Chapter Twenty-Eight
Darkness surrounded her. Her head throbbed with a massive headache between her eyes.
It swept back over her scalp. It felt as though a hot poker was jabbed into the base of her skull.
She was uncertain where she was, but she felt the soft cushion of a mattress beneath her body.
A groan rumbled in her throat. Her eyes did not want to open even as soft light pressed against her closed eyelids.
“Oh, she’s coming around.” That was Evie’s voice tinged with hope.
There was a shuffle of feet, the rustle of fabric indicating movement in the room. Her arm rested against her side. There was a coolness to her surroundings and she sensed she was inside the castle. Dundale? Or somewhere else?
“Can ye hear me, lass?” The familiar voice was warm and encouraging near her ear.
Jamie.
He was still with her. A hand slipped into hers. A calloused hand that was all too familiar. She cracked her eyes open and looked up into his handsome, youthful face. The moment their eyes met, he grinned, showing off those deep dimples on either side of his kissable mouth.
On impulse, she shot upward from the bed and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close and burying her face in his neck.
His familiar heather and leather scent was there, lingering on his skin.
His arms slid around her waist, hugging her back, holding her close as though he would never let her go.
But the movement cost her. The blinding pain relentlessly pounded her head. She squeezed her eyes shut again as she clung to him, reluctant to let go.
“I thought I lost you.” Her words were muffled against the warmth of his skin. She pressed a kiss against his neck and felt the fluttering of his pulse.
“Nay, lass. Ye dinnae.”
Relief flooded her. And though every part of her body screamed in pain, she refused to let him go. She turned her head, resting it against him, as she gazed out to see her sisters standing there with worried expressions on their faces.
“Is it over?” she asked, her voice cracking on a whisper.
“Is what over?” Evie asked.
“The battle.”
“What battle, lass?” he asked. He stroked the length of her hair.
Confusion pressed through her. They didn’t know? How could they not? He was there. So were his brothers. She stared at Evie, who rested a hand on the small swell of her belly. Chloe was nearby, gaping at her with her wide emerald eyes.
“Ye hit yer head hard when ye fell,” Jamie said, his voice rumbling against her ear pressed against his neck.
The last thing she remembered was passing out and looking up the night sky. She must have landed so hard she smacked her head on the ground and then passed out.
“Where’s the keystone? Did we do it? Is everything fixed?” she asked. “Where’s Callum and Malcolm?”
Silence in the room. No one spoke or moved. Jamie’s hand stilled on her hair.
“I dinnae ken what ye mean,” he said. “Yer talking nonsense.”
Either he was in denial or the timeline really had shifted and she was in an alternate reality. She had many more questions that needed answers. She needed to know what had happened to the dark winged creatures that had attacked and to the others who’d came to their aid.
“Jamie, could you give us a moment?” Evie asked.
With reluctance, he released her. She remained sitting upright despite her raging headache and watched as he moved away from the edge of the bed.
He cast her one last glance as he headed for the door and slipped out, pulling it closed behind him.
Brianna glanced down to see her hand had completely healed from the cut.
The brand from the stone in the center of her palm faded.
Evie reached a hand toward Chloe. She took it. Together they approached the bed.
“Bri, this is going to be somewhat difficult to explain.”
Her brows drew together. “What’s going on?”
“You did, in fact, shift the timeline. And something changed within this time,” Evie said.
Heated fear flashed through her as she lifted her gaze to her sister’s. Evie held out her once-branded palm and saw, like hers, the lines had faded. Chloe moved to stand next to her, also extending her hand to show the faded lines on her palm.
“You sealed the portal, too,” Evie said. “But the men…they don’t remember anything.”
“What?” The icy word slipped out of her on a breath.
“We remember, though,” Chloe added. “We remember everything. Do you?”
Brianna thought back to the moment she had taken the piece of stone from Moira in the antique shop, to escaping John MacDonald by traveling back in time, to falling in love with Jamie, and, finally, to the battle in the center of the castle ruins. She nodded.
“I remember it all. Moira, the keystone, sealing the portal. Everything.”
Evie blew out a breath as though she had been holding it. “Thank goodness.”
“But what do you mean the men don’t remember?” she asked.
“They don’t recall anything about a prophecy or a time-controlling keystone. They don’t know we traveled from the future,” Chloe said.
“How could they not remember any of that?” Brianna lifted a hand to her throbbing head and rubbed her temple.
“We think when you shifted the timeline, it wiped their memories but somehow allowed us to stay behind,” Evie said.
“With our memories intact,” Chloe added. “Like I recall everything that happened to me from the moment I arrived to now.”
“And so do I. We don’t know what happened to you in the castle ruins. They couldn’t tell us, of course, because they don’t remember. But we felt a shift happen,” Evie said.
“Yes,” Chloe nodded, taking up the story. “As though the world tilted on its axis. It was the strangest thing to see the great hall mended while the world spun around us in slow motion.”
She sucked in a breath and raked a hand through her tangled hair. There were snarls from the wind that’d take a lot of patience to get out. “It was the same for me. Somehow, Jamie’s hand had the brand of the keystone—the complete Celtic symbol and the circle.”
Nodding, excitement lit Evie’s eyes. “When you destroyed the great hall—quite by accident—and you gave him the stone, it branded him. Then, the tapestries changed.”
She told her about the images in the tapestries changing from the three of them to showing Brianna reaching for Jamie in the castle ruins.
“That’s how he knew to use the blood magic,” Brianna said. “He sliced open his hand. Together, we held the keystone between our bleeding palms. And…” She hiccupped a breath. “The Triple Goddess was there and they…spoke…through me.”
Chloe’s head snapped up to Evie. “Like when we were trying to escape the MacDonald keep?”
“It happened to you both, too?” Brianna asked.
“It did. And it was a strange feeling. Like they were within us and we were speaking for them.”
“Yes.” Brianna’s heart pumped as she nodded emphatically. “There was a chant. Something about mending time forever. I can’t remember now. But at the time, I knew the words. I said them and watched the portal to the Realm of Chaos close.”
She bit her lower lip, trying to recall. Evie started to say something, but Brianna lifted her hand to stop her.
“Oh! I remember now. Threads of time I weave together as Past and Future stitch forever. Now shift this timeline to what once was; forever mended with no more flaws.”
Chloe pressed shaking fingers to her lips as she stared, wide-eyed at her. Evie remained perfectly still.
“The brand on our hands. That’s why the lines are faded to almost nothing,” Evie said.
Brianna held up her hand to show her the same. The two stared at it for a long, quiet moment.
“Then the world started to spin. I don’t remember much after that. How did I get here?”
“I don’t know,” Evie said. “The same happened to us. We woke up on the great hall floor.”
“And the roof is mended?”
“As if there never were a hole in it,” Chloe said.
With Jamie’s and the others’ memories erased, how was she supposed to go on? Did he remember their relationship? Or was that gone, too?
The crushing weight of it pressed down on her chest. Was this it? Was she supposed to accept this was her life now—stranded in the past, bound to a future that wasn’t hers to choose? She pulled in a slow, shaky breath, but it did nothing to ease the raw ache inside her.
Everything was gone. Erased.
Jamie. Callum. Malcolm. Every moment, every battle, every whispered word between them—ripped from their minds as if it had never happened. As if she had never happened. As if there had never been a prophecy at all.
Her voice wavered as she broke the silence. “Do they… remember us?”
The quiet stretched between them before Chloe answered. “That’s the strangest thing of all. Malcolm remembers we’re handfasted. Callum remembers Evie is pregnant with their first child.”
Her pulse pounded, a painful, desperate rhythm in her ears. And Jamie?
Did he remember the nights they spent tangled in each other’s arms, the way he whispered her name like a prayer? Did he remember the fire between them, the love that had bound them together, stronger than time itself?
Did he remember her standing in the wind, shouting that she loved him?
Or had that, too, been lost to the void?
“And Jamie? Does he…?” Her words trailed off.
She was never the type of person to share her feelings freely with anyone, even her sisters. But it was hard to deny the love she had for Jamie. She could not imagine her life without him.
The twins exchanged a knowing glance.
“He has feelings for you. Of that I’m sure,” Evie said. “He kept a vigilant watch over you since the moment we found you in the middle of the bailey. He refused to leave your bedchamber for his and only took meals once in a while.”
She paused, as if there were some unspoken exception hanging in the air.
“But?” Her insides jangled with nerves.
“But he’s promised to Margaret MacDonald,” Chloe added, her voice low with a twinge of sadness.
A sort of numbness slammed into her. “They’re sworn enemies.”
Evie shook her head. “Not anymore. It’s like that part of the memories—the prophecy, the keystone, the clan feud with the MacDonalds, all of it—was plucked from their minds and tossed aside,” Evie said.
“And yet, our memories remain,” Brianna mused.
More questions pounded through her. If they were no longer sworn enemies, then how was her and her sisters’ presence explained? Why did Jamie think she was here?
“Perhaps a parting gift from the Triple Goddess,” Chloe suggested.
Silence wrapped around them, heavy and thick.
Evie reached out her hand, her fingers warm and steady as they closed around Brianna’s. Then Chloe’s hand joined, firm and grounding. Brianna grasped Chloe’s other hand, completing the circle. A quiet understanding passed between them, unspoken but undeniable.
They held on, their hands locked together, as if bracing against the unknown. No words were needed. The weight of everything settled between them—the memories lost, the world unfamiliar, the path ahead uncertain.
They were in a strange new world. And they only had each other.
“Have you heard from the Triple Goddess?” Brianna asked.
Evie shook her head. So did Chloe. Whatever happened, then, the Triple Goddess wasn’t going to make an appearance and offer an explanation.
“But we will never forget what happened,” Evie whispered.
“Blood warms to blood,” Brianna said.
Time had truly mended. And so had her relationship with the twins.