Page 17 of Druid Cursed

A solid plan for a wicked witch bent on revenge, but Wendy would never tolerate being used. Not by a witch, anyway. A rich bachelor was a completely different scenario.

He cocked his head, studying her with the smallest of smiles. “You have no skill at hiding your emotions, Maggie. Is there aught you wish to say?”

Dammit. If he could read her expressions so easily, it was safer to be honest. She huffed out a breath. “I won’t pretend you’re not…uh…”

“Unhinged?” He arched an eyebrow. “Daft? Mad?”

Coming from him in such a sane tone, his eyes clear and sharp, the very suggestion sounded preposterous. She wrinkled her nose, her face warming. “I was going to say in need of a long vacation with cozy couches and fountains.”

“Sounds charming.” There was a definite trace of amusement in his voice. But everything he’d said? Impossible. A Grimms’ fairy tale untold.

Maggie pushed from the wall and moved toward the table, closer to him.

“I hate to burst your bubble, but the only thing Wendy has ever channeled is Love Island episodes. Sick, I know, but not supernatural. And let’s be honest. A zillion years old, doing nothing but sitting around in a cell for hundreds of years, with abs like these?

Please.” She poked him in the gut, and her mouth went dry. Not an ounce of flab, only hard muscle.

“As I said, my body remains as it was the day Sorcha cursed me.” He lifted his chin. “You do not believe me.”

“I won’t be the tragic heroine in a hamartia story.” She crossed her arms at his raised eyebrow. “You know, like Oedipus, whose mistaken beliefs led to his demise.”

“I am familiar with the tale.”

That confession wasn’t helpful to her cause. There was nothing sexier than a man who read. “Yeah? And what about the old folk tale about the village idiot and the enchanted sword?”

He frowned and shook his head.

“There was a down-on-his-luck man in a village who found a sword. The rest of the townspeople convinced him it held great magic that made him handsome, charming, and wise, his battle skills invincible. It was all great—fun for them, and he believed his luck had finally turned—until he entered the king’s tournament. ”

“Ah. So he lost his regained dignity along with his hope, leaving him with naught.”

“Bingo. He lost everything , including his life. I won’t be the village idiot, Kellen, the one guest gullible enough to believe in the impossible only to get to the end and find out it was all some sort of practical joke, and I’m the entertainment for everyone else, a modern-day parable.

I’m not just going to take your word for it. I need hard, indisputable proof.”

He sighed. “Aye, I suppose ’tis wise to require proof for so implausible an account from a stranger. Trust must be earned, and even then, ’tis oft difficult to give.”

“Yes, exactly.” Maggie studied him, wishing she were a walking lie detector. But the fact he understood trust was important, hard to win and easily broken? She couldn’t help respecting him a smidge more.

“I hope I am mistaken about your friend.” He flipped the clue card over. “I must speak with her. Finding her would be a fine start to the proof you require.”

“Great. And now that you’re through threatening me, why don’t you give me a hint as to where a ‘ring with a secret’ might be?

Completing the scavenger hunt Wendy gave me could be the best way to find her.

” She forced her gaze from his dark, wicked eyes to the wizard’s retreat with its myriad of treasures.

As much as she’d enjoy testing every loose stone in this tower room for potential hideaways, Cara still waited for her outside.

She’d said if Maggie took too long, she’d send in help.

Kellen probably wouldn’t appreciate a rescue team tramping through his ancestral home.

“You wish for my aid?” He folded his arms over his charcoal sweater, and damn if he didn’t look even sexier leaning against a table loaded with ancient tomes, animal skulls, and dried herbs, his black-booted feet crossed at the ankles, the light making his ebony hair gleam.

He dropped his chin, and his voice lowered. “Even after everything I told you?”

Right. A druid cursed by her alleged great-great-whatever grandmother. “I’m not expecting any handouts,” she said. “Just hints.”

He frowned. “I have played no part in the orchestration of this hunt.”

“Perfect. So I can’t be accused of cheating if it’s part of any secret side-competition.” She gave him an innocent smile.

“You do understand that you will be required to spend time with me whilst I assist you?” He arched an eyebrow, and she couldn’t deny a true smile. He may be a danger to her pledge, but it was impossible not to appreciate his sense of humor and old-fashioned manners.

“I suppose I’ll have to suck it up and endure your company.” She lifted an eyebrow of her own. “For now. You’ll have to prove your usefulness, though.”

One corner of his mouth curled up. “I shall endeavor not to disappoint you. If what you seek is in this tower, there is no better person than I to assist.”

As he examined the card again, Maggie shifted from foot to foot, ready to find the ring and move on. She needed to track Wendy down again, and Cara had to be getting impatient, waiting for her. Finding Kellen here instead of a ring hadn’t been part of her plan.

He straightened. “There is only one nook in this tower worthy of hiding secrets.”

Bypassing the shelves and table, he went to the hearth and crouched, looking up the chimney.

Maggie trailed him, the excitement of solving a mystery making her steps bounce.

She knelt beside him and peered up into the blackness of the chimney as he reached inside and fumbled with something she couldn’t make out.

The grating sound of rock on rock followed, and a fine dust of ash trickled down.

“A secret hidey-hole?” Maggie asked with no small amount of awe.

Kellen grimaced as he carefully set a fist-size brick beside his knee. “As a child, I had a great love for sweets and a master who reproved indulgence.” He grinned at her, a smudge of soot on his cheek. “But he had no mind for creativity.”

An unexpected tenderness curled inside her, and it wasn’t hard to picture him as a boy, furtively tucking his treasures away from the world. If they’d met as children, they would have been instant friends, she was sure of it.

“Caedmon, however, was not so easily fooled,” he continued, his voice strained as he struggled with something between the bricks.

“He discovered my stash, along with his favorite charm, which I had taken as punishment on one of the many occasions in which he was being excessively vexing. He has always bested me at keeping secrets. I lost all my sweets and my most cherished book that day.”

“What was your most cherished book?”

He ducked down and looked at her. “ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , a forbidden tome for a young druid initiate, considered frivolous by my master. He took it upon my arrival. I stole it back before he could burn it. If I had not been called to be a druid, I would have sought knighthood.”

A would-be knight and protector of books, too? A thrill shuddered through Maggie. She didn’t believe he had really been alive all those centuries ago, longing to be a medieval knight, but the idea of it was fun. She’d play along. “Did you have armor and a sword? A horse?”

“Aye. I believe Caedmon currently has them on display in the library.” Kellen sat on his heels, holding an object wrapped in cloth. “The family sword and armor, not the horse.”

Oh yeah. “I know exactly where I’m going when we get back.”

He paused in untying the twine around the cloth and looked at her. “I will take you wherever you wish to go, Maggie. Whether or not it has to do with this scrounge quest.”

“Quest. I like it. From this point forward, I’m no longer on a scavenger hunt, but a noble quest to secure the resources for my dream. Do you wish to join me, Sir Druid?”

The expression of desperate longing that flashed over his features stole her breath.

“Always,” he breathed, and before she could react, he caressed her cheek with the back of his knuckles, so tender her throat tightened.

Maggie shook it off. Just because a hot guy who loved all the same nerdy things she did paid her some attention didn’t mean she h ad to get all starry-eyed. She jerked her chin at the object in his palm. “What’s in it?”

He dragged his gaze from hers to the box. “I know not. ’Tis not mine.” Carefully, he resumed untying the twine and shook it aside. “Caedmon is the only one who knew of my hiding spot, but I have been imprisoned for centuries. Another could have discovered it in my absence.”

“Such as Wendy.” She didn’t miss his doubtful expression. “She has been out wandering. Exploring. I found her earring near here yesterday, remember?”

Kellen nodded and unfolded the material, revealing a polished wooden box.

It had the same symbol of a scythe and blackberry vines that had sealed the clue card envelope, the one that disturbed her just by looking at it.

He lifted his finger as if to touch the symbol but hesitated. “This is Sorcha’s sigil.”

A shiver scurried down her back and lodged in her stomach. “Do you think Caedmon put the box up there?”

“I do not.” Using the material as an impromptu glove, he gingerly lifted the lid.

Inside, on a bed of crushed green velvet, rested a ring.

It was obviously from another time, the black oval stone at the center and its surrounding crystals dulled with age, the elaborate silver settings scarred and tarnished.

“’Tis a poison ring.” Still using the cloth, he removed the prize and carried it to the table, with Maggie right behind him.

He shut the book with its beautiful symbols and pushed it aside, rattling bottles and bones, and set the ring beside the small book with the tooled leather cover of a tree and ravens.

“Do you mind if I borrow this?” She lifted the book. “I promise not to lose it.”

He glanced at it, frowned, and looked back to the poison ring. “’Tis also not mine.”

“So you won’t mind if I take it with me?” She tucked it into her pocket even as he nodded. Score.

His eyebrows drawn in concentration, Kellen pressed a button on the side of the ring band with the cloth. The black stone popped open.

“Wow…” Maggie leaned nearer. “I’ve always wanted a poison ring.”

He looked scandalized. “For what purpose?”

“Because it’s just cool. And before you ask me again, no, I’m not a witch or a practitioner of the dark arts, and my relationship with my broom is lukewarm at best. I’m merely an admirer of all things metal and deadly.”

“Brooms again,” Kellen muttered with a shake of his head, then stooped over the ring and sniffed from a careful distance. “Traces of oleander.”

“Real poison?” She sniffed but only got a whiff of Kellen’s subtle, spicy scent. He probably smelled better than oleander. And bonus—he wasn’t poisonous. “Does oleander grow around here?”

He shook his head. “Foreign merchants would, on occasion, offer its blooms or stalks for a king’s ransom. ’Tis useful for those who possess poison rings for nefarious deeds.” Kellen snapped the ring shut and tucked the swath of cloth around it. “A person such as Sorcha.”

“So you’re saying a spirit put a poison ring in your hidey hole, sent me on a scavenger hunt—correction, quest—to find it, knowing all along you’d help me, and it’s all part of her scheme to torture you while you’re free?”

She trailed him as he carried the ring back to the box waiting near the hearth. He held it between two fingers and away from his body, as if he gripped the tail of a venomous snake, not an inanimate object.

“That’s a lot of work just to piss you off before sending you back to prison.”

Assuming any of this was true.

“A very astute observation, Maggie, and I agree.” Kellen dropped the ring into the box, crouched, and quickly bound them both with the material and twine.

Done, he sat back on his heels and gave her a solemn look.

“I do believe she has a more sinister purpose for her actions that we have yet to determine. Not only as a way to keep us from breaking the curse.”

Her doubts that any of this was real stirred like dying coals that refused to spark. She shook her head, as if she could toss the details away.

“Maggie!” Cara’s shout carried up through the distance, echoing off stone. “You have two minutes before I organize a search party to storm the castle!”

She huffed a laugh. “For a pretty, pretty princess, Cara’s surprisingly patient. And loud.”

Kellen stood and held out a hand to her. “Come. There is little to do but continue your noble quest and locate your friend. Finding her is key to answering our questions.”

She took his hand, and he hefted her up as if she weighed no more than a pillow. The unexpected momentum pulled her against him, and she braced her free hand on his chest for balance—his firm, strong, delicious chest. By the wicked sparkle in his eyes, he’d totally done that on purpose.

“Right. My quest. Find Wendy.” Maggie stepped back and pushed her hair from her eyes. His warmth lingered on her skin like a snuggling cat, luxurious. “And let’s hope the only things possessing her are her sick sense of humor and addiction to coffee.”