She shifted her attention to her husband, and what was left of her heart seized on his next words.
“I don’t care if the woman claims she’s my wife any more than I’d care if she claimed she’d once been the patron saint of sheep shit and goat cheese.”
Sheep shit and goat cheese? She shook her head, irritated but equally amused. His next words stripped the amusement away in mere seconds.
“She goes, Rowan. She’s out of the castle. I won’t have her here.” He shoved the fingers of one hand through his hair as he lifted the whiskey bottle with the other and took a hearty swig.
“You’d use your magicks to cast her out of this realm without knowing if her claim holds even an ounce of truth?”
“Our magicks. It’ll take us both, as I’ll need you to open a path into the spirit realm. I’ve more than enough magick to handle casting my...her...the woman—” Ethan’s eyes narrowed and his body swayed as he leaned into Rowan’s space “—out. And I’ll say it one more time, since you’re obviously deep enough in your cups to no longer make easy sense of the English language. I’m. Not. Married. Never have been. Never wanted to be.”
Rowan crossed his arms over his chest. “And just what have you got against marriage, then? What is it that scares you? The commitment, I’m guessing.”
Isibéal moved around the men and into Rowan’s field of view. She knew she had to look a sight with her temper up and her tenuous claim to her magick flaring. Strong emotion fueled her response and afforded her the wherewithal to rein in the wind that swirled around her. Not entirely, though. Her hair crackled and popped and her dress whipped about as her temper brewed.
Ethan carried on, totally unaware of Rowan’s raised eyebrows and the cause for the Druid’s response.
Her.
“I have no issues with committing but every problem letting the Fates take control when the heart gets involved and logic is replaced with emotion. And to do marriage right, you have to set logic aside. You have to allow yourself to fall. You can only hope the landing doesn’t break something critical.”
“It’s not like falling in love leaves you with broken bones, you gobshite.”
“It’s not broken bones I was referring to, but rather irreparably mangled hearts.” Ethan grinned, but the affectation was so dark as to be disturbing. “Love is for children and fools, Rowan, and I’m neither.”
The Druid’s shoulders stiffened even as he lowered his arms to his sides in a controlled move. “Tread lightly, darkling, seeing as I, myself was married and yet never counted myself a fool.”
“Why don’t you talk to your wife, then?” Ethan shot out. Rowan flinched and Ethan’s shoulders hunched. “Forget I said that—that was out of line. But know this, Rowan. I’ll not ‘tread lightly.’” Ethan’s lips thinned into a hard line even as his jaw took on a familiar, mutinous set that made Isibéal long to stroke the skin just there. “It’s been hundreds of years since you lost your wife and you still suffer with the mangled heart I referred to. You’re as dead inside as the incorporeal stalker who’s mistaken me for someone who would have ever said ‘I do’ to her or anyone else.”
Isibéal fumed at the thought that there would be someone else for her husband. The man she’d known would never, ever have operated with such blinders on, let alone have even joked about forsaking his vows to her, his wife. This man, Ethan, might have been the spitting image of her lost husband, but she wondered if she’d misjudged his character. Worse, had she mistaken his soul for Lachlan’s simply because she so desperately wanted it to be so?
She sagged, and Rowan caught her eye with a sharp move of his hand. Glancing up, she met that cold gaze and couldn’t help shivering. Then he gave a sharp shake of his head and laid his hand over his heart. Isibéal was lost until he mouthed the word patience as Ethan rambled on.
“The only time you’ll find me wearing the one suit I own and standing at the end of any aisle is right after Easter and Halloween when the grocery stores put the good candy on sale. I take my Toblerone acquisitions seriously, man.”
“Ethan.” Rowan dragged the name out, clearly a warning.
“Rowan,” Ethan mimicked, irreverent as ever. Then he held up his free hand, palm out. “The psycho-stalker came after me. That makes her mine. As such, I reserve the right to have the final word in this. She’s to be banished, dúr, caorach-grámhara duine cac.”
“And when, exactly, did you pick up the Irish?” Rowan asked quietly.
Ethan paled and shook his head, mouth working silently.
His shock at having spoken the old language fluently didn’t settle Isibéal’s ire. Ethan had done far too good a job at ensuring she was...what was the common vernacular? Ah, yes. Pissed off. He’d ensured that his words had enflamed her temper and pricked her pride. She knew she should step outside, give herself time and space to settle, but damned if she would. Ethan couldn’t be allowed the time necessary to create the banishing spell that would send her away. Permanently. For an unanchored spirit neither belonging to nor claimed by Tír na nÓg or the Shadow Realm, banishing her meant her soul would splinter. He would cause it—her—to splinter. The result? She would be little more than a recorded birth and death. She would have no more substance than a dandelion’s head blown into the wind by a temperamental child, its fluff carried a thousand different directions by the mercurial wind.
So, yes, while she should have stepped outside and centered herself, should have done whatever it took to subdue her wrath, she didn’t. Not even hearing Ethan slip into the Irish and call Rowan a “stupid, sheep-loving shit face” tempered the violence brewing in her.
Ethan could say what he would and call her whatever names soothed his black heart. None of it hurt like his explicit objective. If he thought she would sit around and passively wait, hands folded in her lap like a simpleton, while he gathered the means to banish her? He had another think coming.
By the gods, she’d survived this long. She wouldn’t give up the fight not only to carry on but also to make her way back to her husband’s side because of one imbecile’s unencumbered conscience. Even if that man was her husband. For all that she wanted to doubt, she’d seen too much to believe otherwise. Period. If it took her a thousand lifetimes of fighting her way back to him to convince him that that was, in fact, his role? So be it. But there would be more than a little hell to pay for his ridicule.
Isibéal looked at her luminescing hands and basked in the stinging power that traced her nerves. Skills long bound by the grave crackled to life, her long-neglected senses sputtering.
Holding her arms away from her body, she let her power run unchecked for the first time since she’d died. She pulled on her cursed tie to Lugh, the god who had bound her thusly. For the first time she was glad she could summon more power from her tie to the god than what now seemed such a paltry sum at her immediate disposal. She felt him stir, felt his interest in her wrath. So be it. If teaching Ethan a little respect meant she had to draw on the damned god’s strengths? She would do it, and without apology.
For if delivering a little retribution would feel good, certainly raining undiluted hell would be grand.
Isibéal raised her hands above her head.
Her hair whipped in an incorporeal wind.
And she called the brimstone and rain.
Ethan had no idea where the native Irish language had come from when he insulted Rowan. Had no idea why he’d called him a “stupid, sheep-loving shit face,” either. It had to have been a fluke. Something he’d heard before. Surely...
Intent on terminating