She’d never been wanted for so many things in her life.
And not a single one of them any good.
Dageus grimaced as he tugged the Dark Glass from the back of the SUV.
Though he had no desire to make contact with it (mostly because he had every desire to make contact with it), he wanted it in the castle proper, the most heavily warded portion of the estate. ’Twould be safest there, and he hoped mayhap those wards would diminish the pull it was exerting on him.
There were no protection spells laid around the vast, detached garage behind the castle, where he’d parked the purloined SUV. ’Twas too new of a building, and one of which he’d not overseen the construction. He intended to properly ward it soon, for he hoped to make much use of it. He was developing quite a liking for modern modes of transportation. They were far easier on a man’s privates than a horse betwixt the thighs.
He was already sorry he’d left his Hummer down in Inverness. The muscle-packed H1 Alpha was the first vehicle he’d purchased since he’d been living in the twenty-first century, and ’twas a truly magnificent machine. A man could go virtually anywhere in the rugged Highlands in it. He’d gotten attached to it in the manner a lad did his first fine stallion. He hoped his barbaric ancestor was a responsible driver.
“Arrogant Neanderthal,” Dageus muttered, standing the mirror up on end, at arm’s length, and taking a good look at it.
He inhaled a sharp, fascinated breath.
The legendary Dark Glass. In his hands.
Astonishing. He traced his fingers lightly over the cool silvery surface, then across the runes chiseled deep into the golden frame.
Not even the thirteen within him, who’d lived side by side with the Tuatha Dé many millennia ago, knew the language with which the frame was adorned.
It was said that the Seelie and Unseelie Hallows had been spoken into existence by the sheer magic of the Tuatha Dé tongue. The sacred relics had been spelled into being by words and song—and not in the tongue of Adam Black and his contemporaries—but in a far more ancient language that had been spoken eons past, long before the Tuatha Dé had come to this world. A language allegedly forgotten by all but the most ancient among them.
A chill was inching up his arms.
’Twas not an entirely unpleasant sensation.
In fact, ’twas strangely invigorating. Made him feel positively powerful. Not good. Not good at all.
Scowling, he turned, hurrying with it from the garage. The moment he stepped from the cool, windowless interior into the brilliant sunshine, he felt better, stronger.
Still, he wasn’t about to dally with the infernal thing in his hands.
Tucking the glass beneath his arm with the silvery side facing him so as not to blind anyone who might be looking his way, he walked around the castle and began heading across the front lawn.
“YOU BLOODY FUCKING IDIOT!” the mirror roared. “HAVE YOU ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’VE GONE AND DONE?”
Dageus was so startled by the bizarreness of the Dark Glass roaring at him that he did what most men would have done.
He dropped it.
Drustan lay flat on his back, his arm around his wife, breathing hard. ’Twas high noon and he was still in bed. Which wasn’t to say he was a lazy man and hadn’t yet been up that morn. He’d been up. And up. With his lovely wee Gwendolyn in his arms, he was nigh always up.
“God, that was amazing,” his wife said fervently just then, curling closer into his side, one of her small, dainty hands caressing his lightly stubbled jaw.
He had a sudden urge to leap from the bed and proudly pound his chest with his fists. He settled instead for turning his head, kissing her palm, and saying with studied casualness, “Mean you the third or the fourth time, lass?”
She laughed. “All times. As it has been since our first time, Drustan. You’re always amazing.”
“I love you, woman,” he said fiercely, recalling their first time. ’Twas a night he’d never forget, not a detail of it: not the crimson kitten thong he’d believed a fancy hair ribbon when he’d glimpsed it in her pack—until she’d slipped her shorts down that night, showing him what it was really meant for. Not the intense way they’d made love right there in God’s great wide-open, beneath a star-drenched sky, in the center of the standing stones of Ban Drochaid. Nor the way she’d later stood, so true of heart and trusting, as he’d cast her back in time.
Gwen Cassidy was his soul mate, they were bound in the ancient Druid way, forever and beyond, and every moment of life with her was priceless. She’d enriched his world in so many ways, not the least of which had been the recent gift of two beautiful dark-haired twin daughters who, at scarce five months of age, were already showing rather startling signs of intelligence. And why shouldn’t they, he thought proudly, betwixt his Druid gifts and his wee Gwendolyn’s brilliant physicist’s mind?