Page 17 of Farlan (Immortal Highlander Clan McKeran #3)

“I know how kind you are to women, Seneschal, so you don’t have to say anything more.

” She leaned forward and clasped her hands.

“Grace came here searching for me, but I behaved poorly during our first meeting. I have apologized for that to her, but she’s still very upset and avoids me now. It’s breaking my heart.”

“Give her some time, Chatelaine,” he said after another long silence. “I think she shall come to you once she grows accustomed to this place, and offer you another chance.”

For a terrible moment Inga wanted to slap him. How dare he tell her to do nothing when Grace was her granddaughter? How could he have slept with her as soon as she had come here, for that matter? Then Inga saw the sincerity in his eyes, and forced back all her resentment.

“Thank you for the good advice.” She couldn’t fake a smile as she stood. “I’ll wait until Grace is ready, then.”

After leaving Farlan, Inga went back to work, ignoring the sly looks from the maids and the compassionate glances from the guards.

Maintaining her dignity was an old habit, and what they thought of her really didn’t matter.

She had waited all these years to find out the daughter she had adored was dead; she could wait until her granddaughter had forgiven her for whatever wrong she’d done.

After all, they had the rest of forever to get to know each other.

B odach went from Aosda’s territory to the castle and walked down into the dungeons.

The large room he used to monitor the spell trap had become suffused with the scent of rot that came from him, so he lit some strong-smelling scented candles before he pondered a solution to his problem.

The reason he had cursed the clan was to prevent the McKeran from stealing from him a treasure so rare and powerful it would permit him to return to Elphyne and crown himself king of both the light and dark courts.

Unfortunately Bodach had inadvertently imprisoned his treasure along with the McKeran in the spell trap, something he had not realized until it was too late for him to reverse the enchantment, which would now last until the very end of time.

Only the McKeran could break it and, just like him, they would never discover how.

The treasure will be mine, and soon.

He tapped the viewing scroll to look through the magical barricades that kept Dun Talamh isolated from time and the real world.

Monitoring events as they played out in the trap still might reveal an answer to his dilemma.

Because the power that fueled the imprisoning enchantment had come from Bodach, the trap would reject him as soon as it sensed him crossing over its threshold.

It had taken him centuries to learn how to cloak himself with the guises of various insects, and even that painstaking strategy had only permitted him to remain in the trap until dawn.

In such a tiny form, however, he could be badly injured, and even the power the red crystals gave him had its limits.

If for any reason he couldn’t make it back to the cave to be healed, he wasn’t sure what would happen to him.

Before I return, I must find a method with which to wholly incapacitate everyone inside the trap.

He had tried employing enchanted caterpillars and beetles, with only limited success before the clan had eluded and then destroyed them. Only two creatures had escaped him after being bespelled, and he’d not yet discovered what had become of them .

Out loud Bodach said, “Show me the bats.”

The image that appeared on the enchanted parchment showed nothing but the spell trap’s green sky. That moved to a window in the stables, and then inside the loft beyond it.

“I said show me the bats, not the gnats,” he muttered, moving closer and squinting.

He saw something disturb the dust on the hayloft floor, and the two bats briefly appeared.

They then flew up, turning transparent and flying down to where two stable hands worked on spreading new straw.

The men stopped and stiffened as the bats appeared again, and then something Bodach never imagined happened.

“How delightful.” Bodach watched in fascination.

The enchanted creatures made chittering sounds to each other as if satisfied. Without warning several bales of hay flew out of the hayloft and came crashing down, but by the time they landed the bats had flown out through the window.

“Show me the loft again,” he ordered the scroll, which dutifully displayed the image. “Show me who tossed those hay bales at my bats.”

The image remained fixed on the empty hayloft.

“You can’t detect them either.” He eyed the dust on the floor again. It looked white and crystalline, more like very fine snow, or...“Salt. ”

Bodach closed the scroll before he left the castle and drove to his seaside lair, where the red crystal he had collected from every corner of the mortal realm protected all his most important possessions.

The power that suffused him as soon as he walked into the cave made him smirk; anyone else who dared enter his lair would have the life drained from them at once by his crystals.

As he walked deeper into the cave he trailed his fingertips over the crystals embedded in the stone walls, which bathed him with new power.

You feed me so well, my darlings.

At the back he waved a hand in front of a rough-hewn wall, which shimmered before revealing a large niche crammed with scrolls and other objects of worth.

The oldest of the scrolls remained protected by a carved wooden case Bodach had bespelled to kill anyone else who touched it.

When he carefully removed the green scroll inside, the fragile edges flaked against his fingers, which annoyed him but wasn’t surprising.

The spell it contained was one he'd stolen nearly a thousand years ago to create the trap and fling the McKeran and their castle into it.

If you condemn the innocent to such a fate, the melia who had owned the spell had warned him, in time the wee ether prison shall come to protect them.

It may do as it pleases, Bodach had told the forest Fae just before he’d taken hold of her skinny neck. Just as long as they remain there for all eternity.

Killing the greedy little Fae rather than paying her for the spell scroll had been a mistake, for only she had known the method with which to break the enchantment.

He had never intended to release the McKeran, so it made no difference to him.

Opening the scroll now, he studied the particulars of the melia’s spell, which had cursed the clan, their vassals and the stronghold to remain trapped in a tiny world that replayed the events of the tumultuous year preceding the curse. Toward the end one phrase stood out.

Seal the fate of those named by me, and until the vow is broken, never free.

“Named by me,” Bodach muttered, thinking back to the day long ago when he’d gone to the highlands to curse the clan and their vassals. “I cast the enchantment over Dun Talamh, the McKeran and their household servants.”

That effectively imprisoned the clan and their mortal vassals in the ether created by the melia’s spell, and separated them forever from the world. Anyone else who had been inside the stronghold’s walls would not have been taken with them, but he did not know what would have happened to them.

That was what he needed to find out, and quickly .

Bodach reached out to the red crystals lining the cave walls, gently removing one and popping it into his mouth.

Swallowing it made a heated glow run down his throat and pool in his belly, and then the crystal released its store of power, which lit up every immortal vein in his body.

The life-sucking gem loved him so much it reversed its very nature to give him its magic and all the strength it had stolen from the mortals he fed to it.

He would need that when he faced the old mage.

As he went to the mouth of the cave he saw a heavyset woman in too-tight athletic wear trudging up the cliff path toward him.

Bodach waited until she reached him before he stepped out of the illusion that protected his lair, making it seem to her as if he’d emerged from solid stone.

She screeched and nearly tumbled back down the path; saving herself by grabbing a scraggly plant that fortunately for her had deep, strong roots.

“What are you, crazy?” the mortal female demanded as she righted herself. “Jumping out like that, you could have killed me.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.” He glanced past her and saw no one else on the path or the shore below, and offered her his hand. “Here, let me help.”

The moment she touched him his magic gripped her, taking control of her mind and body. Since it was much more amusing for him if she realized what was happening but couldn’t stop it, Bodach freed her thoughts as he marched her through the illusion and into the cave.

“What are you doing to me?” the woman said, sounding much more afraid now.

“Whatever I want. You had the misfortune of crossing the path of a dark Fae immortal, my dear. We’re not known for our mercy.

” He halted her and walked around her, assessing her dubious charms. After this he’d go and fuck Rona unconscious, he decided.

“You must be exercising to lose weight, yes? But not too successful, it seems.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” she countered, her voice shaking.

“On the contrary, I’m delighted that you’re such a corpulent young woman,” Bodach assured her. “You know how they say there’s more of you to love? Well, in my case, it’s more of you I can feed to them.” He gestured at the sparkling walls.

The woman’s eyes widened as a flurry of red-black lights emerged from the crystals and whirled around her. She tried to scream as they began sucking the life energy out of her, but Bodach sealed her lips. By the time the crystals had finished feeding she had become a gray flesh-covered skeleton.