by Jen Holling
A sharp twinge in her back reminded her of Deidra. She scanned the moor around her. The fighting was over. The wind whispered over the moor, disturbing the tufts of grass. Horses meandered about, two of them cantering together playfully. Where was everyone? Her heart raced again as she limped hurriedly to the ruined cottage. She counted four bodies of broken men and spotted several more dark mounds further away.
She found Wallace on the ground inside the cottage, leaning against a wall, grasping his side. His hand was dark and wet.
Rose dropped to the ground beside him. “What happened?”
He spoke through gritted teeth. “Sword wound. Not bad.”
“Let me see.” She pulled his fingers away and pushed his plaid off his shoulder, then removed his leather vest. The linen shirt beneath was crimson with blood.
Against his feeble protests, Rose peeled the shirt off. “I need some water,” she murmured, scanning the interior for their supplies. A water flask was near and she grabbed it, returning to her patient. She pulled the cork out and held it to Wallace’s mouth so he could drink.
“My thanks,” he gasped.
Rose poured water over the wound. Wallace hissed, and the muscles along his side contracted. The gash was deep but not mortal, slicing him along his ribs.
Rose let out the breath she’d been holding. “It will be fine. I just need to stitch it up. Let me find the others first.”
She stood and through a gaping hole in the wall, she saw Drake approaching. Strathwick followed, holding his daughter by the hand. Rose finally allowed herself to truly breathe, putting a trembling hand to her mouth. Everyone was safe, and, it appeared, the broken men vanquished.
As soon as they entered the cottage, Strathwick growled, “I told you to keep riding! Why did you come back?”
His gruff tone brought her up short, and she snapped, “I didn’t mean to! It was Moireach—I lost control of her. She went mad.”
“That cow went mad?” He pointed.
Moireach had wandered to the hole in the wall and gazed in blandly. Deidra giggled.
Rose had no explanation for the mare’s behavior. Her back ached and a wounded man needed her help. She had no time to argue.
“My box,” she said wearily and left the cottage to fetch it off the horse, chastising Moireach all the while for being such a naughty beast. When she returned, Strathwick was kneeling beside Wallace, inspecting the wound in his side.
Annoyed, Rose hurried to join them, edging Strathwick out of the way. “What are you doing?”
“I thought I might heal him,” he said dryly.
“No—it’s not bad.” She brushed his hands away. “I’ll stitch it and it will heal normally. Waste not your magic on something I can easily tend.”
“And if it festers?”
Rose turned to look at him, her mouth tight with doubt.
“I do it now,” Strathwick said patiently, “and cause myself mild discomfort, or I do it later and am laid up for a whole day at least. I choose now.”
“It might not fester.”
“Let her sew me up, my lord,” Wallace gasped. “I owe you my life, I can ask for naught more than to give fate her chance with me. Mistress MacDonell is a fine healer; it will be fine.”
Strathwick gripped Wallace’s shoulder and gazed at him with grim affection. “And that is why I want to do it.” He turned to his brother. “Gather up the rest of the horses. Take Deidra with you.”
“No!” The word exploded out of Rose without warning, surprising even herself.
Everyone stared at her in astonishment.
She hesitated, her mind racing for an explanation but drawing a blank. Nevertheless, she could not allow Deidra to go off alone with her uncle. She said, “I’d like Deidra to stay here.”
Strathwick shook his head decisively. “Nay, I never allow her to witness a healing.” He nodded to his brother. “Go.”
Drake extended his hand for Deidra to take. “No,” Rose said, standing and grabbing Deidra’s arm, pulling the child close. “It’s not safe. What if there are more broken men?”
Strathwick stood, too, his patience clearly wearing thin. “There aren’t—and if there were, she’d be safer with Drake than with you, lass. At least he follows my orders.”
“Does he?” she bit out, her eyes narrowed on the dark-haired young man now gaping at her.
Strathwick’s brows drew together in confusion and annoyance.
Drake stepped forward, indignant. “What mean you?”
She glowered at him and said in a low voice, “You know what I mean.”
His eyes narrowed and his face grew hard. His words were clipped with anger. “No, I don’t.”
“Since no one seems to know but you,” Strathwick said, his voice rife with barely controlled irritation, “I beg your indulgence on this. What are you accusing my brother of doing?”
Rose should have kept her mouth shut. The timing was not right, but after the night’s harrowing events, her emotions were raw and close to the surface. She thought of telling them to forget about it, asking pardon for her insinuations, but she knew that wouldn’t do now. They would not forget. And besides, she wasn’t sorry. There was something empowering about saying it aloud after all the years she’d suffered her own pain and humiliation in silence.
Rose pinned Drake with an accusatory look. “Why don’t you tell your brother about the secret you and Deidra are keeping from him?”
Drake shook his head in confusion, then abruptly his eyes widened in surprise. He turned to his brother guiltily. “Oh…that.”
Rose nodded in cold triumph. “Aye, that.”
Strathwick spoke through clenched teeth, hands braced on his hips as he glared at the two of them. “Someone prithee explain to me what ‘that’ is.”
Drake shoved a hand through his hair. “Now? Can you not tend Wallace first while Dede and I see to the horses?”
“Why?” Rose said angrily, taking a step toward him and pushing Deidra behind her. “So you can take Deidra outside and get your stories straight? So you can threaten her?”
“What the hell?” Drake cried, his face darkening with furious indignation.
Rose whirled to face Strathwick. “He has been doing things to your daughter. Making her touch him.”
Strathwick turned on his brother, his eyes icy. His voice was low and menacing. “What is she saying?”
Drake sprang at her suddenly, grabbing her arms, giving her a hard shake that rattled her teeth. “Are you mad?” he sputtered. “You vile bitch—I would never—”
Rose pushed at him, clawing at his face with her nails. Strathwick was between them, shoving them violently apart. They glared at each other over Strathwick’s arms, panting.
“She told me!” Rose pointed at Deidra, who stared at the adults around her with wide, frightened eyes.
Strathwick frowned at Rose, worry creasing his brow. He gave his brother a long look, then pushed his shoulder lightly and pointed to him to stay where he was. Strathwick squatted in front of his daughter. “Squirrel?” he said with forced calm. “Has Uncle Drake made you keep secrets?”
Deidra swallowed and started to turn, to look up at her uncle, but Strathwick grasped her arms, bringing her gaze back to him. “Don’t look at him, sweetheart, look at me.”
“Uncle Drake said you’d be upset.”
Strathwick’s jaw hardened, and he exhaled hard through his nose. Rose could see he fought for control, not wanting to frighten Deidra.
“You know there is naught you could do that would upset me. Just tell me, love. You don’t keep secrets from me.”
Deidra bit her bottom lip, looking torn and woeful. Rose gave Drake a look of disgust. She wanted to geld him—had ever since Deidra had first said the words to her. But now, seeing the child so miserable, holding so much trust in the man who mistreated her, made Rose livid with rage.
Deidra gazed at her father with wide, unhappy eyes. “Uncle Drake said you have enough worries, that we should not add
to them.”
Strathwick shot his brother a look of barely suppressed fury. “I am your father. I gladly shoulder all your worries.”
Deidra nodded hesitantly, then said, “I can hear the animals. They talk to me.”
The tension abruptly released from the set of Strathwick’s shoulders as he frowned at his daughter. Rose gave Drake a wary glance, but his gaze was fixed on brother and niece.
“What do you mean?” Strathwick asked gently.
“I’m a witch—just like you, but I can talk to animals. See—” She turned to the hole in the wall. Moireach’s entire head hung through the hole now, but she promptly pulled back. Her hoofbeats could be heard around the side of the cottage until she appeared in the ruined doorway and stepped delicately inside. She came to Deidra and nuzzled her head.
“She wants an apple,” Deidra said, smiling. “Watch.” Deidra said nothing to the horse, but Moireach turned and walked over to Strathwick’s bag and pulled at it with her lips and teeth.
“She’ll tear it,” Deidra said. “She can’t untie things with hooves.”
Drake walked over to the bag and untied it. Moireach buried her nose in it and came out munching an apple. When she finished, she lowered her head back to the bag, then stopped and walked away, going to the horse’s end of the cottage, where she stood expectantly, tail swishing.
Everyone turned to stare at Deidra. She said, “I told her she could only have one.” She looked up at her father hopefully. “Are you very angry?”
Strathwick let out a nervous and clearly fake laugh. “Of course not. I think that is a splendid trick.” He grew serious and intense. He gripped Deidra’s shoulders again. “Uncle Drake has the right of it, though. We should keep it a secret—just not from me. We’ll talk more about this when I’ve had time to think on it, aye?”
He stood, gazing about the cottage, thoroughly confounded.
Rose knelt in front of Deidra. “This was your secret?”
Deidra nodded.
“And it was nothing else?”
Deidra shook her head. Rose’s stomach dropped sickeningly. Drake’s shadow fell over her in the moonlight, threatening and furious.
“What did you think it was?” Drake asked, his tone scathing. “Because it sounded vile to me.”
Rose flushed, confused and embarrassed. “I made a mistake…I’m so sorry…forgive me.” She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear the revulsion she’d see in his face. She pivoted and stood, trying to move away, but he caught her arm roughly and turned her to face him.
“No—you’ve dishonored me to my family and it was just a ‘mistake’? I think not! I’ve done naught to deserve this. For God’s sake, why would you accuse me of such a thing?”
Rose could not tell them why, and it sickened her and humiliated her. She wanted it to all go away. Her palms were damp with clammy sweat; it trickled between her breasts. Why had she opened her mouth? Why had she not handled it better? And why, oh why had she assumed such a thing? An image of Fagan MacLean flashed through her head, leering at her in his beard, throwing back his plaid. She gritted her teeth and forced the image away. She knew why, and she would not share that. She looked wildly at Strathwick, pleading silently for intervention, but he still frowned at his daughter, looking befuddled and a bit ill himself.
Drake shook Rose. “Answer me!”
Rose yanked her arm away from Drake’s punishing hold. “I made a mistake and I apologized! Leave me alone!”
Drake’s brow lowered and he stepped toward her again, but Strathwick put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him. “Leave her! Wallace must be tended.” He looked angry again. He leaned close to his brother. “You and I will talk later. Take Deidra.”
Drake gave Rose a final, baleful glare and left, pulling a wide-eyed Deidra along with him. Strathwick sighed and rubbed at his forehead. Rose waited for him to demand that she explain why she thought Drake had done something so horrible to his daughter, but he didn’t.
He knelt in front of Wallace and gestured to her. “Come here.”
On watery legs, Rose did as he bid. She wanted to curl into a ball and shut it all out, but she couldn’t. Work was the next best thing.
“How are you?” Rose asked Wallace, embarrassed that he’d witnessed her outburst, horrified she’d completely forgotten him in the midst of her stupidity.
He gave her a tight grin. “Fine.”
Strathwick touched her arm. “You told me before you only see the colors. That you cannot feel them.”
“That’s right.”
He placed a hand on Wallace’s shoulder. “A moment of indulgence, friend?”
“Of course,” Wallace said, though pain had etched lines beside his mouth and the scar on his cheek was dark.
Strathwick gestured to the wound on Wallace’s side. “Tell me what you see here.”
Rose took a deep, shaky breath and closed her eyes, summoning the magic. It took a moment to focus, but she welcomed the distraction and the opportunity to forget, for at least a brief moment, what had just happened. She opened her eyes and passed one hand over the wound. “I see gold…that’s his color. But at the wound site there are black and burgundy streaks—I always see that on this type of wound. There are also splotches of gray. Normally, I would clean the wound until those splotches faded, then sew it up.”
“Good. That is also what I see. But I want you to try something new.” He placed his hand over hers. “The magic isn’t here, but here.” He tapped her breastbone.
“Your hands are just the instruments.”
Rose nodded. She took a deep breath, trying to assimilate Strathwick’s instructions into something that she could understand. It was true that she felt the magic in her chest and gut, not her hands. But she never saw the auras around others unless her hands hovered over them, so she’d assumed her hands did the magic.
“Close your eyes and see it,” Strathwick instructed.
She clenched her hands in fists and did as he bid, closing her eyes and trying to envision the magic inside her.
“It’s a dark blue,” Strathwick said softly. “And it pulses with life. See it as such, a throbbing cloud in your chest.”
Rose imagined it, a pulsing, shimmering ball of midnight blue.
“It’s all in your mind. It’s yours to command if you wish. Now shift it, send it up, to your shoulders, down your arms—”
Rose gasped. She’d done just as he said and felt something warm and tingling rush down her arms. Her eyes sprang open, and she gazed at Strathwick warily.
He stared back at her, his face grim. “You feel it, don’t you?”
She nodded, speechless with disbelief and wonder. He was teaching her, yet he didn’t seem pleased.
“Now don’t lose it.” He nodded to Wallace’s wound again. “Tell me what you feel.”
“Very well.” The magic inside her pulsed in her breast, stronger now than it had ever been before, twisting and turning on itself, eager for an outlet.
“Send it to your hands,” Strathwick said, as if he could see it in her mind.
Again, Rose imagined it moving down her arms, and she felt the corresponding tingle and warm rush down to her fingers.
“Now feel it.”
Rose placed her hands just over Wallace’s wound. She saw the sharp black and burgundy streaks again.
“Stop looking and start feeling,” Strathwick urged.
Rose bit her lip and willed her hands to feel something. She was startled by Strathwick’s hands over hers, his fingers sliding between hers and holding her lightly. His hands glowed sapphire blue all around hers. She felt a deep throb up her arms.
“Do you feel it?”
Rose nodded. Wallace’s pain radiated up through her palm like heat from a fire, washing over her in pricks and aches. Rose resisted the urge to flinch away from it. Strathwick released her hand, but when she would have drawn back, he said, “No. Place your hands over mine.”
She slid her hands over his, her fingers curli
ng gently between his. Her hands were so pale and delicate next to his large ones.
He turned his head toward her, his face so close that she could feel his breath against her cheek. She looked at him, waiting, her breath short with the mingled excitement of what they were doing.
“Are you ready?”
“Aye.”
He turned his head away and Rose focused on their hands. He placed them over Wallace’s wound. She felt the slick blood on the backs of her fingers where she held onto Strathwick’s hands. She gasped when she saw it, so different from what she’d been imagining. The sapphire blue washed down his arms like a dam breaking, pouring over her hands. Power flowed through her fingers and palms, sending energy and warmth up her arms. His magic surrounded the dark, angry colors of Wallace’s wound. Then she felt a change in his magic, like a line being reeled in, and it washed back over her, taking the pain with it.
It was over quickly. Rose struggled to catch her breath, the strength of his power leaving her breathless and stunned. A faint blue glow lingered around their hands when Strathwick pulled away. Rose disentangled her fingers from his. Blood stained their hands and Wallace’s skin, but when Strathwick used the discarded shirt to wipe Wallace’s side, it was clear, the wound gone. Only a slight redness remained as proof anything had once been there.
Wallace moved gingerly at first, then leaned forward, gaping down at his midsection. “A saint, you are. This is twice you’ve healed me. How can I ever repay you?”
Strathwick stood, grimacing as he did, his hand over his ribs. “You repay me tenfold with your loyalty and friendship.” He walked stiffly to the cottage wall and sank down against it. Wallace fussed around him, bringing a plaid and food, wanting to know what else he could do.
“A fire,” Strathwick said, and Wallace was gone, off to gather what kindling could be found on the moor.
Rose knelt beside Strathwick. “When the fire is built, I’ll make you a physik for the pain and to help you sleep.”
“That would be fine.”
Rose stayed with him, unable to make herself move. He had shown her something wondrous on this night, something only she could see because of her magic. She felt bound to him somehow and was confused by it, wondering if he felt this new connection or if it was just her. The wind blew across them and she shivered, then noticed his hair. He kept it short and neat, like a warrior’s. She’d just been admiring it the night before, and so she noticed the change. She touched a lock at his temple. He drew back slightly, but when her fingers followed, he let her touch him.
