Cat scooped up the tiny dog and backed away, holding himprotectively. “Malcolm said I could have him! He’s the runt of the litter and willnae be any good for shepherding anyway!”
“That isnae the point. The point is that ye disobeyed me.”
To her credit, Cat looked suitably abashed. But a moment later, her defiance returned. “He willnae be any trouble, and I’ll train him myself. The kennel master says he’ll help me, and he can sleep in my room. I’ll clean up after him, I promise. Look, he already knows some commands.”
She put the little dog down. “Patch, sit.”
To Cailean’s surprise, the pup did exactly that. He raised an eyebrow. “Patch?”
“That’s his name. Because he’s got a black patch over his eye. See? Can I keep him, Pa? Please?”
Cailean had been laird long enough to know when to pick his battles, and this was clearly a battle he was not going to win. He sighed. “Fine. But yewilltrain him. And ye will feed him. And ye will clean up after him. Clear?”
Cat cannoned into him again, throwing her arms around his waist. “Oh, thank ye, thank ye, thank ye!”
Cailean’s annoyance melted away to be replaced by a warm, fierce love for this strong-willed girl of his. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. He would do anything,anythingto protect her. But what if he couldn’t protect her from this sickness? What if it came for her too?
A cold, visceral terror clutched at his insides, so strong that for a moment it took his breath. What if he lost her the way he’d lost her mother?
No, he thought.I won’t let that happen. I willneverlet that happen. I will die first.
Cat looked up at him, seeming to notice his pained expression. “Are ye all right, Papa?”
He forced a smile. “I’m fine. Why dinna ye take Patch to the kitchen?I’m sure there were some sausages left over from breakfast. But after that, ye get straight to yer lessons, ye hear?”
Cat gave a little cry of delight and turned to scamper off across the courtyard, Patch running at her heels. Cailean watched them go, that terror clenching his gut again. He couldnotlose her. He just couldn’t.
Taking a deep breath, he turned and strode away, out of Dun Mallach’s gates and onto the road that zigzagged downhill to the coast.
The village that hugged the slopes of the hill on which Dun Mallach was built was quiet at this time of day, with most folks either out fishing or else working the fields inland, so only a few oldsters were around, mending nets or sitting on the front step of their houses, watching the world go by. These few raised hands and called greetings as he strode past, which Cailean returned in kind.
But in truth, his mind was on other things. His thoughts churned, as turbulent as the winter seas. He strode down to the beach, sand and shingle crunching under his boots. The tide was out, and so the shore had become a long stretch of rock pools and sandbars, glimmering in the random shafts of light that occasionally broke through the overcast.
Cailean stared out to sea. The breeze streamed his hair and plaid out behind him and helped to clear his thoughts a little. This was where he always came when he wanted to be alone or needed to think. The smell of the sea, the bite of the wind, the endless horizon, they all helped to soothe his turbulent emotions.
But not today. Today his thoughts wouldn’t settle, going round and round and round, with no solution presenting itself. In his mind’s eye he saw Drew’s fever-ravaged face. He saw the countless others who had already succumbed to the sickness. What was he to do? Whatcouldhe do?
If he had been a religious man, he might have fallen to his knees and prayed. He might have given offerings to the old gods as Maggie did, or prayed to the Christian one as Beatrice wanted him to. ButCailean had long since lost all faith in gods. His loss of faith had started when they took his wife from him, leaving his daughter without a mother, and it had only increased when the sickness began taking his people and the gods stood by and let it happen.
It was once said that the Kingdom of the Isles—Barra, Skye, and Islay—was protected by an ancient magic and that it would keep harm from coming to the people of the Isles. If that were so, Cailean had never seen any evidence of it. Barra had been beset by raiders, savage storms, and now the sickness.
Oh aye, he no longer had any faith in gods.
He felt his hands curling into fists and the old, familiar anger forming in his gut. Anger at the gods. Anger at the hand fate had dealt him. But mostly, anger at himself.
These werehispeople. It was his duty to save them.
But he didn’t even know where to begin.
*
Rose stared atthe silver-eyed woman. “I beg your pardon? Did you just say you’re agoddess?”
Was she a little unhinged? A goddess? Seriously?
The woman cocked her head and regarded Rose with those disconcerting silver eyes. “Do ye have a problem with yer hearing? Aye, I am the goddess Lir, and as I said, I need yer help.”
She had a strange, lilting accent. Scottish? And those eyes… They were like pools of quicksilver, and they seemed to see right into Rose’s soul. She swallowed. She had the strangest feeling that the woman wasn’t unhinged at all. She had the strangest feeling that those eyes weren’t some fancy contact lenses made for show.
