Chapter Two
The buzzing in her ear suddenly made sense.
Lorcan Flynn. Her soulmate. The Druid who had bound their magic together.
She had gotten so used to pushing away the string that guided them, feeling the ever-oppressive weight of it in her gut, that she hadn’t even realized when it was ramping up. It was always there. One step away from driving her to catastrophe. And now he was here.
“You look surprised to see me,” Lorcan said.
Somehow Lorcan made himself seem at home in the gently lit crypt stacked with assorted treasures.
He lounged back on a green chaise, dressed in gray slacks and a white button-up with a navy blazer.
His eyes were a cerulean blue that made her think of the ocean, and his smile made her stomach lurch involuntarily.
The scent of morning sunshine and ocean waves and spring filled the room.
His power that wrapped around her like a noose.
The Oak King, her summer god. “Surely you felt my presence long before you got here.”
“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think about you at all,” she snapped.
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have to tell me.”
Kierse flushed at the silken words out of his mouth. It made her want to shove a gun to his temple and pull the trigger. She would if it wouldn’t result in her death as well.
When Lorcan discovered that she could lower her absorption powers to allow Graves to enter her mind and find her lost memories of her parents, he’d decided to take matters into his own hands.
He’d kidnapped her, forced a binding of their magic against her will, and then locked down her magic so that Graves could no longer get in her head.
All because Graves had destroyed the mind of Lorcan’s sister, Emilie, and ultimately killed her five hundred years ago.
Out of fear that he’d do the same to Kierse, he’d gone about it all wrong.
It didn’t matter that he’d done it out of some false reason to save her. None of that mattered.
Lorcan believed he was in the right. He believed that taking away her choice in the matter was for her own good. And she hated him for it.
Still, he wasn’t wrong about one thing.
She did think about him. And not just fantasizing about his eventual death at her hands.
Kierse had inherited her magic from Lorcan’s dead wife, Saoirse.
The bond stretched back hundreds of years, and they’d had two Fae children, and it was only strengthened through this new binding.
She had to focus to keep him out of her head.
“What are you doing here?” Graves interrupted in a voice that was as cold as the dead of winter.
His storm-cloud eyes were nearly black with disdain for his enemy. He’d taken a half step forward to put himself between Kierse and Lorcan. And when she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, she could see the monster coming out to play.
She sometimes forgot that Graves was the most terrifying being on pretty much any continent at any point in time. That he’d been fine to play the villain for centuries and softening for her was more difficult than this mask he wore.
“You know why I’m here,” Lorcan said. He lifted a hand behind his head and lay back with that smirk on his lips.
“To infuriate us?” Kierse grumbled.
“Is it working?” Lorcan asked with his eyes on Graves as he added, “Brother?”
Graves didn’t even tense at the word. Once they had been as close as brothers, but that was before Emilie. Before Graves had been cast out of Druid society and out of Ireland as a whole. Before they’d become personified gods—the Oak and the Holly Kings—always battling for the turn of the seasons.
“Give us the stone,” Graves said instead.
Kierse held her hand out. “Now.”
Lorcan tilted his head, looking at the two of them with that insufferable smile still on his face. “What do you mean?”
“The Stone of Fal,” Kierse said. “You’re here for it. Give it to me.”
“To you? Perhaps I would.” Then his eyes flicked to Graves. “Come with me and you can have it.”
She scoffed. “Fine. We’ll take it off your corpse.”
An empty threat, to be fair, since killing him would obviously harm her as well…if it were even possible. But damn, it felt good to say.
“He doesn’t have it,” Graves said. “He’s bluffing.”
“Am I?” Lorcan asked, drawing a round stone from next to the chaise and tossing it in the air. He caught it with ease. “This?”
Kierse inhaled sharply. There it was. The answer to her problems right there for the taking.
The Stone of Fal was the last of the four objects from the Tuatha de Danann that they had been stealing over the last year.
Each of the four objects were created by Celtic gods and gave abilities to help their users win wars.
Spear of Lugh for battle, Sword of Truth, Cauldron of Dagda for healing and provisions, and the Stone of Fal to proclaim the true leader.
For a moment, none of them moved. As if they all held their breath for the impending fight. The stone in the hands of Lorcan would be a catastrophe. But he wouldn’t go down without a death battle to keep it from Graves.
“Since when do you care about the stone?” Kierse shot out before Graves could launch himself at him.
Lorcan raised an eyebrow as he tossed the stone into the air and caught it again. “What do you mean? These are the artifacts of my people.” His brow turned soft as he looked to Kierse. “Our people.”
She flinched. “There’s no our here.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “Perhaps not, but there always was in the past. The Fae and the Druids have been linked for hundreds of years. You cannot deny that.”
No, she could feel the pulse of their connected magic right now.
“Our sacred Irish artifacts being collected by a Brit should worry you.” Lorcan narrowed his eyes at Graves.
“I don’t have to justify my ancestry to you,” Graves said evenly.
“His mother was a High Priestess, as you well know,” Kierse snarled. “Don’t try to make him other just because you cast him out of Ireland.”
“He killed my sister. As far as I’m concerned, he got off easy.”
“Of that I don’t disagree.” Graves took another menacing step forward. “I’m still not going to let you walk out of this vault with the stone.”
“If you want it,” Lorcan said, slowly coming to his feet, holding the stone out in his palm, “come and take it.”
The tension in the room rose as he used the stone as a lure, much like Kierse’s new magic. Not that she wanted him to know about any of her new abilities. The last thing she wanted was for him to find a way to lock those down, too.
Graves shot him a deeply disinterested look before turning to Kierse. “He seems awfully cocky, doesn’t he?”
He held his hand out to her, and she put hers in his without thinking.
A united front before their mutual enemy.
Things might have been up and down with Graves.
He’d betrayed her trust about her heritage as Fae, but he’d spent time and effort proving that he could be trusted.
Together they had been working more as a unit than ever before.
The only problem in their relationship at present stood before them.
“Isn’t he always this insufferable?” Kierse asked as he drew her into him. “He’s just trying to get under your skin.”
“I bet I could get under his,” he murmured as his head dipped into her neck. A shiver ran down her spine as his lips grazed the bare skin at her collar.
“Fine,” Lorcan barked.
Graves laughed into her neck. “God, you taste good.”
“Two can play at that game,” Lorcan said into her mind.
She jerked away from Graves and glared at Lorcan. “Stay out of my head.”
“Or what?” he all but purred.
“Hypocrite,” she snarled. “You locked down my powers to keep Graves from touching my mind, and now you have the audacity to talk to me like that?”
“I’m not going to damage this beautiful mind.”
Graves took two quick strides and grasped Lorcan by the collar. “Release her.”
“As if you haven’t been there when she asked you to stay out.”
“I will not have this argument with you again.”
“Could you both fucking stop?” Kierse said, holding her head. “Give us the stone so we can get out of this horrible place.”
Lorcan shoved Graves off him and tossed it to Kierse. “There. Take a look.”
Kierse grasped the stone in her hands, bracing for a new voice in her head.
Each of the four objects had a remnant of whatever being had created it, and that thing was alive.
Her spear obviously insisted she murder anyone in sight.
The stone was arguably the most powerful of the lot and surely had some other obnoxious god trying to force her to do something.
But when it landed in her palms, there was nothing but silence.
She glanced up at the two men of her life.
“It’s a fake.”