The Highlander's Haunted Kiss Read Online Free PDF

Iain could feel his younger brother’s assessing stare. “Why didn’t you return through the tower passage? Who is safeguarding it?”
    If Iain had, he would have arrived on the other side of the waterfall since a long tunnel connected the two places. The escape route had been built in the thirteenth century when Invergale had been constructed by a long-ago Darroch.
    â€œIt is locked. And I wanted to walk through the keep, in case I could learn more about her.”
    â€œBut everything looked… normal?” Magnus passed Alexander a more substantial stick to feed the flames.
    â€œThe tapestries are still hanging. She has not disturbed anything that matters.” She’d cleaned the place and lit the hearth fires. The effect had been strangely comfortable.
    Iain had meant to question her thoroughly about her motive in coming to Invergale, and had ended up kissing her instead.
    â€œYou like her.” Alexander fanned his new fire with a fallen rowan branch full of dry leaves.
    â€œNay.” He lied on instinct, knowing he could not indulge himself with a woman who could still be the enemy.
    â€œAre ye daft, Iain?” Magnus yanked the flask out of his hands. “Do nae give the
Sidhe
a tool to hurt us.”
    The brogue was back, making him sound just like their father.
    Iain tensed.
    â€œEven if she is not a
Sidhe
, she could be helping them.” Alexander, ever reasonable, kept a cooler tone. But as he piled small rocks around his fire, Iain sensed his frustration in the careful precision of his movements.
    â€œThis I know.” He’d spent a century keeping trespassers out of Invergale since it was a known doorway to the
Sidhe
world. He prevented humans from being lured by their false promises of love and happiness in a land where mortals could not reach, the way his sister had been. “We must keep watch on her servants or any visitors who come to see her.”
    He would not allow anyone to steal Lily away or curse her to share his fate for daring to follow his sister into
Sidhe
lands. Immortality was no gift when you were doomed to endless wandering. All three brothers carried a small, eternal flame within their chests, a light that had not been out since the fae bastards had planted it inside them.
    â€œWhat mortal woman braves Invergale?” Magnus mused aloud. “She can only be here to serve some foul purpose. To lead others to Invergale. The
Sidhe
grow hungry for more souls after one hundred years of being thwarted by us.”
    Iain did not answer. Instead, he watched Alexander. Just as his brother finished his rock ring around the small fire he’d built, Alexander swept the stones over the top of the flickering light, crushing the flames.
    â€œYou still believe her unaware.” Alexander observed as smoke drifted on the breeze.
    â€œAye.” She would need Darroch protection, that much was certain. Iain could not deny that he would be happy to give it to her. She had been an unexpected treat delivered in the midst of a life of wandering, her kiss a sweetness he would never forget, even if he lived as long as those
Sidhe
bastards had promised he would. “And she will sleep under our roof until I say she is a threat.”
    No one spoke for a long moment.
    â€œThere is one other possibility,” Alexander said finally, coming to his feet to begin another long and cursed trek through the mountains. Magnus had been the one to take the journey the night before and Iain would travel on the morrow’s eve after he met Lily.
    â€œAnd that is?” Iain wondered what he could have missed. If Lily was not an enemy
Sidhe
immortal, or working for the
Sidhe,
she must be a mortal woman who happened into an age-old feud.
    Magnus edged forward, taking the flask from Iain’s hands. “Go on, brother. Speak yer piece afore your feet get ahead of you.”
    Already, Alexander was retreating from them, the curse of wandering a double blight