Page 4 of Highland Warrior
Her name remained the only thing the Wyrd sisters hadn’t taken from her. The only thing she hadn’t pledged to them. Her last possession.
It seemed to be the purpose of the nether, to strip one’s mind of all individuality. The longer one remained incarcerated there, the more of themselves they lost.
Though a thick mist shrouded the afternoon, and thicker trees blocked the sunlight, Vían blinked against the brilliance of the day. It had been precisely fifty years since she’d been called out of the nether. Fifty years since she’d seen any light whatsoever, and before that it had been a few decades if she remembered correctly. In the hundred or so years she’d been incarcerated, she could count on one hand the number of times the Wyrd Sisters brought her forth to do their bidding. And once their objective had been acquired, it was back into the void with her. Alone and forgotten.
The dense forest shimmered with moisture. The leaves of trees, of which she’d forgotten the names, changed with the season, flaring into brilliant colors before they shriveled and fell to the earth. Her eyes ached with the sight, but she didn’t dare close them, for fear the beauty would disappear. She’d need this memory to hold on to, in case the Wyrd sisters didn’t hold up their end of the bargain and sent her back once her job was finished. The beauty of this forest would keep her for decades, until it, too, faded.
The damp flora beneath her feet felt like a carpet of clouds. She didn’t even care about the biting chill, and couldn’t help but run the moss between her toes with a child’s relish.
Even the wet, cold air that reached through her threadbare cloak until she trembled with body-tensing shivers felt better than the perpetual dry cold of her prison. It wassomething. A sensation and, though unpleasant, it was life-affirming.
Watching her hot breath puff into the autumn air, Vían drifted forward, ignoring the strange rustlings and noises of the forest. She only had one purpose, and the Wyrd Sisters’ evil Magick would protect her from all else.
She must seduce Malcolm de Moray, and say the spell Badb had given her upon his release into her body. With it, she would take his Druid Magick.
He approaches…the wind hissed with the voice of Badb, as she had dominion over the air.Be ready… be ruthless.
“Yes, mistress,” Vían whispered just as trotting hoof beats drew near. Spotting a soft bit of ground beneath the corpse of a fallen tree, Vían threw herself down and made certain her threadbare shift only skimmed her slender thighs and bared one shoulder and half of her breast.
A damsel in distress. Noblemen couldn’t help themselves.
As a dark shadow formed within the swirling mist and began to solidify, she moaned as piteously as she could.
“Help. Please sir. Help me?”
She didn’t have to fake her open-mouthed gasp as the Shire steed obediently stopped, horse and rider peering down at her with nearly identical looks of astonished curiosity.
Malcolm de Moray, Druid King of the Picts, was nothing like she’d imagined. Indeed, Vían had expected an older king, grey-bearded, poxed, and portly from too much ignoble excess.
The man swinging down from his horse couldn’t have yet seen five and thirty. He was tall and wide enough to merit such a giant steed, she could tell that even beneath his forest-green cloak and kilt.
“Christ,” he swore, hurrying to her.
Vían couldn’t make the assessments she needed, nor could she remember the plots and lies she’d worked on. His eyes were so mossy green and lovely in a face so raw with masculinity that the contrast rendered her speechless.
Locks of unruly russet hair fell over his braw forehead as he bent down to kneel beside her prone body.
“What happened to ye?” he demanded, ripping off his cloak and covering her with it.
So much for distracting him with her bare skin.She’d have to improvise.
The reasons she couldn’t answer him were two-fold.
First, because the cloak was fur-lined and sumptuous, retaining the warmth of his body and sliding across her cold, bare skin like a lover’s caress.
Second, because his shirt was unfastened to his torso, and she could see the swells of his chest and the dark shapes of his nipples hardened against the cold beneath the thin linen.
He was lean in the way that wolves were lean. Long limbs thickened with power and sinewed with grace, but also clinging to his braw frame in a spare, hungry way that made her wonder if he ate enough to support a man of his size.
Vían didn’t quite know what to do in the presence of such a male, let alone what to say, so she merely stared at him in an open-mouthed stupor.
“Are ye hurt?” He made as though to put his hands on her, but then thought the better of it, studying her with shrewd, yet gentle eyes. “I doona see any blood. We’re ye attacked, lass?”
“I—I don’t know,” she answered shakily. “I don’t remember anything. I just… appeared here.” Lies were more believable when peppered with the truth.
“Can ye move yer limbs? Yer fingers and toes?” he queried, still squinting at her alertly from beneath a cruel brow.
“Aye,” she lifted her arm out of his cloak as though to show him, letting it fall down past her shoulder and breast.
