The Highlander's Touch

One time, three times, five, then seven.

She stopped. She realized she didn’t have anything to cut herself with. With a peculiar detachment, she pierced the heel of her palm with her teeth, drawing blood. She ascended to the peak of the shian and, applying pressure with her fingers, forced the droplets to fall on the center of the mound.

She waited.

She had no idea what she expected, if anything. But considering how strange her life had been for the past few months, it would not surprise her overmuch if a fairy sprang from the earth, waving a magic wand.

She held her breath. The night was eerily still, even the night creatures strangely mute.

Nothing happened.

Oh, Lisa—no Fairy Queen will spring from this mound, and you will simply have to deal with the fact that you are in love with an immortal man.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, amused by her foolish fancy. After a moment more, she descended the unusually symmetric pile of sod.

This land had definitely done something to her blood. She’d nearly believed that a mythical creature would appear. Magic pervaded Scotland’s air as thick and frequent as the mist, and she’d discovered little that seemed beyond the realm of possibility. Circenn was immortal. She had traveled through time. Making a wish seemed very reasonable in comparison.

She turned her back on the mound, tilted her head, and gazed at the moon, admitting that despite her hurt and fear, she was more than a little relieved. Too many choices could be overwhelming. Now she had none; she had no choice but to stay there and love Circenn Brodie.

Perhaps she would learn to view aging, while he remained ageless, as a small price for the kind of love they shared. She felt for him with her inner senses, slowly removing her earlier barricades. From their bond, she knew he was hurt, angry, and deeply worried. He was also consumed with fear that she would somehow try to leave him.

Well, he needn’t worry about that. She couldn’t.

“What shall you wish, human?” A voice that held a thousand cool shades of snow shattered her reverie, chilling her blood.

Lisa froze.

THE VOICE HAD COME FROM BEHIND HER, WHERE THE fairy mound lay.

“You were watching the moon, as one entranced. Do you wish to fly to it? To count the stars as you touch them? Or something more … earthy?”

Lisa drew a deep breath as the voice shivered through her. Not a mortal voice. She could never mistake such a sound for a mortal voice. It resonated with time and with passionless observation. It frightened her. She turned slowly on her heel. The sight that greeted her was frightening only in the magnitude of its beauty. The air caught in her windpipe, forcing her to draw rapid, shallow breaths.

“Lovely,” she whispered. “Oh, God.” She suddenly understood the lure of fairy tales, of creatures who were so blindingly beautiful that it nearly hurt to look at them. This creature overwhelmed her senses.

The vision inclined her head regally. “We are. Lovely, that is. But not gods. Most call us children of the Goddess Danu.”

Lisa stared, lips parted on a sigh, mesmerized. The woman had silver hair—moonbeams had brushed her delicate head, loath to depart. The night air shimmered around her, as if lit by a thousand tiny suns. Her brows arched above exotic almond-shaped eyes in a pale face. And her eyes—they were of no color known to man, but conjured images of the iridescent hues of a mermaid’s wet tail gleaming in the sun.

Her cheekbones were so high that they lent her face a feline cant, and her lips were full, blood-red, and uptilted at the corners as if caught in a perpetual smile. Her skin was dusted with gold; a sheer gown of white clothed her without covering a thing, and the body that was clearly visible beneath the shimmering fabric sparkled gilded pearl and rose, and made Lisa feel like she was twelve years old.

Perfection.

“What shall you wish, human?” Remote eyes held hers, widened by the barest hint of curiosity. “You made this door with your own blood, now wish before I weary of you.”

Lisa swallowed. Here was her chance. All she had to say was, I want to go home to my mother. But could she leave Circenn? And how could she know whether her mother was still alive?

“Yes,” the Fairy Queen said, tucking a strand of moonbeam behind her ear.

“What?” Lisa gasped.

“Your mother lives. If you call that living.” Her lips shaped a moue of distaste. “A mortal bane, the body. She is dying.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?” Lisa whispered.

The fairy laughed and the sound slithered around Lisa. For a moment, she lost herself in it: forgot who she was, that she had a mother, that she loved a man, that she was human. For an instant she wanted nothing more than to linger as close to this creature as she would permit. To kiss the hem of her fairy skein, to breathe her exhales, to dance barefoot upon a mound of green. She recognized it for an enchanted madness, when the compulsion eased as the laughter faded.