“And what will yer precious mama say when she discovers what ye have done?” A bitter snort escaped him. “I feel certain her opinion of me will change then.”
“It will not.” Ethne closed the distance between them yet again. “She will help me find a way to break the curse.”
“There is no way.” Wolfe hated himself more than he ever had before. “I deserve this hell. Brought it upon myself.” He touched her cheek with a shaking hand. “Ye deserve life. Love. A fine husband and precious bairns to care for ye in yer old age.” His voice broke. “Ye deserve better than me, dear one. So much better.”
“Leave what I deserve to me, ye ken?” She framed his face with her hands and pressed the sweetest of kisses to his mouth. “I will make ye free,” she whispered. “And then ye can decide whether ye want me here or not.”
He stiffened and clutched his staff tighter to keep from falling to his knees and weeping. What precious Ethne promised would never be. He knew it heart and soul. “Go, Ethne. Go to yer mother.”
Chapter Five
Ethne hurried throughthe door, bracing herself for what she knew awaited her.
“Praise the Almighty!” Rhona jumped up from the stool beside the fire and pulled her into a crushing hug. “We feared ye surely dead,” she said through gasping sobs.
“Ethne! Come to me, child,” Mama weakly ordered her from the narrow cot in the corner. She lay back against a pile of rolled blankets, a bag of rags, and what few pillows they owned, securely propped into a sitting position, her eyes red and her cheeks shining with tears. “What have ye done, daughter? What foolishness have ye brought down upon yerself?”
“No foolishness, Mama.” Ethne slid Mama’s gnarled hand into hers as she knelt at the worried woman’s bedside. “I discovered it is the cursed chieftain I’ve fed since last summer. Chieftain Wolfe MacDanua. Not some wandering cripple. I mean to end this curse once and for all.”
“The MacDanua,” her mother repeated in a horrified whisper. Her lined face crumpled with misery. “Oh, Ethne. No, my dear, sweet lass. Say ye didna listen to the entirety of the pipes’ killing song.”
“I have, Mama. And when the wicked one comes, I mean to best her and free the MacDanua.” Ethne squeezed her mother’s hand. “I love him, Mama, and he loves me.”
Mama closed her eyes, but her tears came faster. The scarred side of her face became an angrier red. “Ye canna break the curse, child.”
“Every curse can be broken.” Ethne refused to let everyone else’s disbelief veer her from her course. “Ye’ve said so many times.” She rose from her knees and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning closer, willing her mother to believe. “I just need ye to tell me anything ye think might work. I will try them all.”
Mama shifted with a heavy sigh and wearily shook her head. “Ye canna break the curse, Ethne.”
Ethne stood, too anxious and driven to remain seated any longer. “I dinna ken a thing about witchery, but I remember every story ye’ve ever told about the wicked one and yer hateful mother. How they hurt folks. Their cruelties to ye. Especially when ye protected me from them. I’ll use the holy water ye stole to christen me with. There’s salt in the crock on the table. Rhona got us some silver just the other day, and I’ll pry the horseshoe from our doorpost so’s to have a bit of iron to be sure. Can ye tell me anything else I might use?” She hurried to the dried herbs hanging beside the hearth. “Sage! I’ve got a bit of sage too, and there are rowan sticks in the corner.”
Her mother shook her head while staring down at her hands fisted in her lap. “None will work, my precious daughter. Not against Morrigan-the-wicked’s evil.”
“Then what? Tell me, Mama. What?”
Mama lifted her head and gave Ethne a sad smile. “Same blood but a pure soul sacrificed for a lie told,” she answered quietly. Her watery blue eyes took on a faraway look. “I am the last. Morrigan-the-least. Daughter to Morrigan-the-lesser. Granddaughter to Morrigan-the-wicked. The tainted blood ends with me.”
“She means herself,” Rhona said in a horrified whisper. “To break the curse, ye need her blood. Her sacrifice.”
“That makes no sense,” Ethne said, even though the truth of it soured her stomach and made it churn. For the very first time, Mama’s reciting her ancestry, and the saying that always began it, finally made sense. “No lie has been told. Wolfe told me his wife knew of his adultery and never forgave him, even though he begged her and spurned the Morrigan forevermore.”
“He is not the one who lied,” Mama said. “The wicked one made a false blood oath with him. Swore to bring his dead wife back. Promised that the son newly seeded in his wife’s belly would be born healthy and whole and someday lead Clan MacDanua. But instead, she cursed him to become the deadly piper of Tarbat Ness and made him prisoner to the haunted mist of the Highlands.” She shifted with a heavy sigh. “That is why ye need blood from the Morrigan line to break the bond. Ye need me.”
Ethne sank back onto the stool and hugged herself, unwilling to believe that losing her mother was the only way she could save the man she loved. “There has to be another way. The tools I spoke of. Evil canna withstand them.”
Mama leaned forward and gently tapped Ethne on the chest. “What does yer heart tell ye, child? Always listen to yer heart. Have I not told ye that as well?”
“I am listening to my heart, Mama. I love him.” Then she caught hold of her mother’s hands. “But I love ye too, and am not willing to lose ye. I willna choose between ye. If I canna have ye both, then I will battle the Morrigan alone and take my chances.”
“Ye willna lose me.” Mama smiled, her eyes clearer than they had been in years. “Ye will free me.”
Ethne almost choked on a sob as she shook her head. “No. Ye’ve raised a verra selfish daughter. I canna bear the thought of losing ye. Not this way.”
“Ye would rather I die a slow, painful death from this poisonous sickness eating me alive?” Mama pointed at thebattered black trunk in the corner. “The narrow wooden box in the bottom. Bring it to me, child.”
Ethne rose and backed away, shaking her head. “No. I will not fetch the athame.” Instead, she snatched a cloth sack off the hook beside the door and started gathering everything she needed to battle the evil curse. Salt. Holy water. Silver. Iron. Sage. She wished they had a prayer book or a cross. A cross—she could make one with the rowan sticks and some leather strips.
“Ethne!” Mama smacked the wall beside her bed, making a loud pop. “I forbid this nonsense, ye ken? Do as I’ve told ye. Now.”
