Page 7 of Outlaw Ever After

Silence dropped like a stone.

Visions of that skull, mounted on that pike so long ago, danced through his thoughts—

He shoved the grisly images back under the waves of time, for they’d plague him if he let them float to the surface.

“Drink with me.” Alex recovered, tossing the purse of his winnings and catching it, dangling it in Niall’s face as if tempting a dog with a treat. “I’m buying—”

“Lullaby sweet bairn of mine…”

He froze.

That melody. Faint. And the soft tinging of…a lyre?

A gentle, feminine melody filtered through the din of festival goers like creeping fog curling through the Cairngorms.

Memories, silent for years…whispered .

Like a fool, he strained to hear more through the din of vendors, children playing, laughing celebrants, and cheers rising from the wrestling ring, stock animals bleating—

“Sleeping gently in the pine…”

Soft and high, clear and pure… His eyes darted to and fro as gooseflesh pebbled his arms. The sound once more was swallowed in the din, pieces of melody a mirage, not enough to feel real, too vivid to be fake.

Was it a curious coincidence? This song traveling through the years? The same day that he’d received this letter from the Lord High Treasurer? In the same moment that Niall had referenced his sire? No one ever did.

He’d know the lullaby anywhere, despite not hearing it since he was a boy.

Lughnasadh is a time for olden mischief, when the wheel of time turns the seasons toward Samhain , he could hear Jossy say. Joslyn? Christ, thoughts of her, too?

“What’s wrong?” Niall growled. “Ye look as if ye’ve seen a ghost. Is it one of the Demon’s enemies?” Niall, too, glanced around, body tensing and hand migrating toward his knife, teasing the hilt.

Alex shook away the disorienting sensation. Notched his chin at a passing lass bedecked in wildflowers, who blushed. It was Lughnasadh, after all, and the ancient holiday still bore significance, despite priests with their tonsured hair building kirks upon sacred pagan sites or Protestant reverends evangelizing in obscure taverns in their black coats and signet rings.

“Aye, old man. The ghost of yer pale face when ye realized my scythe bested yer spear.”

Niall punched his arm and sheathed his knife as he repeated Alex’s figure of speech. “Ye mean ‘projectile.’ Seven pounds or half a stone.”

Alex laughed and rubbed his shoulder. “Jesu, ye bastard. I need that arm to beat ye again.”

Niall slung a fatherly arm around his shoulders as they walked, but Alex could still hear the singing like a beckoning. A nagging summons he was helpless to ignore. Who was this woman, singing to him? Strumming her lyre so softly the resonating chimes sounded like fairy dust on a breeze.

Fairy dust. He snorted. His parents had always said he had the fanciful imagination of a mischief maker. Little could they have guessed that he’d flourish with that flare arguing law.

His smile fell. Why were thoughts of them escaping the reaper’s tombs so suddenly?

But as they neared the tavern tent, the din drowned out all other sound. He could no longer hear his muse.

“I’ll be back in a moment.”

He slapped Niall’s pectoral, then ducked out of the tent as Niall called, “What about buying me drink…”

Alex surveyed the surroundings as he crammed his scroll into his satchel. He wedged through the fairgoers to the last place he’d heard that voice. Had she stopped singing? Like a hound, he tracked along the walls of Kilravok Castle that loomed above him like a Highland craig. Away from the din. He edged along the fields, breezes rustling the seedheads like waves, ruffling his great kilt.

He neared the wood and the contest pitch, when…

“Bright green eyes, rest peacefully, for the world isna what it’s meant to be…”

The music filtered once more through the melee, growing clearer.