Come to me.
She took a step closer to the edge until her toes were sticking out beyond the lip.
Join me. Be part of my song, daughter of the Isles. I will end your suffering.
All thought vanished. There was only the irresistible pull of the stormlights and the roar of the water.
She lifted one foot, prepared to take the step that would send her down to join the lights—but a hand seized her wrist.
She jerked in surprise, spun—and found herself staring into Cailean’s storm-dark eyes.
The spell of the stormlight shattered.
Rose gasped, her eyes snapping wide. The world came rushing back in—the roar of the wind, the rain pounding her skin, the cold. She staggered back from the edge, her knees buckling as realization struck her like a blow.
She had been about to jump.
Around them the storm’s fury redoubled. Waves crashed against the rocks they were standing on, sending freezing spray over both of them. The wind howled, and to Rose’s mind it sounded like thwarted fury.
Cailean didn’t hesitate. He reached down, got his arms around her, and lifted her into his arms. Fighting through the spray and wind, he carried down the headland and back into the village while the sea screamed behind them.
He shouldered open the door of the nearest cottage, kicked it shut, and dropped the bolt, cutting out the scream of the wind.
Only then did he set her down.
He was drenched to the bone, his clothes plastered to his big frame, and water was running from his hair in rivulets. His presence seemed to fill the room every bit as much as the storm outside did.
She wanted to run to him. To throw her arms around him. To bury her face in his shoulders and revel in the solid, reassuring safety of his presence. But something stopped her.
Cailean’s expression was tight and his eyes flashed with something that went beyond anger into cold, hard fury.
“Do ye mind telling me,” he growled, his voice sounding like part of the wild storm outside, “what in God’s name ye thought ye were doing?”
*
Rose stared upat him and it was all Cailean could do to keep hold of his anger. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to rage and rant and tell her how stupid she’d been. But he also wanted to hold her, to pull her into his arms and let the feel of her wash away the terror that had squeezed his heart when he’d seen her standing on the rocks.
She could have drowned, been washed out to sea. He could have lost her and that thought was strong enough to snap him in half.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I… I don’t know what I was doing.” She shook her head as though trying to clear it of disquieting thoughts. “It’s like… like I didn’t have control anymore. Something was calling to me. There was a voice…”
Cailean scrubbed a hand through his wet hair. That hand was trembling. Hell, his whole body was trembling. With anger. With fear. With relief.
“Aye, well perhaps next time ye hear a damned whisper in yer head try not to follow out into a storm, especially when I’ve expressly told ye no!”
She flinched in the face of his anger. “But you came for me.”
“Of course I did.”
Did she really expect anything else? Did she really think he would let her go riding off into a danger alone? Did she not understand what she meant to him? Did she really not know how he felt?
He turned his back on her, afraid of the look in her eyes. He needed something to do, or he’d go mad. His knees thumped to the floor in front of the hearth and he began fumbling with the stacked wood inside.
Flint. Spark. Smoke. Flame.
Focus.
Behind him, Rose hadn’t moved. He could hear her breathing, shaky and shallow. He wanted to rage. He wanted toholdher. And that war inside him was tearing him apart.
