Ten minutes later, Gabby pulled into the alley behind her house. Exhaling gustily, she slung her purse over her shoulder, grabbed her briefcase, her gym bag, a teetering stack of files that hadn’t fit in the briefcase because she needed a lot of work to get her through the weekend sane, then balanced her coffee on top of it all, wedging the plastic lid firmly beneath the underside of her chin to hold it all steady.
She made it all the way into the living room before losing control of the unwieldy load.
Files slipped one way, the briefcase the other, then the coffee went, tumbling from beneath her chin, bounced off an end table, knocked over a pile of books and magazines, and drenched it all with dark, iced liquid.
Cursing under her breath, she began snatching coffee-stained files from the floor.
And that was when she saw it.
Since the day she’d gotten home from Scotland, she’d been avoiding the turret library, refusing to go in, in no frame of mind to be able to even so much as glimpse the O’Callaghan Books of the Fae.
Not even noticing that all this time the Book of the Sin Siriche Du had been lying on the end table near the sofa.
It was now facedown in a puddle of coffee.
It was going to be ruined!
She pounced on it, snatched it from the thick, muddy spill of icy liquid, and frantically dabbed it off on the sofa, heedless of the mess she was making of the flowered upholstery.
Thumbed it open to assess the damage.
And as Fate—which Gabby was seriously beginning to believe was wont to masquerade as seemingly innocuous cups of coffee—would have it, the slender black tome parted to a page that hadn’t been there before.
His elegant, arrogant, slanted cursive. She read it once, twice, a third time, flinching as the words slammed into her.
I will never stay with another human woman and watch her die. Never.
And there it was.
Her answer had been there all along.
No, he didn’t die. He’d chosen not to come back.
An anguished cry built in her throat and she tried desperately to swallow it, but she’d been swallowing her feelings too long. Day after day she’d been denying the pain in her heart, managing to stay in a state of limbo by arguing the case to herself that so long as she accepted no outcome, there was nothing to grieve.
She could no longer pretend. He was gone. And he wasn’t coming back.
Tears stung her eyes, blinding her. Clutching the book to her chest, Gabby sank to the floor, sobbing.
Because she was a Sidhe-seer, because he knew the féth fiada didn’t work on her, and because he had an irresistible urge to spy on her unseen for a few moments before completing that for which he’d come, Adam popped into Gabrielle’s kitchen a dimensional sliver beyond her perception, the tiny bottle of elixir cupped loosely in his hand.
He inhaled. Ah, he’d missed this, the scent of her! A faint, utterly feminine scent of vanilla and heather and sunshine.
The house was dimly lit, and he moved through it, seeking her. She was here, he could feel her.
Ahead of him in the living room, a light was on.
He stepped into the doorway and there she was. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back to him. Beautiful as ever. Dressed in a trim-fitting, short-skirted black suit (by Danu, he’d missed those sweet legs!—especially wrapped around his waist), with sexy little heels on her feet. Jacket nipped in at the waist, accenting her hips and full breasts.
But she looked different. Frowning, he stepped into the room, circling to her side. Thinner—he didn’t like that at all. He liked his woman built like a woman. Liked the way she’d been before, soft and nicely rounded. Christ, how much time had passed? he wondered. He always lost track of it when he was immortal; time passed at a slower pace in the Fae realm than it did in the human one. Her hair was styled differently, too, but that, he decided, eyeing her, looked sexy as hell, though he couldn’t quite get a good look at it with her head down like that and all of it spilling around her face.
A soft, wet sniffling sound came from behind the silky curtain of hair.
He cocked his head, moving to stand before her, looking down.
Was she crying?
Just then she raised her head, and Adam sucked in a breath at his first glimpse of her face. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks tear-stained, and she looked so fragile and heartbroken that it pierced him to his very core.
Who had hurt his woman? What bastard had made her cry? He’d kill the SOB!
Then he realized that she was holding a book in her lap.
His book.
Had he made her cry?
As he watched, more tears spilled down her cheeks, dropping onto the soft black leather of the tome. She traced her fingers lightly over the cover. “Damn you, Adam Black,” she whispered.
He snorted. Yeah, well, he’d heard that often enough to last an eternity.
Scowling, he began to reach down, to place his hands on her head, to sift through her mind and strip from her that which he should never have told her to begin with.
Reached. Hesitated. Drew back. Cursed himself softly. Reached again.
She spoke then, her voice thick with tears. “I love you, damn it,” she said brokenly. “I love you so much and it’s killing me. God, I was so stupid. You never cared about me at all, did you? How am I supposed to go on?”
Adam jerked, reeling backward, hands fisting at his sides. He scarcely felt the tiny glass vial imploding in his hand with a soft tinkle of glass.
For a long moment, he couldn’t move. Just stood, stunned.
She knew he was Fae.
She knew he had no heart or soul.
She knew he’d done heinous things, and she’d just said she loved him.
She loved him.
Bloody hell, she loved him.
Never cared about her? Was she crazy? It was all about her! Every bit of it! Every action he’d made, every thought he’d had since that night he’d first seen her had been all about her! Not for a single moment had she been out of his thoughts. She was inside him. Part of him now.
How could she not know that? With every gift he’d chosen for her he’d been saying it. Every time he’d buried himself inside her body he’d been trying to tell her! It had been in his every kiss, his every touch, silent, because he’d not wanted words thrown back in his face. But even in his words it had been there.
Sort of.
In the peculiar way human males spoke of such things. Or so his millennia of spying on them had taught him.
How could she not have known that every time he’d said, “You’re not falling for me, are you, Irish?” it had been his declaration that he was. Bloody hell, even back there on the train he’d known it.
Known he was doing the stupidest thing possible. Falling for a human. But he could no more have stopped himself from falling for her than he could have stopped that train from hurtling to its destination.
You’re not falling for me, are you, Irish?
That had been her cue to say “Um, well, maybe I am a little,” and then he could have said, “Well, um, fancy that; maybe I am too.”
Simple, concise, direct male communication. Right? Wasn’t that how men went about it? Had all his spying been on skewed samples of the population? Had he misinterpreted what he’d observed?
She loves me.
He was awed by it, stilled by it.
He glanced down at the shimmering silver liquid dripping from his fist.
And a moment of crystalline clarity shivered around him, settled into his being.
He opened his hand and slowly relinquished what remained of the vial. With a flexing of Tuatha Dé will, he consigned the spilled elixir and broken vial to a faraway, forgotten dimension where it would hopefully do no harm.
He finally understood that Morganna had been right all along—he hadn’t loved her.
Love would never imperil, never vanquish another’s soul.
The intense pressure beh
ind his sternum was suddenly back, that seizing in his chest, that tense feeling in his stomach. The sensations built and spread, and he nearly doubled over from the intensity of it. And he suddenly apprehended the sum of his existence as nothing more than a culmination of a series of events destined to lead him to a specific bench on a specific night at a precise moment.
To this woman.
He stared down at Gabrielle.
She was sobbing, head bowed, face buried in her hands.
In her grief, she glowed even more brilliantly golden; passion being the seat of the soul. She was so beautiful with that divine radiance illuming her from within, the very essence of who and what she was. He felt sick to think he’d nearly taken it from her. He could never take Gabrielle’s soul.
Nor, however, could he stand to watch her die.
Nor, however, was he willing to live without her.
Which left him, he realized, only one other option.
25
Queen Aoibheal eyed the spot where only moments before the last prince of the D’Jai had stood before her in her Royal Bower.
Adam was gone now. Gone to the human realm.
She sighed, feeling weary to the very core of her being. She’d argued with him, she’d bribed, she’d threatened. But nothing she’d said had succeeded in swaying him.
This is the sentence you chose as punishment for Darroc’s crimes, Adam—yet now you would request it for yourself?
Yes.
You know the transformation cannot be undone! I cannot save you should you change your mind. Unlike your other adventures, there can be no last-minute reprieve.
I understand.
You will die, Adam! One mortal life—and none can vouchsafe how long—then gone.
I understand.
You have no soul. You won’t be able to follow your Sidhe-seer when she dies.
I know.
By Danu! Then, why?
So calmly he’d stood before her, so composed. So regal and beautiful and so—she’d come swiftly to understand—very far beyond her reach.
I don’t want to live without her, Aoibheal. I love her. An elegant shrug. More than life itself.
That was so utterly inconceivable to Aoibheal that she’d been momentarily unable to fathom an argument to counter it.
Make me human, Aoibheal.
As she’d paused, trying to decide if she should continue arguing, or simply confine him somewhere—in the belly of a mountain, perhaps deep beneath the ocean—until the Sidhe-seer was long dead, he’d knelt before her, without a trace of his trademark arrogance and pride.
Her vainglorious, impetuous, wild prince had bowed his head. Humbly.
And he’d said a word she’d not heard pass those beautiful, sensual lips, not once in six thousand years:
Please.
In that moment, she knew she’d lost him.
That if she did anything other than grant his request, she would make of him—her most favored prince—her greatest enemy. Not that he could harm her, considering how much more powerful she was (though, given how unpredictable he was, she wasn’t entirely certain of that), but if she had to lose him, it would not be to hatred of her. She would yield him to another woman first, despite the sting of it.
Aoibheal closed her eyes, her hands clenching into delicate fists. Had she imagined, for even a moment, when she’d chosen his punishment, that things might come to such an end, she’d never have punished him. She would have resisted her Council’s counsel and plotted her own course.
As she would do henceforth—in light of the recent betrayal by those closest to her—Council and consort, no less. She no longer had Adam to watch her back.
“Ah, Amadan,” she whispered, “I shall miss you, my prince.”
Gabby shook her head as she guided the sporty roadster down the alley behind her house.
A man in a Lexus had followed her halfway home from the grocery store, hopped out at a red light, and tried to give her his phone number.
Men had been hitting on her like crazy lately.
It’s because you’re so obviously not interested, Chloe had said the other night on the phone. To many men, it’s a challenge they can’t resist—a pretty woman who doesn’t care.
Oh, please, it’s just the car, Gabby had replied, rolling her eyes. She really was going to have to get rid of it. It was attracting all the wrong kinds of men. Not that there were any right kinds—she’d had a taste of fairy tale, and after that, no mere man could ever hope to compare.
She’d finally returned Gwen’s and Chloe’s numerous phone messages a week ago—that awful night that she’d found the Book of the Sin Siriche Du.
She’d been crying so hard when Chloe had answered that she’d not even been able to manage a “hello.”
But Chloe had immediately known it was her, and Gwen had picked up on another line, and the MacKeltar wives had cried with her, from across an ocean. They’d tried to coax her to come back and stay with them for a while, but Gabby wasn’t ready to see Castle Keltar again.
She might never be ready to see it again. She’d spent the most glorious days and nights of her life in that castle, lost both her virginity and her heart in the Crystal Chamber. She’d worn his diamonds there, become his woman there; she’d perched atop a sheer cliff in the arms of her Fae prince and watched the day being born.
Merely thinking about it brought a mist of tears to her eyes.
Nope, definitely not ready to go back to Scotland.
Gathering her groceries, she set the car alarm and hurried up the steps to the back door. She was just slipping the key in the lock when the door was pulled open from the inside so abruptly that she stumbled inward with it.
Smack into a rock-hard body.
She jerked, flailing backward. The groceries slid from her suddenly limp arms, and her eyes flew wide.
“Hello, Gabrielle,” Adam said.
Her knees buckled.
“Stop manhandling me!”
“I’m not manhandling you,” Adam said mildly, taking full advantage of Gabrielle’s prone position to run his palm over her luscious, shapely behind. The moment she’d begun to go down, he’d swept her up and tossed her over his shoulder. “You swooned. I merely caught you.”
“I do not swoon. I have never swooned in my entire life,” Gabrielle shouted, thumping him in the back with her palms. “And that’s my bottom, not yours, so quit touching it!”
Adam laughed. Ah, how he’d missed his fiery ka-lyrra! “Possession is nine-tenths of the law, Gabrielle. Seeing as how your bottom is currently in my hands, not yours, I believe that makes it mine.” With a wicked grin, he rubbed her enticing, upturned rump, dipping intimately into the cleft between her cheeks.
“Oooh—that’s the most ridiculous line of reasoning I’ve ever heard! What is that—fairy logic? Nine-tenths arrogance, and one-tenth brute force? Put me down. What did you do? Get in trouble again? Need a little Sidhe-seer help? Well, too bad. Go away.”
He patted her bottom and continued to tote her through the house at a swift pace, making for the stairs. “I’m never going away, ka-lyrra,” he purred, savoring the soft, supple weight of her against his body. It felt like a century since last he’d held her.
“Sure. Yeah, right. Go ahead, make some more empty fairy promises. I’m not falling for them this time. I’m not playing whatever stupid game you’ve got in mind. You can’t just walk out on me, only to pop back in whenever you feel like it. There’s no Open Door policy here. Hey—take me back downstairs! What do you think you’re doing? Where are you taking me?” she snapped.
He turned his face into her and nipped her thigh with a playful love bite. “To bed, Gabrielle.”
“I so don’t think so,” she hissed, promptly launching into a tirade about how he was never going to bed with her again. That she may have been gullible once, but she wasn’t anymore. That he’d cured her of all her illusions. Wriggling like a wee hellion over his shoulder, she icily informed him that she had no intere
st whatsoever in having such a heartless bastard in her life to any degree, that she hated him, and that she only wished he were mortal so he could die and burn in hell for all eternity.
When he tossed her down on her bed, it knocked a bit of the breath from her, which gave him time to say, “You hate me, Gabrielle? That’s a bloody shame. Because I meant it when I said I’m not leaving. I’m never leaving. I’m in love with you.”
His ka-lyrra went still as stone, her mouth frozen open in a desperate bid for breath. Her throat worked convulsively. Then, with a great, indrawn screech of air, she launched herself at him, a flying, hissing female catapult of fists and tears.
It occurred to him, as he went crashing down to the floor beneath her, that he might well never understand women.
Gabby lay on the floor in Adam’s arms, her head spinning.
He’d let her pummel him until she’d exhausted herself. He’d let her rage and yell and weep, enduring it all in patient silence until—crying so hard she couldn’t breathe—she’d begun hiccuping uncontrollably. Then he’d rolled her onto her side, pulled her back against his powerful body, wrapped his arms around her, and held her until she’d calmed, whispering soft reassurances in her ear. “Shh, sweet. Be easy, love. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
Love? Adam was saying the L-word? Into what impossible fairy tale had she fallen?
“Am I awake? Is this a dream?” she whispered.
“If it is,” he whispered back, “I ask only that it go on forever. Not the crying part,” he clarified, “the holding-you-in-my-arms part.” He turned her gently then, to face him.
She buried her face in his chest, sniffling, trying to understand what was going on. Afraid to believe she was awake. Afraid that the moment she let herself believe it, she would wake up. Find herself alone in bed, in her big, silent house.
“Look at me, ka-lyrra,” he said quietly.
With a little sniffle, Gabby tipped her head back and met his dark gaze. And frowned, bemused. She’d been so stupefied to find him in her house that she’d not really taken a good look at him. Something about him was different. But what? His eyes?