Page 5

CHAPTER 4

“S orry to interrupt.”

Fintan snatched his hand away and tucked it behind his back as he shifted to face Taryn’s sister, Josephine.

He was thankful she’d arrived when she did, or he’d have done something incredibly stupid.

The sudden slap against the back of his head was unexpected, and he cast a scowl over his shoulder. Before he could ask, Taryn’s thoughts on the matter rang through loud and abundantly clear.

“Kissing me is stupid? You’re an asshole!”

Fuck!

He’d forgotten about their new connection.

“I’d like to forget it, too,” she muttered, shoving past him. “What’s up, Josie?”

Her sister’s gaze swept Taryn’s face and locked on him. A slow smile curled her lips.

“Well, well, well. This is interesting.”

“Why?” Taryn snapped. “You interested in stealing another boyfriend?”

Hurt flashed in Josie’s amber eyes but she quickly replaced her pain with a mask of indifference.

“Rumor has it he’s not that into you, kid,” she said with a one-shoulder shrug. “I was just coming to tell you that Damian and his team are waiting for your little bauble.”

With a finger wave, she turned on her heel to leave.

“Taryn. Your sister’s not the enemy here,” he said through their private link.

“I know,” she snapped. “But that doesn’t give her the right to be mean,” she added silently.

Josie spun back, fiery and in high dudgeon. “Look, I’m only relaying a message here, okay? Don’t shoot the messenger because you’re in a nasty mood.”

Taryn dropped her head in her hands, missing her sister’s tormented expression.

“It’s past time to forgive her, aoibhneas mo croí.”

“I know that, too, Jiminy Cricket.”

He snorted, fully aware she did. Yet knowing and doing were oceans apart, and her unease screamed she wasn’t ready to dive into those waters without a life preserver. Josie was a damned shark when she had a mind to be, and he suspected Taryn avoided her, preferring to keep her hide intact.

“ Mend the rift, love,” he urged.

“I hate being wrong,” she said.

“We all have to take our lumps, Taryn-Taryn.”

Lifting her head, she heaved a sigh so heartfelt that Fintan wanted to hold her and apologize to Josie on her behalf.

“I’m sorry, Jo,” she said. “The ‘I know’ wasn’t directed at you, and neither was my nastiness. Or it shouldn’t have been.”

With a wary look and a deep frown, the titian-haired beauty studied Taryn. “No one else spoke, T.”

“Not aloud, anyway.” She gestured with her thumb. “Looks like we’re fated mates, and Fintan gets to live in my head from here to eternity.”

Taryn’s words were meant to be flippant. But his throat tightened with the weight of the truth. This wasn’t a freak accident. Their bond was forever, whether they wanted it to be or not. Hearing it out loud felt more crushing than expected, and Fintan hated to be vulnerable.

Josie’s first reaction was an unhinged jaw. Her second was laughter, and she doubled over, holding her stomach.

“What the hell is so damned funny?” Taryn demanded.

Across the room, the fish in the tank sped up as if they had somewhere to be.

“Unless you’re after boilin’ your aquarium pets, I’d say to simmer down, yeah?” Fintan suggested.

“What?”

He pointed to the tank.

“Crap. Right. Thanks.” Taryn waved a hand toward the water, and her finned friends resumed their leisurely travels. With crossed arms, she tapped her toe. “Why is it funny, Jo?”

An affectionate smile transformed Josie’s visage, taking it from alluring to breathtaking. Although Fintan could appreciate her loveliness, her beauty didn’t have the power of Taryn’s engaging smile or her naughty grin when amused.

Reaching back, Taryn gripped his hand and squeezed.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For finding me the attractive one.”

He frowned, uncertain why she lacked confidence in herself. “Are ya mad, then? Of course, you’re the attractive one!”

She sent him a sweet smile over her shoulder and released his hand to approach Josie.

“I was worried you wouldn’t find someone, T. That you’d closed yourself off after the incident with Morcant,” Josie confessed.

Fintan shuddered.

To this day, whenever he remembered the Arcane Devourer and his hold on the Stephens family, Fintan wanted to smash things. Taryn had fallen for Morcant after he’d disguised who and what he was—a weapon of chaos for a manky bastard at the Authority. It still rankled.

“Sure, and can we never say that fucker’s name again?” he asked. “It feels like the devil’s dancin’ on me grave whenever I think of him.”

Taryn nodded. “Same.”

“Sorry,” Josie said with a grimace. “No one is happier he’s dead than me, though.”

“Well, maybe there are a few, yeah?” he said. Damian’s daughter had been Morcant’s prime target during that fiasco. But the girl had outsmarted him and everyone involved. To this day, Fintan thanked the Goddess Anu for the girl’s clever brain and Oracle gifts. Had Morcant achieved his goal of appropriating the Aether magic he sought, they’d all be living in an unimaginable hell.

Josie smiled, but her amber eyes were troubled, and he felt a stirring of sympathy for all she’d gone through. She’d been tricked into a bond with Morcant, gotten shot, and—worst of all—suffered her sisters’ disdain when they believed she’d stolen Taryn’s boyfriend as some sick lark. For all her biting sarcasm, Josie had scars no one saw. She carried her shame in silence, hoping someone, anyone , might notice and tell her she would eventually be all right.

“You’ll find your happiness where ya least expect it, Josephine,” he said with all the assurances a Seer could offer. The future’s outcome was never one hundred percent set in stone, but this, he felt confident enough to tell her.

Her hope flared to life but as quickly died out, and she shook her head. “I don’t deserve it, Seer. But my sisters do.” With a careless shrug, she looked between them. “You’re different around him, Taryn. More alive somehow. Maybe you should explore—” She grimaced as she noted Taryn’s distasteful expression. “What? Did I put my big-ass foot in it again?” With an impulsive hug, Josie said, “I’m sorry I can never say the right things around you.”

She hurried from the room, leaving them in awkward silence.

Taryn’s arms remained stiffly at her sides, and Fintan ached for her. Yes, Josie had meant well, but it wasn’t something she was prepared to hear.

“You’ve never not been the liveliest version of yourself to me, Taryn-Taryn,” he assured her.

His words had the opposite effect than he intended, and her expressive eyes dulled.

“But you still don’t want me enough to fight for me,” she stated flatly, holding up a hand when he would’ve objected. “The facts are, you ghosted me back then and ignored me in the years between when you could’ve sought me out. And more recently, whenever I visit my friends at your estate, you avoid me by hiding.”

“Brenna’s estate,” he corrected. “I’m a lowly caretaker.”

She stared at him, not allowing him to joke his way out of the situation he found himself in, as was his way when grunts didn’t work. The weight of her words was a heavy burden.

Ghosted.

Ignored.

Avoided.

He’d never considered it from her angle. Yet standing here, observing her granite-carved expression, he couldn’t deny it. He was a fucking arse.

Fintan sighed heavily. “Aye. I ghosted ya, but the reasons were as valid when we first met as they are today. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want you more than I want to breathe my next lungful of air, aoibhneas mo croí. ”

“Right.”

He hated her dismissive tone, but when he would’ve responded, she spoke over him.

“Let’s get the necklace to Damian.”

The fucking bloodstone necklace! He’d forgotten about it.

“May I see it first?” he asked.

“I thought you said it was a tool in your downfall. Like me.” She frowned as she shot a glance toward the sofa cushion. “Maybe you shouldn’t be in the room with it and me simultaneously.”

“I’m not sure it works that way—ah!”

The pain in Fintan’s head was searing, and he dropped to his knees. In the far reaches of his mind, where he’d retreated for the oncoming vision, the sound of Taryn’s cry drifted to him. His subconscious was aware of her falling into him and of the two of them tumbling to the floor. Yet as he struggled to return to her, to help, he was drawn farther into the ether.

“Tayrn!” he shouted, straining to reach her through their connection.

No answer.

His panic grew. What had they done to her?

“She can’t hear you, Fintan, me boy.”

He spun around, searching for his Uncle Peter, whose voice he recognized. The standard rippling sea of black nothingness stretched out before him, and he wanted to scream his fury but refrained. Any cry would echo and cause untold assault on his eardrums. Stuck in a weightless state with no directional sense, he floated and awaited the ancestors’ directive.

None came.

No unified omnipresent voice like usual.

“Where is she? Where’s Taryn?” he demanded, waiting for them to join him from the other dimension or afterlife or wherever the fuck they resided. They hadn’t seen fit to tell him in the twenty-four years he’d been a slave to their vision quests. He cursed his stupidity at allowing himself to be duped and for playing along.

What if they’d abducted her spirit? Or killed her for his disobedience? Could they do it? Was her death to be his undoing? It certainly would be if it were his fault. Maybe because of their new link and the vision state brought on by his uncle, they had somehow imprisoned her soul, causing her to float in endless nothingness.

“Your girl is well, but listen to me now, yeah? There’s not much time before they discover…”

A lengthy pause frayed his nerves. “Discover what? Uncle Peter?”

“Feck it all! Put on Bloodstone’s necklace, boyo, and never take it off.”

“But it’s to be my downfall, the ancestors ? —”

“Lied,” his uncle snapped. “Now quit dickin’ around, Fintan, or another will take what’s yours. Wake and claim your prizes.”

“Prizes? Plural?”

But before Fintan received his answer, the buzzing of their connection grew deafening. If he could’ve, he would’ve slapped his hands over his ears, but in his limbo state, all he could do was suffer the pain as it transformed into a high-pitched squeal.

Soothing fingers stroked his brow, and healing energy flowed from warm fingertips to his brain, calming his neurotransmitters and allowing him to focus again.

“Taryn!”

He shoved the Healer away to sit upright. After locating her sisters hovering beside Damian’s shoulder as they fretted over an immobile Taryn, Fintan crab crawled the short distance.

“What’s happenin’? She not answerin’ me!” He spun back to plead with the Healer. “Jordan! Do to her what ya did to me. Hurry, man! The pain is ungodly.”

As the young Healer assisted Damian, Fintan questioned Josie. “How long was I unconscious?”

“Long enough for you to be missed and us to get a Sentinel Healer here.”

His heart pounded too fast and way too hard. The thundering pulse rose into his throat, making it difficult to swallow. Or perhaps it was the lump of self-recrimination choking him. If she was hurt because of him…

Helplessly, he waited, alternating between being furious at himself, the Sullivan ancestors, and Damian for allowing him anywhere near Taryn. When she recovered, he’d put enough distance between them that it never happened again.

“Bloodstone’s necklace.”

Peter Sullivan’s words echoed in his head, and Fintan glanced toward the cushion where Taryn stored the bleedin’ thing. His uncle had said “Bloodstone’s” and not “the bloodstone” as Fintan mistakingly believed it to be. Uncle Peter had given him an invaluable clue about the piece’s provenance.

Did he dare slip it on without permission? What would it do to him? For him? Instinct had him pocketing the amulet, and the instant he did, Taryn’s eyes snapped open to focus on him.

“Give it to Damian to destroy,” she ordered in a voice not her own. “Give it to him or face our wrath.”