His lips drew back in a silent snarl. Then, “Och, Christ, tell me you didn’t think I was Cruce! Do I look that bad?”
She nodded vehemently. “Yes.”
“Bloody hell,” he growled. “He’s dead. I’d know if he was alive. At least I think I would.”
She sucked in a ragged breath and crumpled as the strength fled her body, crippled by the profoundly worst moment of her life—thinking Cruce had returned and was going to take Rae away from her. She had nightmares about that happening, awakened horrified and trembling, clutching a hand to her mouth to hold back screams.
Christian caught her before she hit the floor, swept her to her feet and steadied her with an arm about her shoulders.
Good God, he was enormous. Seven feet at least. Massive.
“Easy, Kat. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I thought you knew he was dead.”
She didn’t believe it. She would never believe it until she saw his lifeless form with her own eyes. Christian’s earlier words penetrated at last and, as swiftly as horror had seized her heart, wonder blossomed and happiness flushed her skin. “Sean asked for me?” she said breathlessly, and made the mistake of glancing up to search his eyes.
“Stop doing that,” he growled. “I can’t camouflage it and I bloody well hate wearing sunglasses at night.” He swept a wing around her and swept the blood from her cheeks with the tips of his silken feathers.
The sensation was so familiar, she shuddered and cried softly, “Stop! I’ll get a kerchief.”
He backed away, sensing her revulsion. “I’ve got the Sidhbha-jai muted, lass,” he said stiffly. “I’ll keep it that way.”
As she fumbled about in Rae’s chest of drawers—finding, yes, a sock would do—and wiped her eyes, she watched him carefully in the periphery of her vision.
He’d turned and was staring down at Rae. Then glanced back at her.
Her gaze went instinctively to search his eyes again—by the Saints, she was going to go blind from blood! She dabbed it on another of her daughter’s socks and said faintly, “What do you see?”
He yanked a pair of sunglasses from a pocket, shoved them on and said. “A lovely wee lass, Kat, nothing more.”
It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, she’s my child. “Would you know if she was more?” Fuck, she thought, and she never thought that word. But she’d asked the damned question and it was hanging out there and she waited, breath locked down again, for his answer.
He said nothing for what seemed to her an interminable time. Finally, “Not necessarily. But what are you saying, lass? Have you some reason to fear she’s Cruce’s?”
“No,” Kat said on an explosive exhale.
“Lie,” he said flatly.
Fuck, she thought again. Christian MacKeltar was as bad as she was; a walking lie detector.
Christian sighed but it turned into a darkly amused laugh. “What a world we live in, eh, Kat? I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me that story?”
“You said Sean needs me.” She steered the conversation a
way from a subject she never discussed and certainly wouldn’t in her daughter’s presence, not even while she slept. Some names seemed too powerful to risk uttering. She regretted that his had ever been spoken in her daughter’s room. The mere syllable seemed to hold the power of a divine summons.
“Aye. Kat, have you someone to watch over the lass? I need to take you somewhere. Just for the night.”
She’d suffered such a fright, she felt abject terror at the thought of leaving her daughter. But the abbey was filled with women who vied for the opportunity to babysit Rae and heavily warded against—Again, fuck.
Three times in a night. That word. She demanded, “How did you get in here without setting off our wards, Christian?”
He smiled faintly. It was a terrible smile. White teeth, sharp canines, it brought only more darkness to his eyes. “Och, lass, I’m not what I used to be. None of the Fae are. You’ll be needing new wards. My clan and I can help you with that.”
“Our abbey is no longer safe from the Fae?” she exclaimed softly, horrified.
“Hasn’t been for a long time. Since shortly after the Song was sung.”
“But we’ve not had a single Fae intruder,” she protested.