Right before he vanishes, he whispers, “Find your family.” My mom begins to fade away next, and she reaches out, her eyes beseeching me as she whispers, “The throne.” She trails off, and I can’t make out the rest of what she’s saying.
She vanishes in a puff of eerie black and green smoke. Their words are forgotten as my heart cracks wide open in my chest. I scream, begging them to stay with me, to not leave me again. Tears stream down my cheeks, and I bellow with rage at having them torn from me all over again. Screaming echoes in the void that devours me.
The sound of hundreds of people suffering the same fate as I am.
“Key!” Lachlan’s voice breaks through the dream, and the screaming abruptly cuts off as my eyes blink open.
It was me.
I was the one screaming.
I flutter my eyes open and shut, trying to focus on the dark room around me. Moonlight floods in, illuminating Lachlan’s face. His eyes are lined with silver as he rubs a hand down the side of my face.
“It’s alright, Key, it was only a dream.”
I hiccup, my breath coming out unsteadily. He wipes the tears from my face and pulls me into his arms. All this time spent around my parents’ memories must have conjured them up tonight. Their faces and voices fade quickly from my mind.
My tears begin trickling down my face again as I struggle and fail to recall the entirety of the dream. Only the wound of their absence remains. Lachlan holds me tightly as I sob, feeling as if they were ripped from me all over again. He rocks us back and forth.
“I’ve got ye, you’re safe,” he whispers.
“I miss them so much,” I choke out between sobs.
Lachlan nods. The stubble of his beard grazes my forehead as he presses his lips to it.
“I know, Key, I’m so sorry.”
He holds me tightly to his chest until my tears dry up and my breathing steadies. Lachlan eases back against the headboard and sighs heavily as I snuggle into his side.
“Do ye remember when we were kids, and we used to pick wildflowers by the fairy tree?”
His words have me pulling away from his chest so that I can look into his eyes.
“Yes, why?”
“I used to plant more flower seeds after ye had gone back to the States to replenish the ones we had taken. Even after ye stopped coming back every summer, I would still tend the flowers. Making sure the birds hadn’t eaten the seeds, and that they were still sprouting. It was my way of passing the time and holding ye close during the year until ye would return the next summer.” His face glows in the moonlight, hard planes and long lashes casting shadows across his skin.
We had stopped going to Gran’s every summer after my 18th birthday. Four years had passed, and still he had gone out every year and tended to the flowers.
“I thought I was wild and precocious,” I mumble.
“Oh, you were.” He chuckles. “But you weremywild and precocious. I guess I just dinna realize it at the time.”
My fingers have a mind of their own as I absentmindedly trace his naked skin with a fingertip, starting at his ribs and making my way to his chest.
“How do you do that?” I whisper.
He cocks his head to the side, his unkempt hair brushing against his collarbone. “Do what?”
“Help me breathe, even though I was just drowning.”
Lachlan shivers under my touch. “Because I can and ye need me to.”
He angles his head down and towards mine, his eyes locked onto my lips. Courage surges through me.
I grasp the back of his neck, pulling him down to me.
Our lips touch, and fire erupts through me, burning away every bad feeling I’ve ever had. My body heats, my cheeks flush,and my heart stutters to a stop before it explodes in my chest. It’s everything I ever dreamed it would be.
