Page 35 of Rory

Chapter Nine

After her talk with Tasgall, Harper took a long walk around the stronghold, avoiding everyone working outdoors while she mulled over what she’d just done. If she could heal the enchantment completely with her glowy thing, then things would get back to norm-level around here. There might not be any more of those faceless men or any other weirdness making it so hard to live here. The clan and their people would be safe, relatively speaking.

Okay, I can do that. If it doesn’t kill me.

The biggest question mark was not knowing what this power—and using it—was doing to her. She didn’t sense any weakness in her body this time the way she had when she’d killed the faceless men trees, but she had grown a bit depressed. What if that got worse? Harper had struggled a lot with thoughts of suicide, especially when she’d started really losing her hearing. Was she up to another to-be-or-not-to-be battle?

The sky had darkened to a deep twilight blue by the time she went into the stronghold via the kitchens, which were empty except for the cook. Doon smiled as she came in, and knocked back something in a goblet that smelled pretty good to Harper when she got close to her. The way the older woman kept beaming at her told her that she was a little drunk.

“Come and drink with me, lassie,” Doon said.

She winced. “You don’t want to do that. In my time I’m known as an ultra lightweight.”

The cook rested her chin on her hand and simply gazed at her.

“You might as well tell me why you’re looking at me like I’m better than that whiskey,” Harper chided. “And don’t say it’s because I’m young and beautiful and you want to drag me off to bed. I have excellent gaydar, and I’ll bet money that you’re strictly into guys.”

“Aye, ’tis true. You make me wish I favored the lassies over lads.” Doon poured a healthy measure from the jug, and handed her the cup before taking a swig and sighing. “Ever I’m happy to see you in the flesh, lass, for you’re a promise kept. I’ve dreamed of you nigh on a thousand years.”

She was glad she hadn’t yet taken a sip of the strong liquor, because she would have coughed out a lung. “You did what now?”

“You’ve come to me in my dreams oft since that bastart cursed us all.” Doon placed the jug on the worktable and recorked it. “Always a wee thing in darkness at the start, and then you grew like a flower in a garden, shedding light all round you.”

“A wee thing,” Harper repeated. “Are you sure you were dreaming of me?”

“Aye. Your face, ’tis never changed.” The cook wiped her eyes with the bottom of her apron. “I watched you wander on the green where the bairns played, always alone and hungry until they came for you. ’Twas lovely that you’ve folk in your time that care for the helpless young.”

Two maids hurried past them, carrying empty trays to the sink and picking up laden ones from the sideboard. They glanced at Doon before heading back to the hall.

“You saw me in the park,” Harper said. That made her eyes sting. “What else?”

“All you did came to me, as if I lived in your world, and saw such with my own eyes,” Doon said. “The busy place where you put together things. The gadgetry that captured your fun there with the spirits made from cloth. Even when you bought that lovely house in the city of butterflies.”

“Are we related, maybe?” she asked, but the cook shook her head and drank again. “What could make you watch my life in your dreams, then?”

“For a time I reckoned ’twas me losing my reason in despair of ever escaping this wretched prison,” Doon said. “Only you became my hope, and then here you came just now when we’re near hopeless. I weep with gratitude every night for you.” She ducked her head and added in a whisper, “And I dream no more since you arrived. ’Tis how I ken that you’re our savior, lass.”

That was way more responsibility than Harper had ever wanted, but she couldn’t tell the other woman that she’d bet on the wrong pony. Instead she knocked back the whiskey from her cup, allowing it to burn a path from the back of her tongue to her belly.

“I can’t be the girl in your dreams.” Of course she could be; it made perfect sense in this screwed-up place. Also, the thought of disappointing Doon after nine centuries of hoping made Harper’s belly knot, but she had to give her some tough love. “We’ve never met before I got here, so you couldn’t know what I looked like. Maybe I just bear a strong resemblance to the girl you dreamed up.”

“You believe me a liar?” The cook seemed more amused than offended. “You’re a brave one. No’ a lass in the stronghold should dare speak thus to me. Even Lady Ava watches her tongue in my hearing.”

“She doesn’t around me.” Lady Ava, her nemesis, her new best friend, and now the woman she was going to help her husband deceive.

“You’re more alike than you reckon,” Doon said.

Annoyance over that made Harper lurch to her feet. “Sorry, no, not possible. I don’t think you’re a liar so maybe you’re just drunk. You kinda make me wish I was.” Since her legs seemed a bit wobbly she started to walk toward the door to the gardens. “All the same, thanks for saying it was me. I don’t think I’ve ever been anyone’s dream girl.”

Outside the frigid air slapped Harper like a hard hand, and filled her lungs with an ache that seemed to echo in her heart. She had always liked the cold, even when it hurt. What were the white things falling in front of her nose? She tried to catch one, tripped over something, and landed in what seemed like a patch of razor-studded walking canes.

“Well, this isn’t fun.” Harper had enough sense to keep her eyes closed as she tried to push herself out of the thorny stick patch, and sucked in her breath as the sharp branches shredded her palms. “Ouch. Ow. Yikes. Haven’t I been punished enough today?”

Two big hands seized and lifted her out of the tangle, making her yelp with surprise. She looked at the face of her rescuer, and winced.

“Oh, hello, hunky guy I can never ever have.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, a little sloppily but she was having some trouble coordinating all her parts. “Do you know that your cook has been dreaming of me for like nine hundred years, and watched my whole life?” She frowned. “Do you think she knows that I cheated on that algebra test in the tenth grade because I hated that teacher and I didn’t want to go to summer school for failing? Ah, sorry, thank you, you can put me down now.”

When Rory carried her through the gardens and into the lists, she hiccupped and bled on herself when she clapped a hand over her mouth.