Page 74 of Earl of Darkness (Heirs of Kilronan Trilogy 1)

She planned. Knives? Too messy.

She’d refused the meals offered to her on the road. Turned her nose up at the suggestion she dine before she retired to her rooms. And paid for it now with a growling stomach and a headache throbbing against her temples.

Poison? Too impractical.

She gave up. Murder took too much energy.

Crying might help to ease the pain in her chest and the tight knot in her throat, but she couldn’t do it. Her eyes burned dry and hot, her cheeks flamed, her hands shook with futile self-condemnation. Yet no tears fell.

She’d wept upon hearing of Jeremy’s abandonment. She’d shrieked curses to the gods upon the death of her son. The source of that emotion had dried up. She had nothing left for Aidan. She was simply numb.

The rain moved off, leaving a sky streaked with gray and purple and a few struggling stars. She tried sleeping, but couldn’t relax.

When she began talking to herself, she knew she’d finally gone ’round the bend.

“It’s your own fault, you know,” she accused the frowning young woman reflected in the mirror.

“And how is that?” her reflection argued. Willful as always.

Cat shook her head. “You fooled yourself into thinking all that passion meant something. Fell like a sack of bricks for his brooding, masculine intensity. Are you so surprised Aidan turned out to be Jeremy all over again?”

“He’s nothing like Jeremy,” her reflection denied. “He’s the complete opposite of Jeremy. The anti-Jeremy.”

“You slept with him.” Cat ticked off a point on her finger.

“Yes.”

“You trusted him.” Ticked off a second point.

“Well . . . I suppose so,” her reflection wavered.

“And he stomped all over that trust.” Third finger. “I’ll repeat, he’s Jeremy all over again.”

Her reflection bit her lip, her gaze anxious and unsure, a line appearing between the curve of her brows. “You’re overreacting. Aidan was startled. He said so himself.”

“Startled, my eye,” Cat shot back, weary of arguing with an obviously deluded female. “He was shocked. Appalled. Disgusted. You not only fucked a man you weren’t married to, but you bore his child.”

The woman in the mirror winced. “Don’t use that word. It wasn’t like that, and you know it.”

“I know exactly what it was like. Remember? I was there. You’re as fallen and shameless as they get.” Her voice rose. “A harlot. A slut. Your child naught but the bastard son of a whore.” By now she was shouting.

Her reflection pressed her hands to her ears. Fell back from the mirror with an anguished moan. “Never refer to my son like that. Ever. Do you hear?”

Cat fell back too. Sprawled across the bed. Dragging the pillow to her chest for comfort. Her eyes dry and hot, her skin clammy. “I only speak the truth,” she whispered.

Her reflection had the last word. “Then from now on, keep your damned mouth shut.”

Aidan stood at the southwest boundary of Belfoyle. Concentrated on the cool, mossy feel of the ward stone beneath his hand. The loamy smell of the earth. The warbling of a chaffinch flitting through the bushes. This focus on his surroundings helped to center him. Controlled the wild maelstrom of magic torching his blood. Even so, singeing heat smoldered along his veins. A boiling ache concentrated bone deep. Sweat streaked his brow. Only one more stone after this. One more possibility of instant incineration.

Wards must be managed like any fence line. Checked for strength. Repairs made as the mage energy warped and waned over the passage of time. In the years after his father’s death, he’d let them falter. Why bother? Magic and the Fey world had been his father’s life. Not his.

No longer.

Slapping the hair out of his eyes, he tilted his face to the drizzle. The rain had moved on, leaving a milky, damp twilight. Within the shimmering mist, the band of mage energy shown rainbow pure. Extended outward from the ward stone—east toward the high fields, west toward the cliffs—before dissolving.

Stretching stiffening muscles, he started toward the final stone, set just off the west cliff path. His strides lengthening as he crossed the park. Climbed a stile. Passed through the sunken road that would dump him out below the meadow where the ward stone stood permanent sentinel.

The gloaming lingered, the sea flat and oily as the sun sank through sooty clouds edged in blood. A sailor’s delight. So why did he shiver with premonitions of looming tragedy?

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