He gave her a quick nod, then released her arms to lead her back by the fire. As if he was her host, he waved her to sit on the pallet. When she did, he eased his towering frame down, sitting to face her.
"Okay, MacRieve, I can vow to the Lore that I did not consciously set out to make you believe I'm your mate. I have never enchanted anyone. My friends could work over their teachers from the first grade on, but I never had that ability."
He began to have a hopeful light in his eyes, so she hastily added, "But then I was never a seeress until the tomb either." At his questioning look, she explained, "In any coven, there are members from each of the five castes of witches. That's why we stick together, because the collective whole is so strong. Well, I'm supposed to have powers from all five castes - the powers of a warrior, conjurer, seeress, enchantress, and healer - but I haven't been able to tap into or harness any of them. Then tonight, I somehow knew you were coming. So there's the seeress part. When I attacked you and killed the incubi, there was the warrior. Just now, I conjured that reflection."
"And you healed yourself as well. If you enchanted me, you've done five out of five."
When she nodded, the obvious hope in him grew dimmer. "Then what about the night of the Hie assembly?"
She frowned. "I did nothing that night."
"If you did nothing, then why could I no' take my eyes from you? There was a bloody vampire in the area, one I'd fought, and still I was struggling with everything I was to keep an eye on him and no' to stare at you." And he's up...
When he crossed his arms over his chest with a knowing nod, she blurted out, "The night we kissed, I did will you to want me as fiercely as I wanted you - I consciously did it, and even then I worried that I was enthralling you!"
Instead of looking discouraged, he appeared pleased with her. "So you wanted me fiercely?"
She felt her cheeks heating. "That was then, and this is now, MacRieve. And think about it, if I was ever going to successfully spellbind anyone, it'd be you - you're like a lightning rod for my powers."
"So I'm unique to you, too. Maybe I'm to help you in some way?"
She ignored that and heedlessly continued. "It might not even have been you I truly wanted. The night that you saw me without my cloak, the damage was done. Maybe I was just taking advantage of the situation - "
"What do you mean by damage? And why did you wear the cloak and glamour?"
Tell him everything. Let him make sense of it. She exhaled and muttered, "It was predicted that a warrior from the Lore would recognize me as his mate - "
"A warrior from the Lore?" And he's up again! "Then it's me!"
Chapter 12
Gods, he has the sexiest grin. He always appeared so bitter, so grim, yet then, with one heart-stopping curl of his lips, his entire countenance changed, his amber eyes growing warm.
"It must be me, lass."
"But this could merely be a trick! You do recognize me as your mate, true, but that doesn't mean you should or even that it's real. I could very well have enthralled you. Some witches only have to recognize that they want something, and then, all of a sudden, it's theirs. That could have happened."
"And yet you believe that you could have left behind that enthrallment when you took the mortality curse away? You were weak and nigh out of your head with fatigue and injuries. You canna look me in the eyes and say you would be capable of removing one without the other."
When she pursed her lips, he raised his eyebrows.
She looked away and said, "Maybe not in the past - "
"Did you feel another of your hexes?"
After a moment, she shook her head.
"And you dinna do anything to me at the Hie. If you had no' had your glamour on that night, I would have recognized your scent then." Way up.
"You're reaching, because you want something definite. You want your black and white. And that's not what you're going to get with me."
He had a self-satisfied look on his face, a relieved one, that made her want to groan with frustration. "If you're telling me the truth, Mariketa, then there's a chance you truly are my mate."
"Why would you get two? Are you special?"
"You might be... you might be reincarnated." He frowned. "You doona look shocked."
"No. My friend Regin has a reincarnate, a berserker who's mad for her and keeps coming back. And he never misses an Accession."
"Aye, it makes sense that the Accession could fuel these events - your reincarnation as well."
She didn't feel that this was round two for her - wouldn't she sense it in some way? "Was your mate like me? Do we resemble each other? Act alike?"
"You're nothing alike, other than your names and ears. She was fey as well."
"How did you meet her - by entombing?"
He ignored the last and answered, "I'd known her all her life. After a five-year absence I'd returned to her father's kingdom, and she'd grown into a woman."
"Wouldn't you have known what she was the minute you met her?"
He shook his head. "No' always. Females of different species often need to reach maturity to trigger the Instinct."
"I just don't sense this about myself. And that berserker always gets his memories of his previous lives. I don't remember anything like that."
"You're young still."
"Say all this is true - "
"It's true."
" - the fact remains that I don't want you. Even if fate decreed that we had a bond, I definitely don't recognize it. I don't even like you."