Shaking her head, Shea reached up to hold his face between her palms. This she wanted him to know. To understand, before they set out on the last leg of this quest that would eventually unite them forever.
“It was true, Torin. With you, there was peace and passion and laughter.” Her hands dropped and she bowed her head as if subconsciously apologizing for the woman she had once been. “But when I was with my sisters, I forgot everything I had with you. I listened to the demands of my own greed and let what was really important to me slide away.”
Turning around, she leaned back against him and stared at the castle where she had found love and then lost it again so long ago. “So when I had to hide the Artifact-keep it safe-I brought it to the one place where I had known safety. However briefly.”
“Shea, you had only to reach for me,” he said, wrapping his muscular arms around her. “Then or now, I will be here for you. Always.”
“I know that,” she told him and took a quick, sharp breath, deliberately releasing memories that were as dust now. Time had moved on and she couldn’t, no matter how much she wished it, reclaim what had been lost. But if she completed this task, finished atoning for what her earlier self had been a part of, she could perhaps find what she had not cherished nearly enough in the past.
With her Eternal at her side, Shea felt strong. Capable. The threads of their mating were rapidly tying them together and that bond continued to strengthen every day.
Still, she felt something else. Something she had yet to confess to Torin. The dark pulse of the Artifact called to her, as it had so long ago. She felt its pull, like an insistent song repeating over and over again in her mind and heart. It was there, just beneath the surface, tempting, teasing, reminding her what she had felt in that moment of supreme power, just before her ancient world had crashed down around her.
And a part of her wanted it.
Shea swallowed hard and fought the feeling. Fought the instinct that had her clamoring to go into the castle ruin herself to retrieve the Artifact shard. She wanted to be alone with that darkness. To feel the sweet sweep of power rushing through her. And so she kept her secret to herself, hoping that if she ignored it, nothing would happen. Nothing would go cataclysmically wrong.
Taking her hand in his, Torin said, “Let’s go and get it. The sooner we’re back at Haven, with that thing stored away, the better off we’ll all be.”
“Right.” She nodded, took another deep breath and walked with him across the field and back into her past.
The interior of the ruin looked less picturesque.
Fallen stones tumbled on top of each other and bracken and ivy were slowly covering everything, like a rich green cloak, dotted with autumn wildflowers. Torin could have simply flashed them to the chapel wall, but there was something about this place, about this task, that had them both preferring to walk.
It was hard going and perhaps that was as it should be, Shea thought. She clambered over huge stones, and with Torin’s help, scaled a short wall that looked about to topple. The chapel was at the back of Nessa’s castle. Shea remembered the girl’s wedding day, when there were flowers gathered and hung from trailing ribbons along the castle walls. Musicians had played, voices lifted in song and whiskey had flowed like water.
Now, only the wind sang through the stones.
“There it is,” Shea said, pointing to a wall with chunks as big as her fist missing. “The chapel’s through there.”
“I remember.”
She looked around, worrying at her bottom lip. “It looks as though the doorway’s been blocked forever. There are so many stones and vines, we’ll never get through there.”
“For this,” he told her, gathering her close, “we’ll call the fire.”
She clung to him and when the flames rose up around them, they flashed from outside the walls to within the enclosure. Shea let go of Torin and stepped across the broken flagstone floor. A flutter of noise swept past her and she shrieked in surprise, ducking and covering her head.
“Just a bird,” Torin said, looking around. “Doves have built nests in here.”
She laughed a little at her own edginess and continued across what had once been a tiny, beautiful chapel. Grass and heather sprouted up from between the stones beneath her feet and the roof was gone, the sky stretching wide overhead.
“Sad,” she whispered, remembering it all as it had once been.
“It is,” he agreed in a hushed voice as low as her own.
Letting go of memory and the inevitable march of time, Shea turned to the west wall of the chapel. Her gaze landed instantly on a torch bracket. Hanging at a tilted angle because of the shifting of the stones, the black silver she had magically twisted into the shape of a simple tool, still hung where she had left it so long ago.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Torin asked the question but didn’t wait for an answer. He stalked forward and reached out one hand to grab it.
“Stop!”
He did, turning his head to give her a quizzical look. “What is it?”
How to explain, she wondered frantically. How could she tell him that every beat of her heart, every inch of her skin was compelling her to take that shard of mystical metal. To hold it once more. To feel that heavy darkness draping over her in a wild, sensuous pump of energy and power.
She couldn’t even explain it to herself.
All she knew was that she needed to touch the black silver. She had to be the one to take it from the wall.
“Let me,” she said, moving past him to reach up for the bracket she’d forged and hidden so many centuries ago. The burn of power from the Artifact reached for her, as if the metal itself recognized her and welcomed her back.
Shea’s fingers closed around it and with a twist of magic she pulled it from the wall, holding it close to her. She felt it then. A burst of black energy that swept through her entire system in the blink of an eye. In the space of a heartbeat, she tipped her head back, clasped the Artifact to her breast and smiled widely at the churning sky overhead. Dark clouds gathered in an instant and thunder rumbled like the call of angry gods shouting down warnings.
But Shea heard none of that.
She was wrapped in the silky strands of a power so immense it stole the breath away. How could she ever have given this up? How was she able to walk away from the pulsing strength slipping into every cell of her body?
How would she ever let it go again? God, the swell of power inside her was unimaginable. She hadn’t realized, hadn’t known. Her mind raced with possibilities and she smiled.
“Give it to me, Shea,” Torin said, his voice harsh and strained.
“One minute,” she said, sighing as if to a lover as the black threads unspooled through her veins.
“Shea!”
He grabbed hold of her, giving her a hard shake that brought her up out of the darkness. “What? What is it? We have it. Everything’s good,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” he told her, glaring down into her eyes. “You changed. The second you touched that damn thing, you changed.”
She twisted free of his grasp, still clutching the Artifact to her with greedy fingers. “What change? I’m still me.”
“No. Your hair, your eyes, even your clothes are turning black, Shea! It’s taking you over and you’re letting it. You must resist its call.”
No. She shook her head and stumbled back from him. But she risked a glance down and saw that he was right. Her blue jeans were now black. Her dark green sweater was also black and as she shook her head, she saw that her long auburn hair was now as black as night.
“Oh, God…” Fear rose up inside her, as thick and rich as the power she felt simmering inside the black silver. This was what she’d known so long ago, she thought. This battle between herself and the hunger that could corrupt a soul and twist it beyond imaginings. Her heartbeat thudded heavily in her chest as she realized that she was becoming what she once was and couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t end it. Couldn’t seem to pry her fingers off the
