Page 42 of Ashes of Betrayal

But Cailean barely noticed the cold. Instead, he stared down at his wife’s taut face, marking the shadows in her hazel eyes. “Aye,” she whispered.

“I thought she was dead.”

“No … just in hiding.”

Cailean’s gaze searched her glamored features. There was a distance between them now, one he wagered had little to do with her conversation with the Raven Queen’s brother, and everything to do with him. He should have been relieved, but to his surprise, he wasn’t.

All the same, he took care to remove his hand from her arm.

“Your reunion didn’t end well,” he said after a brief pause. Indeed, he’d seen the fury that had rippled across the man’s face, the way his hand had clenched hard around his eating knife. “I thought he was going to stab you through the throat.”

She snorted. “I’d just admitted I killed his brother … it was my last job before I departed for Duncrag in the spring.”

Cailean cocked an eyebrow. “That’ll do it.”

“We were friends once,” she admitted then, reaching up and pushing a strand of oaken-colored hair from her cheek. “When we were younglings. But over the years, things changed.”

Cailean’s gaze roamed across her face, taking in her pale skin and the scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. They were just an illusion though, and his druid eyes allowed him to see the shimmer that now surrounded her.

“Aye, well … there are some relationships that can never be mended,” he replied. Misgiving stole over him as he thought of Enya. He’d let his sister down all those years ago. Had she hated him in the end?

Shaking himself free of regrets about a past he couldn’t change, Cailean stepped back from Bree then, and they continued walking toward their lodgings. Above them, the first of the stars twinkled in the clear night sky. The moon was rising, just a night away from being full.

Entering the lean-to, he found a jug of bramble wine sitting on the table near the door and two wooden cups. Their hosts had stopped by while they were out.

“Wine?” Cailean asked as he shrugged off his cloak and hung it by the door. Bree’s strange mood was starting to get to him. They both needed to relax a little, especially before he brought up the subject she’d so abruptly terminated earlier.

“Very well,” Bree replied, her voice dull.

The instant they were indoors, she’d let the glamor fall, and a golden Shee woman stood before him once more. However, her lovely face was strained, those tawny eyes veiled. There was a brittleness to her he’d never seen before.

Hanging up her cloak, she moved over to the stool she’d placed back from the iron pot over the fire earlier. Cailean put on a log, and she watched as the hungry flames devoured it. Her expression turned distant.

Suddenly, she seemed far away.

19: RISE FROM THE ASHES

CAILEAN POURED THEM both generous cups of wine and handed Bree hers. Their fingers brushed as she took it, and a familiar heat rippled up his arm.

The feline pupils of her eyes dilated, her gaze snapping back to the present. She’d felt it too, the awareness that shivered between them.

Shit. This isn’t helping. Doing his best to ignore the tingling in his fingers, Cailean took his wine over to one of the sleeping nooks, heeled off his boots, and climbed in, moving the furs so that they provided a pillow for his back against the rough stone wall.

Then, cradling the cup of wine in his hands, he leaned into the nest he’d created.

Meanwhile, Bree didn’t move from her stool.

Now that he’d left her side, her attention returned to the flames. The fire burned bright, hungrily devouring the lump of pine he’d just added. Sipping her wine, she continued to stare at the fire, its light making her eyes glow like two candle flames.

Cailean couldn’t help it, he drank the sight of her in.

Sitting like that, her expression solemn, kissed by firelight, he’d never seen anything more beautiful—or otherworldly.

There would be no mistaking her for a Marav woman now.

Look away, you fool.

It was dangerous to gaze at Bree like this, especially after his decision to continue to Cannich without her. But he couldn’t help it. As both Marav and Shee, she ensnared him.

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