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I’ll hear no more from that bucket of cold slop you men are determined to serve me.”
    She’d completely misunderstood him, but there was no reining her in now.
    “Here’s the way I see our predicament, O’Donar. We could turn around and follow the sword and wait for you to die along the way. But since I’m no willing to drag yer sorry dead arse back to Castle MacGahan, that’s no going to happen. So that leaves us with only two viable choices. We can continue in this direction and hope to find help before you keel over, or I can go after the sword and you can continue on without me. You choose.”
    Let her go back to confront Mathew and the inevitable reinforcements Torquil would send to reclaim the weapon? Never. The fact that she was right made his options no less bitter to swallow.
    “Presented as such, I can see I have no choice at all.”
    “And about damned time you realized that, too.”
    With a jerk to her reins, Bridget set her animal in motion and he followed suit. His only hope lay in a small band of men supposedly heading in their direction.
    He tilted his head, straining to hear far into the distance, praying that if he did hear riders it would be the men from MacGahan, and not those Torquil had sent.
    There was no band of riders within his hearing, but something else lay ahead of them. A familiar tinkling sound he recognized immediately.
    By Hela! Even approaching his end, he couldn’t escape the damned Fae.

T en
    A ARGH !”
    Torquil covered his eyes and stumbled away from the fireplace, gasping for air. There were few things he disliked more than being in a mortal’s psyche at the moment of death. It was a disorienting jolt like no other.
    “So close,” he moaned, sagging into the nearest chair.
    His sword had been there in the clearing, almost within his reach. He’d seen it with his own two eyes. Rather, he’d seen it through the guardsman’s eyes.
    The scrolls must have been there, too. If not for the big warrior, he would have had them all.
    There was something familiar about the big man, as if he’d seen him before. No doubt he and Torquil had crossed paths at some point before Fenrir had taken full control of this body’s consciousness.
    What had happened to his foolish guardsman, anyway? He’d watched through the man’s eyes as his companions had been cut down. He’d seen the big warrior drop to his knees and the youth wieldinghis sword run away. He’d felt his guardsman’s gleeful anticipation as the fool prepared to take the big man’s head.
    And then, without warning, a blinding flash of light and intense pain, followed by the all-consuming darkness of death, had driven him from the man’s mind.
    Foolish, careless mortal. He had allowed himself to be so consumed by his own plans, he’d forgotten to watch for what others might be planning.
    Torquil sighed, rubbing his fingers against his eyes to clear his vision. He had long known these pathetic beings were incompetent. It was for that reason he had sent more than one hunting party.
    As soon as this weak body he inhabited recovered from the experience, he would seek out one of the others. It was the only way for him to direct their progress in securing the treasures. Without them, and the jewels to control them, his freedom, his very existence, was in danger.

E leven
    S OMEONE ’ S COMING !”
    Relief jolted through Brie’s chest as she stared down the path. At last they’d found someone, even though it wasn’t her brother’s party, as she’d hoped. She leaned forward in her saddle, straining to see who approached them. “Is that . . . ?”
    “It’s the Tinklers,” Halldor answered flatly, sounding resigned.
    Even better, to her way of thinking. She understood that many people looked down on the Tinklers and considered them little better than thieves and whores, but she’d assumed Halldor was more open-minded and less judgmental than that. It bothered her more than she would have expected to realize that