by Kyra Whitton
Her heart was in her throat.
Calum.
He was taller than she remembered. And far, far bulkier. His straight shoulders were massive, his arms thick and corded with muscle, the inky edges of a blue tattoo criss-crossing his bicep. His chest was broad, covered by a black leather jerkin, the laces pulling it taut. Her gaze skimmed lower, past the dark leather breeches and to where his left leg was missing. He balanced himself with his one intact leg and a scarred wooden peg.
She had spent many a night wrapped around Calum’s body, but this was not it.
Her gaze snapped to his face.
He flushed.
Yet his face… his face was the same. His black hair flopping over his forehead, hanging down over his collar. Longer than she remembered it. It had always been shaggy, making him seem academic, unconsumed with petty fashions.
How many times had she dreamed of seeing him again? How many times had she replayed a reality in which he had survived through her head? How many times did she beg for just one more minute with him? It seemed like an eternity ago. All of it. The accident, the dark depression she was forced to climb out of, learning he existed to no one. No one but her. And here he stood next to the woman holding her whole future hostage.
Evie didn’t know what she felt. Elation to see Calum there? Or was it dread?
His gaze caught hers and his mouth opened, as if he wanted to call out to her, but knew better than to utter a sound. Instead, he swallowed, his neck bobbing with the effort. But his aquamarine stare didn’t leave hers. And she could swear she could see his heart breaking in them.
Evie had to look away.
She—Mora—smiled deliciously, her red lips curving languidly, pleasure oozing from her. Her black hair was swept to one side, slipping over her shoulder to pour almost to her waist in obsidian waves. She wore all black, the ebony gown draping over her every curve, the folds soft. A full mantle of crow’s feathers fanned out around her, the clasp at her throat made of those three silver circles. No jewelry adorned her neck, her fingers, her wrists.
She drew no undue attention to her assets, instead allowing the sheer power oozing from her to command the room, not the flaunting of her body. Her only decoration was a simple, slender diadem in the shape of a crow, its wings spread across her brow.
“Ailsa. You have finally returned to me.”
Evie didn’t know how to respond. Should she bow? Correct her name?
“And Iain, you succeeded in leading my little battle bird back to me.” Her smile turned sour as she glanced at Calum. She turned back to Iain. “It took you quite long enough. I was beginning to wonder if I had saddled myself with another useless warrior.” The ire dripping from her words was enough to make Calum flinch.
“Forgive me. Ailsa has always been… tempestuous.” Iain bowed deeply. “But she has returned willingly and is well-prepared to continue her service to you.”
Evie’s frown deepened.
“Yes, she has.” She swung her attention to Evie. “Have we put the Carlisle boy behind us at last, dear Ailsa? Your distraction last time is exactly how we ended up in this little situation, How you ruined all of our well-laid plans.”
“I-I don’t understand.” The voice didn’t sound like hers. It sounded like someone else’s, someone who was far braver, far more worldly. A harsh voice. An angry voice.
The woman shook her head. “Don’t worry, my dear. I blame Calum. He was there to keep you focused and he let his jealousy get the better of him. Didn’t he?” She shot another disapproving look behind her like a mother furious with her offspring.
Evie swallowed, the movement loud in her ears. All the pieces were in her hands. She could see all of the bits, all of the edges and the colors, but she couldn’t fit them together.
Iain must have sensed her distress, for he cleared his throat. “If I may…” At the woman’s nod, he continued. “I don’t believe Evie quite grasps your meaning, Your Eminence.”
A soft, knowing smirk. “Perhaps it would be easier to hear it from my lips,” she murmured as the beautiful young woman melted into Mrs. Baird. She stepped lightly down the three steps of the dais to stand before Evie and took her hands lightly in her soft, worn hands.
“Darling lass,” Mrs. Baird murmured. She wore the clothes of Mora, but she was greatly softened. “Do you remember nothing of our exploits together?”
Evie gave a jerky shake of the head.
One of those soft hands brushed down her cheek. “Oh, dear. You were always so headstrong. Always rushing in before really thinking about the consequences of your actions.” A motherly pursing of lips. “It’s what made you such an effective weapon.”
She turned, edging Iain out of the way and slid her arm through Evie’s. She pulled her away from the others, strolling slowly down the aisle upon which Evie had entered. Those who stood around the platform, watching silently with curious eyes tracked their mistress’s movements. None seemed surprised by the transformation into sweet, motherly Mrs. Baird.
“That rising of the Jacobites was to be the first step in a plan we hoped would span generations. You, my dear, planted the seeds. You bided your time, waiting until just the right moment for the unrest. You orchestrated the entire thing brilliantly, from that young, foppish prince returning to a home he had never seen to the rampant patriotism of those who rose up behind him. You were clever enough to surround yourself with a gaggle of men who were all too willing to be controlled.”
She chuckled as she glanced at Calum.
He flinched.
“Even that boy you collected. It was brilliant the way you manipulated him, the youngest son of one of the most powerful households in the British Empire, begging after you like a dog.”
Alec. She meant Alec. Evie’s stomach clenched.
“I was so proud of you… Up until you allowed him to keep you from the battlefield. Your battlefield. You never swept across it, crushing Cumberland’s troops and rallying the Scots. You allowed yourself to become distracted by human emotions. Love.” Her tone turned to one of anger, of disgust.
“And the worst of it, the absolute worst part of your betrayal, was when you thought him dead on that battlefield. You did something so incredibly stupid as let yourself be killed.” Her gaze turned fiery, and she leaned in, her nose inches from Evie’s. “Did you even look for him in the solstice kingdoms or did you race through them, waiting to be reborn?” she growled.
Evie had no idea. But she stared right back, clenching her teeth, refusing to break under the accusations.
Mrs. Baird turned around, fingers kneading her temples, and when she pivoted back, she was the beautiful young woman, Mora, again.
“It pained me to have to wait so long for you to return to us. Never did I imagine my most trusted guard, the one I took in when no one else would have him, would betray me.”
She swung her gaze to Calum, and Evie had to give him credit; he continued to hold his head up. She tried not to let her sympathy for him show, clenching her teeth down so hard it hurt.
Mora paced, her feet silent on the black stone, her skirts a whisper. They swirled about her like a cloud, the diaphanous material floating as if a midnight fog.
“What is to happen to him?” That voice again, the one that didn’t belong to her.
“Oh, he’ll continue to serve me. As I see fit.” She sounded rather magnanimous. “I have reclaimed my gifts, however, and they will remain mine.” She looked pointedly at the peg where his leg had once been.
For the first time since Evie entered the court, his head sank as if to hide his shame. Had Mora restored it for him? As some sort of payment for services provided?
“And me?”
“You?”
“What of Ailsa’s punishment? Am I to receive it?”
She knew it was a stupid thing to ask the moment the words were out of her mouth. But she couldn’t understand how it was fair for Calum to suffer while she was left unscathed? She had loved him, or at least the parts of hims
elf she shared with him and she owed him… something. Even though she should have felt something for the man she had thought to marry, she felt only sadness. A soft mourning for the dream she once had.
Yet, dreams change and her new dream lay across the Otherworld in a small cottage in the forest.
“I am not some heartless tyrant. I won’t heap Ailsa’s transgressions against you, same soul or no. It does no good to punish one for a crime she does not even remember committing, am I right?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “However, now that you have returned, I have great use for you and I expect you to take up your—Ailsa’s—duties posthaste. Your soldiers are at the ready?”
“My soldiers?”
“Yes, Eminence, they are at the ready. Evie and I spent this last season training with them.”
“Mmm,” Mora smiled prettily. “I did always love that little holding of yours on the sea.”
“Mine?” She turned to Iain.
He nodded.
“Hmm,” she said, taken aback. “And what duties will I be accepting?”
“Ahh, yes, I suppose you don’t remember, do you? Ailsa has always been an important general in escorting my enemies to the Spring and Summer Kingdom, to King Hafgan. Why else do you think I had you awaiting the arrival of Flora MacDonald? You were to escort her into battle as you have escorted so many in the past.”
“But she was in the land of the dead. And she isn’t dead.”
Mora chuckled. “No, nor was she meant to be. She played her part perfectly. You simply took your duties too literally and escorted her back across the veil. It was a risk I was willing to take, knowing you had only a tenuous grasp here. I had hoped to keep you longer. No matter, you are here, now, on the eve of the greatest war this or any world has ever seen.” Her eyes twinkled brightly. “You and I have waited a long time to see our plans through, my dear. We will see it come to pass. That I promise you,” she murmured quietly, as though they were the truest of friends, as close as any two women could be. “All the work we have done will not be in vain.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips across Evie’s cheek. “It will be done.”
And then she stepped away.
It was on the tip of Evie’s tongue to ask what would happen if she refused. If she turned tail and ran just as she had thought to do the moment she had walked into the fortress. It was tempting to entertain that as an option, leave all of this behind, let it be a very strange dream, and return to a world where she met a smart, handsome doctor at a bookstore.
She could go back to studying history, spending her days in dusty libraries and musty castles. Her adventures could include plane rides to her parents’ house for Christmas dinners, engagement parties, weddings. She could live by her alarm clock and what to make for dinner. Dream of having babies and fights about whose turn it was to change the diapers.
Or she could stay and do all of those things when she was done racing across frozen plains, sparring with her friends in the mud, and exploring enchanted forests.
She turned to Iain. He must have seen what she was planning, for his lips curled up, the smile reflected in the spark of his eyes.
And then the world exploded.
The castle shook with it, blue light pouring in from the windows, shouting from the guards outside. Those who had crowded around the dais, faces she still didn’t know, took defensive stances, some laying hands over their swords, others reaching for their knives.
And Mora whirled, her face shining with excitement. “It’s begun.”
Calum was on Evie in an instant, sweeping her right off her feet then whirling her around until her back pressed against the hard wall of his chest. How he had moved so quickly while missing a leg, she didn’t know. But there she was, the dagger sheathed at her side now in his hand, angled up toward her throat.
He backed away, the wooden peg thudding heavily against the obsidian floors, and he pulled her sword free from her baldric with his other hand, the well-oiled metal singing against the scabbard as it was released. He held it up in defense.
Iain stood there, looking stunned and Mora’s attention was still on the fading blue light pouring through the windows. Evie twisted, trying to break loose, but his grip didn’t waver. She noticed the strange tattoo that was even more visible from the back of his arm. It looked old, like something she had seen before, but she didn’t know where.
“What are you doing, Calum?” Iain demanded.
“Getting myself out of here and away from her.” He lifted his chin toward Mora. “I’ll not be her whore any longer.” Against Evie’s hair he murmured, “I am so sorry.”
He now had Mora’s full attention. She looked positively murderous, her eyes growing dark.
“You think kidnapping my most trusted general will somehow ingratiate yourself to me?” She let out a bark of laughter. “Do you think she will want you now? Ailsa didn’t want you when she knew what you were. Even if Evie hadn’t already given herself to that Carlisle boy on the other side of the veil, do you think she wouldn’t find out eventually? You think she will just change her mind? After all this time?”
The words were nasty, cruel. They cut through Evie like a knife, and behind her, Calum trembled with anger.
“Remember the first time you begged her for her love? How did she repay you? She forced you to play her brother. You had to stand by and watch while she married another, you playing the doting kinsman.” Another laugh.
Calum had been there all along; at Elizabeth’s back as she wed Alec. What had Alec said? Calum hadn’t been happy about the marriage.
“Should we tell her about how you stood over her chosen and watched him bleed out on the field? How you slinked back across the veil and came crawling back to my bed?” Her eyes were full of amusement. “Oh, I suppose I just did.”
Evie’s heart shattered, sending an ache through her chest. Calum, whom she had loved, left Alec to die on a battlefield so that he could have her to himself? He’d tried to keep them apart by getting to her first?
But then anger took over. How could he do that to Ailsa? How could he do that to her? She endured his death, and he dared hold a dagger to her throat? She wanted to make him pay for what he had done to all of them. She imagined reaching down for the knife then sliding it into his flesh.
She jerked to loosen her arm to do just that, but he held her firm.
“No.” His voice sounded hollow. “Evie—Ailsa, I—”
Iain withdrew his own daggers, turning them once, slowly.
“Evie,” he called, cutting Calum off, his voice strong. “You know what to do.”
In a single motion, she dropped to her knees, sweeping the hand holding the blade to her throat away and kicking out at the peg.
She barely felt the pain in her own leg at the sudden motion, her fingers brushing against the cool floor to keep her balance.
But Calum was too quick, and he deftly outmaneuvered her sweep. She palmed her knife, but Iain lunged forward, daggers a whirl around him. Metal clanged against metal, Iain moving in a flurry of jabs and slashes, all of which Calum blocked and countered despite his obvious handicap.
One of the onlookers, an older man with a bushy beard and plaits on either side of his temple moved to join the fray, but Mora held a hand out, stopping him in his tracks.
Iain’s left blade slashed deeply through the exposed flesh of Calum’s forearm, just below the tattoo, and blood sprang forth like a new river, running a line down the cords of his muscle. He cried out in anger and pivoted, bringing the larger blade down toward Iain’s spine. The smaller man twisted out of the way and Evie saw her opening.
She flicked the knife, aiming for Calum’s sword arm, but he blocked it, and the small blade clattered to the floor. But it was enough to catch him off guard. His gaze caught hers. She read betrayal there, the deepest of betrayals, the kind that feels like the tip of a knife piercing the heart. A betrayal like the ones he heaped upon her.
Despite her own hurt and anger, his look of utter heartbrea
k nearly sent her to her knees.
Iain was on him in an instant, dagger to the throat.
Mora motioned for some of the guards. They clapped Calum in irons and hauled him up.
“Oh, Calum, you know how much I hate a dirty floor.” Mora clucked her tongue and sighed heavily. As she swept by Iain, she paused and murmured, “You know what to do with him.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alec let the water heat up. He stood over the kitchen sink, studying the spray as it hit the pile of dirty dishes, dislodging bits of food.
He’d put off cooking until his stomach wasn’t able to hold out any longer. After coming back to the summer warmth, he did not want to unnecessarily heat up an already hot house, but that was just an excuse, one he needed to tell himself as his mind wandered back to the cottage in the wood. If he wanted to be honest, he had been waiting for Evie to return, and cooking for just him was the worst kind of reminder that she hadn’t come.
He took the brush off the side of the sink and squirted a bit too much dish soap over the skillet and empty plates. His return to a Kansas summer came just minutes after he and Evie left for the Otherworld. His hope was that she would be there shortly after. He even fell asleep in one of the chairs in the front room waiting for her. Yet, she never came.
It meant driving to work the next morning, muscles aching from sleeping at an odd angle. Physical training didn’t help, either, and the hot, muggy air suffocated the already parched landscape as the sun rose. But he still ran six miles on the outdoor track, hoping to sweat the depression out of his system.
He showered, changed, spent a whole shift in the emergency room, and went out of his way to ride by her parents’ house on the way home to his own. But she wasn’t standing outside the house marked with her last name, and she wasn’t waiting on his own doorstep.
He hadn’t wanted to consider she wouldn’t come back to him, but with each passing moment, he began to prepare himself for another lifetime without her. Up until this point, it had always been about finding the other half of his soul, but he’d never thought the other half would… walk away.
