Asshole!
Muttering under my breath, I jerked my sleep tee over my head and picked up the discarded sweats I’d dropped haphazardly on the floor last night. My nose wrinkled when I pulled the clothes on, still damp from last night’s drizzling rain. I didn’t care; they’d be dripping with sweat soon enough.
Last night, as he followed me to the kitchen to ensure that I’d eaten enough food to keep me satiated for days to come, Gage told me that I must be prepared. He showed no qualms about the fact that he intended to work me physically harder than I’d ever worked before.
“You will be allowed no weakness here,” he’d said after dinner. “Because in this game, there can be only one winner.” He was leaning over me in his dominant manner, his lips a hairsbreadth from my own. All I could smell was woodsmoke and forged steel.
I knew he meant it—every single word. I was no longer naive. I understood that in order to get the outcome prophecy desired, he would balance on a fine line between protection and preservation, even if that meant hurting me.
Gage had shared that honing instinctive knee jerk reactions to physical danger could only be perfected when your body was at a crisis point—when it understood that it was on the cusp of fight or flight. He explained that if there was no option to flee, I’d have no choice but to fight. And to be able to defend myself—even for the space of a few minutes—could mean the difference between life or death.
I understood the rationale behind my training regime; however, I didn’t like it, and I’d told him so last night. I’d also tried to push him for an indication of what he felt about my chances—a reassurance of my progress. But Gage had drawn a line in the sand, and after a breath of silence when I thought he would finally share something real with me, he harshly shut me down with a few choice words that described me as a needy adolescent and left the room. The response gutted me. I was feeling vulnerable, and his cold words hurt. It was a billboard proclaiming to all that what we had wasn’t a relationship of convenience but a curse he hated with a vengeance.
Remembering that moment, I thrust my feet into my damp trainers and bent down to tie the laces. “I’m strong,” I muttered vehemently. “He won’t win!”
But, as I left the room, I wasn’t sure whether I referred to Talorgan or Gage.
13
Talorgan
3rd Century BC, Ancient Scotland, First Sentence
Talorgan begged his limbs to quieten and cease their painful nagging as he held himself in a crouch, hidden from view. His eyes never left their mark, remaining steadfast on Cailleach’s willowy form as she removed her long white gown, exposing her bare skin.
He felt his groin tighten at the sight of her high breasts, the slim line of her stomach, and those long legs on her petite frame. He shifted his position, cursing under his breath when the bush rustled slightly in response. But she didn’t notice, intent on entering the pool of water, the still mirror rippling as she walked in.
He caught the look of absolute bliss that came over her face as the water lapped against her naked skin before she closed her eyes and submerged herself completely underwater.
She came to bathe at this spot every day at midday, when the sun was at its highest, rich and warm. She would wash her hair with crushed flowers and then sunbathe next to the pool on the large rock that looked like an altar. A daily ritual that had become the most anticipated moment of his day. Talorgan imagined she did it with the knowledge he was watching her, that it was all for his pleasure.
Once dry, she would dress before braiding her long ash-blond hair. Sometimes she slipped wildflowers among the strands, and most days, she hummed or sang sweetly under her breath. It was clear that she was happy here.
He’d found her habitual weakness not long after the new moon. It was the second day of his sentence, and six and a half months since Tritus had delivered his punishment. Drust had told him he should be thankful that Tritus had persuaded Cailleach to save his life, but he wasn’t. Anything that man did was abhorrent—his gods, his customs, his way of thinking.
The only positive outcome from that fateful hunt was that Tritus had not returned to the village with them. Drust had said Tritus had known that he couldn’t return, not after what had been done, and he’d left to trade his skills elsewhere. Talorgan didn’t care, so long as he’d gone, and knew that if he ever saw Tritus again, he’d kill him. For with his absence from their village, his brother was no longer friends with the Gaul, and there was no longer a conflict of interest. No longer a reason not to kill him.
Talorgan almost hadn’t come to serve his sentence, hadn’t wanted to obey what Tritus had decreed, but he owed the Winter Goddess penance for his deeds. He’d fooled himself that it wasn’t Tritus who had delivered the final sentence, but Cailleach. It was she who had granted him the right to live. And in this world, above all others, it was the gods he obeyed—them, and his Druidic master, Girom.
That first night back on the mountain, Talorgan had arrived late, with barely enough light to make camp. After building a fire and eating a light dinner of the nuts and berries he’d foraged on the journey, he fell asleep immediately. The following morning, he chose to look after himself first by building his supplies for the month, understanding that he was lucky his punishment was to be performed in the spring. Surviving on these mountains in the winter was a death sentence. At least, here in the spring, he had access to the forest’s bounty and would be warm enough in his furs at night.
He’d been out collecting a horde of wild mushrooms in the detritus, farther than he’d ever explored on the mountain, when he heard a faint noise on the breeze.
Humming.
Intrigued as to where it came from, Talorgan followed the sound. As he drew nearer, he sensed the otherworldly power emanating from ahead, a signature that none of his people could replicate. With hope burning bright in his chest, he shielded his form, becoming iridescent with the light that dappled through the canopy above. Next, he imbibed his body with the gift of silence, quietening his movements, his breathing, and his heart rate. Then ever so slowly, he crept onward, ensuring his form was shielded by the bush around him.
The trees had suddenly thinned into a large open clearing, near the top of the mountain. The proud peak of Ben Macdui was visible in the distance, snow dusting its mantle. His gaze alighted on the small aquamarine tarn that lay in the middle of the clearing. It offered an otherworldly beauty to the surrounding landscape.
The small pool was peaceful and picturesque. It looked inviting and deceivingly warm. Talorgan knew it would be anything but—at best ice cold, at worst frigid, as a result of the small tributary that flowed from Ben Macdui into the clearing, north-west of the tree line. But it wasn’t the luminous mountain peaks or the tarn’s glistening waters that drew his shielded gaze.
It was the figure beside it.
She was breath-taking, a vision from his dreams. Long ash-blond hair with eyes so silver they rivaled the stars on a cold night. But it wasn’t just her exquisite face that captured his attention. It was her willowy form, petite and slender with a soft feminine curve.
The air had fairly sizzled with her energy, the grass lush and green, the pool deep and cool. Even the stone was larger than life, and he’d recognized it as soon as he saw it—a carlin stone. A stone for the gods.
He’d wondered who this woman was, to risk bathing at a pool of the gods. Was it Brighid, the Goddess of Light who ruled over Beltane? But after watching her as she stripped naked and entered the cool waters of the tarn, her signature had finally hit him—a hint of pine with a sharp bite of frost.