuming. She knew without looking who it was. “Thaetus, please go do whatever it is you need to do and stop hovering like a buzzard waiting for something to die. I am here in the garden enjoying my morning coffee. I promise to stay right here. What could happen here in broad daylight in the middle of the garden?” She swiveled on the bench and glared at the man fidgeting close to the door.
“Ye are nay to be left unguarded under any circumstances. Ye ken that well enough.” He made a show of plucking withered leaves off a nearby bush and tossing them onto the lawn.
“Then why don’t you get yourself a cup of coffee and join me?” She nodded at the bench on the other side of the glass-topped iron table and smiled.
“Join you?” The Scot looked horrified at the prospect.
“Well, it’s plain you have a problem with either the coffee or my company. Which is it?”
Thaetus didn’t reply. His knees buckled, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed.
“Thaetus!” Rushing to his side, she crouched beside him, checking his condition by pressing a hand to his throat. A faint pulse feathered with an erratic beat under her fingertips. His muscles clenched and twitched as if his body had drawn them too tight.
A sultry voice rose behind her. “He is not dead. I have merely paralyzed him. If ye wish him to live, move away from his body.”
Without standing, Hannah slowly turned and found herself staring into the threadbare linen folds of the woman’s robes. As her heart pounded harder, her eyes traveled up the length of the rough weave and met the amber-eyed gaze of a hooded girl. “Who are you? What have you done to Thaetus?”
With a lazy dip of her blond lashes, the surly woman shoved her tattered hood back to her shoulders. “I am Mia and as I said, I have only paralyzed him. You should thank me. He deserved death.” With a tight-lipped frown, she cast a casual glance over the man’sconvulsing body, then returned her bored gaze to Hannah. “He will recover. In time.” She motioned for Hannah to rise. “Come. We have little time. My master grows quite impatient waiting to meet ye.”
Mia’s detached, pale-eyed gaze sent a shudder through Hannah. Blood pounded in her ears, drowning out all other sounds. As much as she hated to admit it, Taggart had been right. She wasn’t even safe at Taroc Na Mor. But they would not take her without a fight. While staring at Mia’s outstretched hand, a plan crystallized as her gaze shifted to Mia’s right. A gaping hole in the leafy shrubbery entered her line of vision.
She leaned forward and dug both hands deep into the loose dirt, as though steadying herself as she leaned over Thaetus. She pressed her mouth close to the twitching man’s head and whispered, “Tell him I didn’t go without a fight.”
Mia shifted and nudged Hannah with the toe of her boot. “What do you say to him? You must come now. I told you I have chosen not to kill him, but if you tarry longer I will change my mind. We must leave now. My master grows impatient, and trust me when I say that is not a good thing.”
“I’m coming,” Hannah said. After a deep breath, she filled her fists with dirt. Now or never. In one smooth motion, she slung both handfuls into Mia’s eyes. Then vaulted through the thinning bushes beside the retaining wall and dove down William’s favorite mudslide to the creek. Thank goodness the little Draecna had shown her his latest invention. Just yesterday, he had shared how he perfected sliding to the waterway using the back of his tail.
She landed in the rocky creek bed with a splash, rolled to her feet, and floundered across the waist-deep stream. The icy water numbed her, only adding to the panic pounding through her. Her teeth chattered until her face ached. She trembled more from spiked adrenaline than the frigid water. When she reached the other side, she clawed her way up the muddy embankment and pulled herself up onto a moss-covered ledge. Her stomach churned as she risked a look back; terror threatened to close off her throat. She hadn’t heard asound of Mia giving chase, not even a single snap of a branch. Had she given up so easily?
She gave up looking for the woman and reached up into the root system of a washed-out tree. She pulled herself behind the blackened mass of roots and into a hollowed-out cave deep inside the embankment. With her body curled as far back against the damp earth as she could get, she tried to calm herself with thoughts of Taggart. She would be safe here until he used his senses to find her. She closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. It was going to be all right. She was safe. She just had to wait for Taggart.
“He will not find ye because ye will not be here.” Mia’s pale bony hand snaked through the tangled roots and lightly tapped Hannah in the center of her forehead.
“Thaetus,try man. Try to remember. Anything ye can.” Taggart strode in tight circles beside the four-poster bed. Guilt, rage, and sheer torment pounded through him, preventing him from remaining in one spot. His Hannah, spirited away, perhaps already dead. By the holy fires, how had he allowed this to happen? Once again, the Guild and the Protector had failed the sacred Sullivan line. But far worse than any ancient trust, he had failed her, his beloved dear one.
Lips gray, eyes red-rimmed and receding deep in their darkened sockets, Thaetus looked ready for the grave. Mia’s vicious poison still raged within him. His contorted limbs twitched uncontrollably beneath the sheets. “I never saw her,” he forced out in a rasping whisper.
The poor man’s voice was so faint, Taggart ceased pacing and leaned closer to better hear. Pure hatred tightened his chest as he took in the suffering of his devoted friend. His hands twitched as he envisioned them around Mia’s neck.
“She posed as a feckin’ cat!” Gearlach hissed. “It was theprophecy! We shouldha warned the boy against trusting felines. How could we have been so lax?”
Taggart lifted a hand to silence the beast and shook his head. “Even if we had warned the boy, he still wouldha been no match for Mia. William is an innocent, still young and untrained. Mia can be verra convincing when she wishes to be. I should know.” He had never understood what happened to her. She had once been such a wondrous creature of light, filled with hope and promise. Then she turned, becoming poisonous and unforgiving. She became as maniacal as Sloan.
Taggart repeated his question to Thaetus. “What do ye remember, old friend?”
Thaetus ran his blackened tongue across his cracked lips, then drew a shaking breath. “She told the Guardian she couldha killed me but chose not to. Then she said to come with her because her master grew verra impatient to meet her.”
“She showed ye mercy?” Taggart stroked his chin. Mia could have easily killed him. In fact, Sloan had probably ordered her to do so. Ruthlessness and cruelty marked Sloan for the despised ruler of Erastaed; many died without reason by his hand every day. He had an edict against housing prisoners any length of time. Sloan’s standard theory remained very simple: If you kept prisoners, they required feeding.
Septamus entered the room with a tray of herbal medicines clinking in tightly stoppered bottles. “By the way, the young one wishes to see Thaetus. He is troubled that he left the Scot and his mother unguarded with the cat. He blames himself for leaving them unprotected and not seeing through Mia’s evil glamour.”
“It is not his fault.” Taggart shook his head. If anyone was at fault, it was him. He was the one who had failed everyone concerned. After all, he was the Protector.
Septamus paused in his grinding of the pungent herbs and twitched a horn as if it were an eyebrow. “I will leave that for you to explain to the young one. Now back to the question: why would they suffer the Guardian and Thaetus to live?”
The caustic aroma of the herbs wafting through the room yanked unbidden memories from the recesses of Taggart’s mind. Mia knew every herb from every reality and the effects it wreaked upon any creature’s body. She claimed herbal magic as her greatest power and apparently, under Sloan’s tutelage, she had become diabolical in its use. To this day, specific scents still raked vicious claws across Taggart. They reminded him of her and the future they once planned, then the pain she inflicted when she publicly shunned him for being a monster.
