With wings spread erect and pulsing over them, Tegan claimed Aine as his mate and spilled his seed deep within her.
Chapter Fifteen
“Don’t go,” Tegan said sleepily.
Aine looked up from lacing her dress. “If I don’t return the warriors will come looking for me. They may be able to track me to you.”
“Then we’ll find a new place-deeper in the mountains. Just don’t go.”
Aine stroked the downy underside of his wing. It quivered, causing Tegan to close his eyes and moan softly.
“I will come back to you.” She kissed him.
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll try. Rest and finish healing. I have a plan.”
He raised a brow. “A plan?”
“I’m going to tell the Lord of Guardian Castle that I’m not happy there. They’ll have to find a new Healer. It won’t surprise any of them. Maev was my only friend, and now that she’s gone there’s really nothing for me there.”
“Then you will come to live with me?” Tegan rolled a dark lock of her hair around his finger.
“Yes.” She was unable to keep the sadness from her voice.
“Why does the thought of being with me sadden you?”
“My family is going to have to believe I’m dead. That’s what makes me sad.”
Tegan didn’t speak. There was no other way. With what was coming no one would accept their love-Aine wouldn’t even accept it if she knew. That was why he had to get her away from here-before what they had was destroyed by an evil he couldn’t stop.
“Perhaps you and I will begin a new family.”
She looked startled. “Can we?”
He smiled and shrugged. “After the miracle of you, I believe anything is possible.”
Tegan thought she looked a little dazed as Aine wrapped her cloak around her shoulders. He stood up, flexing his leg, pleased at how good it felt.
“It’s much better,” she said.
“Because of you.”
Even when they couldn’t walk beside one another, Aine and Tegan made sure their bodies touched. She brushed his wing with her fingertips. He stopped often to pull her into his arms. By the time they came to the edge of the mountains, dusk was near.
“I have to hurry.”
Tegan kissed her once more, long and possessively. “Come to me tomorrow.”
“I’ll try,” she assured him.
He watched until he could see her no longer.
“Healer! Where have you been?”
The Monro’s gruff voice accosted Aine as she slipped quietly inside the front gates, thinking she was well hidden in the deepening shadows of dusk.
“I went to-” Aine paused. She’d left the funeral urn in Tegan’s cave! Thinking quickly, Aine glanced around them. They were alone with no Edan nearby to contradict her. If she was lucky, he’d been hunting all day and hadn’t even spoken to the Chieftain. “I went to Maev’s pyre and offered more prayers for her.”
“You should have been here. You’ve been needed.”
“What is it?” Aine frowned. The Monro’s words weren’t slurring, but he smelled like a pub. How could the Chieftain of a Clan, and Lord of Guardian Castle be a drunk?
“The warrior Edan was wounded while he was hunting. It was that same Goddess-be-damned boar.”
“Edan! Is he in the infirmary?” Monro’s drunkenness forgotten, Aine began hurrying through the castle grounds.
“No. We thought it best not to move him. His spine may be broken. You’ll have to go to him. He’s not far outside the rear gate.”
“Oh, Goddess! I’ll need my surgical box and a board to brace his back.”
“Those things already await you.”
Aine jogged beside the Chieftain down the path that emptied into the Wastelands side of the pass, feeling a terrible sinking in her stomach. The air was thick, oppressive. This was too much like what had happened to Maev. Then she noticed that Monro was wheezing and dropping behind her. He stumbled and almost fell. Aine paused, but he brushed off her aid.
“Go on.” He motioned feebly down the path. “Take the first right hand fork. Edan and the rest of them are waiting. I’ll catch up.”
Aine nodded and jogged away from him. Pathetic. Before I join Tegan I’ll get a message to the Muse. Guardian Castle needs a change in leadership.
When she came to the fork in the road, she sprinted to the right, finding her second wind. In the thickening darkness she almost fell over Edan. He was lying in the middle of the path-alone. He had been disemboweled and his throat had been ripped out.
Chapter Sixteen
Aine sank to her knees beside Edan. She didn’t have to touch him to know he was dead. Her surgeon’s box was sitting neatly beside the body, just as the Monro had said it would be. There was no back brace, though.
“He doesn’t need it,” she whispered numbly.
“Ahhhhh, there you are, Healer.”
Aine looked up into the eyes of evil.
A Fomorian stood before her. Several other creatures were behind him, carrying torches. The flickering light slicked off Edan’s blood, which covered the leader’s hands and face. He smiled and his dark wings rustled. There was blood in his fangs.
“I have need of a Healer,” the Fomorian said.
“Who are you?”
“You may call me Nuada…or master.” His laughter was horrible. The creatures behind him echoed it, making the sound bounce eerily off the walls of the pass.
Aine sprang to her feet and ran. Nuada opened his wings, gliding easily to cut off her retreat. He grabbed her arms, sinking his claws into her cruelly.
“I need your services, but that does not mean that you must remain completely undamaged.”
He bared his fangs at her and bent down, but he didn’t complete the attack. As he got near her skin his almost colorless eyes widened. He seemed to consider, and then pushed her so that she stumbled back towards Edan’s body.
“Take her to the camp, but treat her carefully. We wouldn’t want our Healer broken.” His laughter followed Aine as the others grabbed her and dragged her along the pass.
Aine studied the Fomorians as they traveled. She forced herself to be dispassionate and use medical logic to assess them. Physically, they were similar to Tegan. They were the same species. That was obvious. But these males were different. They looked more insectile. They were taller, thinner, and their claws were more prominent. Some of their fangs were visible even when their mouths weren’t open. Their leader, Nuada, was the most grotesque of the group. He was larger and stronger than the others. That they feared him was obvious.
Her Tegan was not like these creatures. These were the beasts of nightmare stories-what she had accused him of being. Instead of rejecting her mate, she understood what it was that had driven him into lonely exile. He didn’t belong with these demons any more than she did.
The Fomorian camp was laughably close to the castle at the bottom of a ravine. Maev’s dying words came back to her, The warriors know! They know! Fomorians had killed the centaur, and the warriors of Guardian Castle knew they were here. Not Edan, though. Aine knew in her heart that he had not been corrupted. That was why they had killed him.
Nuada grabbed her arm and dragged her to a tented structure that was guarded by several Fomorians.