And while Ethan had developed a deep appreciation for the assassins’ mad skills with both weapons and elemental magicks, he wasn’t part of their inner circle. Not really. They’d gone so far as to jokingly label him their mascot—or resident pain in the ass. The moniker depended on whom he’d either helped or irritated at the time of conversation.
There were places Ethan had found he fit better than others. When the Assassin, Dylan O’Shea, had made the decision that compelled Ethan to participate in both weapons and hand-to-hand combat training, no one had been more surprised at the outcome than Ethan himself. He’d done well. No, not well. He’d excelled in a way that defied logic. That was when Dylan had begun involving Ethan in some of the Arcanum’s less risky ops, inviting him along as an extra set of hands to manage the element of earth, since none of the other men possessed that skill. But it didn’t change Ethan’s status among them. He was an outsider, a man without legitimate purpose, and it bothered him far more than it should.
A weighted stare settled between Ethan’s shoulders, and he clenched the dagger handle tighter. Last time he’d experienced something like this, assassins—junior assassins—had bagged and tagged him, hauling him from Atlanta, Georgia, to the Irish countryside in County Clare. That still irritated him. The purpose for his warlock-napping had been legit, though. His closest friend, Kennedy, had asked for the chance to say goodbye before the assassins or, more specifically, the Assassin, killed her. Ethan had arrived in time to see her beat the odds, and the gods, and then marry the man she’d fallen in love with.
That her new husband, Dylan the Ass, had been her appointed and questionably willing executioner?
“‘Love is blind’ and all that crap,” he muttered as he rolled his shoulders. “More like it encourages perfectly sane individuals to perform in certifiably insane ways.”
After the dust finally settled from that little magickal brouhaha, Ethan hadn’t wanted to leave her.
At least, that was the public version of events.
Privately? There was another chapter in his play-by-play living memoir. One he hadn’t discussed with anyone.
Ethan hadn’t been able to leave.
He’d tried.
Sure, he could pack his bags and buy his airline ticket and make noises about going back to the States. But when it came time to go? He would stand at the largest window in his small suite and stare out over the cliffs as the clock ticked past his boarding call, past his departure and well past his scheduled arrival.
He would stand there listening. Looking. Waiting. For what, he didn’t know.
Then he’d unpack and start the cycle over, trying to live until he could manage to leave.
No one said a word to him about the number of times this had happened. The Arcanum simply carried on as if he’d be there. The Druids’ healer and surgeon, Angus, never moved Ethan’s supplies or the medical files he kept on each patient he’d treated. His place setting was always laid out on the dining table. And the tyros, or assassins-in-training, never questioned him as he moved throughout the castle or across the grounds. He wasn’t one of them, but he had become part of the familiar landscape. They’d accepted his presence if not him.
None of that was what kept him ensconced in the Arcanum’s inner circle, though.
Truth? All he knew was that his heart was here. Not in Kennedy, although he’d suffered a moment of sheer panic right after she’d married, wondering if he’d unwittingly fallen in love with her. The revolting idea was too close to incest, though, and he’d been relieved. Yet that relief hadn’t translated to anything near understanding.
He’d had to accept that knowing his heart was here and understanding what that meant were two unrelated things. He had no idea what it meant that he couldn’t make himself go back to his former life. Didn’t understand how this drafty old castle, known among Druids as The Nest, had somehow become the GPS location labeled “Home” on his phone. Couldn’t explain how, after only days here in this foreign land, it wasn’t foreign at all. There was no logical explanation.
Despite his gifts in magick and his intimate ties to the element of earth, Ethan didn’t appreciate things that defied logic. Not like this. And definitely not when the heart—his heart—was involved. He loved this country, this keep and the very land beneath his feet. Loved it with absolutely no reserve. It was as if Ireland was his, and he was hers, logic be damned.
A touch, colder than a thousand-year-old grave, skated across the nape of his neck. Despite his conviction to stay focused and reach his rooms, he spun and staggered as he ripped at the shimmering form with his short blade.
“Show yourself,” he demanded, chest heaving.
The visual disturbance winked out, leaving behind record of neither its presence nor its passing. Innocuous dust motes danced on the air where the thing had been.
Like every other time he’d demanded a confrontation with whatever it was that followed him, he experienced a moment of awareness, a sense of soul-wrenching despair, before abject solitude wound its way around and through him, strangling limbs and organs and emotions without differentiation. Every bit of him was put through the wringer and left feeling crushed.
As he rubbed his sternum, Ethan’s wild gaze skipped around the hallway, floor to ceiling. “If I trip and fall and get murdered, I’m filing a grievance with management.” Irritation saturated his mutterings as he whirled away from the emptiness and resumed the trek to his rooms.
That he’d been reduced to what felt like the sacrificial starlet doomed to be the first one taken out really pissed him off. Sure, he loved a good slasher flick as much as the next guy, but he strongly preferred fiction to fact when personal threat was involved. This real-life emotional-torture-cum-horror-fest was messing him up. All he needed to round out his physical retreat was a tension-building score filled with haunting piano music accompanied by ominous strings. Maybe pipe organs...
“Organs.” He snorted. “Bad word choice.”
A huge shadow rose in his peripheral vision.
Ethan’s lungs seized as if a massive, invisible hand had gripped the pair and squeezed them like they were the leather bags on a bagpipe. A choked wheeze of alarm was the most he could manage. Whatever was stalking him had never rematerialized so fast and with such density. Intent on rending that shadow in two, Ethan swung out.
His short blade met the heavy metal of a proper sword, the shock singing up his arm until his nerves vibrated like a tuning fork. His hand spasmed and his dagger fell to the stone floor, striking with a metallic clatter.
“Shit!” He cradled his numb arm to his chest and glared into the shadowy alcove. “You scared the ever-living hell out of me.”
“The gods of light and life will be glad to hear it.” A dark looked passed over Rowan’s face. “If you intend to strike out at a larger man carrying a much bigger sword, you need to either arm yourself better or get faster. Preferably both.”
Ignoring the chastisement, Ethan let a slow, wicked grin spread over his face even as he fought to bank the fury he knew filled his eyes. “Frankly? I’m more interested in what you’re doing tucked away in a lovers’ alcove with nothing but your sword than I am in hearing you criticize my mad fighting skills.”
“It’s not a lovers’ alcove, witchling. It’s an archer’s lookout.” Rowan stared down the hall in the direction Ethan’s mysterious stalker had disappeared. “As for the other, I was doing exactly as you asked—trying to see if whatever it is that you claim is following you might be visible to me in the spirit realm.”
“Tell me you finally saw it.” Coarse and strained, Ethan’s demand sounded like it had been squeezed through a vise.
Rowan’s nostrils flared. Then he gave a single, sharp dip of the chin.
Hope