Chapter 3

My eyes snapped open and a realization hit me. I could no longer sense my connection with Maeve. Did this mean that the bond was broken somehow? I tried everything I could think of, but I couldn't feel Maeve or any of our bondmates. I was alone in my head for the first time in a long while and it scared me.

Then I remembered a conversation with Ariel. "When the bond between a Sidhe couple is broken, neither is likely to survive. And the deeper the bonding the less likely either of the Bonded will live." Ariel said. How about the bond between Maeve and me?" I asked. Ariel shook her head. "Your Bond goes much deeper than any we have seen in over a thousand years. The high King is not as deeply connected to his queen as you are to my daughter. I am afraid that when you die, Maeve will follow you into the next life within moments."

I lay there wishing that I could move, even if it was only enough to cry. Our Bond had been severed by somebody or something, and that meant that wherever I was now, Maeve would be gone, our unborn child gone as well.

I was alone again.

I closed my eyes and let my soul give voice to my pain and grief.

At The Kerry Townhouse.

Maeve sat up so suddenly that her father nearly jumped out of the chair where he had been sitting, watching over his daughter as she slept. She clamped her hands over her ears and her eyes were wide and wild. "I hear him!" she cried. Brian sent a thought to Ariel, summoning her to her daughter's side. "Are you sure it is your husband that you hear?" Brian asked softly. Maeve glared at him. "Yes father, I am as certain as I am that you are here in this room. Bill is alive, but..." her voice trailed off. "I can no longer hear him." Ariel came into the room at a run, followed by Meiko. "What did William say?" asked Ariel after Maeve and Brian had filled her in. "It was not words that I heard," said Maeve after a pause. "It was the sound that someone would make when all hope is lost to them." She lifted her eyes to meet her mother's gaze. "There was a great shout of grief and sadness." Maeve trembled. "And then came the rage and the desire for vengeance." Ariel took her daughter in her arms and tried to comfort her. "Maybe it was just a dream." She suggested soothingly. But Maeve pulled back angrily. "This was no dream mother." She said vehemently. Maeve pressed her forehead to her mother's and flooded her with her memory of the cry that she had heard in her mind. Ariel fainted, slumping toward the floor before Brian could catch her. Meiko cocked her head as if listening to something. "I believe Maeve." She stated at last. "Something has certainly stirred up the other members of the Bond. They are all awake at last." She turned toward the door. "I shall go see to them. Please see if you can get anymore details from Maeve." And she left. Maeve looked at her father where he knelt next to Ariel. "Wherever Bill is," she said, "he is still alive." She bit her lip. "And he'll be coming back to me."

William Bard's Story

I strained against whatever was keeping me from moving with the hysterical strength born of madness, for indeed I was far from sane then. Only one thought echoed through my mind. Whoever did this to me was gonna pay.

Darkness.

And then it felt like I could feel life flowing through my body again. My arms and legs tingled and then burned as if blood had been cut off for too long, and then the circulation suddenly returned all at once. I heard a moaning sound and opened my eyes. This time when I tried to turn my head, it moved easily and without effort. Cautiously I tried to wriggle my fingers and toes. I could feel them move! Slowly I tested other muscles with the same results. I closed my eyes again for a moment, then took a deep breath. I frowned, keeping my eyes closed. The air didn't taste or smell right. For that matter I couldn't taste or smell anything at all.

Opening my eyes once again I lifted my right hand up to where I could see it. It wasn't my hand. Oh it had the right number of fingers, and they wriggled and bent properly, but the hand I was looking at was long and slender where my palms were broader. And I sure didn't remember having skin that looked like liquid gold.

I sat up slowly. Somehow things seemed just a little bit too sharply focused to be real. I looked down at my body. I was the same liquid gold color all over. That I could see. And this body was in a lot better shape than mine, it was muscled like a god and completely nude. What the hell had happened to me?

I turned and swung my legs off the bed. So far so good, no dizziness or nausea. I patted my thigh and heard a faint metallic chiming from the contact. I smiled grimly. RoboBard indeed. Then it hit me where I had seen this type of body before, in the basement of our home where Guido had found those mysterious boxes. And in one of those boxes had been a statue woman of unearthly beauty whose skin had had the same liquid gold coloring. Meiko had said that they were designed to hold the life force of a human or Sidhe. But how had I come to be in this one? Was my body dead?