“It doesn’t matter.” He reached for her again but she stepped back. “You’ve come to yer senses now and we’re doing what we need to do.”Please, God,he prayed,let her have come to her senses.
She scrubbed her hands over her face before clenching them together in front of her. “You dinna understand what I’m trying to tell you. This very morning, though it seems a lifetime ago now, you said we needed to talk. You were right, but that’s because I’ve something I’ve need to tell you before you take me anywhere near yer family. Something I’ve no wanted to share. I’m no the madwoman I pretended to be for so long.”
“We established that fact quite some time ago, did we no?” Robert did his best to tamp down his impatience. Obviously she was headed somewhere with this prattle, and obviously wherever that somewhere was, it was important to her.
“Aye, we did.” She paused to take in a deep breath, lifting her chin defiantly before she continued. “But that’s no to say I’m like everyone else. My mother was one of the Fae folk and, as a result, I’m possessed of a terrible magic I canna control. Or...”—Here she stopped, lifting her hand to stare at the duplicate of his Guardian Mark. “Iwaspossessed of such a magic. But now...”
Her voice trailed away as she looked up at him. Her expression so lost, so frightened and unsure of herself, it dug into the small places of his heart and made him feel small and powerless.
Once again, he gathered her into his arms, holding her tightly to him. “Tell me of this magic, Isa, and of what’s happened to it.”
“That’s just it. I dinna ken what’s happened—only that it’s gone and that I feel somehow less without it.”
He nodded and tucked her back under his arm, gradually urging her forward, one step at a time, as she continued to speak.
“Before this morning, before this”—she held up her hand as if to show him the mark—“it was as if the weather, as if all of Nature herself, were somehow tied to my emotions. When I was sad, it rained. Happy? Bright, sunny, warm days. And if I were afraid, or worst of all, angry, it was as if hell had been released from the very clouds.”
So it was true. He felt as if his heart paused in his chest, just long enough for him to have to work at that next breath. Was there no part of his life the Fae hadn’t penetrated?
His mother said the Fae had predicted his birth while she herself was yet a child, and, for a fact, he knew they would have a hand in his death soon.
Confirming that Isa was one of them simply tied the whole of his life up into one tidy little package of Faerie interference.
Yet, in spite of that, he couldn’t hold them to any blame. All things considered, who was he to question the workings of the Fae? If not for them, he wouldn’t have had a second chance at life.
Wouldn’t ever have met Isa.
Wouldn’t have discovered his Soulmate, no matter how few the days he was destined to share with her in this lifetime.
Andthatwas the true crux of the pain he suffered at this moment. Though he’d danced his way all around it for days, there was no denying it any longer.
Isabella was his Soulmate.
Everything that had happened made sense once he accepted that single fact, from his having arrived twenty years later than he planned to the mark on Isa’s hand. All of it, right down to the way he felt when he held her in his arms.
He’d taken the Guardians’ Pledge to reunite the broken Soul Pairings, and in doing so, he had enabled the Magic to direct him to his other half. That she might never accept the truth of it was beyond his control, beyond even the Magic’s control.
And though they’d be separated soon, he now had no doubt that one day, one lifetime, they’d be together again.
His arm tightened automatically when she pulled to a stop again.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking up at him, wrinkling her nose. “Do you smell that?”
“Aye. Fire.”
They started forward again, their speed increasing until they ran. Robert took the lead, with Isa trailing farther behind as they raced through the trees.
He spared only a moment to wondering whether Isa’s hand tingled as his arm did now, whether she realized yet to pay attention to that feeling. No time to let himself be distracted. He blocked that thought as he blocked the pain burning through his chest. His mind focused on the cottage where he headed and the small boy he’d left sleeping there, and he pushed himself to run harder.
Smoke drifted through the trees toward them. Sharp and acrid, it stung the back of Isa’s throat as she gulped in air. Her chest and legs ached from running but she couldn’t stop. Robbie’s long legs had left her too far behind already.
Up ahead, where the trees gave way to her little piece of cleared forest, Robbie stopped. One hand clutched to his chest, he bent from the waist, obviously catching his breath.
As she drew close, he held up his arm, apparently signaling something.
Stop? Keep silent? She had no idea. And looking beyond where he waited, she lost any interest in trying to figure it out.
Her cottage, her wonderful, lovely cottage, was burning, flames leaping up into the sky from what had been her thatched roof. The same roof she’d repaired herself just last summer.
