“Och, Christ, nay, lass,” he whispered. “Tell me you wouldn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
But he didn’t need to seek visual confirmation of what he’d just heard to know she had. And the truth was, he couldn’t blame her. He’d not have let her die, either. He’d have moved mountains. He’d have battled God or Devil for his wife’s life.
She’d betrayed him.
He smiled faintly.
And in so doing, she’d honored him beyond measure. His Jessica loved him enough to break all the rules for him, enough to damn the whole world just to save him.
He’d have done no less for her. He’d have kept her alive by any means possible.
“Highlander,” Trevayne’s voice rang out triumphantly in the great hall, “you’re mine for another century.”
His smile faded. Unfortunately, her actions changed nothing. “Over my dead body,” he murmured. Which, as he’d always known, was the only way.
Jessi gazed up at the landing, high above the hall where, for the past two weeks, she’d slept every night unless Cian had been free to sleep in a bed with her.
Framed in the mirror, he stared down at her as she stood arm in arm with his enemy. He closed his eyes briefly, as if trying to cleanse the image from his vision. Then he said softly, “Call me out, lass. You doona wish to do this. You must let me stop him.”
Jessi glanced at the tall grandfather clock in the alcove to the left of the staircase. Five minutes to midnight.
Biting her lip, she shook her head.
“Jessica, you’re not just keeping me alive, you’re letting him live. We’ve been through this. You must summon me out.”
Spine straight with resolve, she shook her head again.
When the mirror blazed brilliantly and the hall was suddenly skewed by that odd sense of spatial distortion, for a moment Jessi simply couldn’t make sense of it.
Then Dageus stepped from the shadows behind the balustrade and she realized he must have murmured the chant to release Cian—the chant she herself had told him that first night in the library—softly enough that only Cian had been able to hear.
But why?
“Dageus—what are you—why did you—oh!” she cried. He was moving protectively toward the Dark Glass, making his intentions all too clear.
She was too stunned by Dageus’s betrayal to register the danger she was in until it was too late.
Lucan dropped a silken cord over her head and had it cinched tightly around the slender column of her throat, the choke handles twisted before she even knew what he was doing.
“You son of a bitch, let her go!” Cian roared, bursting from the mirror.
Rather than releasing her, Lucan turned the choke handles just a bit.
Jessica went stiff and still. She understood the use of those handles, she was familiar with the garrote as an ancient weapon. One twist and she was dead. She didn’t dare move even the few inches necessary to try to use the dagger Dageus had given her.
Expect anything, he’d said.
Now, she thought bitterly, she knew why.
Three minutes to midnight.
Lucan had his wife hostage, a garrote about her neck.
“Get back in the mirror, Highlander. Return to it willingly and I’ll let her live. Move. Now.”
Cian stretched his senses. He should have felt it earlier, but he’d had no reason to suspect anything. Aye, the wards barring Lucan from the castle were down.
But the wards preventing Lucan from using sorcery were still up. Which meant Cian could use a spell on the bastard and Lucan wouldn’t be able to counter it.
He opened his mouth, and just as he did, Lucan hissed, “Say one word in sorcerer’s tongue and she’s dead. I won’t give you the chance to bespell me. If I hear one wrong syllable, I’ll snap her neck.”
Cian closed his mouth, a muscle working in his jaw.
“And that goes for you too,” he barked at Dageus. “Either of you start a spell and she dies. Get back in the glass, Keltar. Now. I’m coming up to pass the tithe through.”
Centuries of hatred and fury filled Cian as he stared down at the man who’d stolen his life so long ago and was now threatening his woman.
Vengeance: ’Twas what he’d lived and breathed for for so long, he’d nearly lost his own humanity.
’Til his fiery, passionate Jessica had come along.
Once he’d hungered for nothing more than to see Lucan Trevayne dead. No matter the cost. In truth, it hadn’t been so many days ago that he’d hungered for it above all else—twenty-six days ago, to be exact.