Chapter Nine
For a moment, Brianna remained in the room, her gaze fixed on the peculiar tapestries, which seemed to possess an almost lifelike quality, their intricate details captivating her attention.
She watched them, mesmerized by their slow movements depicting the strange scenes.
What an odd thing to have in the castle.
She didn’t know much about this prophecy. Only what Jamie had shared with her. In the morning, she would find Evie and Chloe and demand answers to all her questions. If she were stuck here in the past, representing the Future, she deserved to know why.
With a sigh of fatigue, she toed off her shoes.
She reached into her front pocket and brought out the piece of keystone, placing it on the bedside table.
How was something so small responsible for so much power?
And did she really believe that a piece of rock controlled all of Time? It seemed farfetched.
She shucked her jeans and shivered. The room was cold, the hearth devoid of a fire.
But since she didn’t see any spare wood, there was no way to build one.
She moved around the room, snuffing out the candles and plunging it in darkness.
Feeling her way back to the bed, she slipped under the blankets, pulling them to her chin, shivering.
She hated being cold. She was much more suited to warmer climes.
But exhaustion overtook her, and it was only a matter of minutes before she was fast asleep.
Then the dream came, bursting through her unconscious mind.
Like in the tapestry, she stood on the craggy hill. The bone-chilling wind pummeled her, billowing the white gown around her legs. She tried tucking a wayward lock of hair behind her ear, but the wind ripped it free, snaring her auburn, sun-kissed locks.
Before her, a vast army the likes she had never seen. Before it, a crusty old man with a faded beard wielding a shining great axe sneering at her with murder in his eyes.
“You are the key to the future and the past,” the woman next to her said.
She hadn’t realized the woman was there. It startled her. “Who are you?”
“I am Athea, the Goddess of the Future. One of the Triple Goddess.”
“What do you want?” Brianna asked.
“Behold the army before you.” She motioned outward with her hand to the men on horseback and foot. “They want what they cannot have. What you cannot give them. For if they claim the keystone in its entirety, it will doom generations to come.”
She glanced down at her hand to see the keystone—now whole—resting against her scarred palm.
“How so?” Brianna focused on the man before her, the one who was the leader with this glowing great axe.
“I will show you.”
Athea reached for her, holding her hand out to her. Brianna hesitated a moment before finally placing her hand in hers. Then Athea swept her other hand outward, encompassing the encroaching warriors and showed her.
Rory MacDonald cleaved the air in front of him with the great axe, opening a portal to the Realm of Chaos that allowed in all manner of dark and dangerous creatures.
Horned creatures with hideous faces, claws, and leathery wings.
They swarmed the opposing army who had come to fight MacDonald and his men.
At the head of that army were the three MacLeod brothers.
They charged with their claymores held high as they bellowed a war cry.
“Do something, Bri!” Chloe said, emotion clogging her throat. She stood next to her, fear evident on her face.
“Use the stone,” Evie urged. She was on the other side of her.
“I don’t know how.”
Brianna choked out the words, glancing down at the whole keystone in her hand, the lines glowing and pulsing.
A sense of helplessness rammed through her as she stood there on the craggy hill.
She did not know how to make it work. She did not know how to save the MacLeod men from the onslaught of disgusting creatures.
She did not know how to stop Rory MacDonald from charging up the hill on his destrier with malice creasing his face, his great axe held aloft, and a war cry ripping from his throat.
She sucked in a breath. Evie and Chloe stumbled back away from him. He was after one thing—the keystone. And if she didn’t give it to him, she would die.
Brianna cried out as she sat up, staring into the gloomy shadows of the strange and unfamiliar bedchamber. Her heart raced with a frantic beat as she clutched the bedclothes to her chest and tried to get her breathing under control.
“It was just a dream. Only a dream,” she said into the darkness.
Was it?
The female voice fluttered through her mind. She snapped her head in the direction of the tapestries and saw the one with the Triple Goddess illuminated, the golden threads shimmering and emitting an ethereal light.
Brianna shoved out of bed, her feet hitting the cold stone floor, sending a shiver prickling up her entire body. She clutched her elbows as she edged toward the wall hanging. When she looked closer, she realized it was not the Triple Goddess at all within the woven fabric, but her and her sisters.
*
Brianna had a fitful sleep the rest of the night. She was haunted by images of death and destruction and dark creatures of the night. Of a rip in space and time. Of a man who used a glowing great axe to kill all those who tried to stop him.
By the time morning came, and sleep was out of grasp, she shoved off the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed. She raked a hand through her tangled hair. She was more exhausted now than when she arrived. The dream was disturbing and clung to her mind like a spider to its web.
She glanced at the tapestry to see if she had dreamed seeing the three of them as the Triple Goddess. But no. The image hadn’t changed. The piece of stone on the bedside table was cold and silent.
With effort, she dressed, stuffing the stone back into her front pocket, and left the bedchamber.
She needed to find Evie. She had questions.
The first one being why she was here and what she was supposed to do with this jagged piece of stone she was carrying around in her jeans pocket.
The next was how was she supposed to get home?
Thinking of home seemed abstract. Once she returned to the future, then what?
Where would she go? How would she live? She’d long since burned through her inheritance.
She would be forced to get a real job, something her mother had always hounded her about.
Or find another rich bachelor who wanted her.
Thinking that gave her pause as she pulled open the chamber door.
She halted in the doorway, the light from the corridor slashing across the threshold behind her.
What kind of person did that make her? A horrible one, that’s what.
Did she really want to whore herself out to the highest bidder for room and board?
The answer to that was no. Which shocked her.
She didn’t want to go back to that life.
And yet, she didn’t have a purpose, or a place.
No one would miss her or even care she was gone.
In the hours she had landed in the Scotland of the past, she’d fallen into the arms of a Highlander who seemed to want her more than anything.
But he didn’t know her. He only knew what he saw in a magical tapestry. He was infatuated. Nothing more.
Still…none of the men she’d been with had made her stomach flutter as it did now when she thought of Jamie. She pressed her hand against her gut, willing those feelings to go away.
“Bri, you okay?”
It was Evie’s voice that pulled her out of her thoughts. Her sister stood in the corridor, a curious look on her face. Brianna hadn’t realized she had appeared.
“Did you sleep here last night?” Evie asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It was late when Jamie and I returned, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Evie lifted a brow. “Where did you go? I saw you riding out with him.”
She wanted to tell her she intended to run away, back to Edinburgh.
But Jamie had squashed that thought when he told her it was a fifteen-day trek over rough terrain and camping in the wilderness.
She wanted to tell her she hated everything about being here, in the past. She wanted to tell her Jamie had hit on her, inviting her to his bedchamber with a sensual gleam in his eyes but she refused him.
She wanted to tell her all of this but didn’t.
“Yes, I rode out with him to the loch.”
“Have you…always known how to ride a horse?”
It likely would come as a shock to her that, yes, she’d learned when she was young.
She’d started riding when she was six with the hopes of making it onto the Olympics equestrian team.
When the twins were born, she and her parents had moved to a bigger home—to give them all a better life, her father said—and that meant giving up her horses.
Because there simply wasn’t enough time or money for that anymore.
“What are you doing here?” Brianna asked, a bit more sharply than she intended.
Evie winced. “I come to the tapestry room every day.”
“The tapestry room?”
“That’s what we call it.” Evie motioned to the open door behind her. “To see if anything has changed.”
“Something has changed.” Brianna stepped aside to allow her entrance.
Excitement gleamed in her eyes as she hurried through the doorway and headed right for the tapestries. She halted in front of them, staring at the one with the changed image, her shoulders stiff and back rigid. Brianna easily read her body language and knew she was processing what she was seeing.
“This image is…” Evie’s voice trailed away. She turned to look at her. Her face drained of color. She pressed a hand against her abdomen.
“It’s us,” Brianna said.
Even saying it aloud made her stomach churn.
“You’re in the center. Where Moira once stood.”
“I replaced Moira?” Brianna moved to stand next to her, peering up at the image. “What does it mean?”
Evie shook her head, her scrutinizing gaze on the woven textile. “I don’t know.”
“What do you know about these tapestries?” she asked.
“Not much, actually,” Evie admitted, her gaze still on the wall hangings. “Hamish was the one who first told me about them. He’s the one who showed them to me. He said they always had images on them. But lately, they’ve been changing and the images on them have been coming true.”
“Who’s Hamish?”
“Their father.” Sorrow tinged her voice.
A signal that something must have happened to Hamish.
Evie added, “He was killed.”
“You knew him?” Brianna asked.
“Only for a short while.” She turned to her then, reaching for her hands and clasping them in hers. “When I first came, Hamish was the one who told me about this prophecy. He begged me to convince Callum it was real.”
“And does he believe now?”
She smiled. “He does but it did take some doing.” She glanced back at the wall hangings, her gazed fixed on them. “The Triple Goddess had to split the stone into three pieces to keep it out of the hands of Brodie MacDonald.” She released her hand to point to the one wielding the glowing great axe.
“That’s his army?”
“Yes.” She turned back to her then. “Chloe was gifted the piece of the Past. She had…visions.”
That caught her attention. “Visions? Like what?”
“Like she saw the Night of Shadows in her vision. That’s where it all started.
There were three goddesses representing Past, Present, and Future who protected this keystone that holds all of Time itself.
Sometimes it’s called the Chronos Stone.
Others tried to steal it and breach the barriers between the mortal realm and the Realm of Chaos.
That became known as the Night of Shadows.
So, the three goddesses decided to break the stone into three pieces and hide it to keep it out of their hands. The Shattering.”
The Realm of Chaos.
“Your stone is the Future, Bri,” she said on a whisper.
Her dream with Athea flooded back to her. What message was Athea trying to send to her with the dream? Was that a vision of the future? Of what was to come?
She contemplated telling Evie about the dream, but she wasn’t ready to do that yet.
“So, what are we supposed to do with these pieces of stone? Put them together? And then what?”
Evie shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that we—the MacLeods and the Sinclairs—were tasked with being the protector of it.”
“Three pieces of stone. Two ancient bloodlines. One divine destiny,” she said, remembering what Jamie told her.
“Yes.” Evie nodded. “Jamie told you.”
It was not a question, but Brianna nodded anyway.
They lapsed into silence as Brianna gazed at the three of them in the tapestry. Her in the middle and the twins flanking her. Her relationship with Evie was better than the one she had with Chloe.
Evie wanted a harmonious family. Hence the reason why she’d called Brianna and asked her to come with her to the gala in Scotland.
Chloe tended to bristle when she was around, giving her the hairy eyeball and keeping her at a distance. Hence the reason why Brianna refused to go with Evie to Scotland.
Something she regretted now. If she had gone, would things have turned out differently for them? Would they still be in the past? Would their fate be decided?
“Why does Chloe hate me?”
Evie glanced at her in surprise. She hadn’t meant to ask it aloud, but the words spilled out before she halted them.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Evie said, her voice soft. Then she straightened and reached for her hand again. “Come on. Let’s find something to eat. I’m starving.”