She tensed, her chin tilting up as though intently listening. She turned just in time to melt Roderic’s dagger in midair right before it would’ve slid between her shoulder blades. As the dagger melted, Caelan heaved his sword across the room. It sank deep into Roderic’s chest, nearly cleaving the man in two.
Rachel bowed her head, appearing disappointed and troubled rather than victorious. She lifted a hand to her forehead and slowly shook her head.
“Better to die by the hand of a man, than lose my soul to a witch,” Roderic barely sputtered through bloodied lips before his eyes glazed over in death’s stare.
Caelan stood taller and glared around the room. His clan had sorely disappointed him this day, the narrowminded lot of them. “The stench of your cowardice makes me ill,” he growled. “My stomach turns at the fear I see reflected in the eyes of the best warriors this clan has ever known. I am ashamed of ye. The MacKays have always had druid advisors to their lairds. And those druids have wisely seen to the betterment and wellbeing of this clan and its future. Why now, when ye see your laird has wed a fine wise woman from across the seas, a powerful druidess in her own right, a caring woman willing to protect us, why do ye shrink from her as though she carries the plague?”
“Why did ye not tell us, Caelan?” Fergus MacKay stepped out of the shadows with his arm tight around Florie.
Caelan narrowed his eyes at the man. Of all people. His faithful war chief. Even Fergus had turned on him. “Ye kent well enough that I traveled forward in time to win her and claim her as my own. Emrys made ye all aware when he returned to secure the last items needed before we all returned together.” He moved to Rachel’s side and pulled her close, trying to ignore the subtle trembling he felt running through her as he addressed his clan.
Fergus threw out his chest and walked to the center of the room, gently pulling Florie along beside him. “Aye, we understood your bride would come with ye from another place in time. But ye never told us she was to be as that one there.” His dark eyes narrowed at Emrys, then he returned his focus to Caelan.
“My woman says the lady is a truly lovely soul but canna make herself be at ease here unless she uses her powers,” a husky voice shouted from beside the hearth, speaking in haste lest Caelan home in on their identity.
“They hate me,” Rachel whispered her hands holding her belly tight as tears streamed down her face.
Her suffering tore Caelan’s heart from his chest and made his blood boil. “Never would I have believed my clan could be so heartless and cruel,” he forced through clenched teeth. “How could ye be so cold and unwelcoming to one who so badly needed help to feel at home here? I promised her ye would welcome her and make her never regret coming here to bear my sons. Ye have shamed me and shamed our bloodline. I can no longer stomach the sight of ye!”
He strode forward, ripped his massive sword out of Roderic’s chest, and started swinging it in a mighty circle, clearing a path through the hall as his kin dove to miss the lethal blade. “Be gone from this keep,” he bellowed. “Be gone from this hall and a curse upon ye if ever I lay eyes upon ye again. Ye have shamed me before my wife and my unborn sons. Your dishonor will be told to them as soon as they are lifted from their mother’s womb. I shall rear them up to spit upon your memory and dance upon your graves.”
“Caelan stop!” Rachel shouted while standing in the middle of the hall with her arms extended and her hands held palms up. “I should be the one to leave. We both know I never wanted to come here. They’re right. I don’t belong here. I thought loving you and loving our babies would be enough, but it’s not, and it never will be. Where I am going, you and Emrys cannot follow. I’ll return for the birth of our sons so you can meet them, and then I’ll leave with them again. When they are old enough, I’ll send them back to you, and our break will be complete. They’remore yours than mine, anyway. They’re going to be the greatest of warriors. All three of them. I have seen it.”
She stood there, her tears streaming. Her chin dropped to her chest, and she slowly spun, counter clockwise with her arms extended and her hands palms up.
“Rachel, don’t!” Caelan dropped his sword and rushed to grab hold of her, only to be thrown across the room by a powerful energy surrounding the love of his life. “Emrys! Stop her! I command ye!”
“I canna interfere here, my laird,” the old druid said, his voice hollow and filled with reverence. “She travels to a plane I am forbidden to even peer into.” He bowed his head, turned away from her, and covered his eyes.
Caelan fell to his knees and crawled to her with a hand raised. “Dinna leave me, my precious one. Ye are my heart, my soul, my life’s breath. I beg ye, Rachel, please.”
“I love you, Caelan,” she said, her voice breaking, “but this is the best for you and your clan.”
A blinding white light shafted down from the heavens, exploded into a protective orb, and surrounded her in a myriad of glittering points of light. When all went dark again, and she was gone.
Caelan stared at the space where only seconds ago his beloved one had stood. He crawled to the spot and flattened his hands on the stone still warm from the strange energy. She was gone. Her and the wee ones. Gone just as quickly from his life as the blink of an eye.
He threw back his head and roared with an unbearable pain unlike any he had ever known before.
CHAPTER 18
“He’ll not eat,” Ian said. “All he wants is enough ale to blind him and numb his pain. I’ll not go back in there again. Last time I carried a tray of meat in there, he nearly took me head off with it.” Ian plopped down on a stool beside the long worktable in the center of the kitchen while Florie prepared yet another tray for their heartbroken laird.
She rounded on the youth, waving her knife as though ready to slit his throat. “Ye will do as I tell ye, and I’ll hear no more out of your mouth, or I’ll have Fergus take a strap to your arse! Dark times have fallen upon this keep what with our lady leaving and our laird in mortal pain.” She turned back to her task, arranging a fine display of meats that she knew were Caelan’s favorites.
Still shaking her head, she clucked like a nesting hen. “Poor man’s drawn and haggard since his lady left. Locks himself in old Emrys’s library.” She arched a brow and waved her knife again. “Emrys told me he spends all his days searching through the mirrors for her.”
“Many say he’s lost his mind,” Ian said while bowing his head. “He mourns for her and the babes.” He crossed himself. “I am ashamed of us, and the pain we caused him with our untrusting ways.”
“She could have cursed us for the way we treated her,” Florie continued while adding a basket of bannocks to the tray. “But instead, she accepted our unfair judgment of her and left for the good of the laird and the clan. I am ashamed of us as well. She should have turned us all into toads and tossed us into the fires of Hell.”
Ian filled a pair of pitchers with ale. “All remember now how it wasn’t her who killed Roderic. Lady Rachel merely heated his hand enough to make him drop that blade from your throat. Our laird killed that bastard and rightly so after Roderic attempted to kill his lady. Would any of us have done any less had it been our wives being attacked?”
Fergus hung his head in shame. “I should never have spoken as I did that terrible day.” He reached over and covered Florie’s hand with his. “Did ye see the pain and humiliation in our lady’s eyes, her weeping as she watched us all turn against her? I am ashamed as well.”
“Well, one of ye take this to your laird and shame yourselves no more.” She slid the tray toward them, then sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I’ll follow ye with the pitchers of ale. With any luck, he’ll at least keep the tray in the room with him if we bring it all to him together.”
Winding their way up the cold dark steps of the tower, Florie, Ian, and Fergus shivered as a cold unholy wind seemed to swirl around them. Ever since Lady Rachel had left, MacKay land had been cast into a dank and gloomy darkness. The castle seemed like a dead body whose spirit had left, and now all that remained was an empty shell. No matter how many torches were lit or how many fires were stoked, the bone-cracking chill refused to leave.
