“Aye, about that time,” Mungan went on, sobering, “ye’ve the right of it. A wife keeps a hall in order, sons keep the name alive. Past a score and ten, are ye nae? It’s time. Long past, as ye say. Nae man builds a line alone, and nae laird holds land without heirs. Ye ken this.”
Ciaran grunted low in his throat. “Aye.”
“Best get to it,” Mungan said simply, as though the matter were no more complicated than sharpening a blade. And then he chortled again. “Ere ye talk yerself out of it, as I ken ye might’ve been hoping I’d do.”
Ciaran shrugged, almost sheepishly, but did not and would not admit that aye, that might have been his hope.
Chapter Two
Into the Unknown
––––––––
The abbey was behind her now, its walls inexplicably whole, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back. If she looked, she might have to accept it, or would only grow more alarmed.
There had to be a simple explanation. Something had happened to separate her from Jason, to move her from the ruins she remembered to this other place, these walls less decayed. She must have missed something—a stretch of time, a drive she couldn’t recall, Jason and her moving on to the next site while she’d drifted off in her thoughts. That was the only answer. She hadn’t watched the past mend itself before her eyes. She couldn’t have.
She needed to find the car. Jason had to be waiting, probably irritated she’d taken too long. She could almost picture him now, tapping the steering wheel impatiently, phone in hand—more annoyed than worried.
But if he was still in the car... ugh, nothing made sense.
Her chest tightened. Maybe she’d blacked out, lost time somehow, walked off without realizing it. Maybe she was confused from dehydration, or worse, from some kind of dissociative episode. The idea chilled her. Was this what it felt like to come unmoored from reality?
It was fruitless trying to retrace her steps since she had no recollection of getting to what seemed like a newer, whole abbey.
She pulled her phone from her pocket for the tenth time, holding it up above her head, as if that extra two feet between her and some unseen satellite hundreds of miles away would make a difference. Still no signal, and her battery was at twenty-six percent. She’d forgotten to plug it into the charger while they’d been driving and she’d been using the map on her phone.
Having no idea what else to do, Claire walked.
The land unrolled before her in long green swells, broken by patches of woodland and stone. There were no roads, no fences, no hum of tires on distant highways. The air was sharp and clean, too clean, with no trace of exhaust, no faint buzz of wires strung across poles. She told herself she was turned around, that she had left the ruins by the wrong side. Scotland was full of open land, wasn’t it? There would be a signpost, a cottage, something.
But hours passed, and nothing came. Only hills, only wind.
By late afternoon her legs ached and her throat burned with thirst. She had nothing but the small purse slung over her shoulder—phone, wallet, hotel key card, a pack of gum. She dug out a stick and chewed it until her jaw hurt, pretending it was food.
She crested a ridge and stopped short.
Nothing but mountains rose before her, as far as the eye could see. The slopes were steep and covered with trees and heather, and in some parts with scree—small loose stones that form the sides of mountains, as she’d learned in her three-week mountain hiking course she’d taken years ago, but had rarely used since.
Claire frowned, though—she knew this place. She had been here, she was sure. Only yesterday she and Jason had driven through it, along a road that cut a neat gray seam into the rock. But now...there was no road, nothing but stone and slope and sky. Maybe it wasn’t the same range she’d been thinking of, the one she recalled from yesterday.
Still, her stomach lurched, since she knew thiswasthe same mountain range, with its very distinctive tree line, which ended where the elevation became too high for trees to grow.The line between the forested lower slopes and the rocky peak had reminded Claire of an EKG strip of a healthy person, with a consistent repeating pattern of waves—good on an EKG but curious or unexpected in a mountain range, she’d thought yesterday, which had made it stand out.
She sighed, knowing she needed to be on the other side of that mountain. She glanced around, even more desperate now, hoping that compact white car would miraculously show itself now though it hadn’t for hours.
When it did not, her shoulders sagged and she marched forward, toward the mountain, all the while telling herself there had to be some explanation for all this....craziness.
The mountain loomed in front of her, daunting on foot, but not impossible.Up and over,she told herself, surely there would be something on the other side. She knew there was.
But then, she wasn’t actually certain of anything anymore.
“You’renot crazy,” she muttered aloud.
Her legs carried her higher, though every step stole more strength. The day wore on, the pale sun slanted low, shadows drawing long across the slopes. She stumbled more than once, falling to her knees, her hands pushed against the earth, the skin of her palms scraped raw. By the time true darkness had descended, she could climb no more. Her chin trembled in fright and tears had long ago left trails down her scratched and dirtied cheeks. When she found a hollow in the rocks, she sank gratefully into the mini-burrow, her limbs shaking with exhaustion and fear.
The cold came quickly. Not the damp chill of an air-conditioned hotel or even the cool summer evening she had expected—it was sharper, biting, the kind that sank into bone. She wrapped her jacket tight, tucked her hands under her arms, and curled against the rock. The sky above was unfamiliar, a scatter of stars so bright it seemed cruel.
Her thoughts blurred, spinning between terror and denial. She told herself over and over she’d be all right, that she’d find the road—any road—or that Jason would come for her. While he didn’t love her, he certainly didn’t hate her, wouldn’t leave her alone out here. Sadly, she just couldn’t picture Jason coming to her rescue. He’d never been—never seemed—the hero of any girl’s dreams; his was not the image a girl imagined if she did contemplate a hero riding in to save her. No, Jason wasn’t the risk-life-or-limb type, not for her, or for anyone. Sacrifice wasn’t in his nature; inconvenience alone usually pissed him off. He hadn’t come or found her by now, she guessed, he wasn’t coming at all.
