“The Stewarts believe you above all others can fetch the maid,” Grim explained. “Her home is Seacliffe Castle, built on lands that-”
“…were once held by my family,” Callum cut in, realization dawning. “Treacherous headlands and wilder seas, and your Stirling friends ken I’ve tracked every inch of that devil-cursed ground.”
“So it is.”
“I dinnae like this.” Callum clenched his fists, felt his nails dig into the flesh of his palms. “’Tis Yuletide, you bastard,” he played his last objection, leaving out that – until now – he hadn’t cared at all about merrymaking or whate’er.
This year, anyways.
“I have a galley moored round thon cliffs.” Grim spoke as if all was agreed. “My men and I will see you to Seacliffe in a day or so, after all plans have been laid. The ship is packed with most everything you’ll need. Stewarts onshore will supply the rest. Once you have Lady Alanna, we’ll bring you back here.”
“A fine lady on Skerray,” Callum grumbled. “She’ll be bawling in an hour.”
“Or not.” Grim actually smiled. “I hear she is a braw lassie. She willnae be a burden.”
“And then?”
“That is for the gods to decide,” Grim said, his gaze on the sea.
Callum grunted, not trusting himself to speak.
He might ask his cousin if Lady Alanna was known as the maid with a stony heart.
Chapter 3
Seacliffe Castle
Northern Scotland, a few nights later…
The Yuletide Lovers were real, their hearts and souls as one.
And no power on earth would part them.
Lady Alanna Grant kept the words in her heart, imagining the boundless love that inspired them as she tipped Yuletide ale into the cold, moon-glazed sea so far beneath the windows of her tower bedchamber.
No power on earth would part them…
She looked out across the choppy water, the sentiment piercing her heart. She’d heard it often enough, and her reaction was always the same. A rush of feeling: pain, hope, then a powerful yearning that faded as quickly as it’d seized her. She doubted that would ever change. Every bard in the land ended his tale of the ill-fated lovers with those words.
Over the years, she’d added a few of her own…
“Torrad the Fearless and Kadlin, may the gods and magic of Yule bless you these days and evermore,” she spoke the blessing aloud, letting the night wind carry her well-wishes to wherever the long-lost lovers dwelled.
That done, she tossed crumbled bits of Yule cakes onto the glassy waves, hoping as she did each year, that – at last - she might find theYuletide Lovers,the two felled trees said to be the pair’s oh-so-romantic resting place.
The quest was a tradition.
And this year more than her heart was at stake.
Unless she was losing her mind, she was no longer simply cursed – her very life was now in danger.
Sure of it, she drew a long breath, refusing to despair. Fear wouldn’t aid her. Though brave as she might be, she couldn’t erase the shock of an arrow thwacking into the heather only a pace away from where she’d strode along the high moors just the day before. Poachers, most had said, the soul’s aim gone wrong when he spied the lady of the castle appear out of the morning mist.
She knew better.
She’d also nearly plunged to her death a sennight earlier when a rope fastened alongside the steep cliff-stair gave way in her hand. Iron pins that had held the rope in place for years, tumbled into the sea, the rope trailing behind.
Her breath caught as the memory rose inside her, but she tamped it down.
