Nine While Nine

Prologue-3

The appearance of a Sgoltadh changed the game beyond anything anticipated. She could have been lost.

“Who are you?” Isabeau breathed out.

His answer was to seal her lips with his after softly uttering a brief litany of words she didn’t understand. It was a kiss to last him, in all probability, for the rest of his life. Once the Comhairle learned of his indiscretion, he would be removed from her life. He should know better. He should be stronger, but she was his undoing. He had watched from the edge for too long, without ever uttering a single word to her, deprived of a single touch—always separated by the ethereal stratum between their existences or by a crowd.

It was a kiss that ripped through his soul and bound her to him in ways that no laws of his kind could ever conceive, bound them in ways beyond his expectations and understanding, and it staggered him.

It was a kiss designed not just to appease him, but to make her forget what she’d seen and felt. A kiss to forget him, because she could not know he existed.

Isabeau fell against the wall behind her when a gust of warm, honeysuckle and forest-scented air rushed against her in an abrupt force, leaving her dazed and somewhat confused as to what had just occurred.

She brushed her fingertips across her lips, still feeling his kiss warm against them. She could still faintly see his eyes and feel his light touch against her skin.

Her Scáthanna’s intention had not fully worked. His heart was not completely in the undoing, and he was no longer there to pursue a second attempt. He’d been pulled back through to the opposite side of the veil, back to where he came from, just as he’d anticipated and feared. He had not expected such immediate action for his indiscretion.

“What the hell was that?” She gasped to catch her breath. The kiss had been long, deep, and full of passion, longing, and promise.

But there was no one there with her. She was alone in the hallway.

It didn’t seem as poorly lit now; the warm lighting from the sconces bright enough to keep the shadows at bay. She spun around, reaching out with her hands and her heart for someone who was not there. Maybe hadn’t been there at all. “I’m nuts.” Isabeau’s sight darted desperately about. “Or this place is haunted. Neither a great option. Cat’s not going to believe this.” She spoke into the room softly, trying to gather her wits. “I don’t know if I do.”

“There you are!” Cat erupted into the hallway gleefully, Gigi in tow. “This place is crazy huge. I have no idea where the guys are, but I’m so glad we finally found you. They’re giving dance lessons downstairs. Let’s go so we don’t miss out. We had a chance to peek in at them. It’s amazing, and your gown fits in perfectly,” she gushed.

Isabeau’s glance delved behind her into the depths of the room, searching for the slightest hint of him, reluctant to leave. Part of her realized she should be frightened of what had happened. A stranger in a dark corridor had laid one hell of an unexpected—and uninvited—kiss upon her and then vanished into thin air. She was either nuts or she’d been kissed by an otherworldly suitor.

But in that kiss she had seen a hint at another world and felt possibilities within herself that she had never been aware of, a tease of an awakening. She had seen things not of her world, things for which she did not possess a vocabulary.

He’d awakened something within her that she was oblivious to; the existence of some enigmatic otherness that was an integral part of her composition. A mysterious something dwelling in her since before birth had awakened and would now continue to flourish and evolve within her. When the time was right, something from the O’Cailleach heritage and beyond would fully emerge.

The memory of the attack was successfully erased. But the images of deep-green and amber forests that held creatures not of this world, and places and things of story books and myths, faintly remained. Images that had come crashing into her mind directly from his, not seen with her eyes.

A vision of his face, and his eyes of such soulful depth, lingered behind her closed eyelids. Regretfully, the more she tried to focus and remember, the hazier he became. The last hour became a déjà vu moment of a dream long past.

But one word he’d spoken after breaking the kiss still resonated with her in his deep, soulful voice, Milseachd.

As Cat grabbed her hand to pull her from the hallway and back into the traffic of the outer room, Isabeau reached back for him with her free hand, as if he were still there. Willing him to hear her from any plane, she whispered faintly, “Stay with me.”