Chapter 1 #3
Her brilliant blue eyes flashed with pride—and a wee bit of shame.
“I am aware of that.” She glanced at her assistant.
“But the entire Council of Divine Weavers tested this particular woman. We are more than certain this time.” She tipped a curt nod at the girl beside her.
“Prepare the scrying bowl so we might introduce Chief MacRaith to his one.”
After a cautious glance his way, the youngling whose name he didn’t care to remember, opened the large cloth satchel hanging from the strap slung across her chest and pulled out a black onyx bowl and a vial of water.
She held up the softly glowing container of fluid, attempted to smile, and failed. “Moon-blessed water.” Her voice cracked with nervousness. “May I place these on yer desk, m’lord?”
Since he couldn’t clench his teeth any tighter, he narrowed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest. “If that will move this along, then, aye, make haste with whatever ye are playing at.”
Talon rumbled with an audible groan, then connected with Magnus’s mind. “This is a waste of time. They are Weavers who have validated dragonkind’s mistrust and dislike of them.”
“Yet, if they have finally found her,” Magnus replied, “It will be worth tolerating them for a short while.”
“It canna be short enough.” Talon snorted a thick cloud of smoke, chuckling to himself as the Weavers squinted and coughed while continuing their preparations.
“Dinna be childish,” Magnus told him. The need for him to be the judicious one irritated him even more. “Ye’ll only slow them, ye ken?”
Talon rolled his eyes and snorted again but withheld the smoke this time.
“Might I ask that our magic be allowed?” Mairwen turned to Talon and waited.
Magnus nodded for his scaly brother to lift the ancient dragon wards that nullified the Weaver’s powers.
Talon growled, then grudgingly flicked a claw. “Proceed.”
As the old witch passed her hands over the shallow bowl of highly polished onyx, Magnus braced himself.
They had done this twice before. Both women had been fine to look upon, but he had felt nothing.
In her flawed wisdom, the Divine Weaver had said it was because they inhabited another plane of existence.
She had assured him that once they entered the Thirteenth Realm, the mate bond would roar into existence.
Both times, it had not, and the poor, confused females had been returned to wherever they’d come from.
Mairwen stepped back from the bowl and bowed her head. “Lyla Ibrams, great chief. Yer fated mate.”
Expecting nothing, Magnus strode forward, looked down into the bowl, and found himself unable to look away.
Eyes so blue, the most brilliant skies over Scotland dimmed in comparison, looked back at him.
Dark hair, not quite black but nearly so, turned a burnished amber hue whenever it caught the light as she turned her head.
It was long and flowed well past her shoulders.
The hint of a cleft in her chin highlighted the fullness of her rose-petal lips.
She possessed the finely sculpted visage of a beautiful queen, staring back at him as if daring him to refuse her.
He swallowed hard. He doubted he could ever refuse this woman anything.
“Brother?” Talon’s concern echoed through his thoughts. “The strength of what ye feel has colored the air around ye. Yer aura has changed, but it shimmers with uncertainty. Are ye unwell?”
“I dinna ken.” And Magnus truly didn’t know. He had never felt this way before. He stepped back and lifted his gaze to the Weavers. “Is she from the same place, the same time, as the others?”
Mairwen nodded. “Aye, the realm of twenty-first century Earth appears to be a favored place for the gods to hide lost souls.” She eased closer, her head tilting slightly as she studied him. “Do ye feel anything this time, mighty chief? Is there hope that we have at last found her?”
“I dinna ken what I feel.” His breathing had become ragged, as if he had just stepped from battle. “But there is something.” He looked back at the image, memorizing every nuance of the woman. “Her voice. Her song. Is it as beautiful as she is?”
The Divine Weaver looked away, grimacing as if in pain.
“She canna sing, m’lord.” She barely shook her head.
“Her voice is…” She released a heavy sigh that sent his hopes crashing.
“Her voice is damaged. Rough with the hoarseness of one who has shouted overly much or suffered with an ailment of the throat. It will never improve.”
Clutching the haft of his sword, Magnus itched to cleave the old crone’s head from her shoulders. “And yet ye came here, anyway. Knowing she could never be the one of the prophecy. What spell did ye cast over her image to draw me to it?”
“Shall I incinerate them?” Talon asked, inhaling deeply and scrubbing his front, hand-like claws together at the prospect.
“No.” Unsheathing his sword, Magnus shoved the bowl off his desk with its tip.
“Get out. Never return, and count yerselves fortunate that I dinna send ye to the abyss. The only thing staying my hand from taking yer lives is yer loyalty to the blessed Highland Veil. But never return. I canna guarantee I will always be so generous.”
“But ye felt something, mighty chief.” Mairwen caught hold of her assistant and held her back from fetching the bowl. “Ye…changed. Went still and quiet.”
“She canna be the healer promised by the prophecy. Not if she canna sing.” He pointed the sword at the old woman.
“My people are crossing over into the never-ending sleep eons before their time. The curse of that damnable sickness fills our tombs with dragonkind and forces their humankind brethren to follow to escape the soul-wrenching pain of their grief.” He jerked his head from side to side.
“If she canna heal my people, I want nothing to do with her. As I said, get out and never return.”
“If ye would but give her a chance,” the witch’s apprentice said, her voice quivering.
“That is what ye said about the others!” he roared.
Flinching, Mairwen dared to move closer.
“Look upon her again, I beseech ye. One more time, great chief. For yer people.” She waved a hand over the puddle of spilled water on the floor.
Its surface rippled, then opened up as if it were a window into the woman’s realm.
The beauty tossed her head and smiled as she tapped her fingers across a strange plank of black and white ivory teeth set in a gleaming black box.
“Listen,” Mairwen whispered. She snapped her fingers over the puddle, then stepped back.
Strains of an ethereal, whimsical sound rose from the image, filling the room with a mystical blue-white light and making it brighter.
When the beauty stopped touching the teeth, pausing to use a strange yellow stick to mark on a parchment propped on the ledge of the box, the soothing song and the light disappeared.
Then she started tapping on the teeth again, and the song continued even better than before.
“What is that thing she touches to make the sound?” Talon asked, his booming voice barely above a whisper.
“A piano,” Mairwen’s apprentice said. “Lyla canna sing, but she is able to make music. That song you hear is one of her own creations. It never existed until she thought of it and made it so.”
“What is yer name, youngling?” Magnus eyed the annoying lass, finding her a bit more bearable than before.
“Keeva.”
“Can all the people of her time make a melody with that box?”
“No. Only those who have learned and mastered it.” Keeva cleared her throat. “She once sang the songs she created, but now she is only able to bring forth the notes on her piano.”
“Why?” Magnus couldn’t resist stepping closer, more to soak in the beauty of the beguiling lass than listen to the entrancing song. “Why is she unable to sing?”
“That is her story to tell,” Mairwen said. “She is a jewel with a lifetime of facets waiting to reflect the light of her fated mate’s love—yer love.”
“But if she is the wrong one…” Something within him couldn’t bear the thought of that.
The incorrectness and removal of the two before her had disappointed him, but not overly much.
But this one. He swallowed hard. If this one failed, he already sensed in the deepest core of his being that it would pain him greatly. “If she is the wrong one…”
“She is not the wrong one,” Talon whispered in his mind. “I dinna ken how she can be the one of the prophecy, but I believe she is yer soul mate.” “Bring the song box with her,” the dragon said to Mairwen. “The piano. Perhaps it will provide the healing we need.”
The crone made a face, as if she smelled something foul. She tipped a polite nod at the dragon lord before turning back to Magnus. “I am unsure whether that is possible, but we will try.”
“Fated mate or not,” Magnus said, “she must be able to create song and heal the ill, or the realm will not accept her.” As much as it pained him, he admitted the hard truth to himself. If the realm didn’t accept her, then neither could he—no matter the strength of his need to make her his.