And then he laughed, the sound sharp and humorless, and swiped his hand over his mouth and chin.
“Christ save me,” he snarled. “I canna believe I’m about to speak such rubbish. But there was a woman at the ford this morn. Out o’ the mist she came, like she’d stepped from the air itself. Said ye and I had met before. Said she’d near flung us together with her own hands.”
Claire’s breath caught. Her hand rose to her neck. “Flung us together?” Her voice was barely audible.
He shook his head, disgust twisting his mouth. “Daftness, I told myself. Dark magic—I shouldnae even give voice to it.”
Her skin prickled. “What—who was she?”
He shrugged wildly, then ground out, “A stranger. Black hair, gray streaked. She said my name as if she’d kent me all my life. And then—” His throat worked, as if he barely believed his own words. “Then she vanished. Before my eyes.”
Claire’s stomach dropped. “Vanished?”
“Aye,” he snapped. “One moment there, the next gone. Like smoke.”
Her knees weakened. “What else did she say?”
Ciaran opened his mouth then snapped it shut, shaking his head. “Nae more, that was all.”
Claire caught the slight hesitation, which he likely would have been able to hide if he weren’t so flustered. “Ciaran, what else?”
He plunked his hands down onto his hips, still clearly unnerved, and stared at her. “She said I should hold ye fast.”
“Hold me fast?” Claire repeated, her voice so low it seemed she only mouthed the words. “What does that mean?”
“Bluidy hell, Claire,” he fumed, “how can I ken? What does any of it mean?”
“I need to see it,” she said suddenly, brushing hair from her face, though the wind promptly threw it back. “The place where you saw her—we need to go back there.”
“Nae,” he bit out. “'Tis naught to see—she’s nae there.”
“Please.” Claire’s voice came low but steady, threaded with desperation. “Ciaran, someone did this to me—moved me through time. If this...woman had a hand in it, I need to know. I need to find her. Maybe she can get me back home.”
“Even if—” he started, then snapped his mouth shut, jaw locking.
“What?” she pressed. When he said nothing, she pushed harder. “What, Ciaran?”
His nostrils flared. At last, in a voice rough with reluctance, he muttered, “Even if she is... the reason ye’re here, I dinna ken she’ll send ye back.”
“Why? Why would you think that?”
He swore, dragging a hand down his face, as if the words themselves were foul. “She said she’d gone to some trouble to... bring ye here, and dinna want her efforts wasted.”
Claire’s breath quickened. The image of some eerie woman speaking riddles, then vanishing before his eyes was impossible to reconcile, and yet it was the first thing that had ever given even the tiniest answer to what had happened to her. At last, some proof—the first answer—to how or why she had landed here at all.
“But why? Why bring me here? Do I know her?”
He didn’t answer. His mouth worked, but nothing came, his eyes narrowing as if the memory itself offended him. She realized he’d be happier to never speak of it again, to bury the whole encounter and pretend it hadn’t happened.
“Ciaran, did she say why?”
His twisted expression saidyesas clearly as words, but he said nothing.
“Ciaran!” she burst out.
He growled the words at last, as if tearing them loose: “She said she’d gone through a bit of trouble so that we would find each other again, ye and I.”
Claire froze, her mouth open. The world tilted under her feet. Her legs gave out, and she sank to the ground, clutching at the earth beneath her.
