Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Rory stoked the smelting furnace, adding charcoal and using the bellows to raise the heat enough to soften the iron he’d hammer for the remainder of the day.
He needed to work off a thousand worries, and keep himself away from Harper Ensley.
After what she’d done in the bailey, he knew she might be as dangerous as he was.
He was also aware that he should confirm that unhappy fact, but who could he tell? The laird? Ava?
Mistress Ensley may possess the power to destroy the spell trap. I ken for so do I.
Once he had a ferocious fire blazing in the furnace, he pulled on his heaviest gloves and placed a length of iron bar that he’d already hammered thin into the shimmering red and orange coals.
He watched the metal change color from dull gray to purple, blue, red and then a bright white-gold.
Only when a handspan at the tip had heated to a malleable state did he remove the bar from the furnace, carry it over to his anvil and shake off his right hand glove.
Picking up his forging hammer, which he had dressed and finished to perfectly fit his big hand, he began working the end of the bar into a pointed shape, sending sparks up from the anvil.
The sound of the hammer striking the white-hot metal was a familiar, almost comforting clanging that helped smooth out his snarled thoughts.
The rise of his magic, which dire events always stirred, began to subside as well.
If he worked at smithing for the rest of the day, he might earn a few hours of sleep.
If no more attacks occurred. If the clan did not intrude and make new demands of him.
If Harper stayed away from him. If thoughts of Inga did not plague him again.
Rory looked up as the door to his workplace opened, and the lady he least wished to see came in and waved at him.
“Yes, it’s me again.” Harper eyed the bar and hammer in his hands. “I know you’re busy, but I just want to watch. That okay, or should I beat it?”
Words spilled from his head into his throat, piling atop each other.
No. I cannae bear to be near you and no’ ken what they made of you, or why.
Go now and never return. More then rose from his heart.
Yes, stay as long as you wish. Share my workplace, my bed chamber, for everything I possess, ’tis yours. I’m yours.
Since he could no more say that to her than he could believe himself capable of such, Rory settled for a nod and turned away to place the cooled iron back in the furnace.
“You said you grew up alone with your mother in the woods,” Harper said as she wandered around the forge examining things.
“I envy you. I only had eight years with my mom, and they weren’t so great.
I don’t remember much before the last year we were together.
She never told me who my father was, or if he knew I even existed.
I thought about doing one of those online genealogy searches with my DNA later on, but I worried that it wouldn’t bring any good news. ”
Placing the iron in the quenching trough, he closed his eyes for a moment.
He wanted to tell her she never again had to worry about anything, that he would look after her, and that even here in this failing prison she was safe with him.
He couldn’t, of course, because none of it was true. He turned and caught her watching him.
“Do you mind if I talk about this stuff?” Harper asked. “You look upset.”
He shook his head, unable to speak without revealing his baffling dilemma.
Harper seemed to assume he had consented to hear more of her life.
She told him about what little she recalled, a brief time during which she had travelled with her lady màthair.
From what she said it sounded as if they had been pursued by relentless hunters; perhaps her sire had sent them.
Rory didn’t understand everything she said, but the words he knew made it plain she had suffered.
“When Mom abandoned me in a park, I hid from other people because they scared me. She’d never let me talk to anyone, you see.
” Harper said that in a light, careless tone, but her pretty eyes went dark with pain.
“Mom never explained why we had to stay in these horrible cheap motels, or the reason she begged or traded sex for money instead of getting a job. I was a kid, and going for days without food when my mother couldn’t scrounge enough cash for anything more than a room seemed perfectly normal to me.
It was all I’d ever known, I think. My memory of the time before that is a little patchy. ”
Just as the time before dwelling in the forest with Chomha had been for him, Rory thought.
“There were a few times when the money ran out and we had to sleep in all-night laundromats, parking garages or bus stations.” Absently Harper tucked her arms around her waist. “You know how it is, trying to sleep while your stomach is empty.”
He recalled the long days of winter after a lean year, when he’d foraged in the snowy forest for anything he and Chomha could eat. Sometimes all he brought back were some acorns stolen from a squirrel’s hoard. “’Tis difficult.”
“After Mom left me I got my food out of garbage cans in the park.” She ducked her head.
“Not proud of that, but it was better than stealing. I did try to shoplift some candy at a supermarket, but I’m a lousy thief.
A cashier caught me and said I couldn’t ever come back there.
But she paid for the candy bars and gave them to me.
I ate them so fast I threw up, which was karma, I suppose. ”
Her sadness and shame over such a desperate act hurt him even more than knowing she’d been forced to live thus. “’Twasnae your fault, my lady.”
“Thanks.” She looked up so that her gray-green eyes caught the light from the furnace flames, burnishing them with gold. “Will you tell me why you’re avoiding me? I may seem a little strange to you, but I promise, I’m not a bad person. Or is it that you don’t like women from my time?”
Her questions made him understand why she’d chosen to confide in him. He wanted to tell her that a dead woman still possessed his heart, but that wasn’t true anymore. It had been too painful until this moment to admit to himself as much.
“We shouldnae be together,” he finally whispered. “’Tis perilous.”
“I’m from the twenty-first century, and you’re from the twelfth.
The fact that we are together in a separate dimension is the most paranormal phenomenon of all time.
” She walked directly up to him, stopping only when he took a step back.
“Wait a second. Why is this perilous? Do you know something about me? Like why I’m so big and tall, and why I lost my hearing in my time?
What happened to me that made me incapable of having children?
It has nothing to do with my genes or a neuroma or bad luck, does it? Tell me what you know, please.”
He had his suspicions—her strangeness was too marked for him not to—but relating such would only upset her even more, so he shrugged. He didn’t expect her to advance on him until she had him near pinned against a sword rack.
“I want to know.” Instead of sounding angry or demanding, tears welled up in her eyes, which she quickly blinked back. “It doesn’t matter how crazy it sounds, or if I can understand it or not. Just tell me, please.”
“I’ve suspicions, but I’m no’ certain, my lady. I must read your power.” Rory lifted his hands to either side of her face, and murmured, “If I may touch you?”
“Any time.” Harper used her hands to press his to her cheeks and temples.
The magic that poured out of her like a cool, bright wind was unlike anything he’d ever sensed from a mortal.
She had been saturated with a kind of magic he’d never before encountered inside a mortal creature, power that occupied every inch of her magnificent body, cloaking her skin and permeating her flesh and drenching the very marrow of her bones.
Encountering such pervasive inhuman power caused his own magic to flare wildly, but not with the dark, ominous greed he’d always experienced.
Her magic entwined with his as if it were soft green and brown leafy vines, which finally suggested what might have been done to her.
“You’re filled with melia magic, lass,” he whispered, stroking his thumbs over her high cheekbones. “’Tis in every part of you, likely since you were born.” That also explained why her body called to his.
“Melia. That’s what you call the tree Fae, right?” When he nodded something glittered in her eyes. “Why would I be full of their magic?”
“I cannae tell you. It’s shaped your body as you grew. I reckon ’twas what stole the sound of the mortal realm from your ears.” He caught a tear with his thumb and stroked it away. “Dinnae weep.”
“This place was made by melia magic.” She said that as if something else had occurred to her because of it.
“Aye. ’Tis why you hear again in our world.” He wouldn’t tell her that the Fae magic had also rendered her barren, for that seemed cruel. “’Tis likely why the alterations here have slowed to a stop for now. The enchantment, ’tis aware of you, and may see you as melia.”
“But you said I’m mortal. I know I’m mortal.” Harper tugged away his hands and stepped back, her face paling. “I’ve never met a melia, whatever that is. What happened, did they hex me or something?”
He knew so little about the reclusive Fae that it frustrated him to no end. He wondered if she might have come into the world as he’d had, but how would she know? She had been a newborn babe.
“I dinnae ken how ’twas done.” When she started to stride toward the door Rory caught her arm and pulled her close. “Dinnae go.”
“You don’t want me here.” She glared at him, but a slight tremor shook her bottom lip. “This is why you don’t like being around me. This melia magic dripping off me or whatever. It’s disgusting to you. Is it like that Bodach guy’s power?”