Page 23 of Highland Warlord
She’d find out just as soon as they addressed the trouble at hand. And do what she could to heal the bleak rifts she could feel emanating from his soul.
“Any word from Kenna?” She walked away from the warmth of the fire, missing her cousin and closest friend with a physical ache.
“Nay,” Malcolm sighed. “I stare into those bloody flames for hours every day searching for a message. But I know she’s alive.”
“The Wyrd Sister’s storm is gathering closer,” Morgana observed from the casement, watching lightning branch from the angry sky to the south. “What should we do?”
“Let them come,” he rumbled. Standing, he gathered his black robe about him, his crown gleaming in the flames, and held out a hand to Morgana. “We’ll fight them together.”
She went to her brother, his emotions as cold as the grey stones of Castle Moray. Wasn’t he frightened? Wasn’t he angry? “But, Colm, we are only two, we haven’t a third. If we can’t cast a circle, how can we protect the Grimoire?”
“I doona think we can,” he said after a long pause. “But it is our duty to try.”
They both walked to the dais in the middle of the throne room. Upon the pillar of stone lay a thick volume bound in an almost blonde leather. Blue tattooed runes adorned the corners and stretched toward the center of the title. Wards of protection surrounding a word spelled in a language not meant to be spoken.
As Morgana neared it, she felt the little thrill of danger that always jolted through her when in the presence of the Grimoire. Though, it didn’t look as ancient as she remembered, it also didn’t pulse with the same mysterious call she’d felt as a girl when sitting at her father’s feet in this very throne room.
She was grown now, a Druid in her own right, and after all they’d been through, nothing ever held the mystery or magic it had seemed to all those years ago.
Wooden shutters began to rattle; the storm had truly finished brewing and now became the harbinger of evil intent. It battered against the heavy wooden door of the throne room, chilling the air and carrying with it whispers, threats, and maniacal laughter.
“Perhaps we could use Bael.” She thought of her lover, her mate, locked in the dungeon by magical chains. “He could beour third. He has a little Berserker magic.” Also, she wanted him here with her. Though she knew there was not much he could do against magic, his presence, his strength, made her feel safer. Made her feel more powerful.
Malcolm shook his head. “He has no Druid blood. It wouldna work.”
“But couldn’t we try?” she argued. “He could at least use his axe to protect us.”
Her brother studied her with shrewd eyes for a moment. “A Berserker, Morgana?Thisis who ye choose after all the suitors Father paraded in front of ye?”
Morgana shrugged. “I didn’tchoosehim, exactly. I saved him and he sort of ran off with me.”
“Ye care for him.”
“Inexorably.”
Somewhere in the castle a window broke. Lightning lashed about the stones in unnatural strikes.
“But—aBerserker,” he repeated the word like it tasted foul. “They’re so proprietary. They tend to be a violent, jealous, barbaric lot with no morals and even fewer scruples. Ye’re not only a Princess, Morgana, ye are a Druid. One of the Sacred Triad.”
“Really, Malcolm, you want to have this conversationnow?” She gestured to the forces rattling the door, to the smoke beginning to curl beneath it. “Don’t you think we have more pressing problems to focus on?” Malcolm and Morgana clasped hands over the book.
“I’m just saying,” he continued as though having an argument over an evening ale. “Ye deserve better than a Viking—”
“Thereisno better, Malcolm,” she hissed. “Or don’t you remember, I can feel what he’s feeling. That man you call abarbarianhas been alive andalonelonger than you four fold.His emotions run deep as the ocean, and he’s never had anyone upon which to shower them. Why do you think he’s given up? Because a man who feels that much, can’t survive so many rejections. Cannot thrive in solitude. He wasn’t made for that.”
“But, Morgana —”
She silenced her brother with a look. “I know Bael can be a bit vicious and maybe even something of a savage, but he’smysavage, Malcolm de Moray, and I accept him as he is, asmine, so you must as well. I knew the moment we kissed that he was somehow meant for me, so don’t try to talk me out of it. You know it won’t work.”
“But—”
“Now we have a protection spell to work, and not enough time to work it in. Chant with me, brother.” Morgana was amazed that Malcolm didn’t seem more worried. That there wasn’t sage burning in the corners of the throne room or Ash leaves in the windows. Where were the wards drawn with crushed burdock, black cohosh, frankincense, and heather? “If we survive this, I’m going to have a discussion with you regarding your lapse in protection.”
He merely lifted another eyebrow at her, and Morgana decided she was beginning to hate that eyebrow.
Morgana began the protection chant. “I am protected by your might, O infinite Goddess of the night.” Malcolm joined her the second time, their voices truly melding by the third.
The flames in the fireplace flared to an inferno. The stone of the altar upon which the book stood vibrated and those vibrations reverberated through the stones at their feet. The storm raged, hurled, and concentrated on the door until the hinges burst and the heavy oak crashed to the stones.
