The Immortal Highlander

He snorted. Yeah, well, he’d heard that often enough to last an eternity.

Scowling, he began to reach down, to place his hands on her head, to sift through her mind and strip from her that which he should never have told her to begin with.

Reached. Hesitated. Drew back. Cursed himself softly. Reached again.

She spoke then, her voice thick with tears. “I love you, damn it,” she said brokenly. “I love you so much and it’s killing me. God, I was so stupid. You never cared about me at all, did you? How am I supposed to go on?”

Adam jerked, reeling backward, hands fisting at his sides. He scarcely felt the tiny glass vial imploding in his hand with a soft tinkle of glass.

For a long moment, he couldn’t move. Just stood, stunned.

She knew he was Fae.

She knew he had no heart or soul.

She knew he’d done heinous things, and she’d just said she loved him.

She loved him.

Bloody hell, she loved him.

Never cared about her? Was she crazy? It was all about her! Every bit of it! Every action he’d made, every thought he’d had since that night he’d first seen her had been all about her! Not for a single moment had she been out of his thoughts. She was inside him. Part of him now.

How could she not know that? With every gift he’d chosen for her he’d been saying it. Every time he’d buried himself inside her body he’d been trying to tell her! It had been in his every kiss, his every touch, silent, because he’d not wanted words thrown back in his face. But even in his words it had been there.

Sort of.

In the peculiar way human males spoke of such things. Or so his millennia of spying on them had taught him.

How could she not have known that every time he’d said, “You’re not falling for me, are you, Irish?” it had been his declaration that he was. Bloody hell, even back there on the train he’d known it.

Known he was doing the stupidest thing possible. Falling for a human. But he could no more have stopped himself from falling for her than he could have stopped that train from hurtling to its destination.

You’re not falling for me, are you, Irish?

That had been her cue to say “Um, well, maybe I am a little,” and then he could have said, “Well, um, fancy that; maybe I am too.”

Simple, concise, direct male communication. Right? Wasn’t that how men went about it? Had all his spying been on skewed samples of the population? Had he misinterpreted what he’d observed?

She loves me.

He was awed by it, stilled by it.

He glanced down at the shimmering silver liquid dripping from his fist.

And a moment of crystalline clarity shivered around him, settled into his being.

He opened his hand and slowly relinquished what remained of the vial. With a flexing of Tuatha Dé will, he consigned the spilled elixir and broken vial to a faraway, forgotten dimension where it would hopefully do no harm.

He finally understood that Morganna had been right all along—he hadn’t loved her.

Love would never imperil, never vanquish another’s soul.

The intense pressure behind his sternum was suddenly back, that seizing in his chest, that tense feeling in his stomach. The sensations built and spread, and he nearly doubled over from the intensity of it. And he suddenly apprehended the sum of his existence as nothing more than a culmination of a series of events destined to lead him to a specific bench on a specific night at a precise moment.

To this woman.

He stared down at Gabrielle.

She was sobbing, head bowed, face buried in her hands.

In her grief, she glowed even more brilliantly golden; passion being the seat of the soul. She was so beautiful with that divine radiance illuming her from within, the very essence of who and what she was. He felt sick to think he’d nearly taken it from her. He could never take Gabrielle’s soul.

Nor, however, could he stand to watch her die.

Nor, however, was he willing to live without her.

Which left him, he realized, only one other option.

25

Queen Aoibheal eyed the spot where only moments before the last prince of the D’Jai had stood before her in her Royal Bower.

Adam was gone now. Gone to the human realm.

She sighed, feeling weary to the very core of her being. She’d argued with him, she’d bribed, she’d threatened. But nothing she’d said had succeeded in swaying him.

This is the sentence you chose as punishment for Darroc’s crimes, Adam—yet now you would request it for yourself?

Yes.

You know the transformation cannot be undone! I cannot save you should you change your mind. Unlike your other adventures, there can be no last-minute reprieve.