She swallowed hard, her mouth dry. “The Triple Goddess?”
“Yes.” The word slipped out on a quiet, icy breath.
“Did you sense anything else?” Though she tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, it had been bothering her since the moment they touched the pieces of the stone together, the moment they used their blood to enact the magic within.
“I saw…” Evie took a deep breath, expelled it. “I’m not sure what I saw.”
“I think I know,” she said. “It was as though I were Bridget and you were Moira in that moment. We spoke as two-thirds of the Triple Goddess. We invoked some kind of magic that allowed us to open time and step through it.”
“But how?” Evie’s voice shook.
“Because you have the power of the Present, maybe,” Chloe said. She thought about that for a while now, trying to work it out and understand how. “But it took the power from both of us to make it happen.”
Evie shivered. “If that’s true, and that is the power it possesses, I hate to think what power it has when all three pieces are put together.”
She voiced what Chloe was thinking. Brianna would, eventually, arrive with her piece and they would put them all together to make the keystone whole again. What, then, would that do? What sort of magic would it bring forth?
“Let’s not worry about that now,” Chloe said at last.
That was a problem for when—if—Brianna showed. She tried on numerous occasions to imagine her free-spirited sisterin the medieval Highlands. Nothing about it made sense. There was something else bothering her.
“Rory’s great axe, Evie. What’s to stop him from coming through a portal to us again?”
Evie thought about that for a long moment. “Perhaps he can’t use it more than once. He already did to kidnap us. Maybe, like the keystones, the magic needs to recharge.”
That made sense. She hoped Evie was right. She had other questions about that great axe. Where did he get it and what made it powerful? She started to ask this when she noticed her sister’s face was pale and fatigue lined her features.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Evie nodded. “Tired, but I’m all right.”
“The baby?”
“As far as I can tell, everything is fine.”
“That’s good. You should rest,” she said, releasing her hand.
“If you’re sure.”
Chloe grinned. “I have Malcolm to watch over me.”
“I know he’ll take good care of you.” Evie rose, standing by the bed. “He has questions, you know. Questions about what happened.”
“I’ll explain everything to him.”
As best as she could, anyway. She, herself, still wasn’t sure how that all happened. Evie leaned down and kissed her forehead.
“I’ll see you later.”
She headed for the door and pulled it open. Malcolm was on the other side, leaning on the door jamb. The second the door came open, he got to his feet. Evie told him goodnight as she slipped past him into the hallway.
Malcolm closed the door and returned to his seat next to the bed. Firelight flickered over his pensive features.
“Ye gave me a fright, ye ken,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that though she assumed he referred to the use of the keystone.
“When I saw ye there at the end of MacDonald’s great axe…” His gaze flickered to hers. “I wanted to murder him.”
