Ronan eyed Eliza before turning to Mairi. “Aye, m’love.”
“Why did you look at her first before you agreed? Have the two of you not had time to work out all your lies?” Mairi slammed her chair back and rose from the table. She should’ve known he was too good to be true. Why in blue blazed had she let down her guard?
“He was sent to fetch ye.” Eliza raised her voice as she fisted her hands atop the table. “Ronan’s mother and his best friend have taken verra ill and the Sinclairs have been charged by the Fates to the task of setting things a’right. A dark evil has descended upon MacKenna Keep and Nia and yer sisters canna battle it alone. Ye must go back, child. Many souls depend on ye—depend on the healing that only you can do.”
Eliza’s explanation didn’t add up. Both Granny and Trulie possessed the gift of healing and both were already firmly ensconced in the past. And why would the Fates specifically charge her with thismission? What the devil had she done to deserve this?
Mairi swallowed hard against the sick feeling of betrayal, doing her best to ignore the bile burning at the back of her throat. She glared at Ronan, searching his face for some clue as to why he hadn’t told her all this sooner—before they’d had such an unbelievable night.
She already had a pretty good idea why he had kept his mouth shut. He had known she would refuse. And what did Eliza mean bya dark evilhad descended upon the keep? How was she supposed to fix that? She wasn’t a freaking exorcist or some sort of ghost chaser.
Ronan broke her tortured reverie when he shifted in place. He stared at her, his eyes cold and unreadable, jaw locked as though waiting for the death sentence he knew he deserved.
“Granny or Trulie can heal them.” She kept her gaze locked on him. Her eyes burned with the need to blink, but she didn’t care. If she blinked, she might miss another clue as to why he had gone to such lengths to hurt her. She could already read the guilt and pain in his eyes; this trickery was as much his doing as Granny’s and Eliza’s. “Why didn’t you just take them to MacKenna Keep instead of coming here to get me?”
And that was another thing—he couldn’t be a male time runner. There was no such thing.Someonehad to have helped him and she had a pretty good idea who that someone was. This power play to get her back to the past had Granny written all over it.
“Who are you really?” Mairi leaned across the table. “And I want the damn truth this time.”
Ronan blew out a heavy sigh. Sadness and emotions that she refused to allow through the wall around her heart filled his eyes. “My name is Chieftain Ronan Sutherland. I come from a land hidden in a shifting mist because of an ancient curse. I am three hundred and fifty-three years old and canna die—and I came here for the help that only ye can give me.”
Mairi wanted to screambullshitand knock him out of his chair. Her fists shook with the need to hit him. Why the hell couldn’t she have just one precious thing in her life that was normal? Her palms stung as her nails dug into her flesh.
The way he had paused and kept glancing at Eliza fanned her rage even more. “You’re lying. None of what you say adds up. If you can’t die and your mother is still alive then apparently, she can’t die either. If she can’t die, then why does she need to be healed?”
Mairi shook an accusing finger at him. “And both my grandmother and my eldest sister have the gift of healing. All you had to do was go to them. You don’t needme.” She jabbed a finger at him again, pumping her fist with every accusation fired. She wanted to hit him, hurt him just as much as he had hurt her. “Who sent you? How did you travel through time?”
“Nia propelled him across the web.” Eliza stood and slowly paced back and forth across the small kitchen. “Neither Nia nor Trulie can break the curse and heal the chieftain’s mother or his friend. Ye are the only one who can break this bit of wicked magic trapping their souls, and time grows short for the doing of it. Ye are the only hope against this evil that is so determined to escape its hell.”
“Bullshit.” Mairi pushed away from the table. “Why would I be the only one who could break some random curse and heal people I’ve never met?” She sensed there was a great deal more to the story, but she just couldn’t put her finger on it. Eliza might not be lying, but Mairi knew her elderly guardian was the queen of omitting details to twist the truth to her advantage. Eliza was a lot like Granny.
Eliza stopped pacing, crossing her bracelet-covered arms atop her heavy bosoms as she leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Ye have been chosen to pay the debt for all that the Sinclairs have done.”
“What debt?” Mairi’s mind raced, rewinding all of Granny’s tales, searching for whatever crime this mess might be about. It had to have something to do with Tia. Granny’s twin sister was the only one who had openly defied the rule about not manipulating history. But Tia had finally been condemned and executed by witch hunters. Eliza still didn’t answer and Ronan looked as though he was about to choke on whatever he had eaten for breakfast. Mairi repeated the question—louder. “What debt, Eliza?”
“To the Fates—to the cosmos.” Eliza closed her eyes, pressing her slightly trembling fingers against her temples and massaging them with tiny circles. “For too long, the Fates have looked the other way whenever the Sinclair’s dabbled with time—altered events. They have grown weary. The slate is bursting with the list of transgressions—most verra minor, mind ye, but transgressions all the same. The slate must be cleansed.”
“Tia was executed. Wasn’t that enough?” Mairi wasn’t letting this go. She was going to get to the bottom of this. If they were going to stomp on her heart, she was at least going to find out the truth.
Eliza deflated with a weary sigh, dropping her hands away from her temples as she shook her head and stared down at the floor. “It’s not just Tia’s wrongs, lass. Think about it. All the Sinclairs—yerself and Lilia included—have altered events in time. Perhaps not seriously, to be sure, but altered them just the same. Yer sister Kenna smuggled modern-day conveniences back to the past. Trulie changed the ways of the MacKenna clan—changed them for the better, mind ye, but changed them in ways they would have never known if a woman from the twenty-first century had never landed in their midst. Any time a Sinclair visited a different time, they’ve been unable to resist dabbling just a wee bit, and the Fates have grown as weary as parents tired of telling their childno.”
Eliza finally lifted her gaze. Her sad smile made her look years older as she locked eyes with Mairi. “The slate must be cleansed. The debt paid. And ye are the one charged with the doing of it. I am truly sorry, lass.”
Mairi swallowed the sob trying to burst free, holding her breath and tensing her fists until tiny sparkling bits of light clouded her vision. This was so not fair.
So, there it was. The truth. She hated the truth.She closed her eyes and pulled in a deep breath. What she wouldn’t give to rewind time back to when Ronan arrived. She would kick his ass to the curb and the Fates could figure out some other way to amuse themselves.
Maybe what Eliza said was true. Maybe all of them had altered history whenever they had jumped to different centuries. They had probably changed things just by showing up. But if that was the Fates’ issue with the Sinclairs, then why had they made them time runners in the first place? It didn’t make any sense—but then that was the Fates. They rarely made sense. Granny had even remarked on that once.Logic never comes into play when it comes to the druthers of the gods.
Fighting against the heartache, frustration, and rage churning inside her, Mairi slammed her fist on the countertop—desperate to prove them wrong. Theyhadto be wrong. “How do you know for certain it’s me? How do you know I’m the only one able to break this curse andsaveeveryone from this evil?” She hated the shrewish tone her voice had taken. Damn them both for turning her into a walking mountain of bitterness.
Ronan stepped forward and held a silencing hand up to Eliza before she could respond. “According to yer grandmother, the demented witch who spoke the curse was also the most high priestess to the Fates. She was privy to their fondness for the Sinclairs and also their weariness of yer family’s wee indiscretions. The wicked one kent well enough that the mighty Fates would charge the Sinclair line with the remedying of her darkness as punishment for all that they had done.Máthairsaid when the curse took hold of her body that she heard these words floating on the wind:Only she who is light of step shall remove the weight of the witch’s words. She who possesses the soothing touch shall wipe away the witch’s pain. Only she with the sight for the unseen can restore hope for the future. Find these things in a single woman and all debts shall be paid.”
With his hands clenched in front of him, Ronan seemed to be struggling to keep himself from reaching out to her. His barely contained emotions etched lines and shadows on his face. Even wearing nothing but a plaid, his strength and power filled the room, and right now—she hated him for it.
“Ye must go,” Eliza said in a quiet voice barely above a whisper. “Ye know in yer heart ye are the one of which the riddle speaks. A time runner. A healer. An artist able to see beauty where none exists and bring it into creation. Ye know how ye always said ye saw yer dragons hiding in the blocks of clay? Ye always said ye merely released them.”
Mairi shifted her attention back to Ronan, willing him to hurt with the same excruciating pain currently breaking her heart in two. “Why did the witch curse you?”
