The Ruby Kiss (31 page)

“You have no idea what terror is, hunter.”

Kade’s expression gave nothing away, but the feather edges of his wings trembled.

“Give the Mistress her Magic Knot or I’ll show you some of
my
memories,” Troy continued in that same cold psycho voice he’d used when he’d threatened Ruby.

Kade glanced up, then his wings swept down in a huge arc and he lifted from the ground. His specter swirled around him before reentering the top of his head. The Seelie hunter reached beneath his crystal breastplate and threw something small and shiny up in the air. “All right then. You want my daughter’s Magic Knot so badly, you can have it.”

Transfixed by the battle between Kade and Troy, Ruby only noticed the dragon bearing down on them at the last minute. Smoke spiraled out of the creature’s nostrils as it prepared to release a burst of flame that would engulf the Magic Knot thrown by Kade into its path. Could her stones burn? Would such an event kill her? She froze. The breath locked in her lungs. Her eyes followed the tiny shining stones as they arced through the air.

As she watched, Dragon fell from the creature’s back. With a furious roar, he plummeted toward the ground headfirst without opening his wings. He landed with a sickening thud. Ruby pressed a hand over her mouth, bile bitter in the back of her throat. He couldn’t have survived the fall.

“Ruby, take cover,” came a shout. Her gaze jumped back
to the sky to see Nightshade descending toward her fast. She didn’t need to be an expert on supernatural creatures to guess the dragon would go mad when it realized its master was dead.

Nightshade hadn’t seen her Magic Knot, which still arced through the air. She shouted at him to grab it, but all he did was hurry to reach her.

Troy’s head tilted back and his eyes tracked the path of Ruby’s Magic Knot. Running forward, he leapt impossibly high, his arm reaching out above his head. He snatched her stones from the dragon’s jaws, fire licking all around his hand, then he dropped back to his feet. He pivoted to face her. Their eyes met, sending a physical shock through her.

Nightshade landed at Ruby’s side with a thud that reverberated through the ground. He wrapped an arm around her waist and tried to pick her up. “We need to get out of here before the Welsh Red starts grieving,” he growled. When she didn’t respond, he snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Ruby, can you hear me?”

She couldn’t rip her gaze from the crystalline blue of Troy’s eyes. Her vision shimmered, and a rushing sound filled her ears. She still sensed Nightshade’s arm around her, and his voice, but she couldn’t make out his words. She was swept away across an endless landscape of snow and ice, the air clean and crisp, the sun bright and hot against her face. A kaleidoscope of people and places flashed through her mind, recollections that weren’t hers: a beautiful blonde-haired woman in Troy’s image, the memory sheathed in layers of love; Devin, Niall, Michael, and their children; other people and places spinning around her in a tornado of memories from ages past.

Her muscles gave way and she was aware of Nightshade holding her upright, though the whirlwind of images sucked her back in time. A woman appeared at the end of a long tunnel, surrounded by light, red highlights in her long dark hair. She smiled, and Ruby knew this woman held Troy’s Magic Knot.
Then the stream of memories cut off abruptly and she found herself kneeling in front of the cave. Nightshade by her side.

But Troy had touched her Magic Knot. She was bonded to him. She couldn’t give her Magic Knot to Nightshade now. Tears filled her eyes.

“Ruby?” Nightshade’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “Are you hurt? Tell me what’s the matter.”

The heartbreaking answer circled her mind but she couldn’t get the words into her mouth. She shook her head repeatedly, denying the light, expanding sensation of Troy’s presence in her consciousness.

The dragon had landed. It was crouched over the lifeless body of Nightshade’s father, nosing him. The body flopped over, and the beast threw back its head. A keening screech sliced the air. Ruby pressed her hands over her ears, but the sound bored through to the very marrow of her bones.

The sound distresses you,
Troy noted softly inside her head. He approached, raised his hand and generated a light dome over the three of them, cutting off the dragon’s wail. Silence hummed in Ruby’s ears. For long moments Troy stared down at her, seemingly oblivious to Nightshade.

“Where’s Kade?” Nightshade asked. “Did he give you your Magic Knot, Ruby?”

Troy’s gaze moved to Nightshade, and regret flickered across his face. “We have it,” he said. His voice was a low, sonorous tone that slowed her racing heart and soothed her frayed nerves.

He extended his closed fist. Hesitantly, Ruby held out her palm. He dropped three linked pale pink stone rings into her hand. Strange, that her Magic Knot was pink. She didn’t think of herself as a pink person.

“Thank you,” she whispered. She closed her fingers around her stones and held them to her chest, expecting an emotional storm to assail her. All she felt was loving warmth. It flowed
into her hand, up her arm, filling her like the soothing touch of warm water.

“You touched her stones,” Nightshade said in a disbelieving whisper. Then he shouted: “What were you thinking? What were you bloody well thinking?”

He surged to his feet and grabbed the front of Troy’s jacket, growled, and shook him violently. Troy made no move to defend himself. Strands of his golden hair escaped the knot behind his head; buttons popped off his jacket and fell in the dirt.

“He saved my Magic Knot from the dragon,” Ruby shouted, but Nightshade wasn’t listening.

“Why? Tell me why?” He drew back a fist and punched the side of Troy’s face, knocking back Troy’s head. The immortal still didn’t protect himself.

Ruby scrambled to her feet and grabbed Nightshade’s arm before he could take another swing. “Stop, Nightshade! He had to.” She glanced helplessly at Troy. “Tell him what happened. Tell him what Kade did.”

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Troy said.

Nightshade released him and stumbled back. He dropped to his knees and pressed his arm over his face.

“Explain,” Ruby begged.

Troy shook his head. “No words will help.”

And, he was right. Whatever he said could not change the facts or ease Nightshade’s hurt. Pain welled up inside Ruby, grief for a bond she longed for and could never have. She wrapped her arms around Nightshade and hugged him as hard as she could, tears leaking down her face.

“Just when I thought it was all going to work out,” he said. “The gods hate me.”

“No, they don’t. We can still be together.” But her words sounded trite, even to her own ears. Nightshade could give her his Magic Knot, but that wouldn’t change the fact she was
already bonded to two other men. It felt as though fate was punishing her for her reluctance to bond with Nightshade.

Nightshade dropped his arm from his stricken face to stare at Troy. “She can only bond through her Knot with one person, right?”

“Yes.”

Nightshade sucked in an uneven breath and stared blankly into the distance. “The bond is unbreakable,” he whispered.

“Not completely . . . .”

Troy’s softly spoken words snatched her attention. Nightshade came to life in her arms, his slack muscles suddenly tense and ready for action again. “How can we break your bond with Ruby?”

“By death.”

Ruby’s heart stuttered. The surroundings faded until nothing existed but Troy’s words in massive jagged black letters in her head:
DEATH.
Troy didn’t like her. Would he kill her to break their bond?

The immortal stepped back: once, twice, the distance between them growing. He passed through the protective light dome, and it dissolved. Long golden hair fluttered loose around his face. His jacket gaped open where the buttons had come off from Nightshade’s shaking. The torn black lace at his throat revealed a swath of glowing white skin.

“Don’t,” Nightshade choked out. He sprang to his feet, pulling from Ruby’s grasp, and took a step forward.

“It will appease the Welsh Red, which will keep you two safe. It’ll kill two birds with one stone.” Troy unsheathed the black sword from his back and tossed it through the air. It landed upright in the damp soil at Nightshade’s feet. “Give my sword to Devin.” Loneliness bled into Ruby’s mind through her bond with Troy, a desolate emptiness that stretched back into the mists of time. He’d lost the woman he loved so long ago and he was weary of his endless life.

As it dawned on Ruby what Troy intended to do, the blood drained from her head and left her ears buzzing. He had never meant that
she
should die. He had been talking about himself.

The breath locked in her lungs, and she gulped as though she was drowning. She grabbed Nightshade’s arm and dragged herself upright at his side. He kept shaking his head, but he didn’t move.

“Stop him,” she whispered.

“Do not fear, Mistress,” Troy said. “This too shall pass.”

Troy glanced over his shoulder as he neared the dragon. The creature raised its head from its master’s body and eyed him with glowing red points of hatred. Then it reared back and blasted a stream of flame from its mouth.

Ruby dug her fingers into Nightshade’s arm as the conflagration engulfed Troy. When it died back, however, Troy still stood in the same place with no sign of injury. Not even his clothes had burned. He tilted back his head, gazing up at the sky as if for inspiration.

“Devin, lad, I need you.” He spoke softly, but the words echoed in Ruby’s head like a command from God.

When nothing happened, some of her tension leaked away and she grabbed her first decent breath in minutes. Perhaps she had been mistaken. Perhaps the beast couldn’t hurt him. After all, he was immortal, wasn’t he?

The dragon moved suddenly, whipping its vicious spiked tail toward Troy’s back. Time slowed. Scarlet blossomed like a beautiful rose on the golden silk of Troy’s jacket. Then the serrated tip of the dragon’s tail burst through his chest.

Nightshade stepped in front of Ruby, tried to block her view, but she stumbled sideways and caught hold of a tree, eyes glued to the horror. Blood spurted from Troy’s mouth. The dragon’s tail jerked him up off the ground and smashed him back down like a rag doll. Next time the tail rose, Troy hung in a limp, disheveled mess of blood and dirt, his golden hair and jacket
soaked with gore. Ruby’s strange expanded consciousness snapped back into her. The bond with Troy was broken.

The dragon curled around and grabbed Troy’s body in its mouth. Then it lifted Nightshade’s father in its claws and launched itself off the slope to soar away over the glen. Ruby stared transfixed by horror and disbelief until the creature disappeared in the distance.

Shakily, she stooped and picked up one of the glittering black buttons that had fallen off Troy’s jacket. Nightshade closed his hand around the hilt of Troy’s short sword and pulled it from the ground, tears glistening in his eyes.

“He’s dead,” Ruby whispered. “But I thought he was immortal.”

“He sacrificed himself to release you,” Nightshade replied. “I’ve been told he can return from the dead, but . . .”

They gazed at each other in mute shock at what they’d witnessed. Despite what Nightshade said, his face was etched with lines of grief. He did not believe Troy would return.

Ruby hugged her arms around her middle and stared at the torn, bloodstained earth. Troy had sacrificed himself for her. After all the horrible things she’d thought about him, how would she ever live with that?

Devin bit back his annoyance as his mother, Zafirah, berated him for neglecting the three concubines in his harem. She paced between the oversized silk cushions littering the carpet of her retiring room, her steps jingling the gold coins trimming her clothes.

When her tirade finally ended, he drew breath to master his temper before he spoke. “I did not ask for the concubines. You foisted them on me. To refuse would have dishonored them.”

Zafirah threw her slender hands in the air, her jeweled rings flashing in the lantern light. “You dishonor them by disinterest. What’s the matter with you? Are you not man enough for them? Instead of keeping them happy you pant after that milksop virgin who’s wedded to the Book of Light.”

Anger spiraled up inside Devin. He normally tolerated his mother’s vicious tongue, but he would not allow her to slander Aila. He opened his mouth to retort but froze at the sound of Troy’s summons inside his head. Troy had called for his assistance only once before, over two hundred years ago. His father simply didn’t require anyone’s aid. Or, normally he didn’t. Devin’s heart raced.

“What is it?” Zafirah asked, her brown eyes as sharp as those of the hawks he kept for hunting.

Devin met his mother’s gaze. “Troy called me.”

Her hand went to her throat, an instinctive emotional gesture she would despise in another woman. Zafirah was as
hard as the diamonds glittering on her fingers. But she had one weakness—Troy. And she hated him for it.

Her breath hissed snakelike out between her teeth. “He’s in trouble?”