Free Eternity: Immortal Witches Book 1 (The Immortal Witches) by Maggie Shayne

Her eyes were closed, head tipped back, and she stood with her feet wide apart. Her left arm stretched upward toward the moon, her palm turned up as if to catch the pale moonlight that spilled into it. Her right arm was extended downward, toward him. She turned her palm down and pressed it gently to his forehead. And as she chanted, he felt energy flooding him. Filling him. Warm, potent, zinging energy.
    Moon Goddess, Diana, send your healing hands. Move through me, renew me, and heal this good man.
    She repeated the chant three times as he lay there. And then she went rigid, eyes flying wide. And Duncan felt a surge of something white hot and tingling jolt right through his entire body. It was sudden, and brief, and then it was gone.
    He blinked his vision into focus and scanned the room, trying to understand what had just happened. Then he spotted her. She leaned on the back of the chair, head hanging down between her arms, her face curtained by her glorious hair. Breathlessly, she murmured, “Sweet lady, never has it been like that.”
    Duncan was breathless himself. But as he took stock, he realized his chest was clear, his pain gone, his throat, no longer sore, his head, no longer spinning. And he turned again to look at her, to see her and drink in the sight by the light of the moon—only to see her eyes widen in alarm.
    “You’re dreaming,’’ she told him. “This has all been no more than a sweet dream.”
    “No, lass, ‘tis no dream. An’ what you just did—”
    She held her palm toward him. “Sleep now, Duncan. Sleep.”
    A wave of drowsiness suddenly swept over him, and his eyelids felt so heavy he could barely hold them open. “Dinna go,” he whispered. “I beg of you, dinna go. I dinna care what that was, nor what you are. I only need you to stay. Please, my dark angel...stay with me.”
    “Sleep,” she whispered. “Sleep and regain your strength. You’re exhausted. Rest, Duncan. Sleep.”
    His eyes fell closed, though he fought to keep them open. And he felt her lips, warm and soft upon his, all too briefly.
    “If I could stay with you, Duncan, I would. Believe me I would. ‘Tis better this way. I wish ‘twere not true, but ‘tis, Duncan.”
    He heard her leaving, heard the door creak open. Battling to stay awake, he forced words through his lips before losing himself to the veil of sleep that he could not resist. “I'll find you again. I swear I will. I'll find you, lass.”
    * * *
    I had never felt the power surge through me as it did that night. No, nor had I ever before felt the other forces that came to life in my blood then. The ones that burned in me when Duncan pulled me into his arms, when his mouth mated with mine, when he whispered that he hadn’t stopped thinking about me.
    I’d never felt such things for a man. Not for any man. But I did now. For Duncan. From the moment our eyes had met I’d sensed there was something between us. Something new and powerful. I’d had no idea how powerful.
    And yet, I could not trust him, could not tell him the truth. Secrecy was vital, especially from any man associated with the Church and her witch-hunters. He’d told me he’d given it up. But would he not tell me that even if he hadn’t? Would that not be the perfect way to fool me? To entrap me? Lure me into his trust, into his arms, into his bed, gain my confession and then haul me away? And what if I foolishly told him the only way I could be killed, what then?
    No. I was weak where Duncan Wallace was concerned. My mother had trusted my own aunt Matilda, and now she was dead because of it. She had written the words, emphasized them: Trust no one. No one.
    I had become hard that day they killed my precious mother. Harder than I had ever been before. But my hardness melted when Duncan’s lips touched mine. My wisdom faded away like mist in the morning sunlight. He’d tried to protect me once, yes. But had  he not just now accused me of bewitching him? Of making him want me by using