“You called her ‘Shen-Ora.’ What does that mean?”
Though the light in the animal shed was low, he could almost swear she blushed.
“When I’m here, I fall to old habits too easily, I fear,” she said quietly, almost as if she were confessing. “It’s a name my mother called her and I used it, too, as a wee bairn. I’m no sure it has a true meaning, though my mother said it was an endearment, something akin to saying ‘my mother’s mother.’”
Chase stopped in the act of tossing the straw around the stall where he stood.
“Your grandmother? Surely Torquil wouldn’t send his own grandmother out into the middle of nowhere to fend for herself.”
Christiana shook her head slowly. “I dinna ken whether or no Orabilis and my mother were trulyrelated to one another. I do ken that I could love no one of my own blood any more than I do her. It was she who cared for me after my mother’s death. She who led me out of my days as a child, and onto the path of being a woman. It was she who taught me all I ken of the ways of healing. And were she truly of my mother’s blood, it would only be more reason for Torquil to despise her, as he despised my mother above any other. You see, Torquil and I share our father’s line but we’ve different mothers. He alone was the issue of our father’s first marriage.”
Things were starting to make more sense to Chase now.
“So this is why Torquil prepares for war against your brother, Malcolm? Because Malcolm is your mother’s son?”
He and Hall had learned that much already. Knowledge of who their enemy was had fallen into the “Are we fighting on the wrong side?” conversation more than once.
“Aye. He’s long hated my brothers, Malcolm and Patrick. He sees them as a threat to his power. And make no mistake, Chase Noble, my brother is a very powerful man. Wickedly powerful.”
He stared at the top of her head as she fixed her gaze on the floor.
“Why does Torquil keep you around, then? If he hates all your mother’s children so much?”
“Because he has use for me, of course. He usesmy gift of prophecy, and he’s made no secret that he’d see me dead before he’d allow that gift to be used against him.”
Her words were so simple, her voice so matter-of-fact, his heart felt the power of her plight more powerfully than if she’d railed against Torquil.
He dropped the straw and went to her, kneeling in front of her and grasping her hand. When she didn’t look up, he placed his forefinger under her chin and lifted, bringing her gaze up to meet his.
“That’s just wrong. Brother or not, he has no right to hold you against your will. If you want to leave, you just say the word and I’ll see to it that you go wherever you want to go.”
“It’s no so simple as that.”
She reached up, her soft fingers stroking down the side of his cheek, and he was lost. Nothing else mattered but the swirling skies he saw in the depths of her eyes.
“I’ll tell you what, Christy. We’llmakeit as simple as that. Your brother is just a man. And there’s not a man out there, not even your brother, who I will allow to harm you.”
Where that vow had come from, he had no idea, but he meant it from the depths of his soul. Perhaps this was why the Fae had chosen to send him to this time. To this place. To rescue the woman he was meant to spend his life with.
Perhaps Christiana was why he was here.
He could carry out a mission like that with hiseyes closed. A simple rescue op, a snatch-and-grab where the target was a victim, rather than the enemy.
Chase leaned back, surprised to find he’d been steadily leaning in closer toward Christiana as they spoke, as if his mouth were on an independent mission all its own.
“You dinna ken what you say,” she denied, her eyes widening in surprise and her mouth forming a perfect littleoas she stopped speaking.
A perfect littleothat he would like to—
The force hitting his back sent him hurtling into her, toppling her and the bench over backward.
A red haze of anger filled his mind as he grabbed for the sword from its sheath on his back, finding neither sword nor sheath but clearly seeing in his mind’s eye the weapon as it stood in the corner of Orabilis’s home next to her fireplace.
“Damn it,” he hissed.
Christiana’s peals of laughter melted the haze, as surely as salt on ice, allowing him at last to focus on the bleating sound behind him.
“Homer did no take so well to waiting for his food, aye?” Christiana managed. “You see? He’s eyeing you even now. Sizing you up to see if you’ve taken his hint, or if you’ll be needing another reminder nudge in the right direction.”
