With a sigh of fatigue, she toed off her shoes. She reached into her front pocket and brought out the piece of keystone, placing it on the bedside table. How was something so small responsible for so much power? And did she really believe that a piece of rock controlled all of Time? It seemed farfetched.
She shucked her jeans and shivered. The room was cold, the hearth devoid of a fire. But since she didn’t see any spare wood, there was no way to build one. She moved around the room, snuffing out the candles and plunging it in darkness. Feeling her way back to the bed, she slipped under the blankets, pulling them to her chin, shivering.
She hated being cold. She was much more suited to warmer climes.
But exhaustion overtook her, and it was only a matter of minutesbefore she was fast asleep.
Then the dream came, bursting through her unconscious mind.
Like in the tapestry, she stood on the craggy hill. The bone-chilling wind pummeled her, billowing the white gown around her legs. She tried tucking a wayward lock of hair behind her ear, but the wind ripped it free, snaring her auburn, sun-kissed locks.
Before her, a vast army the likes she had never seen. Before it, a crusty old man with a faded beard wielding a shining great axe sneering at her with murder in his eyes.
“You are the key to the future and the past,” the woman next to her said.
She hadn’t realized the woman was there. It startled her. “Who are you?”
“I am Athea, the Goddess of the Future. One of the Triple Goddess.”
“What do you want?” Brianna asked.
“Behold the army before you.” She motioned outward with her hand to the men on horseback and foot. “They want what they cannot have. What you cannot give them. For if they claim the keystone in its entirety, it will doom generations to come.”
She glanced down at her hand to see the keystone—now whole—resting against her scarred palm.
“How so?” Brianna focused on the man before her, the one who was the leader with this glowing great axe.
“I will show you.”
Athea reached for her, holding her hand out to her. Brianna hesitated a moment before finally placing her hand in hers. Then Athea swept her other hand outward, encompassing the encroaching warriors and showed her.
Rory MacDonald cleaved the air in front of him with the great axe, opening a portal to the Realm of Chaos that allowed in all manner of dark and dangerous creatures. Horned creatures with hideous faces, claws,and leathery wings. They swarmed the opposing army who had come to fight MacDonald and his men. At the head of that army were the three MacLeod brothers. They charged with their claymores held high as they bellowed a war cry.
“Do something, Bri!” Chloe said, emotion clogging her throat. She stood next to her, fear evident on her face.
“Use the stone,” Evie urged. She was on the other side of her.
“I don’t know how.”
Brianna choked out the words, glancing down at the whole keystone in her hand, the lines glowing and pulsing. A sense of helplessness rammed through her as she stood there on the craggy hill. She did not know how to make it work. She did not know how to save the MacLeod men from the onslaught of disgusting creatures. She did not know how to stop Rory MacDonald from charging up the hill on his destrier with malice creasing his face, his great axe held aloft, and a war cry ripping from his throat.
She sucked in a breath. Evie and Chloe stumbled back away from him. He was after one thing—the keystone. And if she didn’t give it to him, she would die.
Brianna cried out as she sat up, staring into the gloomy shadows of the strange and unfamiliar bedchamber. Her heart raced with a frantic beat as she clutched the bedclothes to her chest and tried to get her breathing under control.
“It was just a dream. Only a dream,” she said into the darkness.
Was it?
The female voice fluttered through her mind. She snapped her head in the direction of the tapestries and saw the one with the Triple Goddess illuminated, the golden threads shimmering and emitting an ethereal light.
Brianna shoved out of bed, her feet hitting the cold stone floor, sending a shiver prickling up her entire body. She clutched her elbows as she edged toward the wall hanging. When she looked closer, she realized it was not the Triple Goddess at all within the woven fabric, but her and her sisters.
*
Brianna had afitful sleep the rest of the night. She was haunted by images of death and destruction and dark creatures of the night. Of a rip in space and time. Of a man who used a glowing great axe to kill all those who tried to stop him.
By the time morning came, and sleep was out of grasp, she shoved off the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed. She raked a hand through her tangled hair. She was more exhausted now than when she arrived. The dream was disturbing and clung to her mind like a spider to its web.
