“I will not.”
“Ye care not for it.Dinna even believe in it.All ye care about is the time ye came from and that friend ye left behind.”
Jessa swallowed hard.Sweat peppered across her forehead, burning as it trickled into her eyes.“If I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn’t still be here.Mairwen gave me the chance to go back and forget about everything.I stayed with Grant.”
“Aye, but ye’re still not certain, are ye?”The wolf reared up on its hind legs and took the form of a haggard old woman wearing a ragged cloak of black feathers.She pointed at Jessa with a crooked finger, knobby and bent with age.“Ye didna go back because of yer lust for him.That does not mean ye believe.Ye dinna feel the truth of the ways in yer heart.”
“Just because I have never been the decisive sort does not mean I don’t believe.”Jessa angled her chin higher.“It just means I like to keep my options open.Can you honestly say you’ve never done that?”Her fosters had always hated how she would argue with them and try to turn the tables.Maybe that technique would buy her some time.At the very least, it should irritate whatever this thing was that couldn’t decide what form it wanted to take.She pointed at the crone.“Just look at you.When you first appeared, you were some kind of shadow figure, like the Grim Reaper or something.Then you changed into a flock of buzzards, a wolf, and now an old hag.You can’t even settle on what you want to be, and yet you criticize me, saying that just because I can’t make up my mind, I don’t believe.”
“They were ravens, ye insolent wee chit!Not buzzards.And I am the Morrigan.The Phantom Queen.Goddess of War and Fate, and when I bring down the Highland Veil, all will bow to me.Even Mairwen, with whom I shall finally have my full revenge.”The old one threw back her grizzled head and laughed.“She has no idea how I intend to use him.”
“How you intend to use who?Grant?”Jessa strode forward.The only fear she possessed now was fear for Grant’s safety.“You stay away from him.”
The old one laughed.“Or what?”
“Or I will become a royal pain in your nonexistent ass.”
The hag shooed away the threat as if it were an annoying fly.“Ye have no idea of what ye speak.One as weak as yerself would stand no chance against me.”
“When people stop believing in something, that which they once believed in ceases to exist.Is that not true?”
Iron bars shot up from the path in a circle around her just as a large black slab fell from above and landed atop them with a deafening clang.Balled up on the floor, her eyes shut and ears covered, Jessa braced to be crushed.After a long, terrifying moment of expecting to die, nothing happened.She opened her eyes, and once again, all she could see was impenetrable darkness.Gingerly patting the floor, she felt around to find the wall but couldn’t reach it.The iron cage, her tiny prison, had her corralled in the center of the path.
Holding tight to the bars, she tried to shift them, even tried to squeeze through them, then gave up.If she somehow escaped, where would she go?“Anywhere but here,” she told the darkness.She slid to the ground and hugged herself against the ever-increasing chill creeping into her bones.Maybe the eighteenth century wasn’t so frightening after all.It had to be safer than being trapped in the darkness, in a cage, in some evil goddess’s playroom.
“If you’re still here, you just proved I’m right,” she taunted.“You know it’s really easy to get people to believe in something new and chalk their old beliefs up to myths and legends—fairytales to tell their children.Nothing more than pretend stories that are totally and completely powerless.”
A wave of icy water slammed into her, choking her with its force and knocking her hard against the iron bars.The briny deluge burned her eyes and her lungs.She coughed and wheezed to get air.Hanging on to the bars, she dragged herself back to her feet and braced herself, waiting for another soaking, but it never came.She almost laughed as she coughed and spat more water.Damn, she’d hit a nerve that time.She had also discovered the Morrigan’s greatest fear: to be forgotten and cease to exist.
* * *
Grant shovedanother pistol into his belt, then added two more daggers to each of his boots.He would strap on every weapon in the keep, if need be, to get his precious Jessa back.
“Those will do ye no good against the dark one,” Mairwen said from behind him.
“Aye, well, having them makes me feel a damn sight better prepared.”He should never have allowed Jessa to go beyond the wall.Why the hell hadn’t he told her to stay within the safety of the keep?Why the hell hadn’t he kept her at his side?
“The Morrigan would have stolen her no matter where she roamed,” Mairwen told him, as if he had spoken his misgivings aloud.“She seems to fear yer match more than she has feared the others.Yer binding oath should have sent her on her way.I dinna understand it.”
“Stay the feckin’ hell out of my mind, witch!”He advanced on the old woman, pointing at her with his blade.“I canna live without my Jessa.If anything happens to her, know that I will come for ye first.Ye will be the last life I take afore I take my own, so I can join my precious love.”
Mairwen backed up a step, seeming more fragile than usual.Almost human.Her regret and worry were impossible to miss.“We will get her back.The Defenders and Weavers await yer orders.”She went to the door but stopped, looked back, and locked eyes with him.“But ye should know, ye may be the only one able to save her.”
“As it should be.”He trusted no one else with his precious lady love.“Keep them the hell out of my way.”He lashed short swords under each arm rather than the usual wearing of the one sheathed under his left.As he turned, Lachie and Henry stepped into the room.“Report?”
Henry nodded.“Thecleughechoed with the cries of birds for a while.Sounded like a battlefield when ravens come to feast upon the dead.The blackness of the cracked earth lightened for a bit, but the mist never fully cleared to enable us to see more than a wee bit.Then it went dark again and growled like thunder.”
“Take heart with this news,” Lachie said.“It means she has not given up.She is fighting the evil.”
“I take heart in nothing.None of this should have ever happened to her.”Grant passed between them and exited the weaponry hold, unquenchable rage coursing through him.The closer he drew to the part of the cliff that had turned into an unholy, gaping maw to the earth’s bowels, the hotter his fury boiled.
The oldest of his MacAlester kin still walking this earth sometimes whispered that Grant possessed berserker blood, reminding anyone who would listen about the elite warriors from his father’s ancient line.For the first time in a long while, he hoped the whisperings of his ancestry were true.He could use a touch of invulnerable savagery today.
As he trod toward the strange ravine that was more like a crack between this reality and the next, a call went up from the watchtowers, announcing the approach of more Defenders on horseback.Word had spread fast.He had Henry and Lachie to thank for that.But he would just as soon do this himself.The Morrigan needed to learn once and for all that he was not the one she should toy with.
Emily stood at the edge of the abyss, peering down into it, her cheeks wet with tears.
“Move back, lass.Take safety within the walls of the keep.My Jessa would never forgive me if the dark one hurt ye.”
