Flames of another kind. Hellfire. You will believe you canna possibly endure the agony.

At ten and four, I shiver, startled by the solemnness and sorrow in his eyes. There’s gravity in his low voice that makes me more than uneasy; a young man that prides himself on his courage, I taste the sudden ash of fear.

I canna prevent it. The stones are closed to us now. I would spare you if I could.

Are you foretelling my future? I ask warily. Do I lose my virginity this year? I add quickly. I’d pose that question to none other of my uncles, but Dageus was different. The eyes of women follow him everywhere. I want to be like him one day, lady killer (but not a lady murderer) with the same slow, sexy smile that melts my (pretty darned hot, she’s only ten years older than me) aunt Chloe every time.

I’m ready. I want Tara to be the one.

He smiles sadly.

It’s whispered among my clan that Dageus has glimpsed moments in the years to come. That when he traveled through time—before the Seelie Queen took away our power to navigate the centuries in hours of need—he saw hours, even days, of our lives. He’s never spoken of it, but we’ve always suspected. He has a canny sense of premonition that’s proved invaluable on more than one occasion.

I doona ken the how and when it happens, so I doona ken how to prevent it, short of locking you away and that’s no’ a life. Time is tricky. It may or may not come to pass, but if it does it will test you beyond imagining. If that hour comes, you must hold on to one thing.

I shiver again. What?

Love. You can only be broken without it. So long as the smallest spark of love, pure, protective, and good, exists within you, that which is Keltar in you will survive. You will return.

Return.

I know a harsh truth.

So long as I stay in the magnificent Highlands of my mind I will never return.

You must face the fire. I doona ken how long you must endure. You must hold on, remain aware. You must be prepared when your opportunity arises, or it will fail. Uncle Dageus laughs softly. Every man’s time comes eventually. It will not, however, be yours. With luck, you’ll live forever.

I’d stare up at him, rejecting it, refusing to believe he had any powers of prophecy. Telling myself no one lives forever (not knowing I’d turn Unseelie Prince) and his rambling only made him half mad, likely from the constant chatter of the thirteen dead Draghar within him. Then I’d torn from his grip, raced off, and refused to speak to him for days.

Now I wish I’d asked him questions, now I wish I knew what he saw, what my opportunity is because I sure as hell don’t see one.

Love?

Can I even feel it anymore?

I’ve hated everyone and everything around me since the moment I began to change. I ran from those who cared about me. I concede it’s possible my hatred hastened the changes, fed the wrong things, starved the right ones. But love? To feel it here and now? I’m not sure it’s even possible.

Och, but of course it is.

It’s what I’ve been doing all along. Like my da and all my clan before us, the Highlands are our greatest love. I was shielding myself without understanding the nuts and bolts of it. I’m not a man that could wed a woman, follow her to another country and live there. I’m wedded to my motherland, to the very soil of Scotland.

I add to those mountains and valleys the faces of those I ache for and would protect, etch them in vivid detail on the backs of my eyelids, my mother and father, my siblings Colleen and Cara and Cory, and Tara, och, my sweet, sweet Tara—the third reason I recall that evening so clearly, she took my virginity that starry night on a mossy bed near the loch and bloody hell did I love her for it, and love doesn’t die just because the person does, although it would be infinitely easier if it did—my friends and villagers and the lovely, brilliant, risk-taking, cocky Danielle O’Malley who conceals her broken heart behind a gamine grin, and I roll them all up into one ball of light and hold on.

I take a final look at my clan, inhale the scent of roast pig and potatoes, whisper a farewell to my long-dead Tara, shove away from my blessed retreat and force myself to embrace awareness.

I will be ready when my chance for escape comes.

I open my eyes and stare into the hideous face of the Crimson Hag as she slices my gut open.

Again.

24

“And I’m gone, I’m gone, you know it”

MAC

I have a small psychotic break, overwhelmed by too many shocks to process. My brain pulls the plug on my body.

I should run. I should figure out how to make my feet move. At the moment they are neither attached to my ankles nor controlled by conscious thought.