More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Now Dageus MacKeltar is a man with one good conscience—and thirteen bad ones. Although he can hold his own for a while, his time is growing short.
Day by day he continued to change … felt colder, less connected, less fettered by human emotion. More detached god, less man. Except when he tooped—och, then he was alive. Then he felt. Then he was not adrift in a bottomless, dark, and violent sea with naught but a puny bit of driftwood to cling to. Making love to a woman staved off the darkness, replenished his essential humanity.
I wait for my brother, lass, he hadn’t said. I wait for the day Drustan wearies of my refusal to return to Scotland. For the day his wife is not so pregnant that he fears to leave her side. For the day he finally acknowledges what he already knows in his heart, though he so desperately clings to my lies: that I am dark as the night sky, with but a few starlike flickers of light left within me.
Some days Dageus felt as ancient as the evil within him.
“Life isn’t always fair, lass, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be sweet.”
“ ’Twas naught but practice for the day I might please you.”
When a Druid offered his favored weapon, his Selvar, the one he wore against his skin, to a woman, he offered his protection. His guardianship. Forever.
Devil and Angel: he, seduced by her lightness; she, tempted by his darkness. Each drawn to what they lacked.
He had the wild, true heart of a child, in the body of a jaded man. Intensely guarded, unless he chose to give it, yet once given, it was given completely. Without thought to his own survival.
Naught risked, naught gained, Grandda had always said.
the only time reason fails is when we’re trying to convince our minds of something our heart knows isn’t true. Stop trying. Listen with your heart.”
You may not have nine lives, Chloe-cat, but you mustn’t be afraid to live the one you’ve got.
There were voices inside his head. Thirteen distinct ones: twelve men and the jewel-bright tones of a sultry-voiced woman, talking in a language he couldn’t understand.
He crushed her in his arms, swept her up and, in a few powerful strides, backed her hard against one of the standing stones. Ah, so the stones are still here, she thought dimly. Or I’m still here. Or something.
As if from a far distance, she heard Silvan say gruffly, “ ’Tis good to be seeing you again, lad. Nellie and I have been sore fashed o’er you. Och, the wee lass is going, son. You might catch her now.”
But Silvan had poked. Silvan always poked. And despite the barriers his son had erected, buffering it a bit, it had poked back and Silvan was, quite simply, horrified by what was growing inside Dageus.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, she thought with droll exasperation, this certainly explains a lot. It’s no wonder I haven’t been able to keep my hands off the blasted man since the day I met him. He’s an artifact! A Celtic one at that!
“If aught must be lost, ’twill be my honor for yours. If one must be forsaken, ’twill be my soul for yours. Should death come anon, ’twill be my life for yours.”
“Ah, the nefarious everyone. I’ve long wondered who comprises that group.”
He sensed a pure heart in her, a heart like Dageus’s, more sensitive than most, wildly emotional, hence carefully guarded. He heard her love for his son in the slightly husky timbre of her voice. A love so strong that it fashed her a wee, and she was not yet ready to speak of it.
When a heart realized it loved was also, paradoxically, when a heart learned to fear most deeply.
When he was his da’s age—in the event he had the luxury of living that long—he had no doubt he’d still be replaying the vision of Chloe perched on that chair before the shield, practicing how to say she loved him, just right.
“Tell me. You promised to tell me it all. Now tell me where the damned thing is and, more important, how do we destroy it?” Dark gaze boring into hers, he wet his lips and said softly, “ ’Tis inside me.”
“Lad,” he said softly, “Give my love to Drustan and Gwen, but know you carry the bulk of it with you.” Another pause. “I ken a da shouldn’t have favorites, but—och, Dageus, my son, you were always mine.”
“I’ll kill the son of a bitch!” Dageus snarled and began to move toward the door of the library. “Sit,” Chloe said, dashing after him and tugging firmly at his sleeve. “Let’s hear the rest of it. You can kill him later.”
Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important ashow we have lived. —JEAN LUC PICARD, captain of the Enterprise
They squabbled a bit—he squabbled with the queen!—over a few minor points. Mostly because it was rather like a game of chess and finessing for the advantage was as much a part of her nature as it was his.
