by Carey Corp
If I were to die, this is how I would go. In Jamie’s arms.
Wanting his mouth back on mine, I took his face in my hands and lifted it up. He kissed me slowly, savoring my lips. Fire raced in my blood, flooding my senses. Needing to get closer, I reached down and untied the strings holding his shirt together, and spread the material wide.
With a gasp, Jamie gripped my hands and pulled away.
But I didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want reality to intrude on my blissful oblivion. I leaned in.
Jamie drew back with a groan. “Yer makin’ it blasted difficult to keep my promise, lass.”
I blinked at him, disoriented.
He lifted a hand and covered his mouth, his fingers digging into his cheeks as he searched my face. Heat rushed up my neck. What was I doing? Hastily, I began to extricate myself from him.
“Let me,” he whispered and put his hands under my arms, lifting me from his lap.
As I stood fiddling with my dress, shaking and dizzy, he rushed over and picked up my chair. He carried it to his side of the table and sat it facing his. He gestured for me to sit, which I did with great reluctance. The ticking clock in my chest sped up once again.
Jamie sat and raked the hair off his forehead. “What is goin’ on with you?” He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees, one side of his mouth quirking. “No’ that I’m complainin’, mind ye, but this isna like you.”
Latching my eyes on his, I took both his large hands in mine. “Promise me something.”
Without a second’s hesitation he replied, “Anythin’.”
I stared at our laced fingers, noticing my hands appeared small in his. Delicate. I loved his hands. Broad and sun-darkened, with a map of powerful veins across the back. Straight, strong fingers, his palms peppered with calluses. They were not the hands of a sit-on-his-throne-and-bark-orders monarch, but those of a leader who ruled by example — by digging in elbows deep to clean up after a party, by training every single day so he could protect his people with his life.
Jamie stroked my fingers with his thumb. “Verranica?”
Tears rising, I blinked them away, but I couldn’t look him in the face; instead, I stared at the space above his left shoulder. “If something . . . happens to me . . . promise me you’ll choose another queen.”
His silence forced me to look back at him. A furrow appeared over his left brow, and his fingers tightened almost painfully. “Dinna talk like that.”
“I’m serious. We have to expect it to happen again.” I pushed out a sigh and glanced at the crackling fire. “Something is trying to push me out of the kingdom. What if I can’t make it back next time?”
“There willna be a next time. And if there is, you’ll have the rings.”
“Jamie.” I forced my gaze back to his, but I couldn’t form the words that would add to his fear. Couldn’t tell him that the sickness that had almost taken me from him once was back. Instead, I focused on convincing him to do the right thing if I were gone — for any reason. “We have to think like rulers. If something happens to me, you’ll need a queen beside you. Someone to temper that hotheadedness of yours. And . . . and I think Sofia Rosetti is the perfect choice.”
His brows lowered over his eyes and he sat back, dropping my hands.
I’d thought about this a lot. Sofia grew up side-by-side with Jamie, knowing she could be Doon’s next queen. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that she’d missed her Calling. Maybe it was so she’d be open to this new purpose for her life. To take my place.
I attempted a smile, but felt my lips quiver. “Sofia is smart and compassionate and she loves Doon. And . . . I know . . .” I swallowed hard. “I know she could make a great co-ruler.”
Jamie sprang out of his chair and stalked to the hearth. He ran his fingers through his tawny hair and then linked them against the back of his neck as he paced, his every stilted movement evidence of his head warring with his heart. After several tense minutes, he leaned against the mantle and stared into the fire.
As much as the thought of him being with someone else fractured my heart, I needed him to agree to this promise. Needed to know Doon would have two strong rulers, and that he wouldn’t turn bitter and hard without me.
Blaz whined and shifted to lay his head on Jamie’s boot. But when Jamie ignored him, he rose and slunk off into the bedroom.
After several more drawn-out moments of silence, Jamie shook his head and spat, “Nay.” He strode back to the table and went down on one knee before me, his dark gaze blazing into mine, the telltale vein ticking in his throat. “Verranica, I would do anythin’ you asked. I’d kill a thousand witches and their undead armies for you.” He cradled my clasped hands in his, his voice a rough whisper. “I’d crawl through hell and back. But dinna ask this of me. Dinna ask me to replace you.”
Tears burned my eyes and throat, love for this boy threatening to overwhelm me, but I buried my emotion, pushed it down into the deepest well of my soul so that my voice became cold and unrecognizable. “I’m not asking you to replace me in your heart, just on the throne.” He shook his head and I sat straighter. “Fine. If you won’t agree, then I’ll write a legal decree . . . binding in the event of my death.”
Jamie blinked at me like he didn’t know who I was, his limp hands dropping from my lap. He’d poured his heart out to me and I’d shut him down like a true ice queen.
But the suppression cost me, and I began to shake. My limbs trembled so hard, I wrapped my arms around myself and bent at the waist. Pain splintered through my chest, my vision faded in and out, and I wondered if I’d even get a chance to wrap up my affairs.
“You’re no’ pushing me out. Dinna let an evil scheme steal your faith. There is nowhere you can go, nothin’ that can keep us from finding our way back to each other. This is the Protector’s will.” His voice broke in a ragged edge, but he pushed through it. “Do you hear me, Verranica? Doon is your Calling and you . . . you are mine.” His hand splayed on my back. “Vee? You’re burning up.” He leaned down to look into my face, and that’s when I noticed my pendant had slipped out of my dress.
“What in all that’s holy!?” With a hard yank, he snapped the chain off my neck.
As if a cool breeze blew a screen of smoke from my eyes, my vision began to clear. The tightening in my chest loosened and my equilibrium returned. I sat up.
Jamie dropped the pendant on the floor and smashed it with the heel of his boot as if it were a poisonous spider.
“What are you doing?”
He moved his foot, and the pendant winked back in the candlelight, whole and undamaged. I stood, the strength in my legs like an old friend I’d missed terribly. The shaking was gone, the chills faded to a comfortable warmth. And suddenly I knew — it had been the pendant all along.
“Jamie I . . . I didn’t know.”
“You got this from the witch’s cottage, didn’t you?” he practically spat.
I took a step toward him, my hands spread in a pleading gesture. “Yes, I found it there when we discovered the spell book. I recognized the necklace from Queen Lynnette’s portrait. I couldn’t stand the thought of something so precious to her rotting away in that evil place.”
He took two steps and clasped my arms in an iron grip, his face like granite. “Tha’ pendant killed Queen Lynnette.”
“But . . . how?” I sputtered, trying to put the pieces together. “She gave it to the coven as an act of good faith when she promised them the throne of Doon. It’s what she thought would save the people. I . . . I wore it for courage.”
Jamie’s dark gaze moved over my face, and the softness returned to his eyes as he yanked me to his chest and encircled me in his arms. His mouth pressed to my hair, he murmured, “Dear Lord, I almost lost you.”
I hugged him fiercely and then pulled back. “But I still don’t get it. How did it kill Lynnette if the witches had it? And why did it make me sick?”
Jamie palmed my cheek. “Ye feel cooler now. Are you all right? Any he
art palpitations or dizziness?”
I blinked in wonder and I shook my head. “I’m fine.” I hadn’t realized how bad my health had deteriorated until I started to feel like myself again.
Relief sparkled in Jamie’s eyes as he let me go and walked back to stare at the jewel-encrusted luckenbooth on the stone floor. “Ye didna wear it all the time, did you?”
All the times I felt most like myself over the last weeks . . . the céilidh dance, the day we crossed back to Doon from Alloway . . . I hadn’t been wearing the pendant. Feeling like an utter moron, I replied, “No, but when I collapsed the first time, I’d been wearing it for a solid seven days. Why didn’t it kill me then?”
“Because you’re stronger than Lynnette ever was. And the curse was no’ meant for you.” He stroked his chin. “But perhaps because it was meant for the queen of Doon, the longer ye wore it the stronger its hold on you became. And the more it ate away at you when it touched yer flesh.”
I shivered hard.
Jamie wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “From what we’ve been able to gather, the coven used the pendant to create a curse tha’ bound Lynnette to her vow to relinquish the throne. The broach became symbolic of her soul. It was her most prized possession, and she gave it over to evil because she was afraid — weak. She lost faith tha’ good would triumph over evil, and it ended her life.”
“So this pendant represents Addie’s claim to the throne of Doon, and I’ve been wearing it?” My voice spiraled higher with every word. How could I have fallen into that witch’s plan again? Fury burned through my chest as I grabbed the chain off the floor. Before Jamie could stop me, I darted around the table and hurled the pendant into the fire with a shriek. “You will never have power over me again!”
There was an ominous hiss and then black-violet sparks flew up the chimney, purple flames licking out as if consuming the fire. A whoosh of icy air touched my face and Jamie yanked me back. The door burst open behind us.
A body slammed into both Jamie and me, tackling us to the floor so that my face was buried in the carpet. A boom shook the room, followed by the tinkling of shattering glass. And then silence.
I lifted my head to find Eòran half on top of both of us, shards of purple debris coating his hair and beard. “Yer Majesty? My Laird? Are ye all right?”
I met Jamie’s eyes and then nodded, watching the purple ash as it fell from my hair. “Jamie?”
“I’m fine, love. Tha’ is, I will be if this thousand-pound boulder you call a guard would get off of me,” he teased.
Eòran lifted up with a groan, limping backward on his bad leg. Jamie shot to his feet and steadied Eòran with a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, my good man.”
My guard nodded, and they both turned and extended a hand to help me up. I took each of their hands and let them tug me to my feet. Jamie ran his fingers through his hair and then shook like a dog, sending sprinkles of purple everywhere.
Eòran scanned the room. Everything in a twenty-foot radius of the hearth was coated in plum-colored dust. “What the devil was that?”
I wiped the ash from my arms, and the tiny shards, like iridescent sparkles, stuck to my fingertips. I’d seen this before.
Picking up a lantern from the table, I made my way to the hearth and squatted in front of the now-dark fireplace.
Jamie crouched beside me as I sifted through the heap of ash with a brass poker.
“Be careful.”
“I am. But the frozen flames and the purple ash, it’s exactly what happened when Fiona and I broke the curse on Aunt Gracie’s journal, the night Addie kidnapped you.” I kept digging. “But I have to be sure.”
Eòran moved to stand behind us, the candelabra in his hand throwing wavering ribbons of light onto the hearth. “What are ye lookin’ for?”
Just then the tip of the poker clinked against metal. Maneuvering the hook, I lifted the pendant from the rubble. “I’m looking for this.” Charred and twisted almost beyond recognition, the luckenbooth hung from the blackened chain.
“We need to find Fiona.” I turned to Jamie. “I think we broke the curse.”
CHAPTER 10
Mackenna
If déjà vu all over again was a thing, I was having it . . . again. The only other time I’d been in the royal chapel, the group had been solely focused on breaking the curse wrapped around my aunt Gracie’s journal. What Vee was describing to us now, with the pendant and the shards of purple debris, made my stomach sour. The Witch of Doon definitely had a signature to her curses.
The charred remains of the luckenbooth rested on a small dais in the middle of the chapel annex off to one side of the main sanctuary. The windowless, rectangular room felt like a tomb, even with a ton of candles blazing from the altar at the far end. Three of the four walls were covered in floor to ceiling box-like panels that varied in size and reminded me more than a little bit of the mausoleum where my mom’s ashes had been buried.
One of those boxes contained the witches’ book of spells. Now, Queen Lynnette’s pendant would go in another. When Vee and I had first arrived in Doon, and our rings had been confiscated, they had also been kept in here.
Without meaning to, I touched the silver and emerald ring on my right hand. I’d promised not to take it off until we’d solved whatever had been going on. If only the cause could be attributed to the cursed luckenbooth. But of course not. That would be too neat and tidy for real life.
“You’re sure this isn’t what sucked us out of Doon?” I asked lamely as Fergus lifted the pendant with a pair of fireplace tongs and placed it into one of the boxes near the altar.
Fiona shook her head so that her strawberry blonde curls bounced around her grave face. “Nay. Not likely.”
Over her shoulder, Adam added, “Especially since it caused Vee to become ill long before the two of you were transported to the modern world. More likely, it’s a different curse or something else entirely.”
Next to him Oliver cleared his throat, and I noticed his eyes glowed with their own light — that of a science nerd about to get his geek on. “We’d like permission to study the pendant and the spell book. Maybe there’s an electro-magnetic signature we can identify. Something that will tell us if there are other cursed objects in Doon.”
With a quick glance at Jamie and Duncan to ensure they were on board, Vee replied, “Of course. Anything you want.”
“Thank you.” Oliver’s gazed dipped longingly to the ruby ring on her hand before he remembered himself. Sheepishly he said, “I’d like to start tonight.”
Jamie grasped Oliver’s hand. “Thank you, man. Your dedication is greatly appreciated.” Then taking Vee’s arm, he guided her toward the exit with Fergus and Fiona close behind. As I started to follow, Duncan’s large hand settled against the small of my back, his touch anchoring me to his side and his kingdom.
As we made our way through the corridors and Fergus and Duncan began to discuss boy things — borders surveys and whether to postpone their next training exercises — Fiona fell in step with me.
In her quiet, non-judgey way, she said, “I sense ye still have some questions about the luckenbooth. Put your mind at ease by askin’.”
That’s all the invitation I needed. “If the curse was meant for Queen Lynnette, why was Vee getting sick?”
“As far as I can discern, the spell was cast to kill the queen o’ Doon. Thankfully, Vee is verra resilient and the spell had been partly used up on its intended victim.” She shook her head ruefully. “Tis a blessing that our queen is a much stronger lass than the locket’s first victim.”
I snorted in response. “I still don’t get why Lynnette made the deal with the witches. She should’ve known better.”
Fiona touched my arm, and as we walked through the long north corridor, her green eyes began to shimmer. “People do all sorts of unthinkable acts when they’re desperate. Regardless o’ her reasons, Queen Lynnette made a terrible bargain to save her kingdom. By opening up her soul to evil, she gave t
he coven the means ta destroy her.”
“Such a tragic fate.”
“Perhaps,” Fiona agreed in her musing tone that meant she was about to contradict me. “But without her sacrifice, King Angus never would’ve petitioned the Protector ta save our kingdom. There would’ve been no miracle o’ deliverance . . .” She trailed off, her head tipped to the side as she let the implication sink in.
“And Duncan and I would have never met.”
“Nor Veronica and Jamie,” she added.
“So the Protector caused Lynnette to make that bargain?”
“Nay, she did it of her own free will. But the Protector used the situation for his glory, in spite of her weakness.”
“If the Protector could do that, why didn’t he save Lynnette?” I challenged as we approached the corridor to our tower.
“Because her actions had consequences. All our actions do.” “So he allowed the witches to punish Lynnette for her lack of faith.”
“He allowed her to reap the consequences of her choices, yes. But he also honored the intentions of Lynnette’s heart. Ultimately, she wanted to protect her people, and although she wasn’t around to see it, her deepest desire was granted. Doon was saved. Which I suspect had been his plan all along.”
As I wound my way through the castle, I envied Fiona her faith. Life would be so much easier if I could trust there was a perfect plan behind everything, and that someday I would be able to look back and see clearly how everything played out exactly as it was meant to be.
I woke up to knocking on the bedroom door and Vee’s freshly painted toes poking into my cheek. We were sleeping head to toe, just as we had when we were little, when sleeping at the foot of the bed seemed the pinnacle of ten-year-old rebelliousness.
“Your Highness, Mackenna.” Emily’s soft but insistent voice pierced the dark in tandem with the shaft of light from the cracked door. “Come quick. Adam’s at the door. He thinks he found something.”
Vee and I rolled to sitting positions with minimal collision. By the time my feet hit the floor, Emily had crossed the room to light the wall sconces. My eyes clamped shut against the golden onslaught. Blind as well as sleep-dumb, I fumbled with heavy limbs for a robe while my feet wriggled on the floor like sightless moles in search of my slippers.
