Kenna slipped in and out of consciousness while Malcolm was awake through every second of those two days. He offered a hundred prayers an hour to whoever would hear them.
Finally, Morna put her hands on Malcolm’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. “The time has come for it to go one way or the other. If I am to have a hope of saving either mother or child, I must have no distractions. You and the rest must leave the room at once.”
Malcolm swallowed hard, nodded, and withdrew. He leaned against the wall outside the door with Seamus by his side, beseeching death itself to spare his family.
An hour passed. Then another. And another.
The door opened, and Morna emerged. There was an awful silence hanging over the room behind her, and from the look in her eyes, Malcolm knew the outcome with chilling certainty.
“I am so sorry, my laird,” Morna said softly. “I did all I could.”
The words hovered for a few moments, and then it was Malcolm’s screams that blanketed the land all through the night until the sun came up and his voice gave out.
