“I want you to take the ring and go home,” she said.
Those words shattered the illusion I’d created in my mind.
She didn’t want this. Didn’t want me. Who in their right mind would?
Take the ring and go home.
She may as well have said, “Thanks for the ride. Here’s a little something for your time.”
I thought we’d connected on some higher level. I felt something for her that I’d never felt for anyone.
But it was only Fiadh’s curse at work again. How could anyone care for what I was? What I did? She’d seen me go off with how many women? How did she know it wasn’t because I wanted to?
I went to tell her, the words on the tip of my tongue, but I stopped.
I was a means to an end.
According to Keelynn, the end had arrived.
I closed my mouth and let the words die.
She tried to kiss me, but I jerked away in the nick of time. Without that ring on her finger, she’d be in the underworld the moment her lips touched mine.
I muttered an apology, slipping the emerald onto my smallest finger. A whisper of energy, like a blanket being thrown over you when you’re almost asleep, warmed my skin. If only it could go deeper and clear the frost overtaking my heart. “Force of habit.”
I brushed my lips against her cheek, a silent goodbye.
I should’ve dressed myself to conserve my magic, but I couldn’t stay in this room for another second. I collected my coat and sent my bag away, not having it in me to carry the feckin’ thing. And then I turned back to the only woman I’d ever truly cared about and said thank you and some shite about appreciating everything, even though all I wanted was to beg her to let me stay.
All she did was nod.
There was nothing left inside of me. I’d given it all to her. I turned on my heel and left through the door, praying for her to call me back. To give me some inclination that she could want me half as much as I wanted her.
I’d thought Keelynn was the one. I’d thought after all these years, I had done enough good to erase the terrible decisions of my past. If we’d had more time, I was sure I could make her love me.
“I was wondering which room ye were in,” said a woman with a gravelly voice from behind me. I turned to find the maid from downstairs, her clothes reeking of bacon and stewed meat.
Desire rolled off her in invisible waves, drawing my curse to the surface like a bucket in a well. If only I could have evanesced but I couldn’t move. Magic hummed in my veins. Just there. Just feckin’ there. But I couldn’t access it.
For centuries I had waited to get my ring back. To be free.
And it didn’t feckin’ work.
I swear I could hear Fiadh’s grating cackle at the clever spell she must have wrought to negate its protective magic.
“I was just on my way out,” I told the woman when she drew closer.
“Ye should stay,” she said, opening a door to the right that led to a wide linen closet. “Would be such a shame fer ye to lose that pretty head again.”
Shit.
She must’ve been at the executions yesterday.
With the offer made, there was nothing I could do to stop my feet from following her into the linen closet and reaching for the buckle on my belt. Well, that wasn’t quite true. I could kiss her.
No no no.
I couldn’t take another life. Refused to take the easy way out. No matter how many times this happened, I deserved it. How many women had I gone through like glasses of wine? How many women had I lied to? Used? Cast aside? There wasn’t a book big enough for those names.