Chapter 7 #3
“The last time I got a massage and a lovely soak, I ended up in this alternate Scottish hell!” Lyla stamped her foot again, then flinched because the flagstone flooring was not conducive to a pain-free rant.
“I just want some clothes so I can go home.” Then a tidal wave of guilt crashed into her because the girl who was just doing what she had been told stared at her with the biggest set of I’m-so-sorry puppy dog eyes.
Holy crap, it looked like she was about to cry.
“Albionna—look. I’m sorry. None of this is your fault, and I’m not angry with you.
” She jabbed a thumb in Magnus’s direction, noticing that at least he sat upright in the pool now, looking…
worried…or something along those lines. “It’s his fault for threatening me with imprisonment. ”
“I did not threaten ye with imprisonment!” Magnus’s voice rumbled with such a loud growl that the flames danced wilder across the candles. “Did I once say ye would be sent to the dungeons?”
She stormed closer, shaking her fist at him.
“You said I had to stay here fourteen days and fourteen nights, even though I told you I wanted to go home. Whether it’s in a dungeon or a five-star, luxury spa, holding someone against their will is imprisonment!
How would you feel if someone forced you to stay where you didn’t want to be? ”
“If ye dinna stay and accept me as yer mate, many will die,” he roared so loudly that the vibration traveled through the stones of the floor and tickled up into her bare feet. “They need yer magic!”
She nearly let the blanket drop again and had almost reached the point of not caring. “What are you talking about? That makes no sense.”
He shifted his glare to Albionna. “Leave us. I shall summon ye when yer mistress is ready. It appears she and I have a great deal more to discuss.”
The maid scurried out before Lyla could stop her, closing the door with a rattling of the latch that sounded suspiciously like a lock or a barrier of some sort falling into place.
Lyla went to the door and tried it. It was sealed as if the metals of the opening and the frame had melted together into a solid mass of rock. An unnerving sense of panic and helplessness shot through her. “She locked us in.”
“Nay, lass,” Magnus said with an almost weary gruffness.
“She locked everyone else out because ye will not like the truth I am about to tell ye.” His pained expression squeezed something deep inside her, making it hard to breathe.
“The truth I had hoped to ease ye into over the next fortnight while I did my damnedest to make ye feel the mate bond and choose to stay at my side—willingly, because yer heart convinced ye to do so.”
He stepped out of the pool, his lean, muscular form glistening and rippling with such perfection in the candles’ glow that it paralyzed her. “Bracae,” he growled, and his snug leather pants immediately covered his lower half.
Lyla bit her lower lip. How was that possible?
“Magic, lass.” He scowled at her, his eyes narrowing.
“And no, I dinna read yer thoughts. ’Tis unnecessary when yer face shows all that ye think and feel.
” He jerked a nod at a long, low couch near the hearth.
“Come. Sit. I have much to tell ye to explain yer imprisonment since ye seem oblivious to the pull of the mate bond.” Teeth bared like an angry beast, he bowed his head and raked his hands through his hair, then tied it back from his face once again.
“I dinna understand how it could be so. My soul wants ye with a fury the likes of which I have never known, and yet, ye feel nothing.”
“I never said I felt nothing.” And she probably shouldn’t have said that, but the way he suddenly seemed so defeated broke her heart. “I’m afraid. You and this place are simply unbelievable.”
Head still bowed, he stood beside the couch and didn’t comment.
It took her a minute to realize he was waiting for her to sit.
His manners were so… A soft, huffing laugh escaped her.
Extinct. Manners like his had become a sham or a con back home, only used by men to impress those around them.
True gentlemen who behaved with such thoughtfulness because they felt it the right thing to do had become a rarity.
Radical feminism and overzealous haters had persecuted them to the point of retiring all the polite niceties their mamas had taught them just so they could survive and avoid lawsuits.
“Thank you,” she said as she seated herself on the end of the sofa closest to the fire.
Still scowling, he sat on the other end of the long couch, leaving an arm’s length of space between them. He stared at her, studying her as if she were as strange to him as he was to her.
“You have been nothing but nice to me, but”—she looked all around the room, awkwardly waving a hand at everything within it—“this place, and you…” She didn’t have the words to explain how vastly different everything was.
“This place, the Thirteenth Realm, is like nothing I have ever seen before, and I’ve traveled all over the world.
I know I’m a simple girl from the South, but I’ve seen a lot. Nothing compares to this.”
“And since ye have never seen it, ye canna believe it exists?” His despair, the misery in his tone, nearly broke her.