She scoffed. “Tis an excellent question dear daughter. Perhaps ye should consider what happens if ye daena agree.”
“I guess you aren’t just going to let me go?”
“What is my ultimate goal?”
“To have Magnus do your bidding in six months.”
“If ye die today he will be upset. He may mourn ye long, but imprisoned he would have nae options but tae submit tae me. It might well be easier in the long run, but as I said, I am nae wanting tae see ye finished. I simply need ye tae be more controlled.”
“You see that this is an impossible decision for me to make?”
“Nae. Tis an easy decision. You just have tae make it.”
“If I take the deal, we can go back home to the day after we left?”
“And you can come back here and visit. You can come and go as ye please until Magnus is called for.”
“My knees really hurt.”
“Then you should make the decision quicker than this.”
“If I say yes, you won’t harass us, threaten my family, or bother us in any way?”
“I winna have a reason tae speak tae ye.”
“And if I say no...”
“You winna see morning.”
I gulped. “Can I speak to Magnus first?”
“Nae.”
I nodded. I knew that would be her answer, but I was hoping to ask everything I could think of before agreeing. I knew I had to agree though, I didn’t want to die, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Can you tell me what the ring does, how it works?”
“Nae. I daena know myself. I would imagine tis quite lethal. Possibly immediately so, but if the pain of the time vessel is any indication this may well be more painful. The inventors of these machines daena seem tae give a thought to mercy.”
I sat back on my heels and nodded.
She raised her brow, waiting.
“Okay.”
“You are saying aye tae my deal?”
I nodded again.
“I need ye tae say it louder.”
“Yes.”
She kept her gaze on my face.
I tried to meet her eyes. “Magnus will be ready for when he is called.”
“Good. Verra good.” She stood and crossed the floor to where I kneeled. The ring in her hand. She stood in front of me. “Raise your hair.”
“Wait, what? I thought it was a bracelet.” I raised my hair and flinched as she stretched the golden metal — it pulled open like putty — she brought it down over my head to my shoulders and released it. It felt like cold fingers as the ring grabbed around my throat, forming, tightening, panic-inducing.
“I don’t think I can—” I tugged at it but it felt adhered to my skin. “I can’t breathe.”
“Aye, ye can breathe.”
I gasped for air and tried to calm myself down. Clutching at the metal I heaved in a ragged breath. “I don’t want to I—”
“Just breathe.”
I dragged in a deep, stuttering breath.
“See? In a moment ye will nae remember tis there.”
Tears welled up in my eyes.
She offered me a hand to help me stand.
I groaned and shook out my legs. My right one had gone to sleep. I banged it up and down and rubbed the kneecap while she retrieved one of the time vessels from a nearby table and fiddled with it for a moment and then unceremoniously passed it to me. The silver ring had been wrapped around the vessel.
“In the fourth series of numbers, now, ye simply add the date.”
“Oh. Okay. What about the order, month and day and year, or the day the month the year?”
“The day, the month, the year.” She said, “Kaitlyn, I will show ye tae your husband’s room so ye may go.”
I tried again, fruitlessly to get the ring around my neck to pry away. It felt snug, not in a good way, and while it had been about a half inch wide before, it was now foil-thin and about two inches wide. I took a step and stumbled on my half-dead left leg. It shot through with pins and needles.
“Follow me,” Lady Mairead said.
Chapter 36
I rushed into the small prison room and sobbing into Magnus’s arms. Lady Mairead stood at the door, flanked by two formidable guards. Magnus held me and spoke into my hair, “Tis okay, Kaitlyn, okay.”
“I had to, I had to do it.” My face was pressed into his chest, sniveling into his skin.
He pulled my face up to his.
I cried harder looking at him. His face was broken. His skin marred, bruised, and split.
“What’s this then?” He meant my words, but his one sort of opened eye saw my neck ring. He lifted my chin to inspect it, tried to peel it off. “Kaitlyn what is this?”
I sobbed harder. “I’m just going to wear it while—”
“Lady Mairead, what have ye done?”
“Your wife, Magnus, has been sensible enough tae make a deal with me. I have given her life. She has promised me yours. In six months time, ye will be my warrior and attend me tae ye father’s court. If nae, she will take the punishment.”
“I will go with ye, take it off her neck, I promise I will—”
“Tis too late tae be willing tae deal, your wife has stepped in where ye were incapable.”
His arm went around me holding me to his chest.
“She has received a peace offering from me as well, a gift for ye both.” She turned to go. “I will see ye in six months, Magnus.”
“What about Kaitlyn, what will happen to her in six months?”
“I won’t need her anymore.” She departed through the door with the guards behind her. The door clanked shut as Magnus lunged for it.
He yelled though the door and struggled to open it. “What will you do to Kaitlyn in six months? Mairead, what is going to happen to Kaitlyn?”
There was no answer. Magnus stood, his hands on the door, his breaths coming in heaves.
What would happen to me when Lady Mairead didn’t need me anymore? It was the big question and one I forgot to ask. But what would it have helped? Either I died today or six months from now, either way I was going to die.
I sank onto the cold stone floor. The sound of my collapse brought Magnus around. He strode to where I laid crumbled in a heap. “Kaitlyn?”
“Yeah?”
He lowered himself beside me. “You have the vessel?” He pulled me up into his lap, cradled in his arms.
“Yes, and she gave me a new part. If we say a date now, we can go to that date.”
“Do ye remember the date we left?”
I nodded and curled into his arms, snuggling into this shoulder. “It’s the fourth set of numbers.” I gave him the date to use, one week after we left, so that it would make sense to our brains, our memories.
He pressed his cheek to my forehead and twisted the vessel, setting it pulsing to life. He began to recite the numbers while I held on around his neck, crying, going home.
Chapter 37
We must have landed in a sand dune. It was hot as hell. I had been sleeping, or whatever you called this thing after time-jumping where you lay unconscious just about dying of pain, for what felt like hours. Writhing. Screaming, sometimes internally, other times externally. Moaning too. I shook sand from my hair and checked Magnus. He shifted, thank god. I checked for my pouch. It was still around my waist. I dug through it for my phone.
I called Quentin.
That sound, the phone ringing, Quentin answering? Was the freaking best sound in the world. “Hi, we’re back.”
A moment later when I knew they were coming, I collapsed back in the sand. Then I rolled over and put an arm across Magnus’s chest. “They’re coming.”
“Och, aye,” he said and we lay there in the heat of a hot very hot Florida day.
* * *
Quentin’s face swam into focus. “Kaitlyn? Magnus? Jesus Christ Magnus, what happened to your face? Dude, I told you I should come with you, looks like you got your ass handed to you. Wow. Do you need a hospital?” He held ou
t a hand for me and helped me to standing.
Magnus lumbered to his feet with a groan. He looked at Quentin through his swollen, black, lidded eyes, and chuckled. “What? This daena look like I won the fight?”
“Sir, it looks like you beat a man with your face. You have a sword, you shouldn’t fight with your nose.”
Magnus put out an arm, waving it in the air, helplessly. Quentin threw his shoulder under his arm and helped lift him to the car. “I have lost my sword.”
“I see, along with your shirt and a good deal of your former good looks. How about you Katie, you okay?”
I limped behind them. “Besides being people-trafficked, having my life threatened, and PMSing in a cottage with a bunch of medieval madmen, yeah, I’m fine.”
Quentin chuckled. “Man, that sounds fun. Boss, take me with you next time?”
I climbed in the back and Quentin helped Magnus lower into the passenger seat of the mustang, then asked me, “Want to drive?”
“I am in no condition to do anything but cry in a heap on the ground.”
“Thought I’d ask.” He jogged to the driver’s seat.
“How long have we been gone?”
“One week.” He roared the car to life. “We didn’t have time to miss you.”
“Thank god.” At least Lady Mairead had been telling the truth about the vessel. My hand went to my throat. I felt along the edge of the ring. I could barely feel where my skin ended and the metal began. It was really terrifying, actually, how seamless my future death had become.
Chapter 38
Zach and Emma, with the baby in her arms, met us in the garage at the bottom of the steps. When Magnus stepped from the car, Emma said, “Oh! Oh no, I’m going for the first aid kit...” She jogged up the steps.
We all followed Zach to the house. He walked backwards ducking his head under the ceiling as he climbed to the first floor, “Magnus, sir, what the fuck happened to your face?”
Quentin climbing the steps behind me said, “I told him if your face looks like that you aren’t sword fighting right.”
Magnus chuckled, his hand gripped the rail tightly, a slight limp to his climb. “Tis verra funny.”
Quentin’s hand went protectively to my elbow helping to lift me because I was faltering, exhausted, pained, and apprehensive.
Magnus was made to sit at one of the kitchen stools where Emma assembled her supplies. Baby Ben was in the high chair beside her. She rifled through the box for bandages, ointments, anything, then said, “I don’t know where to begin, you need a shower. Then I can bandage you.”
Zach said, “What about steaks for those eyes?” He turned from the fridge tearing open a butcher paper roll and pulling out two steaks. He held them out for Magnus.
“What are these for?”
“You put them on your eyes.”
Magnus looked skeptical.
“Don’t be a baby — sir, I mean, here, hold back your head.” Chef Zach gingerly placed the steaks on Magnus’s face, “Hold these in place.”
“For what purpose?”
“The swelling. I don’t know, I heard it works. Maybe it fucking doesn’t at all, but at least your face is hidden for a while so I don’t have a panic attack looking at you. What happened?”
“Lady Mairead’s guards were teachin’ me a lesson.”
“Holy shit, that is one messed up mom you have.”
“Chef Zach, I am terribly starved, am I tae eat these steaks after I wear them?”
Zach spun around and began searching the refrigerator shelves and the freezer, making his lists. “I have ice cream!”
Magnus’s voice a bit muffled under the steaks. “Vanilla? Are there sauces for the top?”
“Caramel, fudge, marshmallow—”
“I will take them all.”
Zach deposited a bunch of jars and cartons on the counter. “How about you, Katie, want ice cream?”
I gulped. My throat felt tight, not a lot, but a little, barely, but enough. My voice was so quiet that it shocked me. “Yes please.”
Zach cocked his head to the side. “You’re being really quiet, and what’s with the new metallic neck tattoo?”
I burst into tears.
Magnus allowed the steaks to fall to the counter with a slurp sound and grabbed my hands. I cried, my shoulders shaking, huddled over my lap in my kitchen stool. This was not how my homecoming was supposed to be. How was I going to survive this fear?
Zach and Emma stood stock still. Baby Ben sat in his high chair banging his palms on the food tray, oblivious.
Quentin asked, “What happened to Katie?”
Magnus’s head hung forward. His muscular hands enveloped mine. Strong, but not strong enough, not to protect me, not to rescue me. He had been in prison while I decided our fate, and I didn’t know if I had made the right decision. And in a negotiation I ended up with a neck shackle. I clearly didn’t negotiate well enough.
I smoothed my hair and wiped my cheeks. Emma rushed forward with a Kleenex, and I blew my nose. The snot of Scotland, three hundred years ago. When astronauts went to outer space, they had to clean thoroughly so they didn’t introduce bizarre germs in a pristine environment. God, I needed a shower too.
I mumbled something to the effect of, “It’s just a thing I have to wear and — I really need a shower.”
Magnus’s eyes met mine and he stood with a groan. “Aye, a shower, then we shall fill you all in on our adventures.”
We left the room hand in hand while our family stood staring at our hunched, traumatized backs. Chef Zach said, “I’ll keep the ice cream in the freezer for you.”
“Aye, it might take centuries tae get this much grime from our skin.”
* * *
A few moments later Magnus went to our bedroom door to call for help. “Emma, I could use some help here?”
She rushed in the room.
“I am trying tae work Kaitlyn’s laces, but my hands are verra sore and nae workin' well.”
She began tugging through the middle of the lacings, loosening, finally she said, “There ya go.”
“Thank you.” Tears welled up again.
“Want to step out of all your long underwear so I can take it to the laundry?”
“No. I didn't—” I took a deep breath to try to fight back the tears that wanted to come. “I ruined the underwear. I left it there. I didn’t have my stuff.”
“Aw, Katie, that sucks. Hey, Zach was thinking you guys might want some McDonalds tonight — he’s running out to pick it up?”
I really did start crying. “Really? That would be amazing. Thank you.”
She called into the bathroom. “Magnus, is McDonalds okay with you for dinner?”
He called back. “If there’s ice cream, and Kaitlyn wants it.”
“Yeah.” I said, “I’ll take a shower. Once I eat I’ll stop being such a crybaby, and we can maybe burn everything in a bonfire.”
“Good. Perfect. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Just Hayley.”
“I’ll call her and tell her it's an emergency.” She left and I stepped from my clothes leaving a big pile I kicked so any stains would be hidden. And met my husband in the bathroom.
He had started the shower. The temperature was perfect. He held my hand, led me into the water, worried over my step, let me go under the shower first and treated me like an invalid. I let the shower round down my head, my face, mixing with my tears to cover me, a waterfall of water, fresh and salty, the sound of water falling to drown out everything else.
Magnus stood beside me, wet flesh, muscle-bound, solid. Where I stood, he pressed into my space, just by standing there. After my turn under the water, I stepped to the side, and he took his turn, ducking under the water, with a, “Phwesha!” Flicking his hair, beginning to press his palms to his face, but stopping in time and instead, rubbing the width of his shoulders.
He looked at me finally. One eye barely visible in the swollen mass of purple. His lopsided cracked s
mile was sad. One of those sad, sad smiles. Almost more sad than no smile at all.
I looked down at the ground, squirted shampoo in my hand and began lathering my hair, eyes closed. No sad smiles, please. No. I didn’t need placating looks, or invalid helps — I needed answers. Like how was I going to live with this thing around my neck? What was going to happen to me in six months? What was going to happen to Magnus when he was called on? Would we be okay? Were we okay now?
Soon we were in pajamas.
Back on the stools with bags of McDonalds all over the counter. Our burgers placed decoratively on nice plates. Beers in front of us. The sweet decadent sheer swollen size of the food, and the endless beers, each coming before I even needed the next one, began to work on my mood.
When Hayley appeared, alone, so she could hear about our adventures, I even laughed when Magnus joked, “I know, I shouldna have beat that man with my face, but he deserv’d it.”
And then Hayley, eyes leveled on me, said, “Out with it, the whole story, ending with that metallic neck-thing you have there.”
“So I was people trafficked while I was PMSing.”
“Jesus Christ girlfriend, what kind of god-forsaken vacation did you go on?”
“As you know, it wasn’t a vacation, we were going to rescue Magnus’s brother from Lord Delapointe, who, by the way, is still an invalid from the knock upside the head I gave him.”
“Nicely done.”
My eyes met Magnus’s. He was looking at me through that slit in his swollen eyes, head cocked back to see better. The look was appreciative. Like he thought I was great. And yes, I was beginning to feel a tiny bit better.
Zach slid another beer in front of me.
“We rescued Sean. It was awesome.”
Quentin asked, “How’d you do it?”
“I blinded them with those flashlights like we discussed. Worked great. But then we waited in the woods with a bunch of men for the guards to come out and fight.”
Quentin leaned forward. “How many men?”
Magnus said, “I had about twenty-three. Some mercenaries I dinna trust, but some of my cousins.”
Warrior of My Own Page 14
