He should have seen these complications coming. He knew that when a man poised on the brink of achieving true greatness, the world tested him. It had happened to him before. It would happen again. He should have been better prepared this time. He would be in the future.
He, Lucan Myrddin Trevayne, fathered by an unknown Druid on a whore of a mother who’d lain with dozens of Druids from all over Great Britain during the course of a three-day council held in the tiny Welsh village of Cochlease, eleven hundred and seventy-eight years ago, had risen high above the ignominy of his birth and was this close to becoming powerful beyond his wildest dreams, able to command even the legendary Tuatha Dé Danaan themselves.
His earliest years had not been easy. He’d struggled, he’d worked, he’d studied, he’d traveled the world seeking knowledge and power. He’d transformed himself from the bastard son of a whore other Druids had refused to recognize, to a man respected and deeply feared by the mightiest among Druids and sorcerers alike.
It had been during those early years of travel that he’d learned of the Dark Hallows. He’d managed to secure rubbings from three sacred pages of the incredible Dark Book at the tender age of twenty-eight. He’d devoted the next eight years of his life to deciphering the encrypted rubbings.
Upon succeeding, he’d learned much from those rubbings, including the location of the Dark Glass of the Unseelie Fae, as well as the necessary tithing and the binding spells to use it. In exchange for the triple boon of the sacrifice of innocent blood, the ensorcellment of a captive, and a recurring tithe of pure gold, it bestowed eternal life.
It was rumored that Merlin himself had once possessed the Dark Glass, until it had been seized from him by an army a thousand strong and a mysterious group of Irish holy men.
Unfortunately, knowing where it was and how to use it hadn’t been enough.
Lucan had tried four times to get to the Dark Glass. And four times he’d failed. The final time, he’d barely escaped with his life, and he’d been forced to concede that he simply didn’t possess the power necessary to get past the guardians.
He’d spent the next seven years of his life looking for someone who did. He’d found him in Cian MacKeltar.
He’d hated the Highlander on first sight.
15
Jessica lay facedown in a pool of blood, her glossy black curls wetly matted to her head.
She was bled white, stiff and icy in death. Her spine was drawn in a painful bow, her right leg splayed at an impossible angle. Her left arm was bent awkwardly over her head, the underside of the wrist down, the palm twisted gruesomely up. Her other hand was clenched in a bloody fist.
It was obvious she’d suffered as she’d died. Not just pain. Horrific pain.
She’d cried out for him.
She’d never stopped believing he would save her.
He’d told her that he would; that he would be her shield—he’d vowed to stand between her and all others.
He’d failed.
Pounding the wall with his fists, Cian tossed back his head and howled like an animal. The sound echoed from walls of stone, ricocheted off a stone ceiling, bounced back at him from a stone floor.
One thousand one hundred and thirty-three years had not driven him insane.
But the past two days had managed to accomplish what eleven centuries had not.
She was out there, his Jessica, with only her wits and will to rely upon. And he was trapped in the mirror, unable to protect her.
From the moment the Dark Glass had reclaimed him, the terrible possibilities had begun playing themselves, with chilling detail, in never-ending repetition through his mind.
An assassin had slipped onto the plane and into the seat behind them, then taken her captive the moment she’d disembarked. She was, even now, drugged and on her way to London.
Nay—the bloody frigging plane had simply plummeted from the air, crashing thousands of miles to the ocean below, sinking like a stone. He didn’t understand how the hell it stayed up there, anyway. It might have wings, but they didn’t flap. (This was the kindest of his hells; she suffered no indignities and death came more swiftly in this than any others.)
Nay—when his mirror was next uncovered, it would be to discover himself once again hung upon Lucan’s study wall, staring down at his beautiful Jessica, tied and gagged, being raped and tortured by his ancient enemy.
Nay—when his mirror was next uncovered, he would see only Lucan’s hated face and the bastard would do the same thing he’d done to him with word of Cian’s mother and sisters—never utter a word about Jessica again, no matter how Cian pleaded, leaving him to imagine the worst of all possibles every single day for the rest of his eternal existence.