Lady MacDonald seemed to cover the space between them in a blink. She towered over Ceana. The mental image of the fairy towering over her and Gavran stole her breath. She flinched back.
Lady MacDonald drew herself together. She lifted a hand as if she were going to touch Ceana’s face, brought it within an inch, but let it fall back to her side. “I’d hoped to avoid what clearly needs to be done.”
Ceana opened her mouth to tell her that was no clearer than anything she’d said before, but Lady MacDonald raised a hand again, this time in a be patient motion.
“I promise to be less cryptic when I’m sure your ears will be the only ones to hear what I have to say.”
She led the way out of the chapel and up the castle stairs. She pushed open the door to a small room with a fire that burned despite the growing warmth of the day. She asked Eachann to wait outside.
Lady MacDonald drew close to the fireplace and held her hands near to the flames. “I can never seem to feel warm until the heart of summer.” She turned back to face them. “When you entered the chapel, I was praying the nuckalevee hadn’t left you to suffer long before killing you.”
Ceana reached out a hand into space but couldn’t find anything to hang on to. They’d been lambs sent to the slaughter after all.
A palm cupped her elbow, and Gavran steadied her.
“So you did send us out to die,” Gavran said.
The look on Gavran’s face was like that of a dog standing between its master and a wolf. He’d worn that look when she’d run to him, her face bruised from where her dadaidh hit her. It felt like a thousand years since she’d seen that look and struggled to convince him that killing her dadaidh would only see him hung and her family no better off than before. Even after all she’d brought down on him, he still sought to protect her.
Gavran fisted his good hand. “You’ll only anger the Lord God Almighty by praying to him and making human sacrifices to demons.”
“I’m not fool enough to anger the Holy of Holies.” Lady MacDonald spoke the name with reverence again. Like she was awed by merely speaking of God. “I prayed for your quick deaths because I believed you’d challenged the nuckalevee and failed, not because I sent you off to appease the creature’s lust for blood and pain.”
“And why did you believe we’d failed?” Gavran’s tone clearly said he’d need more details if Lady MacDonald expected them to believe her this time.
“We received word at dawn of a new outbreak of the Black Death.”
It came, and they’d missed it. Ceana couldn’t stop her head from wagging back and forth. “But we waited at the most likely spot. If you’d seen how void of life it was, you’d be convinced.”
Lady MacDonald removed her head covering and folded it into precise squares. “That is my fear. If it avoided its normal spot, it knows we’re hunting it, and now it plays with us.”
“Then we’ve no hope of catching it.” Hard as she tried to control it, her tone still shot up in pitch, and her words tumbled over each other.
“You’ve asked that I tell you everything I know about the nuckalevee.” In contrast to her own, Lady MacDonald’s voice rang hollow. “There’s one thing left we can try. We can lure it into a trap with a bait it can’t resist.”
Ceana’s fingers suddenly felt numb. She could think of very few reasons why Lady MacDonald wouldn’t have sent them out with bait for the nuckalevee in the beginning. “What do we use for bait?”
“Fresh flesh.”
“Then why are we delaying?” Gavran straightened his shoulders. “Have your butcher slaughter a pig.”
Lady MacDonald’s lips were blue, like cold had set into the marrow of her bones. “Human flesh.”
Chapter 21
Tremors attacked Ceana’s arms, and she gave in to them rather than fighting them. Monster wasn’t a strong enough term. Gavran had been right when he called the nuckalevee a demon. She suddenly felt naïve for once believing the fairy who cursed them was the worst being out there. At least the fairy had offered good to one of them. “We wouldn’t have been enough bait, then? Two of us would have been a feast for it.”
Lady MacDonald gave Ceana an I’m-so-sorry-to-be-the-one-to-tell-you-this look. “The flesh needs to be recently dead.”
Gavran buried his hands in his hair and pulled. She’d never seen him do that before.
“How recently dead?” She heard herself asking the question, but it felt like the words came from someone else, one part of her detached from the other, like a marionette with frozen strings.
“I can’t say.”
Ceana tugged her mind back from the corner it wanted to hide in. Lady MacDonald had played with them like a spinning top, keeping them dizzy so they didn’t know which direction to face. It was time to stop and hear the whole truth. “You can’t tell us more, or you refuse to? What are you still holding back?”
“I can’t.” Lady MacDonald’s words carried a sharp edge. “I may hold more knowledge about the fae than most, but I’m not all-knowing. Only the nuckalevee themselves and the Almighty know at what point dead human flesh stops holding an attraction for them. I’ve told you all I’m able. I can’t even tell you how much flesh would be enough to lure it out.”
The implication of what Lady MacDonald had told them clung to Ceana, and the weight of it suddenly seemed to be more than her legs could support. She sank into a chair.
Gavran let go of his hair. “Do you have anyone sentenced for execution?”
“Not at present.”
“So all we have to do to trap the nuckalevee is kill someone.” His words dripped with enough sarcasm to make the floor slick. “Hunt down a human being like an animal.”
Ceana rubbed the spot above her temples where all the tension in the world had pooled. The MacDonalds had no one scheduled for execution, but many people who deserved to die were never caught. Perhaps they could kill someone who deserved to die.
“How could we know who deserves to die and who doesn’t?” Gavran said.
Her gaze snapped to him. She couldn’t tell if she’d accidentally spoken her thoughts or if he’d merely been thinking the same thing she had. But the question sounded rhetorical, so she must have spoken aloud.
Lady MacDonald held her head covering to herself, crumpling it. There was no more haughtiness or self-righteous anger in her manner. Only sadness so genuine that Ceana wanted to cry. Wanted to cry for her. Except she and Lady MacDonald seemed to share that in common. Neither of them could afford the luxury of tears. They had to hold themselves together. If they broke, the resulting pieces might be too small to find and put back together.
Or maybe she was projecting her own emotions onto the woman because she didn’t want to feel alone, now of all times.
“I won’t kill someone to lure the nuckalevee.” Gavran knelt in front of Ceana, his good hand resting on the arm of her chair. “We have to think about who we want to be when this is done.”
Gavran had said as much when she’d suggested killing the spaewife, and he’d been right then, too, even if she hadn’t been able to see it at the time. They couldn’t kill someone who wasn’t part of this.
And yet, making that choice required giving up on saving her brother and all the people plagued by the nuckalevee.
The shivers wracking her moved from the outside in, straight to her center. They were out of options. Her brain couldn’t seem to grasp it. “I didn’t think this was how it would end.”
Blood pounded in Gavran’s forehead. His life had become a fairy tale where everyone ended up losing their heads or drowning in a pot of boiling oil.
He glanced back at Lady MacDonald. “Will you leave us, please?”
Lady MacDonald left without a word.
The ache spread to his heart and wrapped around it until each beat felt like a struggle. He linked his fingers with Ceana’s. “We can find another way.”
“There is no other way.” Her voice had gone flat. “You’ve said it, and so have I.”
; He had no answer to that. No good answer, anyway. They had said that. It was the whole reason they’d agreed to fight the nuckalevee in the first place.
She wriggled her fingers from his grasp and stood. She put two steps between them. “It’s time for you to go home to your family.”
Nae. He moved after her, closing the space between them again. It wasn’t fair, nor right. He couldn’t let it end this way. He couldn’t go home to his blessed life and leave her to the curses once again.
He also couldn’t take her back with him. His family wanted her tried for witchcraft. Breaking his promise to Brighde and leaving his family would be more right than abandoning Ceana to her fate. “We can start over somewhere. You’ll be safe from the curses as long as we’re together.”
She smiled as if there were some joke about this that he didn’t see. “I thought so, too, at first, but that only works so long as we stay together. There’ve been so many times I’ve almost been separated from you already. We could never go anywhere beyond the field borders without the other. Neither of us could have a family. No spouse would abide it.”
He ran his hands over the stubble on his cheeks and chin. He couldn’t seem to rub away the wrongness of it all. “If you want a family, children, then I’ll wed you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut so tightly the edges crinkled. “You know as well as I it won’t work.”
“And why not?”
“You still can’t leave me alone. What happens if you have an accident and die? I wouldn’t even be able to keep any children alive.” She shook her head slowly. “You don’t know what it was like with my brother. I won’t do that to a child.”
The acerbic scent of the smoke from the fire clogged his brain. He drew a breath in through his mouth and still it choked him. “We can’t just give up.”
“You tried. We’ve both tried.” Her voice was steady, the deadness replaced by a disturbing calm. “It isn’t giving up to stop pushing against a wall that will never topple. It’s wisdom.”
How could she be at peace with this? He clenched and unclenched his hands, stretched out his fingers, but couldn’t get the clenching around his heart to release with them.
She slipped her hand into his and stared down at their linked palms. Her hand hid in his. He’d never noticed before how tiny her hands were. How fragile. And yet she seemed to be facing this situation with more strength than he could muster.
She squeezed his hand. “You always did want to save everyone, and you can’t this time, not me or the people here.”
He freed his hand and stroked the loose hair back from her face, the face that he’d see every night in his dreams if he left her behind. It was unsettling to be so well-known by someone he felt he’d met but a fortnight ago. If he left her behind, he’d never have a chance to rebuild the friendship they’d had before.
He was also sure he’d never find another like it again. Friendships so deep that one member would give up everything to spare the other couldn’t come along twice in a lifetime.
She smiled up at him. “You can still save my brother. With the wishes guaranteeing your success, you can find him and keep him safe. Please do that for me. It’s what’s mattered to me from the start.”
Maybe he’d been trying too hard to find a perfect solution to a situation where there wasn’t one and couldn’t be one. Maybe this time saving just one boy would have to be enough.
But it didn’t it feel like enough.
He wanted to pull her into his arms and shield her, but what he wanted wasn’t important anymore. He’d come into this thinking about himself, appeasing his guilt and freeing himself from his dream. If he refused her now, he’d still be thinking about himself.
Instead, he’d go out of it thinking about her. What she wanted and needed was for her brother to be cared for the way he should have been.
“I’ll find him. I promise.”
“And I know you’re much better at keeping them than at making them.”
Her smile crumbled, and his heart cracked with it. He pulled the final two coins they’d stolen from his dadaidh out of his pocket and held them out to her.
She accepted them and gave him a firm nod.
He headed for the door, not allowing himself a final look back. He used to think nothing could be worse than dreaming about her every night without an end. Now he knew he’d been wrong.
Chapter 22
Ceana stared down at the coins. Enough to buy herself a bannock or two. A day’s worth if she could manage to keep it.
Her hands quaked so violently that the coins slipped from her fingers. She dropped to her knees and grabbed for them, but they rolled in all directions. If she couldn’t keep hold on them now, what was she to do once Gavran left the boundary of where the wishes and curses canceled each other out?
She slumped forward and pressed her head to the floor. Her chest hurt enough that she should have died from it. But she didn’t want to die anymore. She wanted to live a real life again. She’d held it for a moment, and then it’d slipped through her fingers just like Gavran’s coins.
The coppery tang of blood flooded her mouth. She eased her jaw and ran her tongue over where she’d bitten the inside of her cheek until she bled without even noticing. She forced herself upright again.
She’d made the right choice, no matter how much it hurt. She’d found a way to ensure her brother would be cared for. That edged her pain in joy. Gavran wouldn’t rest until he found him, and Davina’s mother-hen instincts would never turn away a young man who couldn’t care for himself.
A woosh of air told her the door across the room swung open, and her stomach plunged.
If Gavran had returned, she wouldn’t have the courage to chase him away again. He’d almost broken her will when he offered to marry her. He couldn’t know how many times before the wishes she’d prayed he would offer. But the wishes seemed to enjoy taking every hope she’d ever had and twisting them beyond recognition.
The footsteps that crossed the room were too light to be Gavran’s and accompanied by the rustle of skirts.
He hadn’t returned. Lady MacDonald had.
She raised her face.
Lady MacDonald offered her a hand.
Ceana took it. It was a touch colder than her own and reminded her of a breeze passed through a shadow on a hot summer afternoon. “I sent Gavran away with my blessing.”
“I saw him on his way out. I instructed him on how to find his father’s camp.”
“I don’t have long until the curses set in again.”
Lady MacDonald walked her to a chair. “I’ve sent for food.”
Her stomach growled, and her heart wanted to grab onto Lady MacDonald’s kindness and hold it so tightly it couldn’t get away, but she couldn’t let herself care. Any minute now, whatever she wanted would only turn into the opposite. “I won’t be able to eat it.”
“You will with my help.”
Ceana tucked her hands between her knees. Lady MacDonald must have misunderstood when they’d explained the wishes and curses to her. She didn’t have the fortitude to go through it again. Soon it wouldn’t matter if Lady MacDonald understood or not.
A servant entered and set a platter of fresh bread, cheese, and ale on the table between them. Lady MacDonald picked up a chunk of bread, added cheese to it, and held it out to Ceana.
Perhaps if she swallowed her food without chewing, she’d get it down before Gavran passed the boundary. She snapped up the bread and cheese and gulped it down.
“You don’t need to eat that way,” Lady MacDonald said.
Instead of offering Ceana the plate, she handed her another chunk of bread. Ceana hesitated. Lady MacDonald hand-fed her like a mother bird. Something more was going on. How did she put into words what she wanted to know? “The curses—”
“Don’t apply to me.”
Ceana’s appetite vanished. She and Gavran had been right. Lady MacDonald hadn’t told them the whole truth, even after they’d demanded it.
> “Take it.” Lady MacDonald pushed the food closer. “I can even try handing you the plate to see if it will work.”
Ceana took the piece from her hand and chewed it until it dissolved in her mouth. She didn’t drop it. It didn’t choke her. It didn’t bring bile rushing into her throat. “Why is this…? Why am I able to…?”
“I’m immune to fae curses that weren’t cast directly on me. If I give you something, you’ll be able to use it because I want you to. The curses won’t stop you.”
Ceana shrank back in her chair. Now that she saw the way Lady MacDonald’s hands moved before she spoke, not after, and the quickness of her answers, she could tell Lady MacDonald spoke the truth now and when she said the nuckalevee could only be lured out by freshly dead human flesh. And that she’d lied to them more than once before.
Ceana drew in a deep breath to clear away the weight from her lungs. She couldn’t change the past. But this might change her future. “How is that possible?”
A mournful smile flitted across Lady MacDonald’s lips. “Call it a blessing that runs in my family line.”
“You said you couldn’t cure my curse.”
“I can’t. It doesn’t extend far. Only to our direct interactions because it protects me from any influence of your curse.”
The clues aligned in her mind like a broken pot melding itself back together. She must have been blind—or, more honestly, blinded by her own needs—not to have figured it out before. “You’re fae. You were fae.”
The tightness in Lady MacDonald’s figure relaxed, almost as if she was glad to hear it spoken aloud at last. “I was seelie. A selkie. Ihon and I brokered a deal to allow me to stay with him.”
“Angering the unseelie. Hence the nuckalevee sent to kill you if you leave your home.”
Lady MacDonald nodded. “They feel my permanent presence in the human realm gives unfair advantage to the side of good, despite the restrictions placed on me.”
Cursed Wishes Page 15
