I understand.
You will die, Adam! One mortal life—and none can vouchsafe how long—then gone.
I understand.
You have no soul. You won’t be able to follow your Sidhe-seer when she dies.
I know.
By Danu! Then, why?
So calmly he’d stood before her, so composed. So regal and beautiful and so—she’d come swiftly to understand—very far beyond her reach.
I don’t want to live without her, Aoibheal. I love her. An elegant shrug. More than life itself.
That was so utterly inconceivable to Aoibheal that she’d been momentarily unable to fathom an argument to counter it.
Make me human, Aoibheal.
As she’d paused, trying to decide if she should continue arguing, or simply confine him somewhere—in the belly of a mountain, perhaps deep beneath the ocean—until the Sidhe-seer was long dead, he’d knelt before her, without a trace of his trademark arrogance and pride.
Her vainglorious, impetuous, wild prince had bowed his head. Humbly.
And he’d said a word she’d not heard pass those beautiful, sensual lips, not once in six thousand years:
Please.
In that moment, she knew she’d lost him.
That if she did anything other than grant his request, she would make of him—her most favored prince—her greatest enemy. Not that he could harm her, considering how much more powerful she was (though, given how unpredictable he was, she wasn’t entirely certain of that), but if she had to lose him, it would not be to hatred of her. She would yield him to another woman first, despite the sting of it.
Aoibheal closed her eyes, her hands clenching into delicate fists. Had she imagined, for even a moment, when she’d chosen his punishment, that things might come to such an end, she’d never have punished him. She would have resisted her Council’s counsel and plotted her own course.
As she would do henceforth—in light of the recent betrayal by those closest to her—Council and consort, no less. She no longer had Adam to watch her back.
“Ah, Amadan,” she whispered, “I shall miss you, my prince.”
Gabby shook her head as she guided the sporty roadster down the alley behind her house.
A man in a Lexus had followed her halfway home from the grocery store, hopped out at a red light, and tried to give her his phone number.
Men had been hitting on her like crazy lately.
It’s because you’re so obviously not interested, Chloe had said the other night on the phone. To many men, it’s a challenge they can’t resist—a pretty woman who doesn’t care.
Oh, please, it’s just the car, Gabby had replied, rolling her eyes. She really was going to have to get rid of it. It was attracting all the wrong kinds of men. Not that there were any right kinds—she’d had a taste of fairy tale, and after that, no mere man could ever hope to compare.
She’d finally returned Gwen’s and Chloe’s numerous phone messages a week ago—that awful night that she’d found the Book of the Sin Siriche Du.
She’d been crying so hard when Chloe had answered that she’d not even been able to manage a “hello.”
But Chloe had immediately known it was her, and Gwen had picked up on another line, and the MacKeltar wives had cried with her, from across an ocean. They’d tried to coax her to come back and stay with them for a while, but Gabby wasn’t ready to see Castle Keltar again.
She might never be ready to see it again. She’d spent the most glorious days and nights of her life in that castle, lost both her virginity and her heart in the Crystal Chamber. She’d worn his diamonds there, become his woman there; she’d perched atop a sheer cliff in the arms of her Fae prince and watched the day being born.
Merely thinking about it brought a mist of tears to her eyes.
Nope, definitely not ready to go back to Scotland.
Gathering her groceries, she set the car alarm and hurried up the steps to the back door. She was just slipping the key in the lock when the door was pulled open from the inside so abruptly that she stumbled inward with it.
Smack into a rock-hard body.
She jerked, flailing backward. The groceries slid from her suddenly limp arms, and her eyes flew wide.
“Hello, Gabrielle,” Adam said.
Her knees buckled.
“Stop manhandling me!”
“I’m not manhandling you,” Adam said mildly, taking full advantage of Gabrielle’s prone position to run his palm over her luscious, shapely behind. The moment she’d begun to go down, he’d swept her up and tossed her over his shoulder. “You swooned. I merely caught you.”