LITMIR.BIZ

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This was fear. And it demanded she either act or react. Whichever would save her husband from the potentially deadly fall.

      “Don’t you dare let go, Lachlan Cannavan,” she bit out, considering every option that would get her to his side faster.

      Lachlan Cannavan.

      Her husband’s name was a smear across her mind, the caustic acknowledgment so heavy and full that she instinctively cradled the crown of her skull for fear it would crack under the pressure.

      Then she realized what she’d done.

      She’d named Lachlan in front of Lugh, confirming her husband’s return.

      Oh, gods, what have I done?

      She couldn’t have been so stupid as to hand her husband over to the god who believed he’d been betrayed, and damned, by Lachlan.

      Ethan slipped another fraction, and she lunged forward, teetering on the unnatural crevice’s edge.

      She had no time for this, no time to dally with might-have-beens, empty promises made in the heat of the moment and new threats based on a mythology that had been rewritten so many times over the centuries that there was no one still alive who knew the unbiased truth. No one but Lugh and, to a point, Lachlan. She wouldn’t allow the god to ruin Lachlan’s...Ethan’s...best chance at finding his way back to her.

      “No,” she responded aloud.

      The thread between her and the god who had damned her was severed so abruptly that Isibéal collapsed. Throwing out the hand nearest Ethan’s body, she strained toward her man, willing the earth to shift with everything she’d ever possessed.

      It wasn’t enough.

      His limp body slid faster as he inched his way toward the floor’s edge and a fall that would, at the very least, leave him broken of body. At worst? She couldn’t fathom the outcome where she would lose him again. The spell she’d bound their souls to had been released. If they died now, they would move on, though not necessarily together. And she’d just been returned to him. If anything more than the plane of life and death were to separate them? Well, that would be her version of humanity’s Purgatory. But if that separation were to last an eternity?

      That would be her version of hell.

      Driven by a new kind of madness, one that demanded she save her husband’s life, Isibéal launched herself across the expanse.

      A spectral hand shot out of the bowels of the damaged classroom. Skeletal fingers widened and smoke roiled around them, leaving a vaporous but inconsequential mist. Snatching Isibéal midflight, the hand encompassed her waist with the speed of a viper’s strike. Translucent and yet as solid as the confines of her grave, those bony fingers curled into the soft flesh of her belly. She might have been a ghost, but to this thing she was as tangible, as malleable, as she’d ever been. The hand clamped down. Squeezed. Flexed. Tightened further still.

      Something within her torso, something that would have been labeled “Fragile: Handle with Care” if she were still alive, gave with an internal snap.

      Excruciating pain scored not only the heart of who she was but also who she had been—child, daughter, wife, friend, witch, lover. It was as if every nuance of life that had ever wounded her—from minor bruises and scrapes to the final and fatal blow that had taken her life—now reoccurred, and she experienced the pain of each one all over again. The reality of the moment transcended everything she thought she’d known about pain across the centuries, from birth to mere moments ago. This, this breath-stealing, heart-stopping, soul-breaking torture that amplified every nerve’s response one hundredfold? Everything else was reduced to a precursor to this.

      This was pain.

      She bucked and flailed, desperate to break free.

      Something else snapped.

      A sound eerily similar to gale-force winds erupted from lips parted in a scream.

      Her lips.

      Her scream.

      Windows shattered.

      Glass rained, creating pinpoints of light that sparkled brilliantly against the inverse sky.

      The hand that held Isibéal flexed, relaxed a fraction and then began to withdraw from Ethan’s primary room. Though her mind was hazed with pain and her stomach had lodged in her throat, she still made an effort to strike at her bizarre assailant. She didn’t want to go anywhere this thing would thrill to take her. Yet nothing she did—fists, kicks, curses—slowed her macabre abductor. She had the strangest sensation of being cradled and crushed, unsure which experience would prove most accurate as she was hauled through the gaping hole in the floor.

      She flinched as piles of debris fast approached, not convinced she wouldn’t hit them with a firm form. But as she flew through solid materials, she had to accept that whatever physical attributes she’d temporarily assumed when “the hand” snapped pieces of her were now gone, the changes temporary.

      The speed of her descent increased.

      Isibéal sagged in her captor’s grip.

      Who would see her through this? Who could intervene on her behalf? The answer was redundant. She had no one. Not really.

      She passed through the familiar into the unfamiliar, leaving behind wood and stone and dirt, descending at an ever-increasing speed. Topography changed. Nothing was recognizable any longer, and she was oddly grateful because this new land was terrifying. She moved beyond what human geologists knew and into the birthplace of every mythological tale ever told.

      None of it mattered. Not when Isibéal realized what was happening.

      “Stop this. I said stop!” she shouted, verbally at first. Then she let the objection rage through her mind. Nothing she said, no threat she made, carried the weight or consequence to slow her abductor’s retreat. No magick she possessed was enough to halt this.

      Absolute darkness wrapped itself around her. She fought not to panic as memories of being entombed threatened to steal her sanity. She couldn’t go back to that, to the silence and unyielding isolation with only her voice to keep her company, not without losing the tenuous hold she had on her sanity. Straining to listen, she heard nothing. There were no voices from the keep. No shouted curses from the god responsible for this mess. No benediction from the gods of light and life. She heard nothing, saw nothing and yet felt everything.

      Her struggles renewed and she fought viciously but to no avail.

      The hold she had on her sanity, precious and revered, slipped. It was arguably an incremental move, but, for all that, it made her feel as if there were fathoms between the woman she was now and the woman she’d been so long ago. Never had she thought to lose her mind. Never had she considered it to be the remotest of remote possibilities. Isibéal had always been the sound one, the reliable individual, the practical woman. No longer.

      Anguish that she had survived so long on the fundamental hope she might see Lachlan again, that she might know his touch even once more or hear him call her name, blew through her like a caustic wind. The emotion scoured her throat. Tipping her head back, she opened her mouth and loosed the most raw, animalistic sound ever to cross a woman’s lips.

      The cry went on and on until she was jerked upright and set on her feet with more force than finesse.

      “By the gods, woman. Enough already.” Clothing rustled. “You weren’t this difficult the day your soul was bound.”

      Chest heaving on the tail end of the scream, Isibéal dropped her chin and opened her eyes. Blinked in the small room’s low light. She turned in a slow circle, fighting the fiery opposition in her ribs.

      So the damage had been real.

      Her gaze landed on a man whose appearance was hidden in the room’s shadows. Propped as he was in the corner, she was only able to make out the quick flash of his smile.

      “Welcome to the Shadow Realm, Isibéal Cannavan.”

      He

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