Mairi rushed to his side but he waved her away, stumbling blindly to take a seat.
“I’m fine.”
He’d be fine in a few moments, anyway. It was his own fault. He’d been so wrapped up in his own selfish troubles, had grown so comfortable in the presence of his cousin and her Soulmate, he’d completely forgotten his need to erect the barriers he normally used to shield himself from the world.
It was the intense pain of a broken Soul Pairing that assaulted him now. Someone in this room had known life with their true Soulmate. Had bonded with that person and then had them torn away before their allotted time.
Even as Colin hastily erected the internal barriers he’d developed against such feelings, he raised his eyes to scan the room for the source of such pain.
The hunt was short. Even though only one person in the room was unknown to Colin, it would have been no challenge to find the person he sought.
The man sat in a large chair, his back straight, his expression shielded. But Colin’s second vision saw more than what was on display. Pain emanated from the man in shards of blazing red light, the shredded edges of his soul raw and pulsing.
Pol, High Prince of the Fae and Colin’s own ancestor.
Colin shuddered as he met Pol’s piercing emerald gaze, his mind scrambling to shut out the vision as well as the pain surrounding his Faerie ancestor.
He knew the legend, the story of Pol’s having been forced to leave his one true love. He’d heard how Pol had watched helplessly from his side of the curtain separating the World of Man from the Fae as his love had been rejected by her family and had slowly withered away.
But knowing the legend and seeing the man were two completely different things. What he’d just seen, what he’d felt, explained so much. He understood now why Pol hadn’t bothered to respond to his blustering demands for answers when he’d visited the glen.
Considering how Pol suffered, it was a wonder the prince could function at all.
“It has lessened over time.”
Colin had no doubt Pol spoke directly to him.
“It’s quite disconcerting, you know,” the prince continued. “I’ve rarely encountered any with the gift of Soul Vision.”
“Gift?” Colin shook his head. “Curse is more like it. Courtesy of the Faerie Queen herself. Her own particular way of teaching me to respect my elders.”
A bitter lesson forced on a headstrong, impetuous youth. A lesson, in truth, he might never have learned any other way.
Pol tipped his head and, for a moment, his eyes glazed over as if he were lost in some ancient memory. Then he blinked rapidly, turning his clear gaze to Mairi, picking up the thread of an earlier conversation as if no interruption had occurred.
“Cate tells me the Magic refused to heed your call no matter what you tried.”
Mairi nodded. “Exactly as I described when I called you, Grandfather. Cate and I tried everything we could think of, even including Rosie’s help, all to absolutely no avail.”
“How did he come to be here?” Pol continued the annoying course of speaking to others about Colin as if he weren’t sitting there within reaching distance.
“We don’t have an answer to that,” Ramos responded, taking a seat next to his wife on the sofa. “Though it’s quite a coincidence he ended up with someone who actually knew Mairi, a former student of hers.”
Colin sat back in his chair, folding his arms.Fae.He might as well have stayed in Mairi’s library for all the good he was doing here. It certainly didn’t feel as if they needed him at all for this conversation.
“When it comes to the Magic, there is no such thing as coincidence.” Pol shook his head. “You’ve investigated the woman? The one who found him?”
The woman? Colin looked up, scanning the faces around him. They were speaking of Abby.
“Aye.” Connor nodded from his spot by the doorway. “There’s no much to tell. Seems a decent enough lass. Working and going to school. Coryell assigned surveillance to her right away.”
Surveillance? Someone spied on his Abby? He struggled to tamp down the anger this knowledge spurred. It wasn’t as if she was actuallyhisAbby. He knew that. Still, she was more than just some random stranger into whose home he had fallen. Of that he had no doubt.
If not, why had she haunted his dreams from the day he’d first encountered her? Even after learning about the Battle of Methven, in his nightmares filled with screams of the dying men he’d left behind, always she was there, a presence at his side, her hand reaching for his. One sweet, gentle touch to his fevered skin and no matter how hideous the scene before him, he found the strength to move beyond it all.
In spite of dreams, he understood that she didn’t belong to him and that he likely had no right to the anger he felt welling in his chest on her behalf, but if not him, who?
“Who is this Coryell?” Colin demanded, unable to leash his tongue any longer. “And by what right does he act as watchman over Abby?”
