CHAPTER30
Kenna sent up a silent prayer of thanks as the wagon rolled beneath the stone archway leading into the bailey. Colum was rapidly getting worse. His body alternately tensed and jerked with wild, violent thrashing and then collapsed. With the high fever now refusing to subside, seizures couldn’t be a good sign.
“Granny!” Kenna waved madly as Trulie, Granny, and Coira burst out of the wide double doors and ran down the sprawling front steps of the keep. “Hurry, please. It’s Colum. Please—
You have to save him.” Kenna’s heart thumped so hard she gasped for breath. Colum’s salvation was finally in sight. At least she prayed it was.
Kenna wallowed through the tangle of blankets and jumped down from the back of the wagon before it groaned to a complete stop. She stumbled in the tangled mess of torn skirts and pitched forward. Ronan caught her before she hit the ground and steadied her to her feet. He immediately released her and stepped back as Granny and Trulie rounded the wagon.
“Thank the heavens you are finally safe.” Granny grabbed Kenna to her and held on tight. She patted and smoothed shaking hands across Kenna’s matted hair, all the while sobbing unintelligible endearments against Kenna’s cheek. She pulled back, looked Kenna up and down, then yanked her close again. “My baby . . . my poor brave baby. I will curse that man to the hottest part of hell for what he put you through. That son of a bitch will rue the day he ever laid eyes on MacKenna keep.”
“Granny.” Kenna gently extricated herself from Granny’s embrace and eased a step back. “Granny, not now. Colum is dying.” She couldn’t believe she had just said Colum was dying as though she was noting the day’s weather. She felt numb to everything, to all that had happened over the past few days. Standing taller, she sucked in a deep breath. Numb was definitely good. She hoped like hell the absence of feeling lasted forever.
“Dying?” Granny hurried to the open end of the wagon, waving an arthritic hand for Trulie to follow. “Quick, gal. Kenna knows the right of it. I see his spirit trying to rise. Make haste before Colum’s soul breaks free and travels beyond the gateway.”
The cart rattled and swayed as another violent seizure shook Colum’s body across the bed of the wagon. Gray lifted Granny into it just as Colum stiffened, then thrashed wildly with a second attack. Trulie took one look at Colum and turned back to Kenna. “Get up here, Kenna. You have to keep his soul anchored here long enough for us to heal his body.”
With Gray on one side and Ronan on the other, the two men lifted Kenna over the side of the wagon. She knelt behind Colum and pulled him back into her lap. His head thrashed from side to side as she hugged him against her chest. Hair soaked and his flesh on fire, the heat of his fever seeped through Kenna’s gown as though she cradled a bucket of red-hot coals. Colum jerked wildly with the increasing strength of the convulsions.
“Hurry. I can’t hold him much longer.” She clenched Colum tighter against her chest and clamped her legs down across his shoulders. He bucked and roared like an enraged beast, fighting as though he was beating demons back down to a deeper hell. Gray and Ronan clambered up over the sides of wagons. The men crouched on either side of Colum, latched onto his flailing arms, and pinned his body.
Trulie rubbed her thumbs across her fingertips in a rapid sweeping motion. Her hands twitched faster and faster, her fluttering fingers creating an eerie whisper of frenzied flesh against flesh.
Kenna held her breath as both of Trulie’s hands began to glow. Finally.The healing energy was powering up. That rare energy Trulie, Granny, and Mairi controlled and manipulated at will.
Granny appeared at Trulie’s side, her hands already humming with the same glowing power.
Kenna struggled to hold Colum tight against another fit of thrashing. Thank goodness both Trulie and Granny were here. The only thing that would make Kenna breathe a little easier would be if Mairi were here too. Healing was Mairi’s dominant gift. As bad as Colum’s situation had gotten, it was going to take all they had to keep him on this side of death’s door.
“Stay with me,” Kenna whispered as she pressed a cheek against his soaking-wet head. “I can’t bear it if you cross to the other side.” Tears burned down her face. If Colum lived, she would never be allowed to get this close to him ever again. She tightened her hold and burned the very feel of him into her senses. He tensed and pushed against her, as though somewhere in his delirium, he knew what she was doing.
The air crackled and hissed with building energy. Kenna lifted her head. It wouldn’t be much longer now. She wiped her cheek against her shoulder and braced herself for what was about to come.
In a unified motion, Granny and Trulie dove forward and slammed their hands flat on Colum’s heaving chest. A golden glow emitted from their arms and hands, pulsating with a low-pitched hum. Trulie and Granny stared at each other as though marking time, tensed for the perfect moment.
With the barest bit of movement, their heads bobbed in unison as though counting out the rhythm to a song only they could hear. Their focus was locked on each other. Eyes unblinking, they rocked to and fro until the entire wagon swayed with the rhythm of their motions.
The strange luminescence around their hands changed from a golden glow to a sizzling blue-white arc. Kenna closed her eyes against the retina-burning light and turned her head away. It wouldn’t be long now. The arcing energy was about to explode.
The healing power surged free of the women with a deafening boom. A scream ripped from Kenna’s throat as the explosion rattled her very bones. A violent wind ripped past and wailed around the stone walls of the bailey. Flying debris blasted her, threatening to sand away her flesh.
The force of the gust whipped Kenna back, thrashing her against the sides of the wagon as though Colum’s soul was trying to shake free of her embrace. She clutched him tighter, curling herself around him as her back slammed into the iron framework holding the boards of the cart together. Then all went silent. It was finally over. Either they had managed to heal Colum, or his soul had broken free and moved on.
She slowly raised her head and opened her eyes to his bewildered expression.
“Kenna?” His rasping whisper was sweeter than any music she had ever heard.
A relieved sob shook through her as she gathered him to her. She wept as she pressed a cheek against his matted hair and rocked back and forth.
“Ye are… ” Colum pushed her away, fumbling across the bloodied pillows and blankets. His left leg remained stiff at the knee and dragged beside him like a dead weight. His jaw rippled with clenched teeth as disbelief and anger filled his face. “It was not a wicked nightmare. Ye actually did it. Why the hell did ye do it, Kenna? Why the hell would ye think . . . ”
With a shaking hand, he reached toward her. But just before his fingers made contact, he slowly closed his hand into a shaking fist and brought it down hard against the bed of the wagon. “Why? Why would ye think I would wish to live this way?” He slammed his hand on his weak leg, then locked his scowl on Kenna. “And how could ye ever think I would wish to live without ye at my side?”
Servants and clansmen gathered closer around the wagon. Kenna felt each and every nervous glance in her direction, especially Ronan’s watchful stare. Both Ronan and Gray slowly rose from their posts on either side of Colum and vaulted over the sides of the wagon, leaving Kenna alone with Colum. She inhaled a deep breath and released it in a shuddering sigh. She had to make him understand. There had been no choice.
“You know why I did it.” She motioned toward the bloodied blankets scattered around the wagon. “You are lucky to be alive. You came so close to dying that you’ll still be weak for a while, but at least you are alive.” It sounded so simple when she said the words out loud, like reading items off a list.
Colum shoved himself up through the blankets and struggled to a sitting position. He growled like a caged animal when he lost his balance and fell back against the side of the wagon. “Ye call being a cripple and living without the other half of yer soul a matter of good prosperity? What the hell good can come from living a life such as that?” He fixed her with a wounded stare, his teeth bared in a sneer. “What the hell good can come from living a life without the one ye love more than life itself?”
