Ethne ignored her and turned to Rhona. “Daren’t ye help her harm herself, understand? I can do this without our losing her.”
Rhona stared at her, cast a nervous glance over at Mama, then turned back to Ethne.
“Swear it, Rhona,” Ethne demanded.
Rhona gave a weak nod, then bowed her head.
Not happy with her friend’s hesitant response but knowing it was as good as Rhona could give, Ethne charged out the door, cringing against Mama’s shrill cries. Everything in her wanted to turn back, run to Mama and hug the dear woman tighter than she had ever hugged her before. But she couldn’t. Not with Mama determined to die so that everyone else might live.
Never would she slaughter her precious mother like a sacrificial lamb on the wicked one’s altar. Nor would she wait for the evil Morrigan to choose the time to strike. Armed with her sack of weapons, she would summon the witch’s vile wickedness when the mist returned.
When she reached the ruins, she slowed. Wolfe had gone silent as a stone when she promised to save him. The hopelessness in his gaze had shouted that he believed all was lost. But all was not lost. Ethne refused to believe that.
“Chieftain MacDanua,” she called out as she moved deeper into what had once been the courtyard. He’d not given her permission to use the intimacy of his first name in anything other than her thoughts. He didn’t answer, but she knew he was there. Somewhere. The ruins held him prisoner.
The details of his poor wife came to mind. The east tower. The troubled woman had jumped to her death from there. Ethne gathered her skirts higher and picked her way around the piles of crumbled walls and blocks of stone. The east tower looked out across the sea. If the lady had dropped from the parapet, she would have met her end on the stone slabs covering the shoreline. Ethne needed to wage war against the darkness there, where the blood oath had been dishonored with Morrigan’s lie.
She slipped through a crack in the wall and climbed down to the rocky strand beneath the tower. Shielding her eyes, she looked up at the parapet. Which section of the rounded wall had Lady Aria jumped from?
“She landed there, Ethne. On that slab,” Wolfe said from behind her.
Ethne turned and gave him an encouraging nod. “Then that is where all this suffering will end, my chieftain.”
“I would have ye call me Wolfe before ye learn to hate me.” Flinching with pain as he made his way across the rough ground, he hobbled to her. “Ye must not do this, Ethne. Go from here. Surely, if ye travel far enough away, the curse will fail to find ye.” His gaze sharpened with pleading. “Ethne—please.”
She couldn’t resist a victorious smile. “See? If ye were a wicked man or a selfish man, ye wouldna worry about me or feel remorse for anything.” She boldly rested a hand on his shoulder. “We all make mistakes in this life. Ye were never given the chance to atone. When ye tried, the wicked one imprisoned ye with the curse.”
“I would not have ye suffer because of me, lass. Can ye not see ye’ve made me love ye? I canna bear what the devil woman and her killing mist will do because ye helped me. Because ye cared.”
“I love ye too,” Ethne said. “And ye need me.”
“Ye love a cripple? A man weak and worthless?”
“Nay—I dinna love a cripple who is worthless. I love the kind, courageous man I see before me.” She opened her sack and carefully placed its contents on the waist-high shelf of stone where Lady Aria had met her end. “I need to make a cross from these rowan branches. Can ye hold them in place while I tie them?”
“Aye, since ye refuse to listen.” He leaned against the squared-off rock and rested his staff against his shoulder. “Why rowan?” he asked as he held the sticks together as she instructed.
“Witches dinna like rowan. That’s what Mama always said.” Ethne lashed the wood together and knotted the leather three times.
“Dark clouds are coming.” Wolfe cast a worried frown at the sky. His scowl deepened as he scanned the sea. “The water churns harder with the rising wind. ’Tis creating a maelstrom.” He caught Ethne’s hand and squeezed, then bared his teeth, his face filled with imploring. “The demoness senses ye, and she comes before sunset. Run, Ethne. Afore it’s too late.”
“I will not.” She pulled free, took the salt, and sprinkled it in a circle around him. “No matter what. Stay inside this circle, ye ken?” She handed him the horseshoe and the pieces of silver. “And hold tight to these. All these things will protect ye.”
He tried to shove them back into her hands. “No. I need ye protected. Not me.”
Taking a step back to dodge him, she touched the mark on her throat and lifted a small, stoppered urn. “My different-colored eyes, my mark, and this holy water will send her back to the hell from which she came. I need nothing more.”
“Ye are wrong, Ethne!” her mother declared from close to the base of the tower.
Panic shot through Ethne like lightning. She turned and spied her mother clinging to Rhona, lashed to her friend’s back like a bundle of sticks. Rhona had her arms looped under Mama’s knees and hitched the old woman higher onto her shoulders as she picked her way down to the shelf of stone.
“I had to bring her,” Rhona said in a tone imploring Ethne to understand. “She begged me to pack her here before it was too late. She’s ready to be free of her pain, and now that ye’ve found the MacDanua, she yearns to make amends for the evil her grandmother did.”
“But she will die,” Ethne said, the words catching in her throat.
“Stop talking about me as if I am not here,” Mama said. She patted Rhona’s arm. “Set me on the stone, lass. ’Tis where the blood oath was dishonored.”
“All of ye must go,” Wolfe said, stepping out of the protection of the salt circle. “Go now, afore it’s too late. Leave the Morrigan to unleash her temper on me. I am the one who started this feckin’ mess.”
