Page 62 of Connal

A woman stood in front of the well-barricaded entry, a dark, exquisite-looking female who exactly resembled the fiend in every legend he’d been told about his sire’s worst enemy.

“Derdrui,” he said, as rage swept through him.

“Son of Mar.” The Fae enchantress bared her teeth, which elongated into two rows of sharp fangs. “How mannerly of you to come and seek me out. Come here, so I may kiss you hello, and goodbye.”

Connal couldn’t risk charging the woman, not with Valerie in his arms. He sensed Derdrui wouldn’t bargain with him, either. He looked around the room, and then shifted his love against him so that her body hid his dagger. Although the door and one of the windows had been blocked, they had not yet finished with the other.

“Hold tight,” he murmured to her, as he lifted her arm around his neck. Slowly, his hand slid from her back to the hilt of his blade.

Derdrui shifted her stance, looking between him and Valerie. “You were safe on your island, Son of Mar. Now I shall–”

His hand flashed out in front of him as the dagger sliced through the air. Without waiting to see it sink into the enchantress’s face, he lunged for the second window. In one bound, he leapt atop the chest of drawers that covered its lower half and rammed sideways through the thick covering above it.

He fell out of the house onto the stony ground, turning as he did so that Valerie landed atop him. Staggering to his feet, he ran for the road, which his men blocked as they forced the sailors to retreat in a running brawl. He then changed direction, heading for the edge of the cliff where a year ago Joana had jumped. As he looked over, he saw what awaited them.

Joana did this. So must I.

“Run down the hill there. I shall draw them to me,” he told her, knowing it unlikely he would survive smashing his body on the rocks below. “When the battle’s done I shall come back for you.”

But as soon as he put Valerie on her feet, she stiffened and her eyes seemed to look through him. Although he reached for her shoulders to point her down the hill, she took hold of his hands and looked over the edge. “Do you trust me?”

Derdrui appeared, her body changing into a huge, monstrous-looking creature with wide jaws and impossibly strong, brutish limbs.

Valerie pulled him back from the edge a few paces.

“With all my heart,” he promised her.

“Run fast.” She yanked him after her as she ran to the edge of the cliff.

Connal should have stopped her, but he knew death waited for them in either direction. Going with her into oblivion was surely the finest end he could imagine.

As they jumped from the edge, he pulled her to him, holding her tightly as they plummeted. Then, incredibly, the air rushing passed them lit up with blue and green lights, and he sensed for the first time in a thousand years the presence of his sire.

Do you wish live, my son?

Connal smiled as his death came rushing at him. Aye, Sire. More than anything.

A voice he had only dreamed of for the last year then spoke, coming from inside his heart. Then you must live, my dearest husband, Joana said, and love again.

Chapter Twenty-One

Valerie thought she might flash back to the terrible drop off the bridge, but the gentle voice had again been insistent and reassuring.

Do you wish him live?

Now, even as they plunged downward, Connal’s arms were warm and safe. It had been the right choice. She would die as soon as the fall ended, of course, but with the running jump they’d taken there was a chance her love might clear the rocks below and survive.

If he doesn’t, then we’ll be together in the next place.

Something wrapped around them, and their fall slowed as the air filled with flashing blue and green shimmers of light. She looked down at Joana’s ring, the stone of which shone so brightly now it hurt her eyes. Suddenly she was floating with Connal instead of falling, her hair drifting around her face as if they were already underwater.

I died for him, the soft voice whispered inside her mind. You must live for him.

Yes, she thought back to the ghost of her man’s first love. I will.

Their fall ended when Valerie’s feet touched the top of a flat stone, and Connal staggered before clutching her to him. They both looked down and then at each other in amazement once they’d seen that they now stood on top of the rocks that should have killed them.

“My sire,” he murmured as the lights slowly faded away. “’Twas his magic saved us.”