They settled into silence again, but it was different now, not awkward or tense. Elena felt as if some hollow had been carved in the very center of her, felt devoid of...everything, her life’s dream.
She tried to console herself with the idea that at least it was done now, finally after all these years, that she could move on. But she knew she would need some time to grieve the death of a hope that she had allowed to survive far longer than was sensible.
Drawing Jacob’s plaid around her shoulders, she lowered herself onto her side, pillowing her head on her arm. The tears came quietly then, slipping free without sound, soaking into the wool where they could do no harm.
MORNING CAME QUIETLY, the light pale and thin as it filtered through the boughs overhead. Jacob woke, feeling heavier than usual. His limbs were stiff, his mouth dry, and when he shifted to sit up, a faint dizziness followed. He decided almost immediately that his fever wasn’t better—though it wasn’t any worse—but that his arm was in worse shape than yesterday.
He paused, breathing through what ailed him, and glanced toward Elena.
The space beside him was empty.
Jacob surged to his feet, panic striking him fiercely. His gaze swept the ground where Elena had slept, the hollow in the needles still visible, she and his plaid gone. For one breathless instant, his mind leapt to the worst, hands closing around her again, a cry smothered in the dark—
“Elena,” he called softly, turning in every direction, already scanning the tree line.
He forced himself to slow, to think, to look rather than lunge blindly. The ground bore signs enough if one knew how to read them: the scuff of a boot, the faint disturbance of leaves. He saw neither, realizing she had left on her own, had not been taken. This offered only marginal relief.
He circled the camp, tightly at first and then in a wider perimeter. Out of habit, his hand hovered near the hilt of his sword even as he fought the instinct to shout her name. Calling out would draw more than her attention, and he would not trade one danger for another.
“Elena,” he said again, firmer now, pitched low.
There was no response and he kept moving, marking the direction on the trail he finally picked up, headed east—nae even in the bluidy proper direction if she meant to return to Strathfinnan on her own—toward a stand of thinner trees and a low, damp hollow where mist clung stubbornly to the ground.
He found her not five minutes later.
She emerged from between the birches, seemingly without a care in the world, walking with maddening calm, her skirts gathered slightly in one hand. She still wore his breacan, but it covered only one shoulder and drooped carelessly off the other. In her other hand she carried a small bundle of green stems and pale flowers.
Relief hit him so hard it left him momentarily unsteady.
Anger followed close behind.
“Elena,” he hissed as she walked toward her without having noticed him yet.
She looked up, startled only for a heartbeat before recognition smoothed her expression. “Oh. Ye’re awake.”
He crossed the distance between them in long, angry strides, stopping himself just short of reaching for her. “Where did ye go?”
She blinked, taken aback by the edge in his voice, and held up the stems in her hand. “I went for yarrow.”
“Bluidy hell, ye canna simply wander off with nae—"
“I wasn’t wandering, I was searching.” Her mouth tightened slightly, showing a hint of defiance.
“Searching, wandering, what difference?” He began and then stopped himself, drawing a breath. The last thing he needed was to snap at her. “Ye canna do that again.” The tightness in his chest had yet to ease. He dragged a hand through his hair, forcing the panic back into its box. He studied her then, properly, noticing the faint smudge of dirt on her fingers, the chill pink at her cheeks from the morning air, and the way she stood just a fraction too still just now, as though bracing herself. The memory of the night before rose to the fore of his mind, heavy and wholly unresolved, by his reckoning. “Dinna stray, Elena,” he said with greater calm. “Ye ken how unsafe it is.”
“My plan was—and I believe I managed it—to stay within shouting distance of you,” she defended steadily, lifting her chin.
That did not appease him in the least; she’d practically been within shouting distance of him when she’d been taken from Strathfinnan in the first place.
“I checked your temperature this morn, and found it against my liking.”
This startling news disturbed him in more ways than one.
She had woken before him, that alone was unusual enough to unsettle him. He was not a heavy sleeper, not on the road, not with danger so near. More troubling still was the thought that followed hard on its heels: she had touched him this morning, had checked his brow, his skin—and he had not woken to it. Therealization sat ill with him, a quiet rebuke to instincts he thought he could rely upon.
And then, the fact that she’d shown concern for him this morning... after the night they’d had. After the moment that still sat between them like a bruise neither would touch. He had expected a profound and icy distance this morning perhaps, or a more subtle, careful avoidance. Instead, she had risen early, moved quietly, and thought first ofhim.
He did not know what to do with that.
