They’d been talking for some time now. For the first time since they’d cast their lots together, all manner of calamity was not erupting around them. He could do nothing further to ensure her safety at this time from inside the mirror, so he’d seized the opportunity to learn more about Jessica St. James.

Where had she grown up? Did she have clan? How many, who, and where were they? What was she learning at her university? What kind of things did she one day dream of doing?

I’m learning about digging in the dirt, she’d told him with a cheeky smile, and that’s what I one day dream of doing. Once she’d explained what she really meant, he realized ’twas but another thing that drew him to her. She was curious as a Druid about things. In his mind’s eye he could see her toiling in the soil for treasures of the past, delightedly unearthing pottery shards and bits of armor and weapons. Och, Christ, how he’d like to be there beside her while she did it! To tell her stories of those things she found and, later, take her beneath him and show her another real, live artifact.

If she could have anything in the world, he’d asked her, what would it be?

She’d answered that one without hesitation: a best friend. She’d hastily added, a truly, seriously best friend; one that I couldn’t wait to talk to first thing in the morning as soon as I woke up, and one that I still wanted to be talking to, right up to the last minute before I went to sleep.

He’d smiled faintly. You mean a soul mate, he’d thought but not said. She’d meant a man, a lifetime lover. He could see it in her eyes.

Now she was telling him how she’d decided to be an archaeologist; that she’d read a book when she was young that had inspired her and set her on her path.

He listened intently, watched intently. He fancied he could sit like this for two eternities, mayhap more, drinking her in. He wanted to hear the minute details of her life, to know as much of this woman as he possibly could.

“So there I was, in college, second year into my major, realizing that it wasn’t going to be like Anne Rice’s book The Mummy at all. That it wasn’t glamour and travel and the thrill of discovery. That it was really a lot of grunt work and paperwork. Most archaeologists never get to dig in the dirt.”

“But by then it was too late,” she told him with a sheepish smile, “I’d fallen in love with it for totally different reasons. I’d gotten addicted to the history. I’d been sucked in by the mysteries of our origins, of the world’s origins, of trying to piece together the big picture.”

She spoke of Druid things now, the things that had always fascinated him. Life was full of tiny slices of truth and knowledge, here and there, and a wise man or woman endeavored to collect them.

An unwise man endeavored to collect other things. Like Unseelie Hallows.

And paid the price. Och, Christ, and paid the price!

“My mother hates my choice of major,” she confided. “She can’t understand why I’m not married and popping out babies left and right. She can’t imagine how I could prefer to spend time with artifacts when I could be out trying to find a husband.”

His gut twisted. Out trying to find a husband. He hated those words. They pissed him off to the last sorcerous, fiery drop of blood in his veins. “Why have you no man?” he said tightly.

Her smile faded. She was quiet a moment. Then she smiled again, but this one was softer, older than her years, and achingly bittersweet. “I think I’m misplaced in time, Cian. I think that’s part of the reason I’m drawn to the past. I’m an old-fashioned girl. My mother has had four husbands and she’s already looking for the next.”

“Do they die, lass?” he asked. He wondered if she had any idea what she did to him, sitting there like that. Plaid soft and rumpled around her shoulders, her dainty hands relaxed in her lap, her palms upward, fingers half-curled. She was utterly unself-conscious, reflective, her shimmering jade gaze turned inward.

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “They just seem to decide they don’t love each other anymore. If they ever did. Usually she leaves them.”

“And they let her?” Were mother aught like her daughter, ’twas unfathomable that a man would let her go, inconceivable that a husband wouldn’t do all in his power to make her happy, to breathe life into every last one of his woman’s dreams.

He would never understand modern marriages. Divorce was beyond his comprehension. Though at times he made light of it, the truth was, a Keltar Druid lived for his binding vows and the day he could give them.