by Annis Reid
How long would it take before she could do any of the things she had once taken for granted without imagining what he would think of them if he were there with her? How long before she would forget the wonder all over his face as she had described gadgets and tools and conveniences which she usually never gave a second thought to?
And for just a second, she wished in the depths of her heart that she could see her world through his eyes, just for a little while. That it would all be fresh and new to her again.
That they could discover it together.
What a joke. It wasn’t meant to be. And the question of whether or not she would go home wasn’t really a question at all, because she had no choice. She had to go. Her father needed her, everybody needed her.
For the first time in a long time, she asked herself what she needed.
She stood, shaking her hand. “It’s nothing. I’m just really tired. Pretending to be a witch isn’t easy.”
“Ye did a fine job of it, if that makes ye feel any better.”
There was no stopping herself from smiling at the hope in his voice. He wanted to make her feel better, he hoped he made her feel better. “It does,” she managed to whisper over the lump forming in her throat.
He lowered his voice further, watching his buddy on the other side of the wall. “Ye said something about a plan,” he whispered.
Her pulse picked up speed. “Yeah, I did. Maybe not a plan, not really, but an idea. Are there really such things as witches? Be honest with me. Do they actually exist?”
Was it a trick of the light, or did he wince? “What makes ye think I would know?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I would trust you, either way. You’re not like them.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Why are you asking me so many questions?” Her skin got all prickly when he looked at her the way he was, like he was trying to see inside her head. “I just trust all you, that’s all. You seem smarter than the rest of them, and you believe me. You listen to me, and you believe me, and that means something. You’re the only one who does.”
The lines on his forehead eased as his expression softened. “Forgive me. I am far too easily stirred.”
“Well? Do you know any? Or whether they exist at all? Is there, like, a place where they all live together?” She realized she was describing what sounded like a sorority. Though she had known quite a few sorority sisters she wouldn’t have been surprised to find out were witches.
Why did he seem fidgety all of a sudden? Nervous, like he didn’t want to look her in the eye? What was he trying to hide? “I could not say for certain,” he murmured, glancing toward his buddy again. The guy looked like he was about to fall over at any second. Maybe Kaden had worked him so hard during their training that he was exhausted.
Did he not want to say in front of somebody else?
“You just don’t want to get my hopes up, is that it? I’m a big girl, I can handle it. I only want to know what you think is true.”
He ran a hand over his face, sighing heavily. “Aye, I believe witches do exist.”
“You don’t have to be ashamed or anything. I’m not gonna laugh at you for saying that.”
“I should hope not. Aye, I know witches exist because I know a witch. I have known her a long time.”
And damned if she didn’t immediately think he meant girlfriend or something. Jealousy bloomed in her chest just like it had when he’d mentioned Blair earlier. She reminded herself yet again that he wasn’t of her time and could never belong to her, so it wasn’t fair to want him to live as a monk.
He was a gorgeous, healthy man, and it was only right for girls to fall over themselves because of him. Maybe he had a however-many-times great-grandson in Scotland who she could hook up with when she got back to her time.
But even though she was only partly serious, only teasing herself, there was still part of her that knew it wouldn’t be the same even if she could find one of his descendants. It wouldn’t be him, and he was who she cared about.
She cared about him way more than she should have.
He waited, brows lifted. “Well? Have ye nothing to say to that? Have I not shocked ye?”
She shook her head. “No, you haven’t shocked me. Surprised, maybe, but not shocked. At least I understand now why you believed me when I said I wasn’t one. Because you know one yourself, and you know I’m nothing like her.”
Now he smiled, just a little. “Nay, ye are nothing like her.” She wished she knew whether that was a compliment or an insult.
This wasn’t the time for that. “Can you find her for me? Do you think she could maybe help me get home?”
He sighed again. “Lass, I dinna know what to tell ye. I suppose I would have to ask her when I find her.”
“Yeah, you can tell her what I told you about how I got here. Or how I think I got here, I really don’t know. Maybe she’ll have a way to get me home. I have to get home. I have someone there who needs me.”
She had never talked about her dad before except when she told him about Chicago. Anything else she had told him about her time had been general, mostly about the way things had changed from what he knew. He knew she was a singer. That was all.
He frowned again, deeper than before. “Who is it?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She looked down at the horse, who seemed to be resting comfortably enough. He sniffed her leg, then nudged her a little. She chose to take it as his way of thanking her, though she didn’t have the slightest idea what it might’ve meant.
“Someone ye would rather not speak of?” he asked.
“What does it matter? Just leave it alone. I have a life I have to get back to, and people who depend on me. One person more than everybody else, is all.”
“A bairn?”
God, give her strength. “No, I don’t have kids. I don’t have a husband or boyfriend, if that’s what you’re trying to ask me. I have a father. He had a stroke. Do you know what a stroke is? He’s very sick.”
“Aye, I understand.”
“Well, hallelujah. Something I can tell you about without having to explain it. He had a stroke, and he can’t take care of himself, and I’m the only person who cares whether he lives or dies. My sister totally flaked out, and it’s all up to me. Okay? Is that enough for you?” She pushed her way past him. For once, he stepped aside for her, and she went to the stall she had spent more than a week living inside.
Funny how it felt like home. Funny in a very perverse way.
Her head was going to split open, she was sure. A person could only stand so much of this sort of thing—the confusion, the stress, the constant fear of losing her life for some stupid reason or another. Wondering if they would burn her or hang her or torture her. Waiting for it, anticipating the moment when they would finally come to her and say this was it. Her life was over.
He found her pacing back and forth, rubbing her hands together. “I’m gonna fall apart. I know it. I feel it happening.”
“I will not allow that happen.”
“You can’t stop it. Just like you’re not what brought me here. You can’t help me.”
“I want to. Have I not done everything in my power up until this point? Have I not risked for ye?”
“But you can’t get me home. I need to get home to him, he needs me. I’m all he has in the world. He doesn’t remember things, and I’m afraid he won’t remember me anymore.”
She turned away with her hands over her face, ashamed at how selfish she sounded. She had just told this guy that her father was sick, but now here she was, admitting that what scared her most was that he wouldn’t even remember her to know she was missing.
The hands that closed over her shoulders were gentle but firm. He turned her to him, drawing her close, holding her as she cried. For herself, for her father, and for the conflict he stirred deep in her heart.
Her father needed her. But to go back to him, she would be leaving this man. This man who,
just like he said, risked so much for her so far. He had taken chances, he had gone out of his way to make her as comfortable as he could. He was the only one who had thought about her at all. At least, the only one who thought about her not as just a filthy, evil witch who deserved to be hanged.
To go back to her father, she would have to leave him. This man, this man who wasn’t like anybody she had ever known. Maybe men like him didn’t exist anymore in her time. She had to go back four-and-a-half centuries to find anyone like him.
And now she had to leave him. How was she supposed to do that even if a real witch could help her go home? How could she leave him behind?
“I’m sorry,” she sniffled. This wasn’t the time to fall apart. Not when she still had to treat the horse and prove her witchy powers. A bandage over a wound, and nothing more, but if it kept her alive long enough to make it home, it was what she had to do.
She looked up at Kaden, prepared to thank him for being so nice, for always thinking about her.
But she forgot about that when she saw the look in his eye. She had seen that look before, down by the stream. Just before he kissed her.
Her heart cried out. Yes, she wanted him to kiss her again. And again and again, until her lips hurt and she forgot how to breathe. Until she forgot everything.
And when he did lean down, hesitating for just a moment before brushing his lips against hers in the softest, most tantalizing way she could imagine, her knees buckled, and she clung to him to keep from falling down.
His arms tightened around her waist as her fingers tightened around his shoulders. It was wrong, it was dangerous, her guard could come back at any time and find them wrapped up in each other, but she didn’t care very much just then. Because she was in his arms and it felt so good, and she needed to feel good. She needed to feel like something made sense, even if nothing about the two of them made sense at all.
Even though she knew she should push him away, she wrapped one arm around his neck and pulled him closer. She was hungry for him now, hungry for the hands that slid up and down her back before taking her head between them and tipping it back, so his lips could brush against her cheek, her jaw, her throat.
She bit her lip to hold back a gasp, melting against him, lost in sensation and the joy of being with him like this. And desire hot enough to burn her up from the inside out. It was all she could do to keep from climbing him like a tree and saying screw the consequences.
Only when he thrust his hips against her and groaned low in the back of his throat was she able to shake herself free of the moment. What she really wanted was to pull him down into the straw with her, but that would be like signing a death warrant for both of them.
And he didn’t deserve that. Not a man like him.
“Kaden,” she whispered in his ear. “We have to stop. We can’t do this.”
He groaned again, and the sound sent goosebumps up and down her body. “Och, lass, ye will never know how I want ye. How I yearn for ye.”
Her arms tightened, fingers pressing into firm muscle along his shoulders. Oh, it was so unfair. She wanted him, too, so much. Enough that it hurt.
But she had to be the strong one, disentangling herself from his arms. “Please, Kaden. You know what he’ll do to you.”
She reached up, touching his face, trying her best to commit him to memory so she would remember this moment as clearly as possible for the rest of her life. The warmth of his skin, its surprising smoothness. The light in his eyes, the gold flecks in the green. The heat between them, the yearning.
“I will do what I can to find a witch for ye. I swear it.” He closed his eyes, touching his forehead to hers. “As soon as the battle is won.”
Battle.
“What battle?” she whispered, searching his face. “I keep hearing you all talk about a battle, but I don’t know anything about it.”
Just like that, he went from a guy on the verge of losing himself to passion to a guy with a guilty secret. “Och, I suppose ye ought to know about that before it takes place.”
“You’re fighting? Who? When? Why?”
He held a finger to his lips. “Quiet. All is well. Nothing will befall me. But ye will have to be there, I imagine.”
“Me?” she squeaked. “Why me?”
“Dinna ye ken why Kirk is so keen to prove ye are a witch?” he asked. “He wishes to use ye to protect us in battle. That is why he has kept ye, why he wishes to test ye. He believes ye will be what we need to win the battle.”
Now she knew what it felt like to be punched straight in the gut.
14
It was well before dawn when they rode out, over a hundred men on horseback cutting across the village on their way to the henge. That was where they would meet Clan Fraser and would either defeat them or die trying.
Kaden rode at the head of the group, his gaze steady, staring out over the road. He made it a point to avoid meeting the gaze of anyone watching from their homes. Wee lads in the doorways, waving sticks in place of swords, wishing they might be part of the fight. Women clutching each other, watching in silent prayer as their men passed.
Would that they might have avoided this entirely. He still believed in his heart that avoiding the fight was always best, though he would never back down when the time came to defend what was his.
If only the lass’s life did not hang before him. They had to win, or she would die. Even the thought of losing his own life meant less to him than the thought of her death.
She was behind him, as he’d demanded she be. He would not allow her to stray far from him until the time for fighting had arrived. Ever since Aonghas’s recovery at her hand, Kirk had shown greater interest in her than ever. He had even suggested she live in his household, that she advise him and take meals with him.
For some reason, this disturbed him even more than the notion of her spending her life in a stall, shackled in iron. While she had not accepted Kirk’s suggestion, it would not be a suggestion much longer.
After the battle—after their victory—it would become a demand. Kaden was certain of it. The chieftain would wish to have his witch, his prized possession, near him always. Where he might watch her, ask questions of her.
Among other things.
Would he go so far as to consort with a witch? It beggared belief, but then Kirk had never been the sort one could predict. He did as he wished, all in service to the clan.
And himself. Kaden was beginning to understand this, to truly know it. He did not merely wish to push back Clan Fraser, to banish them from land claimed by Clan MacGregor. He wished to crush Malcolm and his men into the dirt, to turn their bones to ash. That was not a matter of protecting the clan, not entirely. That was personal.
Imagine how bold he would become once he believed he had a true witch on his side. The thought alone sent a cold chill racing down Kaden’s spine.
He’d not been permitted to speak to her in the days since her test. Kirk kept him busy from the moment he opened his eyes until the moment they closed. Even then, he’d done whatever he could to spare a free moment or two, but it was to no avail. She’d been guarded all the while.
If only they might have shared a few words before leaving the village. If only he could have assured her she had nothing to fear.
And it would not have been a lie, for he would see to her safety one way or another. She had nothing to fear so long as he was alive and breathing. Did she know it? Was she aware of his devotion? He could not say. He could only hope.
It was a fine, clear morning, ideal for battle.
Clyde drew a deep breath, riding beside Kaden. “Aye, the air does smell sweet,” he mused. “A pity it might be the last I breathe.”
“Dinna speak so,” Kaden chided.
“One never knows, lad,” he laughed. “’Tis best to understand it straight away. There is never any telling whether a man will make it through a battle or nae. Only fools believe they will never die.”
“Aye,” Fergus called out, riding o
n his other side, “and they normally are the first to die, the fools. Rushing headlong into it.”
As if he needed to be told. They tended to forget he was no longer a lad, that he had already earned a reputation as a keen warrior. One with enough skill to train other men. They were his elders, and he supposed they found it difficult to see him as anything more than a mere lad pretending to be a man.
That, he could stand, for they were good men with no malice or jealousy in them. It was a far different matter for Kirk to speak in such a manner, for instance. Even his compliments often had another side to them, a sharp edge beneath the words.
It seemed Anna’s arrival had thrown everything he thought he knew on its end, leaving him confused and questioning what he’d only recently believed.
This was the worst time for such thinking, for a man had to be of a mind to fight while riding into battle. He cleared his mind, turning his thoughts to the fight ahead.
The men were prepared, or as prepared as he could make them. All of them believed in what they fought for, their clan’s land, their families, their right to live in peace without the threat of invaders trying to take what was theirs.
They fought on the side of right. It meant a great deal for a man to believe himself on the side of right.
The henge was just ahead, the stones gleaming in early-morning sunlight. He’d always felt drawn to them. Something he did not share with anyone for fear of being laughed at, but that made it no less true. They held such mystery. Who’d placed them in that very spot, and why?
Anna had told him the stones stood in her time, as well. To know they were still there, standing silent guard, stirred his soul. Knowing she had touched them in her time, just as he’d placed his hands upon them since he was a wee lad, humbled him.
Knowing he’d already been long dead and forgotten by the time she was born shook him to his core.
He dismounted once they’d arrived, along with many of the others. Archers prepared themselves around the raised semi-circle, taking their positions and readying their bows. Between them waited men, both on foot and on horseback, prepared to charge down the slope and take the field once Clan Fraser showed themselves.
