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I do not know what caused me to turn. Mayhap ‘twas the wind changing, or a premonition, or a scent. Either way, I absentmindedly turned, brushing hair from my face, and saw a figure crest the distant hill.

My heart dropped into my stomach as it always did when a stranger approached. Ewan and I were so vulnerable here to thieves and those who would do us harm…and John.

In the months we’d been stubbornly eking out an existence, I knew John was aware of our location. He’d told us he’d wait for me to come crawling back to him, but there was the possibility he wouldn’t leave the timing to chance.

I’d assumed he’d wait until after I dropped the babe, but what if he’d grown impatient? What if he’d come to take me? Take Ewan?

“Ewan?” I was proud of the way I kept my voice steady. “Remember the hiding game we played?”

He popped back through the low doorway, expression scrunched in memory.

“Where I go hide in the loft and don’t make a single peep until you say the magic words?”

I watched the distant figure growing larger. He rode a horse, his long hair whipped by the same wind which whipped mine.

“And what are the magic words?”

“You gotta say I want a pickled beet. Those are the magic words and then I come down, right Mama?”

“Aye, honeybun.” I couldn’t drag my terrified gaze from the stranger, who was riding right toward our croft. Swallowing, I forced a smile.

“Go now and hide, Ewan. I love you.”

Mayhap the lad had picked up on some of my panic, because he went without fighting, thank the Lord.

If ‘twas John riding toward us, I would do everything I could to keep my son safe. Keep us both safe.

Without looking, I selected the largest piece of kindling and dropped the rest, wishing I still carried the hatchet. ‘Twould not stand up to a larger blade, but ‘twas all I could hope to wield, with my ungainly center of balance.

Go past us. Go past us, I prayed.

In vain, it seemed. The figure turned his horse toward me, and ‘twas only then that I realized how large he was. The horse was big, aye, but the man? A hooded cloak hid his features, but he would tower over me.

He was bigger than John, and I felt myself exhaling in what might be slight relief. The stranger wasn’t John, but could still do us harm⁠—

That was the moment the male straightened and pushed his hood from his head to reveal his scarred green skin, and the piece of kindling fell from my arms as I gasped in recognition.

‘Twas not John riding toward me, or even a stranger.

‘Twas the male who had caused me to lose my head all those months ago, the male who was responsible for our current tenuous position. ‘Twas the male whom I’d been dreading and praying to meet again.

“Maardok,” I breathed.

CHAPTER THREE

Maardok

I knew I was going in the correct direction, but I couldn’t tell you why. After acquiring the horse and supplies, I turned its head eastward and dozed as we rode. When dawn broke, I kept my cloak tucked around my kilted knees, but passed no one on the road to see my green skin.

The mountains loomed large throughout the morning, and for the last two hours, I’d been directing the animal with subtle shifts in direction without really knowing how I knew.

My Kteer hummed with satisfaction with each passing moment though, so I knew I was heading in the right direction.

Sure enough, a little past noon, with snow hanging heavy on the horizon, I crested a small hill and saw a dilapidated croft sitting in the middle of an overgrown farm. The building had some recent repairs—mud shoved in the cracks and in between broken logs—but the thatched roof was in danger of falling in.

And standing in the doorway was a figure I couldn’t recognize from this distance, but one my Kteer knew.

I gave a wordless shout of what I realized was joy and spurred the horse into a gallop, racing toward Cataline. She was stubborn enough not to back down, of course, and actually stepped toward the mad berserker barreling toward her.