Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
“So just to be clear, your master plan was to find my father’s cousin’s widow, whom I, at six years old, took for a witch?” Callum slings his arm around me. “I only believed it because she had a nose like a crow’s beak and as many teeth.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” I shoot him an exasperated look only to find him biting back a grin. “Are you messing with me? Because I am way too tired to be messed with.”
We’ve been walking for hours, discussing our options. I was relieved when Callum quickly agreed to get as far from Loch Lomond as possible. The problem? By foot, in the dark, Scotland feels gi-freaking-normous.
“Is that a threat?” Callum pats his sword, returned to his side. “’Cause now that I’ve my blade back, I’m fit to guard myself against wee hellcats from the future.”
A laugh bursts from me. “Hellcat? I’ve never heard that one before.”
“D’you mind terribly?” His face goes still, which means he’s actually serious.
“Are you kidding?” I bump my shoulder into his side. “It’s awesome. Though this hellcat could use a rest soon. It doesn’t seem like any Campbells are after us.”
He hesitates. “Can you make it just a spot longer? The banks of Loch Long would be a good place to shelter till dawn. The water there is long indeed, leading all the way down to the Firth of Clyde. From there, we’ll find passage to Arran, and then onto Eilean MoLaise.”
So close.
“Do you have family there?”
He shakes his head. “My reason is far simpler—Donag once told me ’tis a holy isle.” Grief flashes in his eyes. “Even if I knew of MacGregors who yet live, I’d have no notion how to find them.”
I link my arm with his and try to sound bright. “Well, we have each other.”
“True.”
“And we’re getting close.”
He gives me a careful look. “Aye, verra close.”
“And from there we’ll find a way to travel to my time.”
He moves his head in a way that’s neither a shake nor a nod. His jaw tightens, fingers clenching at his sides.
Something inside me turns cold. Why isn’t he more excited?
“What does that mean?” I mimic the weird head bob. “Are you worried we won’t find someone to help with the chant? We’ll figure it out. We’re an unstoppable team. A force. The stuff of comic books. Seriously, though, you’re going to love my time. It’s going to blow your mind.”
He exhales sharply, like it hurts to say. “There’s a way for you to get back, Rose.”
His words—and the absence of Rosie—stop me short. “For me and you. I’m not going without you.”
“We’re running out of time. Hamish will be on our trail come morning, and all we have is Donag’s spell. The one that sent your mother away. I ken the words. And the moon’s cycle might make it possible—”
“No. No way. Callum, look at me.”
He slows, stops, turns, like he’s in physical pain. “The incantation only works for one.” He reaches out and catches a loose strand of my hair, twirling it in his fingers. “It’s a spell for a lovely lass with hair the color of flame and a fiery heart to match. There’s no other way.”
“Then we’ll wait.” My words are firm, but my heart wavers. What if we never figure it out? Would I truly choose not to return to Poppa? Could I give up hot showers, and supersized Cokes, and binge television?
Callum’s hand is strong and nicked with scars, yet his fingers weave through my hair so tenderly. He’s fierce—sword at his waist, with a warrior’s single-minded focus—yet he holds himself so carefully, gazing down at me with grief so intense it seems he might shatter.
And he’s mine.
I know now—yes. I’d sacrifice everything to keep us together. To keep Callum safe.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“The Campbells are after us. They’ll find—”
“We’ll hide. This is a big country. Really exhaustingly huge, actually,” I add with an only-half-joking stretch of my back. “So forget the Campbells. We can hide in a cave somewhere if we have to. I found you across hundreds of years. I’m not leaving you now.”
“But you love your time.” Though Callum is trying to talk me out of it, his guard has dropped. When his eyes meet mine, I see the hope he’s trying to hide, his expression so raw, I know what he’s really asking.
You love your time. But do you love me?
The answer is already written in my bones.
But saying it out loud would make everything final.
If I admit how completely he’s changed me, this isn’t about finding a way home anymore—it’s about choosing a life.
A future. And the weight of that confession, here when we’re running and desperate and everything feels impossible… What if I lose him anyway?
“I love my world,” I say carefully. “But I also love…”
You.
So much that saying it out loud would change everything. I swallow the words and deflect instead. “I love this place, too.”
I recognize the truth of my words. In spite of the weather and the food, despite taking sponge baths instead of showers, or using salt for toothpaste, there’s a way in which I’m happier here than I’ve ever been.
Even on the coldest mornings, my walks to the castle are a joy. There’s no constant hum of traffic, no sirens, no twenty-four-hour news cycle. Yet the silence here is full. The wind has its own music, rustling through leaves, carrying distant voices, amplifying birdsong.
Life is richer here. Slower. There’s just Callum and me. The miles we’ve walked, the nights spent in the kitchen, completely focused on each other.
In this world, where the stakes are so high, even the smallest gestures carry the deepest meaning. Here, even the most basic things aren’t easy. Something as simple as Callum fetching me a cup of water demonstrates his complete awareness of me. His caring and intent.
Scotland of 1622 has slowed me down, taught me what matters. It’s opened my eyes to life.
“What of your grandfather?” he asks quietly.
“You said it yourself, he probably doesn’t even know I’m gone. I can…” My throat tightens. “I can live with that. For now. Because we will find a way. Eventually.”
“Aye, we will.” He snatches my hands in his. “We’ll figure it out, Rosie-love. You’re right—together, there’s nothing we can’t do.”
We’re quiet after that. At first, it’s a thoughtful quiet, but as the temperature plummets, it becomes our way of enduring, heads tucked low as we slog ahead.
Though it makes our gait awkward and slow, Callum keeps one arm wrapped around my shoulder and holds his other arm in front of me, bearing the brunt of the wind.
Just when I think I can’t go any further, Callum stops.
I’m shivering uncontrollably now, jaw sore from chattering.
The moment I stop walking, my core temperature feels like it drops ten degrees, and I hop on the balls of my feet, my body automatically twitching and spasming to keep warm.
“Are we lost?” There’s no water in sight, just the same shabby snarl of landscape that I’m beginning to resent.
“Och, I’m nae lost. Loch Long is through the trees, just there.” He points at something, but it all looks the same to me—more trees silhouetted in shadows.
“If you say so.”
With a low laugh, he pinches my chin, and his fingers are warm on my freezing skin. “Have you so little faith?”
I forget the loch and snatch his hand instead. “How come you’re always so warm?”
“Losh, woman. How are you always so cold?” Chafing my hands in his, he leads me to a massive rock. He slides the threadbare blanket from his shoulders and unfurls it on the ground. “Bide here a wee bit.”
“But you’ll freeze,” I protest. “That was your cloak.”
“The bare bird hops farthest,” he says with a wink as he guides me down. “I’ll be fine.” He squats and gives a final chafe to my arms. “I’ll make a fire, and you’ll have a warm wee burrow in a trice.”
The rock breaks the wind, and with the extra layer of wool, I’m already warmer. I huddle into myself, watching as he deftly sets up camp.
“’Twas brilliant of you to fetch my sporran,” he says, and my pride is almost enough to warm me through.
He opens it and fishes something out. “It means I’ve my tinderbox.
” He gathers fallen branches, leaning the larger ones against the side of my rock as a windbreak.
The smaller ones he uses as kindling, arranging them into a tiny cone which he encircles in a ring of stones.
Soon a small fire is blazing. It warms my cloak and finally my muscles.
Sighing, I gaze up, humbled by the trillions of stars spattered across the boundless, blackest-black sky. “I had no idea there were so many stars.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve no stars in the future.”
“There are. You just can’t see most of them because of all the artificial light polluting the sky. Look, you can see the moon.” It’s the faintest shadow of itself in the sky, limned by a whisper-thin crescent of white.
“Almost the new moon.” Callum’s voice is subdued as he sits beside me.
I’d been desperate for a new moon and its promise of returning to the future. But now, sitting with Callum on a stretch of plaid, heated by the fire, anticipating our cheese and oatcakes, I realize all I want is this.
Him.
He wraps his arm around me and I lean into him as we stare up at the night sky. “’Tis like a wee chink in the heavens,” he says.
“The moon?” I smile, because there’s so much to share with him, so much to talk about. “It’s not. It’s big and round, and we eventually fly into space and land on it. People have walked on it.”
“’Tisn’t too hot? It burns so brightly.”
“Actually—get this—it doesn’t burn at all. That’s just reflected sunlight.”
He’s quiet. I realize he’s staring at me.
I scoot my shoulder free so I can meet his eye. “What?”
“You’re from a time of such wonders. Are you certain…” He falters. “If you change your mind, about staying, you’ve only to ask. I’ll move the heavens myself to make it possible.”
“What? No! I told you, I’m not leaving without you. And anyway, there are plenty of wonders here. I mean, just look at all these stars. Plus, you know”—I pat his thigh, working up the nerve to finish—“you’re pretty wondrous yourself.”