Incarnate: The Moray Druids #3 (Highland Historical) (2 page)

My name is Vían
. It was all she remembered.  Anything else had disappeared into the nether ages ago.  Her memories, her identity, and her humanity.  She knew she used to be something.  Someone.  That she had loved, and had been betrayed.  But even those details had begun to dissipate within the cold, dank void that had been her home for centuries. 

When the madness set in, when she felt as though she’d fall through her prison that was as insubstantial as air, and yet as strong as iron, she’d press her cheek to the cold floor and chant the one thing she knew for certain over and over again.

My name is Vían
. 

Her name remained the only thing the Wyrd sisters hadn’t taken from her.  The only thing she hadn’t pledged to them.  Her last possession. 

It seemed to be the purpose of the nether, to strip one’s mind of all individuality.  The longer one remained incarcerated there, the more of themselves they lost. 

Though a thick mist shrouded the afternoon, and thicker trees blocked the sunlight, Vían blinked against the brilliance of the day.  It had been precisely fifty years since she’d been called out of the nether.  Fifty years since she’d seen any light whatsoever, and before that it had been a few decades if she remembered correctly.  In the hundred or so years she’d been incarcerated, she could count on one hand the number of times the Wyrd Sisters brought her forth to do their bidding.  And once their objective had been acquired, it was back into the void with her.  Alone and forgotten. 

The dense forest shimmered with moisture.  The leaves of trees, of which she’d forgotten the names, changed with the season, flaring into brilliant colors before they shriveled and fell to the earth.  Her eyes ached with the sight, but she didn’t dare close them, for fear the beauty would disappear.  She’d need this memory to hold on to, in case the Wyrd sisters didn’t hold up their end of the bargain and sent her back once her job was finished.  The beauty of this forest would keep her for decades, until it, too, faded.

The damp flora beneath her feet felt like a carpet of clouds.  She didn’t even care about the biting chill, and couldn’t help but run the moss between her toes with a child’s relish. 

Even the wet, cold air that reached through her threadbare cloak until she trembled with body-tensing shivers felt better than the perpetual dry cold of her prison.  It was
something
.  A sensation and, though unpleasant, it was life-affirming.

Watching her hot breath puff into the autumn air, Vían drifted forward, ignoring the strange rustlings and noises of the forest.  She only had one purpose, and the Wyrd Sisters’ evil Magick would protect her from all else. 

She must seduce Malcolm de Moray, and say the spell Badb had given her upon his release into her body.  With it, she would take his Druid Magick. 

He approaches…
the wind hissed with the voice of Badb, as she had dominion over the air. 
Be ready… be ruthless.

“Yes, mistress,” Vían whispered just as trotting hoof beats drew near.  Spotting a soft bit of ground beneath the corpse of a fallen tree, Vían threw herself down and made certain her threadbare shift only skimmed her slender thighs and bared one shoulder and half of her breast. 

A damsel in distress.  Noblemen couldn’t help themselves.

As a dark shadow formed within the swirling mist and began to solidify, she moaned as piteously as she could. 

“Help.  Please sir.  Help me?”

She didn’t have to fake her open-mouthed gasp as the Shire steed obediently stopped, horse and rider peering down at her with nearly identical looks of astonished curiosity. 

Malcolm de Moray, Druid King of the Picts, was nothing like she’d imagined.  Indeed, Vían had expected an older king, grey-bearded, poxed, and portly from too much ignoble excess.

The man swinging down from his horse couldn’t have yet seen five and thirty.  He was tall and wide enough to merit such a giant steed, she could tell that even beneath his forest-green cloak and kilt. 

“Christ,” he swore, hurrying to her.

Vían couldn’t make the assessments she needed, nor could she remember the plots and lies she’d worked on.  His eyes were so mossy green and lovely in a face so raw with masculinity that the contrast rendered her speechless. 

Locks of unruly russet hair fell over his braw forehead as he bent down to kneel beside her prone body. 

“What happened to ye?” he demanded, ripping off his cloak and covering her with it. 

So much for distracting him with her bare skin.
 
She’d have to improvise.

The reasons she couldn’t answer him were two-fold. 

First, because the cloak was fur-lined and sumptuous, retaining the warmth of his body and sliding across her cold, bare skin like a lover’s caress. 

Second, because his shirt was unfastened to his torso, and she could see the swells of his chest and the dark shapes of his nipples hardened against the cold beneath the thin linen. 

He was lean in the way that wolves were lean.  Long limbs thickened with power and sinewed with grace, but also clinging to his braw frame in a spare, hungry way that made her wonder if he ate enough to support a man of his size.

Vían didn’t quite know what to do in the presence of such a male, let alone what to say, so she merely stared at him in an open-mouthed stupor. 

“Are ye hurt?”  He made as though to put his hands on her, but then thought the better of it, studying her with shrewd, yet gentle eyes.  “I doona see any blood. We’re ye attacked, lass?”

“I—I don’t know,” she answered shakily.  “I don’t remember anything. I just… appeared here.”  Lies were more believable when peppered with the truth. 

“Can ye move yer limbs?  Yer fingers and toes?” he queried, still squinting at her alertly from beneath a cruel brow. 

“Aye,” she lifted her arm out of his cloak as though to show him, letting it fall down past her shoulder and breast.

There, he looked
, she noted with pleasure.  His gaze snagged on her creamy breast and pebbled nipple, before he tore it away and reached to cover her again. 

“Were ye robbed?” he pressed, “Were ye—” He broke off, color crawling up his neck as his jaw clenched.

“My head.” She pressed a hand to her forehead.  “’Tis pounding, but I feel no pain elsewhere, and I have nothing of value to steal.”

“Perhaps someone came up behind ye,” he murmured.  “May I?”

At her nod, he reached out and threaded big, careful fingers in her thick hair, probing her scalp with the expertise of an experienced physician. 

“Are you a healer?” she asked, turning her head so her lips brushed against the skin of his arm. 

“I have some experience with it,” he hedged, pulling his arm away from her with a start.  “I doona feel a lump, though that doesna mean one willna develop.  Do ye think ye can stand?  I’ll want ye away from here in case they come back.  There is much danger in these woods.”

“I’ll try,” she said weakly, allowing him to help her upright.  Immediately, Vían let his cloak fall to the earth, leaving her only with her almost transparent shift, as she swooned against him.

He caught her easily, and tensed as she pressed her body against his.

“Do ye live here in the forest with yer…father?  Husband?” he asked uncomfortably. 

“I live alone,” she said against his chest.  “I have naught but a cottage by the loch.  Can I prevail upon you to take me there, sir?  I don’t think I can walk all that way back just yet.”

Lifting her easily, he secured her on the back of his horse before bending to reclaim his cloak.  Swinging up behind her, he wrapped them both in the fur, and pulled her back into the circle of his strong arms.  “Lean against me, lass.  Ye’re like ice.  I’ll share my warmth with ye.”

Vían leaned back, letting her head rest in between the grooves of his chest.  Pangs of guilt and conscience stabbed at her belly, but she brushed them away.  Though he was handsome and gallant, Malcolm de Moray was still a man.  Still weak and prone to temptation.  He’d take what she offered, or maybe he wouldn’t even wait for her to offer. 

And then she’d take from him.

She hoped he didn’t hurry to the loch, though.  His body fit so well against hers, and she soaked in the heat radiating from him.  She couldn’t remember anything feeling so incredible.

And she hadn’t been warm in over a hundred years.

***

Malcolm did his best to keep his stallion’s gait even.  If the lass were concussed, jostling her overmuch could do irreparable damage.  The mist seemed to thicken as they plodded toward Loch Doineann, which was more of a pond, in truth, surrounded by lush forest.  He tried to keep his awareness on their surroundings in case brigands were about.  If he didn’t, he’d focus on how her soft body fit against his, or how supple and tantalizing her breasts had looked. But the forest whispered warnings through the mist that unsettled him. 

Beware.
It said
.  Enemies are near.

If his enemies were near, then the Grimoire was too.  The scrying stone had told him thus.  So what was he doing escorting a peasant home when he should be searching for it? 
 

“I’ve not seen you here in the forest before, how do you know where the loch is?” she asked, pulling his cloak tighter around herself and pressing her shoulders against his chest with a tremor of chill.

“I know every inch of these lands,” he answered simply. 
They’re my responsibility.

For some reason, he didn’t want her to know who he was.  Didn’t want her to treat him with the deference she’d show the King of their Pictish people.  For all she knew, he was a woodsman, doing a pretty lass a kindness.  There was no Grimoire, Wyrd Sisters, Berserkers, or impending war.  For just a moment, there in the mist, they were a man and a woman, making their way through the fragrant, loamy autumn forest.  

“Do yer people hie from these woods?” he asked. “Do they live close by?”

“My people are all dead,” she murmured, without much inflection.  “I’ve been alone for many years.”

It unsettled him how curious she made him.  He wanted to press her, but knew the telling of her story would be painful.  How did she come to be alone in these woods with nothing but a threadbare shift?  Did her people die in the Lowland wars?  Or by the hands of the English?  Perhaps illness took them.  Or plague.  What family did she belong to? 

Who had put the wounds and wariness behind her lovely, amethyst eyes?

“There.” She pointed. “Just past that copse of trees.”

Malcolm spotted the structure—if one could call it that—and frowned.  Due to her dress, he hadn’t expected much, but the rotting, dilapidated dwelling leaning against a few ancient trees was uninhabitable. 

The roof, for lack of a better word, had rotted through and fallen in on one side.  The door was a bunch of green branches lashed together and propped against the entry. 

Malcolm tensed as they approached, stopping on the narrow sandy beach of the loch and gaping in silent protest for several minutes.  When the lass began to squirm, he dismounted from behind her.  “Stay here,” he ordered.  “I’ll make certain no one is inside.”

She nodded, her eyes growing rounder in her face, as though she hadn’t considered intruders. 

The interior was cozier than he expected, but only just.  She’d been using the collapsed part of the roof as a chimney, with an old empty cauldron and cook fire laid, but unlit.  A pallet of worn furs and a tattered blanket was the only protection from the chill of the dirt floor.  A pestle, knife, tankard, wooden bowl, and a long-handled spoon were neatly lined up against the wall opposite the—well he couldn’t rightly call it a bed, could he?

Forest fauna and the loch could sustain one person, he supposed, but surviving out here on one’s own would be mighty difficult.  Malcolm felt a pang slice through him at the thought of that lovely woman shivering alone on the dirt floor at night. 

“I mean to mend the roof before winter sets in,” she said from behind him.

He turned to her, unable to straighten to his full height in the cramped space.  “Ye…
live
here?” 

From the flash in her eyes, he could tell he’d said the wrong thing.  “Aye, I live here, and it’s a palace compared to where I was before.”

At her words, his heart broke, but he tried to keep the pity from his eyes, lest she interpret it as condescension.  “I didna mean to offend ye.  It’s only that this place seems…” cold, dark, broken, not fit for a forest creature’s den, let alone a delicate woman. “Lonely,” he finished.   She didn’t belong in this place, either.  No one did.  He prided himself on the prosperity of his people, upon the procedures he had in place to economically buoy those who were vulnerable.

“It does get rather lonely here.”  Her voice lowered to a husky rasp of honeyed suggestion.  “Most especially at night…in the dark.” 

She moved closer to him, his cloak sliding down her shoulders to her elbows.  Her lavender eyes glittered like gems in the fading light against the dreary surroundings.  Ebony hair gleamed like silk and velvet.

Malcolm’s body’s reaction was instantaneous.  Suffused by lust and awareness, he hardened beneath his kilt.  A spell seemed to make the evening darker, and her skin brighter.  It was as though his body was no longer his own.  He couldn’t even swallow, let alone step away from her as a nobleman in his position
should
.

It was invitation he read in her eyes, there was no mistaking it.  But something else lurked in their depths, a hesitancy, a vulnerability maybe, that kept him in check. 

And pain.  There was plenty of that. 

Giving himself a stern cursing, he remembered that she’d been hit over the head not an hour ago.  “I want you lie down,” he ordered gently. 

She blinked as though he’d stunned her.  “You want me to—lie with you?” 

“Nay,” he said vehemently, and at her puckered frown he amended. “Not,
nay
, just not… now.  I mean, perhaps not at all.  That is… I doona expect anything…but…”  Christ, what was he, a pubescent youth?  He clenched his teeth and tried again.  “I want to examine yer head again, to make certain ye’re not concussed.”