Redeemed (Heroes of the Highlands) - By Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,2

because he’d felt an icy and invisible chill reach into his bones despite the warm sunlight. And Kylah because it had felt as though he might rip away another part of her soul as they disengaged.

Another man inside her without her permission. More contact than she was willing to allow. Durness was too full of people. Of memories. Of emotions and desires not her own. Contentment and hope swelled within her clan at the dawn of a new spring. Their Laird had money and there were crops to be planted. The plague of witchcraft had passed on the night of Rory’s wedding, as suddenly as it had appeared. Everyone rejoiced.

Kylah couldn’t bear it, so she’d sought the solitude of the wilderness.

Reaching the swift waters of the Kyle, she levitated over and idly wondered why some people considered walking on water so bloody miraculous. All one needed was a bit if Faerie magic. Her constant aura reached the western shore before she did and Kylah grimaced as she watched it spread out on the rocks before her, casting the growing shadows in her sickly green glow. Her sisters’ auras had always been a bright and eerie blue. Why not hers?

Kylah’s head snapped up from where she contemplated the ground. A strong ocean wind ruffled the grasses of the moor and brought with it a faint call of something she’d encountered before and never forgotten. A response rose inside her with a dark and powerful allure, drawing her toward the phenomenon before she made the conscious decision to follow it.

Highland streams and lochs flew past her with more speed than the swiftest horse. The Cearbhag River split around the Cearbhag Dune and crawled through the golden shore of the tiny bay of the same name. The Allt Dubh or River Black spilled across the same sands where both rivers were claimed by the roiling waves of the ocean. Named for the fine dark silt embedded beneath the clear waters, the River Black was notorious across the Highlands for a singular reason that had nothing to do with its rare earth.

And everything to do with the infamous man who lurked along its banks.

Beyond the beach, the land lifted to the large and ancient cliff face. Kylah followed the precipice, her insides rolling and crashing in time with the loud incoming tide that was hurling itself against the stones.

She’d reached the edge of the world. Or at least, the edge of Scotland. Cape Wrath, it was named, by the numberless hordes of Norsemen who’d tried to overtake her inhospitable shores. Time and time again they were driven back by the perilous sea and the remarkable clans strong and formidable enough to carve out a life here. They then chose other beaches from which to launch their assaults.

It was wrath which drew her all the way out here. It pulsed from the black rock. From the waves. From—somewhere beneath her. Not only wrath, but a hopeless misery, a cold fury stewed and stormed with rebellious opposition to the lovely sunset.

Kylah stepped off the edge of the cliff and dropped to the ocean below. Enormous sprays of water clashing with stone showered through her as she surveyed the rocks.

There.

To the left of the jagged rock, a shadowed cleft slashed through the cliff face. To the naked eye, it appeared shallow, but if one noted the break in the agitated water as it flowed deep into the gap, it would be recognized as a sheltered ocean cave.

This was what she’d been looking for.

As she floated past the entrance, the black sea that had churned beneath her calmed in contrast to the stirring hatred emanating from the depths of the cavern. Her weak glow acted as an insufficient lantern as the twilit Highland sky disappeared, replaced by smooth rock hollowed out by untold millennia of tides.

The place had an ancient, sacred grief beneath all the darkness. As though evil had overrun a holy place. Beyond the narrow passage, the water smoothed into a clear pool that reflected her light back at her as it became shallower, until the stone rose above the water and created a shelf.

Kylah drifted to the ledge and peered into the shadows. She couldn’t tell how far back the cavern extended, and didn’t care. She liked the illusion of blackness pressing in on all sides, threatening to overwhelm her pitiful glow. Turning, she sank to her knees and let the yawning darkness of the grotto engulf her.

Her face reflected back at her in the