by Carey Corp
When I didn’t answer right away, she clasped her hands next to her cheek and squealed, “Oh, Prince Jamie! He’s sooo gorgeous!! Doesn’t he have the best voice eveeerrr?!?”
Blaz jerked on his leash and howled in response to the grating whine in Kenna’s voice. Agreeing with his assessment, I gave her a well-deserved smack on the arm. “Stop already!”
“Well, you did pretty much get engaged last night and you haven’t even mentioned it.”
We turned a corner and I glanced behind us to make sure Eòran hadn’t returned from taking our bags to the carriage. The man had been hovering like my second shadow all morning. I tugged Kenna into a narrow backstreet and turned to her with an unguarded grin — the kind that was so uncontrollable it almost hurt my face.
Her eyes flew wide as she pulled me into a bear hug. “I’m so happy for you guys! When can I help you design your dress? I’m thinking princess style, of course, with — ” She squeezed me until I wiggled away to avoid a cracked spine.
“Whoa there, girly. We aren’t engaged yet. It’s like a . . . I don’t know.” I shrugged. “A pre-engagement.”
Her ecstatic joy melted into confusion. “Like a promise ring? Lame. Then why was everyone so excited?”
“Well . . .” I looped my arm through hers and led her down the darkened alley, Blaz walking ahead of us. “The Handfasting is a public ceremony where multicolored cords are braided and wrapped around the couple’s joined hands, symbolizing the integration of their lives with each other and the Protector.” I’d been unable to sleep the previous night until I’d read up on the Handfasting.
“Doesn’t that whole Completing thing mean you’re engaged?”
“Umm . . .” I wrinkled my nose. All the formalities in Doon could get confusing, even for me. “No, I think that was more about the throne. Doon requires a king and queen to balance one another’s strengths. This is more of a personal thing. Anyway, once we go through the ceremony, we become officially engaged for a year and a day. Handfasting is like a trial period to see if the couple really wants to tie the knot — which incidentally is where the expression originated.”
Kenna rolled her eyes at my random trivia.
But I ignored her. “Some couples even live together during the trial.”
“Will you and Jamie live together?” She raised her fingers in air quotes and wiggled her auburn brows suggestively.
“We kind of already do — ”
“What?” she squeaked. “When did this happen?”
“I meant, we live in the same castle, weirdo.” We reached the end of the shadowed lane and stepped into a slant of sunlight bisecting the flagstones. “I’ve never even been to his roo — ”
My vision blacked out and something yanked me forward, like a rope intertwined with my intestines. Pain bloomed from my core. For a nanosecond, I was floating, in a zero-gravity spacewalk. In complete silence.
Then a pressurized pop.
Nausea burned in my throat as the invisible tether twisting my gut fell away. Sensation returned by degrees. I blinked, and my senses snapped into focus.
A body pressed tight against my side. Kenna and I stood on a sidewalk. A concrete sidewalk. The sun sank behind the trees, where moments before it had been late morning. With a tiny electric buzz, streetlights flickered on all around us. Raw chills skittered across my shoulders and raced down to my fingertips.
A car whizzed past, and I stumbled back, digging my nails into Kenna’s arm to keep my balance. I squeezed my eyes closed, willing the illusion away. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
“Can I assist you ladies with anythin’?” My eyes popped open to find a man wearing the black polyester uniform and checker-brimmed hat of the Scottish police. The officer glanced at my crown and then back to my face. If this was a mirage like before, how could he see us too?
“Miss?”
Because this was real.
“No, no, no.” I paused and swallowed my panic. “I . . . mean . . .”
“No . . . thank you, sir. We’re fine.” Kenna finished for me, her voice as shaky as I felt.
His dark brows crouched over his eyes as they darted between us, then he shook his head and walked away. I glanced around at the whitewashed buildings and tree-lined street. The sign for Poet’s Corner Coffee House swung gently in the breeze just ahead. I stumbled to the sewer and emptied the contents of my stomach.
This was no hallucination. We were in present-day Alloway, Scotland. On the other side of the Brig o’ Doon.
CHAPTER 6
Mackenna
You know that feeling you get when there’s an abrupt scene change in a movie? The main character drives down the road, and an instant later is sipping a latte in a café. Or they lock eyes on a stranger in a club and the next second they’re in an apartment making out? Without a transition, it takes a moment — sometimes several — for your brain to fill in the gaps.
This was a zillion times worse — because it was real.
Vee straightened after vomiting into the street. I grabbed her arm and steered her down the sidewalk, away from the mess and the suspicious copper who kept giving us the stink eye. When we were out of earshot, I whispered, “What just happened?”
She stopped. Her pale face accentuated the confusion in her eyes as she stared listlessly at the sidewalk. “I don’t know.”
“But we’re in Alloway.”
Her head jerked up to face me as she snapped, “I can see that.”
Although misplaced, I understood her angry reaction and held up my hands, palms out to remind her that I wasn’t the enemy. “So what happened?”
“Let me think for a minute.” She sank onto a nearby bench.
“Okay.” I knew better than to push her when she needed time to process, so I paced up the sidewalk. The evening sun sat low on the horizon. In this part of Scotland, anything near seventy was considered a heat wave, and the temperature was indeed brisk. As soon as I had the thought, it was impossible not to feel the cold. Soon my teeth began to chatter.
Ahead I could see the sign of the Poet’s Corner Coffee House — one of my favorite places in Alloway. While Vee was thinking, I would get a strawberry scone to settle her stomach and some cinnamon cocoas for us both. I took a couple of steps before realizing that I didn’t have any money. In Doon we charged everything to the castle — the perks of royalty — but here we were just two broke teenagers. At least our maxi dresses fit in with current fashions.
I turned back toward the bench, watching as a group of girls emerged from a pub at the other end of the block. They pointed at Vee, commenting to one another in whispery giggles. Although her dress was stylish, her tiara seemed a bit much. And without a jacket to ward off the chill, she shivered conspicuously like some homeless fashionista. The whole scene was so surreal.
Acting on impulse, I walked over to my bestie and pinched her arm.
“Ow!” Vee leapt to her feet. “What was that for?”
Dang. “I was hoping it was a dream,” I explained apologetically.
She shook her head. “Nope. This nightmare is real.” She slumped back down to the bench.
At the far end of the block, I spied the copper keeping tabs on us. Casually, I leaned over the bench. “We should go to Dunbrae Cottage.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “To regroup, get supplies, get off the streets and away from the fuzz. Figure out how we’re going to get back.”
That’s when it hit me. Every time we’d crossed in or out of Doon other than the Centennial, we’d had the aid of my aunt Gracie’s rings. They were special, magical in a supernatural kind of way. Without the rings, we were stuck.
My insides turned to ice as I contemplated never seeing Duncan again. The princes would eventually come looking for us. But time moved slower there; how long until they noticed we were missing? We could be in our thirties before they showed up. I could be middle-aged by the time I was reunited with my eighteen-year-old boyfriend. I was already older than him —
thanks to my chasing dreams in Chicago stunt — but now I could end up a cougar creeper. Did Duncan even like older women?
“Get a grip, Kenna!” Vee shook me back and forth so hard my head rattled. Somehow I had wound up on the bench beside her. As I sputtered, she stopped shaking me and leaned in. “You were babbling. Something about Chicago and cougars and creepers.”
Oh my! I didn’t realize I’d been internalizing out loud. Rather than explain, I asked, “How are we going to get back to Doon?”
“With these.” Fishing around in her tiny clutch, Vee pulled out a satin drawstring pouch. Inside were the Rings of Aontacht. “I know you wanted to pretend that the vision in the arena never happened, but I felt it was better to take precautions.”
Bless her over-reactive heart. As she placed the gold and ruby ring on her finger, I slipped the silver and emerald one on mine. The cool metal instantly soothed me. Thanks to Vee’s brilliant mind, we would not be stranded in the modern world.
Feeling tons better, I sprung up from the bench. “Should we head to the bridge?”
Vee made a sucking-on-a-lemon face before answering. “I think you had a good idea about going to the cottage. It’s right by the bridge, and the princes probably won’t figure out we’re missing for a while. Plus, they’ll search the village and the castle before thinking about the bridge, which means that we’ll have to make our way back on our own. We should get flashlights and water. And anything else that seems logical.”
“Ding Dongs.”
Vee frowned at me, so I clarified, knowing they were her go-to stress snack. “I’ve been dying for some good old junk food. There should be a box in the pantry — and those things don’t have an expiration date.”
“Kenna, we need to be practical.”
“I am being practical.” I started to list things off, using my fingers to count. “Flashlights, water, Ding Dongs, Little Debbies, fashion magazines, more nail polish, polish remover, and some hair product.”
Enticed by my litany of modern conveniences, she groaned. “I would trade my throne for some decent conditioner.”
We walked past the Poet’s Corner, both of us hesitating slightly at the thought of tasty treats we couldn’t afford. At the end of the block, we followed the jog in the road that would take us to the roundabout at the southern edge of the tiny town. From there, it was a couple more blocks to the cottage.
Clutching one another for warmth and stability, we hunched forward as we walked into the bracing wind. Except for the hike, and the wind, and being sucked out of Doon, this wasn’t such a bad thing. We didn’t know why we’d ended up back in the modern world, but we had a way to get home and we could stock up on supplies.
When I said as much to Vee, she shook her head. “You can’t treat this like a field trip, Ken. Something isn’t right.”
As if I hadn’t figured that out on my own. The million-dollar question was, why was this happening? Fiona had said on more than one occasion that Doon had need of us. Though now that the witch’s limbus curse had been thwarted, maybe we weren’t needed anymore. “What if Doon’s done with us?”
“Done?” Vee halted midway through the roundabout to face me.
“Yeah. Like we’ve accomplished what we were supposed to — defeating the witch and all — and now the Protector’s sending us back to our own world.”
“No.” The wind turned her hair into mini whips that lashed at her cheeks. Impatiently, she wound her hand through the mess and gathered it into a smoothed knot at the base of her neck. “None of the Destined have ever been cast out. We were called to Doon and we chose to stay. We’re a part of the Covenant now. Doon is our home.”
But what if it didn’t feel like home? Could the Protector sense that I was having trouble adjusting? Or maybe I’d been deemed unworthy. Maybe this was about me — Doon trying to kick me out.
“Kenna, look at me.”
I focused on my best friend’s grim face, knowing she’d picked up on my thoughts on account of us sharing a brain and all. “You belong in Doon, whether you feel like you do or not. And entertaining these doubts just wastes energy that could be spent on what’s really going on.”
She was right. At least in the part about wasting effort on questions with no clear answers. “Okay. So what is happening?”
“That, my friend, is what we need to find out.” We resumed our journey to Dunbrae Cottage. “Something tells me we’re going to need a little help from the brightest minds in Doon.”
Scooby Gang time.
It gave me an immediate sense of relief that greater minds than mine would be helping figure this out. Each one of our friends brought something special to the think tank. Fiona could discern the supernatural and knew a wealth of folklore and historical information. Fergus was tactical. Jamie, who was nearly as crazy smart as Vee, had a gift for understanding complex problems. Duncan, the perfect counterbalance to his brother, tended not to overcomplicate things and instead saw issues in their simplicity. Adam, a newer member to our group, whom we’d met during the limbus fight, had a brilliant, scientific mind. Emily thought of details the rest of us didn’t, and Analisa — although she wasn’t a friend and probably never would be — was crafty in a dodgy, breaking-the-law sort of way. Reluctantly, I had to admit that Ana’s particular skill set had come in handy on more than one occasion.
By unspoken agreement we picked up our pace as Dunbrae Cottage came into view. My aunt Gracie’s cottage, with its overgrown English garden, looked like something from a Shakespearian faerie story. We crossed under the arched trellis at the foot of the walk and made our way to the front door. I reached for the rock that doubled as a hidey hole for the key and thought about the last time I’d been here with Duncan. So much had changed since then — we were finally together and he was building me my very own theater.
I hurriedly unlocked the door and replaced the key. By the time I had the rock back in place, Vee was already in the foyer. She sat on the steps leading to the second level, with her face in her hands.
“Are you okay?” I flipped on the lights as I closed and locked the door after us.
“Yep.” Other than a head jiggle, she didn’t move. “Just dizzy is all.”
Dizziness had been the first symptom when she collapsed and nearly died. I rushed over and knelt beside her. “Are you having another episode?”
Her muffled voice replied, “I don’t think so . . . Jus’ need a minute.”
I gently touched her temple. It was burning up.
“Vee, look at me.” I helped her lift her head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glassy and unfocused. After a moment her lids slid shut. “Are you sure you’re not having another episode?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Her head bobbed again. “Must be the flu or something. I think I jus’ need to lie down for a moment.”
She lurched to her feet and I reached out to steady her. With my hand on her back, I followed her up the narrow steps, guiding her to the bedroom overlooking the River Doon. She stumbled toward the bed and flopped face-first onto the comforter. “Don’ let me sleep too long. ’Kay?”
“Okay . . .”
I watched her burrow into the blanket, and within seconds she was out. Was she really just under the weather or was this another episode that would bring her to death’s door? I still vividly recalled the way she had collapsed in the courtyard. That incident had filled Vee, and those who loved her, with terror. This time there was no fear, no gasping for breath, or clutching at her heart. As her bestie, I needed to take her at her word that she was simply under the weather. As if she were reading my mind even in her sleep, Vee gave me a soft snore of confirmation.
Leaning over her, I unfastened the delicate tiara from her hair. As I removed the final hair pin, I noticed a chain across the back of her neck. The halter-style top of her dress had concealed it. Slowly, I unfastened the clasp and removed the necklace so it wouldn’t strangle her in her sleep. Attached to the chain was a gorgeous silver pendant, a jewel-encrusted heart topped by
a crown — a Scottish luckenbooth — identical to one I’d seen in a painting in the library of the Castle MacCrae. As I set the necklace on the desk next to the tiara, I wondered if Vee wore a replica of Queen Lynnette’s or if it was the real enchilada. More importantly, why had I never seen it before?
With another dainty snore, Vee turned to her side. I wasn’t sure how long she would sleep, but I decided to be packed and ready to head home when she woke up. With a little luck, she’d rally after a catnap and we would be back in Doon before anyone realized we were gone.
CHAPTER 7
Veronica
The dregs of sleep fell away in slow layers, revealing the ache pulsing in my temples. I kept my eyes closed against the sun heating my face. So much to do, so little time. Petitions, a meeting with my advisors . . . What else? Oh yes, I’d agreed to meet with Analisa about her new gym. Then, golden-brown eyes and Jamie’s dangerously handsome face appeared behind my closed lids. Definitely no time for a headache.
I sat up and threw the covers off in one quick motion. And blinked at the cool blue walls, cherry furniture, and eyelet curtains framing a view of trees, the glint of a river, and . . . the distant arch of the Brig o’ Doon. Memories rushed back in and a scream curdled in my throat. “Keennaaa!”
Kenna appeared almost instantly, hair sticking straight up on one side, her eyes extra wide. “Vee, you’re awake.”
“Why did you let me sleep all night?” I hissed as I plucked my sweater off the end of the bed and shoved my arms into it, before realizing I’d put it on upside down.
“I tried to wake you up. You’re the one who practically passed out. Here . . .” Kenna peeled my sweater off, turned it right side up, and held it out for me. “So, you’re feeling better today?”
Finding my half-boots, I plopped into a chair and yanked them on. “I’m fine. But we have to go.”
Kenna yawned and smoothed down her tidal wave of crimson hair. “What’s the rush, Cinderella? It’s not like you’re going to turn into a pumpkin. You said it yourself, hardly any time will have passed in Doon.”
