Page 11 of To Wed a Highlander (A Highland Magic Collection #3)

Chapter 11

“W here is he?” Morgana demanded, blocking the Pictish King, Malcolm de Moray’s intent scrutiny of the blaze illuminating Moray Castle’s great hall.

Her brother’s cold green eyes slid to her, and a flicker of what might have been affection touched them. “If ye’re referring to yer Berserker, he’s in the dungeon.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” she cautioned. “Berserkers cannot be bound by chains.”

“I reinforced the chains with magic, until I can figure out how best to kill him.”

Morgana gasped, fighting the childish urge to yank on his wildly auburn hair, the exact same shade as hers. “You’ll do no such thing!” She wagged a finger at him. “I forbid it.”

“Ye forbid yer king?” A russet eyebrow crawled up his broad, noble forehead toward a crown of gold shaped with short spikes fashioned to look like young Elk antlers.

“You’re not my king, you’re my brother,” she snapped.

That produced a short sound of amusement from her otherwise stoic brother’s throat. “He seemed to be under the impression that I was duty bound to end his life,” Malcolm observed, leaning forward in his throne until his royal robe fell from his wide shoulders. “Really, sister, warn a fellow before pledging my hand at murder next time. And be happy I allowed ye to waste yer magic healing his burned hands before we arrived home.”

“He used those hands to save my life.” Morgana studied her brother, worrying the skirts of her clean frock, wondering at the change in him. He’d been a handsome, sparkly-eyed youth with a quick temper and an even quicker wit. His hair had been wild and wind-blown like hers instead of slicked back into this tight queue. She’d liked the way his smile smoothed the calculating sharpness of his features and made him seem so young.

That was before Macbeth. Before they’d been taken prisoner and banished from their father’s kingdom. Before the battle Malcolm had waged to win his throne back.

Before Kenna disappeared.

He didn’t look so young anymore. He looked like a dominant man who carried more weight than even a Berserker could hold. Malcolm de Moray wielded unimaginable power, and yet something about him was broken.

Morgana was starting to think that she’d gotten the better bargain in her exile with the English King. Something had happened to Malcolm. Macbeth and his insane bitch of a wife had irrevocably harmed him, somehow.

She’d find out just as soon as they addressed the trouble at hand. And do what she could to heal the bleak rifts she could feel emanating from his soul.

“Any word from Kenna?” She walked away from the warmth of the fire, missing her cousin and closest friend with a physical ache.

“Nay,” Malcolm sighed. “I stare into those bloody flames for hours every day searching for a message. But I know she’s alive.”

“The Wyrd Sister’s storm is gathering closer,” Morgana observed from the casement, watching lightning branch from the angry sky to the south. “What should we do?”

“Let them come,” he rumbled. Standing, he gathered his black robe about him, his crown gleaming in the flames, and held out a hand to Morgana. “We’ll fight them together.”

She went to her brother, his emotions as cold as the grey stones of Castle Moray. Wasn’t he frightened? Wasn’t he angry? “But, Colm, we are only two, we haven’t a third. If we can’t cast a circle, how can we protect the Grimoire?”

“I doona think we can,” he said after a long pause. “But it is our duty to try.”

They both walked to the dais in the middle of the throne room. Upon the pillar of stone lay a thick volume bound in an almost blonde leather. Blue tattooed runes adorned the corners and stretched toward the center of the title. Wards of protection surrounding a word spelled in a language not meant to be spoken.

As Morgana neared it, she felt the little thrill of danger that always jolted through her when in the presence of the Grimoire. Though, it didn’t look as ancient as she remembered, it also didn’t pulse with the same mysterious call she’d felt as a girl when sitting at her father’s feet in this very throne room.

She was grown now, a Druid in her own right, and after all they’d been through, nothing ever held the mystery or magic it had seemed to all those years ago.

Wooden shutters began to rattle; the storm had truly finished brewing and now became the harbinger of evil intent. It battered against the heavy wooden door of the throne room, chilling the air and carrying with it whispers, threats, and maniacal laughter.

“Perhaps we could use Bael.” She thought of her lover, her mate, locked in the dungeon by magical chains. “He could be our third. He has a little Berserker magic.” Also, she wanted him here with her. Though she knew there was not much he could do against magic, his presence, his strength, made her feel safer. Made her feel more powerful.

Malcolm shook his head. “He has no Druid blood. It wouldna work.”

“But couldn’t we try?” she argued. “He could at least use his axe to protect us.”

Her brother studied her with shrewd eyes for a moment. “A Berserker, Morgana? This is who ye choose after all the suitors Father paraded in front of ye?”

Morgana shrugged. “I didn’t choose him, exactly. I saved him and he sort of ran off with me.”

“Ye care for him.”

“Inexorably.”

Somewhere in the castle a window broke. Lightning lashed about the stones in unnatural strikes.

“But—a Berserker ,” he repeated the word like it tasted foul. “They’re so proprietary. They tend to be a violent, jealous, barbaric lot with no morals and even fewer scruples. Ye’re not only a Princess, Morgana, ye are a Druid. One of the Sacred Triad.”

“Really, Malcolm, you want to have this conversation now ?” She gestured to the forces rattling the door, to the smoke beginning to curl beneath it. “Don’t you think we have more pressing problems to focus on?” Malcolm and Morgana clasped hands over the book.

“I’m just saying,” he continued as though having an argument over an evening ale. “Ye deserve better than a Viking—”

“There is no better, Malcolm,” she hissed. “Or don’t you remember, I can feel what he’s feeling. That man you call a barbarian has been alive and alone longer than you four fold. His emotions run deep as the ocean, and he’s never had anyone upon which to shower them. Why do you think he’s given up? Because a man who feels that much, can’t survive so many rejections. Cannot thrive in solitude. He wasn’t made for that.”

“But, Morgana —”

She silenced her brother with a look. “I know Bael can be a bit vicious and maybe even something of a savage, but he’s my savage, Malcolm de Moray, and I accept him as he is, as mine , so you must as well. I knew the moment we kissed that he was somehow meant for me, so don’t try to talk me out of it. You know it won’t work.”

“But—”

“Now we have a protection spell to work, and not enough time to work it in. Chant with me, brother.” Morgana was amazed that Malcolm didn’t seem more worried. That there wasn’t sage burning in the corners of the throne room or Ash leaves in the windows. Where were the wards drawn with crushed burdock, black cohosh, frankincense, and heather? “If we survive this, I’m going to have a discussion with you regarding your lapse in protection.”

He merely lifted another eyebrow at her, and Morgana decided she was beginning to hate that eyebrow.

Morgana began the protection chant. “ I am protected by your might, O infinite Goddess of the night .” Malcolm joined her the second time, their voices truly melding by the third.

The flames in the fireplace flared to an inferno. The stone of the altar upon which the book stood vibrated and those vibrations reverberated through the stones at their feet. The storm raged, hurled, and concentrated on the door until the hinges burst and the heavy oak crashed to the stones.

The flames that had weakened it were extinguished by the tumultuous downpour as lightening illuminated three figures in the arched doorway.

The Wyrd Sisters.

They manifest as maiden, mother, and crone, a blasphemy of the sacred Goddess from whom they drew their power and then twisted it into something dark and self-serving.

They, too, were chanting as they slinked in oily progression toward Malcolm and Morgana. Their language was older, their spells more ancient, yet so far, their powers clashed against the Moray Druids like the waves against a cliff.

“Give us what is ours,” Badb, the crone, lifted a gnarly finger from beneath black robes, indicating the Grimoire. At her gesture, the book slammed open, its pages flipping in the wind with startling speed before landing onto the most dangerous ritual in history.

The Curse of Four : The seven seals .

The ritual that would bring about the Apocalypse.

“Nay,” Morgana yelled. “It was never yours. It will never be yours.”

The girl stepped forward, more than a child, not yet a woman. Nemain . Her angelic face and golden hair made all the more horrifying by the sacrosanct lust in her eyes as she stared at the book. “The Grimoire belonged to us centuries before it came into the hands of you Highland Picts,” she informed them condescendingly.

Macha advanced, her body sheathed in a form-fitting gown made of all curves and womanly seduction. “We are the Moray’s of Eyre, and it is our right to enact the Curse of Four and awaken the Horsemen.”

“Why?” Morgana demanded. “Why would you do such a thing? Why end the earth upon which you live?”

“With destruction comes rebirth.” The crone said cryptically, and a chill of terror kissed Morgana’s spine at the vacant darkness in her silvery eyes. “With rebirth comes a realignment of power.”

“It is not yer right,” Malcolm insisted, never breaking contact with Morgana. “It is not the time. The earth is not done with her cycle. This I know, she has told me.”

“It is not only our right, it is our destiny!” Nemain drew fire from the inferno in the fireplace and snaked it toward Malcolm, igniting his robes.

Morgana broke the contact of their hands to reach out to the rain, drawing the deluge toward them and drenching her brother until only steam rose from his scorched and tattered robes.

“Fool!” Badb pushed the girl, Nemain, behind her. “The prophecy says there has to be four Druids. Four Elements. We need him .”

Macha, the mother, stepped forward and thrust her hand toward Morgana. A dread stole through Morgana’s veins, as did the woman’s dark water magic. Her blood was no longer hers. It belonged to the evil woman with mirroring powers. Macha froze her in place, slowed the flow of her life until she could barely stand. Barely breathe.

Malcolm drew a heavy stone from the ground and hurled it, but the crone knocked it away in a powerful gust of wind. “Try that again, King Malcolm, and we’ll stop your dear sister’s heart forever.” Badb approached Malcom, her rheumy eyes glowing with malevolence. “You see, she is expendable. We have our own Water Druid.” She motioned to Macha. “And we have fire and air. What we’re missing… is Earth.”

“Ye know I willna perform the ritual.” Malcom’s voice was cold as the stones beneath them.

“Not even for her?” Badb drew a long, jagged fingernail across Morgana’s throat.

Malcolm’s gaze locked with hers, and Morgana put all her words into her eyes. Don’t you dare, they screamed at him. Just let them kill me.

“You know how persuasive we can be.” The old woman cackled as Malcolm’s face drained of color, but he stood his ground.

“Never,” he vowed, in a voice so dark, Morgana didn’t even recognize it.

“That remains to be seen.” The crone turned from him. “But for now we need the book.”

“And men in hell need water.”

“If you do not give…” Macha put her other elegant hand out, and Morgana fell to her knees. “We will take.”

For the first time in her life, Morgana wished she could feel her heart pound with terror. Wished that she could sense the blood surge through her and heat her skin in a flush of emotion and pain. For now, facing the end, she could feel none of those things. It was as though her life slowed to a trickle. She could feel her heart struggling to find its fuel, her lungs trying to force oxygen into the almost non-existent flow. Muscle and tissue screamed for want of it. She was shriveling up from the inside. She knew she should be worried about the Grimoire. Knew she should be mourning for an earth that might never be if they failed. But all she could think about was how she’d never get to tell Bael the one thing he needed to hear before the end.

That he was worthy. That he was accepted. That he could be loved, if he’d allow it.

And now it was too late.