Page 18 of To Wed a Highlander
This was her fault. She shouldn’t have let him weaken himself to save her. If she used her powers to redirect the flames, it would drain her strength against the Wyrd Sisters.
“Don’t,” she ordered. “You need him, and you need me against the witches who are, even now, plotting violence and terror without these walls.”
“I have no need of you, harlot,” the old nun hissed. “I’ve made my own deal with the devil.”
“What deal?” Kenna gasped, the smoke now becoming a real threat. She’d need to do something soon, take action.
“All will be revealed,” she hedged.
Kenna was so absorbed in the trajectory of the old woman’s torch toward Niall’s pyre as she tossed it onto the wood, that she almost missed the two nuns release the bolt to the abbey’s heavy gates.
Mother Superior turned toward her, eyes glittering in the light of Kenna’s own fire. “IknowI’ll be absolved before I die, which is more than I can say for you.”
Kenna’s heart leapt from its perch in her chest and took a dive into her stomach as three figures were outlined in the abbey’s gates.
A maiden. A mother. A crone.
“You know nothing,” Kenna addressed the wayward nun in a voice made low and dark, though she never took her eyes from the Wyrd Sisters. “For if you did, you’d realize the mistake you just made.”
The Wyrd Sisters advanced in tandem, black-robed and cowled, a dark, malevolent ooze tainting the very air around them. Badb, on the left, the crone, her gnarled hands stirring the wind. Macha, the mother, on the right, calling upon the sea and darkening the clouds, promising the wrath of a storm.
And, in the middle Nemain, the girl with dark fire in her eyes and flames in her hands. Kenna’s nemesis. It was because of her existence that Kenna’s life was obsolete to these dark witches. They only needed one fire witch, and therefore could destroy her.
In Ireland they were thought to be the Morrigan, in England, the Wayward Sisters. Here in the Highlands, the home of their birth, they were the Wyrd Sisters. De Moray Druids who’d lost their way and let their greed for power take hold, turning them into creatures of darkness and avarice.
Kenna felt the ropes give as her clothes went up in flames. She yanked her arms free, letting the conflagration consume her robes. Heat spread through her body, a pleasurable singe with a punishing scorch at the end as she beckoned the blaze to heed her call.
Fire. Her element. A masculine, destructive, consuming force. It filled her, danced for her, and ignited a passion and a need for justice.
“Your fires of judgment could never hurt me,” she taunted the speechless nun who’d just set the blaze to her lover’s pyre. “It gives me the fuel to fight.”
Chapter 9
Niall watched his mate disappear into the flames with a horrified sense of awe. Smoke curled into his already weakened lungs, and slowed the ineffectual struggles against his bonds.
Who knew nuns were so good at tying knots?
Had he his usual strength, he’d be able to rip through rope as though it was parchment. But he was weak, he’d given all of his essence, his potency, to the woman he and his Berserker had chosen.
And he’d do it again, gladly. Though, his heart wept for his men, scattered around the court yards like corpses, yet still drawing precious breaths.
This was no sort of death for a warrior of Freya. Rendered helpless by the poison from a gaggle of frightened women and left out in the storm for these fucking harpies to use as fodder.
Flames began to lick closer to his flesh, and despite himself, Niall felt a frantic sort of rage well within him at his impotency. If only he had more time. If only he could see blood.
If only…
She was like a goddess, standing on her pyre, her clothes turned to ash and her hair flowing behind her, lifted by the fingers of the flames. Her precious skin was unmarred by burns, but glowed with power and strength.
“Give us the Grimoire, Kenna de Moray, and we may spare your life,” the witch in the middle spoke in a child’s voice dripping with an eerie innocence that she’d likely never possessed.
“Not a fucking chance,” Niall growled, knowing the depth of his woman’s devotion to her cause. To humanity.
Three heads swiveled toward him in sinister synchronization. “Another Berserker,” the crone hissed.
Their momentary distraction gave Kenna the time she needed to gather the flames to her body, creating a sort of human torch. Niall’s skin had broken into a sweat as the fire arced closer to him, but she seduced it toward her, as well, leaving none for the evil witches to gain control of.
It crawled to her glowing body like a child to a mother, and once Kenna had it in her possession, she released an arc of flames toward the Wyrd Sisters with lyrical words spoken in her ancient language.
