Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“ F reya! Freya, wait!”
The familiar voice brought Freya to a stop and she looked over her shoulder to see another horse approaching her.
And its rider was none other than Morgana.
How did she manage tae catch up with me? She must be a very good rider.
Freya had been moving down the path in a leisurely pace, while Morgana had clearly been galloping as fast as her horse would allow, but even so, Freya had managed to cover a good distance. The fact that Morgana had caught up to her at all could only mean that she was desperate to get to her.
Morgana brought her horse to a halt next to Freya, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Her skin was pallid, her expression guarded. She was the last person Freya had expected to see there, chasing after her, and her presence made her uneasy, not because she didn’t trust her, but rather because of what it could mean.
“Ye must come back,” she said. “James… he needs ye.”
It was precisely what Freya had feared and now her stomach turned at the thought of everything that could have happened to him. She hadn’t been gone that long; what could have possibly happened to send Morgana into this state?
“There was an attack,” Morgana said through ragged breaths before Freya could ask what was wrong. “The Campbells… they attacked and James… Freya, they’re saying he willnae make it.”
Tears streamed down Morgana’s cheeks as she spoke. Her chin trembled and so did her hands where they held the reins, and Freya could see she was barely holding herself together. Learning the news, Freya also started to cry, her heart sinking, so heavy with grief she feared she would plummet straight into the earth.
Damn them… damn them all fer this!
He cannae die. I willnae let him.
Freya had saved his life once already; she could do it again. “Let us go,” she said, gritting her teeth to stop the tears from falling. For now, she couldn’t be James’ beloved. She had to be the healer who would nurse him back to health. “We must hurry.”
Morgana nodded, saying no more before she turned her horse around and rushed back to the castle. Freya followed her, and though she was not as good of a rider as she was, she did her best to keep up, to match her pace and make it back to the castle as soon as possible. The two of them rode for what seemed like eons to Freya, each second passing by agonizingly slow. The wind whipped her cheeks and the chill seeped into her bones, but there was only one goal in her mind: reaching that castle.
When she saw it in the near distance, she could have wept with relief. The closer they got, the clearer the signs of the recent battle became—smoke and damage to the curtain walls, portcullises that had been torn down, the frantic rush of soldiers as they tried to gather the injured and the dead, save as many of them as they could.
Freya and Morgana bypassed them all. The moment they were within castle grounds, they jumped off their horses and ran to the keep, Freya’s lungs burning with exertion. Though Freya looked around with wide eyes at the destruction, none of it registered—the only thing in her mind was saving James and seeing the damage the battle had done.
Within minutes, they were outside James’ chambers, but that was where Freya stopped. The doors were open, revealing the rooms inside, and the first thing Freya saw was not James, but his mother. The woman sat by his bedside, holding his hand to her lips and mumbling a prayer with her eyes firmly shut.
Even so, tears still managed to escape them.
“Come in,” Morgana urged her, but Freya was reluctant to be there when Kathryn was there. Would she even allow her to touch James? Would she allow her to try and save him or would she send her away once again, claiming she was too useless to do anything for her son?
At the sound of Morgana’s voice, Kathryn looked up, her face hardening when she saw Freya. Bracing herself for conflict, Freya stared right at her, forcing herself to keep her head high—but she had not expected Kathryn to stand, smooth her gown, and then step out of the room.
“Save him,” was all she said, before disappearing down the hallway.
It was all the permission Freya needed before she got to work, pushing her sleeves up and out of the way. She rushed to James’ side, where the healer was already tending to him, and told her she could care for the other soldiers now that she had arrived, as there were many others wounded that needed help. The healer nodded with a faint smile and left.
She peeled back the dressing to look at the wound on his shoulder, which was still bleeding sluggishly. But that wasn’t what concerned her—the healer had done her best to stop the bleeding, applying a paste of what Freya identified as St. John’s Wort and vervain, and what little blood still seeped out was not enough to kill him. What concerned her was how pale he was because of how much blood he had already lost.
And most of all, the fact that he was burning up under her hands.
“We need water, cool water,” she told Morgana. “A bath of roses, violet, and mallows. And we need coriander and yarrow.”
“Where… where dae I find all this?” Morgana asked, too panicked to think.
“Ask the maids,” Freya said. She knew the importance of giving people clear instructions when they were in the throes of panic, and so she walked over to Morgana, placing her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “A cool bath of roses, violet, and marrow. And coriander. Dae ye remember it all?”
Freya had some yarrow in her bags, as she had stopped to gather some earlier that day from the side of the path. All she needed was the rest, and some time.
Morgana nodded and within moments, she was gone to ask for help. After that, it didn’t take long for the maids to bring Freya everything she had asked for, placing a large tub by the bed and filling it with cool water before they threw in the herbs and flowers. As they worked to bathe James, Freya prepared him a tea of coriander and yarrow, dabbing it onto the tip of his tongue drop by drop, since he could not drink it himself.
Hours passed—hours during which Freya’s heart never stopped pounding, hours during which she prayed again and again for James to open his eyes, even though she knew it was impossible. He was on the verge of death. If he was to live, he would have to sweat out the fever. Slowly, his body would replenish the blood he had lost, but the fever was his biggest enemy.
The hours turned to days. Freya sat by James’ side the whole time, giving him drop after drop of the tea and bathing him with the herbs that would help bring down his fever. All that time, he hardly stirred. The only thing that marked the passage of time for her were the visits from his family—his father and Edward, who came as often as he could between clan meetings, Morgana, who stayed with him and Freya all day unless she was called to her duties, and his mother.
Every day, his mother stayed there with him, always at sunset. Freya always left the room at that time, not only to give her some privacy, but also because she doubted she was wanted there. It also gave her some much-needed time to freshen up and rest before another long night tending to James. Though Freya was nursing her son back to health, she was nothing but cold towards her, never so much as glancing at her whenever she entered the room. Kathryn always went straight to James, sitting on the chair next to his bed and taking his hand.
It was one such night, when Kathryn had just left the room, that James began to stir. With a gasp, Freya leaned over him, watching him carefully until his eyes fluttered open and he looked at her, a frown knitting his brows together.
“Freya,” he said, his voice quiet and weak. He tried to reach for her, but his hand barely moved, and it was Freya who had to take it in the end, lacing their fingers together. “Ye’re back.”
Freya couldn’t stop her tears from falling now. She had kept them at bay all this time, staying strong for James, but hearing his voice had opened the dams within her and she couldn’t have stopped if she tried.
“Aye, I’m back,” she said, her free hand cradling his cheek. “I came back fer ye.”
Slowly, James smiled at her, leaning into the touch. A few moments passed with them like this, Freya gazing into his eyes in the candlelight, the relief to see him open them so great that she could hardly bear it. But then James tried to sit up only for him to fail at it entirely and lay back down with a groan of pain.
“What happened?” he asked. “How… how long has it been?”
“Almost a week,” Freya said. “Ye’ve been asleep this whole time with a fever. And ye’re still hurt, so dinnae try tae sit up just yet.”
“Edward… me faither…”
“They’re both fine,” Freya assured him. “Everyone is fine, James. It’s over.”
Only then did James allow himself to relax, the tension melting from his shoulders. Silence stretched between them for a while, but neither of them felt the need to fill it. Freya was just content to gaze at him, to take in the light of life in his eyes.
When James finally broke the silence, he said, “Never leave me again. Ye belong with me, Freya. I dinnae care what anyone else thinks… I love ye and I will never part from ye.”
Freya had tried to do what she thought was right. She had tried to leave, to ensure that she wouldn’t be an obstacle to him, a burden. And yet now she knew she could never part from him, either. Her place was by his side. Anything else seemed too painful, too unbearable.
“I willnae leave ye again,” she said, her hand tightening around his. “I promise.”