The Immortal Highlander
Page 53“So I take it we’re not going to try to find this Circenn Brodie person any longer?”
Adam watched her intently as he replied, “I can no longer wait for my son to resurface.”
“Y-your w-what?” she sputtered, looking at him with an astonished expression.
“My son. Circenn is my son.”
She sat up straight in her chair, frowning. “You mean, by a human woman? That’s why he’s only half-Fae? You had a child with a human woman?”
He nodded, concealing his smile behind a swallow of wine. She sounded both offended and . . . reluctantly fascinated. Fascinated was good, very good. Precisely what he wanted to hear.
“When? Recently?”
“Long ago, ka-lyrra.”
She looked as if she were about to leap up from her chair, grab him by the shoulders, and shake him. He might have antagonized her further, to goad her into doing it for the excuse to pull her into his arms, but he was too charmed by the fact that she’d just called him “Adam.” Though she’d said his name on other occasions, this was the first time she’d used it so casually in conversation. He’d been waiting for it to happen. It was a milestone, revealing a deepening acceptance of him. He was no fool; he knew he’d been an “it” to her at first. Then the sin siriche du, or the blackest fairy, then his full name, Adam Black.
But now he was just Adam. He wondered if she had any idea what she’d just betrayed.
“Circenn was born in 811 A.D.,” he told her. “He lived in his time until the early 1500s, when he met a woman from your century. They now live in your time.”
Her eyes widened. “I don’t think I even want to know how that happened. It would just give me a headache.”
She was silent a moment and Adam fancied he could almost see questions whizzing behind her green-gold eyes as she pondered which one to ask next. He was pleased by what she chose.
“So does that mean any children you have are also immortal, even if they’re only half-fairy? Not that I personally care,” she added hastily. “I was just thinking it might be interesting to add to our books.”
The only person who would be adding anything to those idiotic books was him; it was time the O’Callaghans got a few things right. “No, Gabrielle, only a full-blooded Tuatha Dé is born immortal. I gave my son an elixir that my race created so we could grant select humans immortality.” She didn’t need to know that he’d done it without his son’s knowledge or consent. Or that Circenn had hated him when he’d found out what he’d done. Had, in fact, spent most of the next six centuries or so refusing to speak to him, refusing to acknowledge him as his father. His son could hold a grudge with the best of immortals.
“Yes. I made his wife immortal too.” How long ago had that been? He’d been tripping around in time so much of late that many centuries had passed for him, but for her—three mortal years or so? A distant shadow clouded his mind at the thought. The elixir of life had a particularly unsavory side effect; one he’d told neither Circenn nor Lisa about. Half-Fae children were born with souls (apparently half a dose of humanity was enough to merit the divine), and Circenn, with his more tenacious constitution, had a few more centuries before it would happen. It took roughly a millennium to affect a half-Fae. Pure humans, on the other hand, like Lisa, lasted but a few years. Lisa had little time left at all. The golden glow illuming her would soon sputter out, leaving her as void of a soul as any Fae.
“Did you make Circenn’s mother immortal too?”
Abruptly Adam wanted out of the conversation. Pushing himself up from the table, he began bagging up leftovers. What food remained they would eat in the morning before catching a plane. He wanted an early start. “No.”
“So she’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you offer her—”
“I did,” he ground out, cutting her off.
“And Morganna wouldn’t take it.”
“Oh.” Her eyes narrowed, then widened, as if something had just occurred to her. “When did Morganna die?”
“What the bloody hell does that have to do with anything?” he snarled.
She eyed him warily but persisted, “When?”