Chapter 27
“Mousie!” the little girl squealed, stumbling out of her bed with bleary eyes and her dark hair sticking out at odd angles. A sure sign that she had slept well, despite Ailis’s worst fears.
Ailis ran forward and scooped her up into a fierce embrace, hugging her until the child began to wriggle in her arms.
“Ye’ll squash me!” Skye said, laughing giddily.
Ailis loosened her hold, setting the girl on her hip instead, and took a moment to search the child’s face for any sign of harm or pain.
When she found none, she carefully ran her fingers through Skye’s hair, seeking out the lock that had been cut.
To her confusion, she couldn’t find any hair missing.
Did he use a lock he’d cut before?
She frowned. There had been a keepsake in a box in her room, a lock of hair that she herself had cut when Skye was two.
Had this all been a cruel ruse to make her think that her niece was in danger? The one thing that would prompt Ailis to come running back to Castle Ainsley?
“Where have ye been, big mouse?” Skye asked brightly. “Pa said ye’d gone mushroom pickin’. Ye were gone for ages.” She squinted at her aunt. “Why do ye look all sad?”
Ailis put on a smile. “Oh, well, I accidentally wandered into a faerie ring and had to convince them to let me go. When I finally emerged from the faerie realm, I wasnae sure what year it was. I thought maybe fifty years had gone by, and when I came to see ye, ye’d be an old woman.
So, I’m relieved as anythin’ that ye’re still a wee mousie. ”
“Ye were with the faeries?” Skye gasped, her big blue eyes—her mother’s eyes—widening in awe.
Ailis nodded. “Aye, but ye mustnae tell. If ye do, they might come and take me back.” She hesitated. “What of ye? What have ye been doin’ in me absence? Have ye been well? Has anyone… upset ye?”
“Pa wouldnae play with me or tell me a story. That upset me,” the little girl replied, absently picking at the shoulder of Ailis’s dress. “But I did some drawin’ with Molly. This dress is pretty. Did the faeries give it to ye?”
A lump formed in Ailis’s throat. She had forgotten that she was still wearing her wedding dress.
“They did,” she replied. “Ye see, the faerie king wanted to marry me very much, but I couldnae leave ye behind. So I told him I had to go, and… here I am.”
Skye nodded thoughtfully. “Was he handsome?”
“Oh, aye, very handsome,” Ailis said, keeping her voice low. Her father was still outside.
“Did he love ye?”
Ailis’s heart ached as if a blade had plunged through it. “I daenae ken.”
“Did ye love him?” the child pressed.
Ailis could only blame herself. She was the one who had told the little girl so many stories, and in all of them, there was a prince or a princess, or the equivalent, who loved one another very much.
Incapable of answering, Ailis held her tightly for a moment.
“I ken that I love ye, little mousie. And I’m so glad to be back with ye.” She paused, thinking of the lock of hair in her pocket. “I’ll never let any harm come to ye, sweet lassie. And I’ll never let any faerie king steal ye away when ye’re older.”
“Can ye tell me about the faeries?” Skye asked, pulling back, her little hands gently cupping her aunt’s face.
Ailis smiled. “Of course, mousie. After all, ye should be back in yer bed. I didnae mean to wake ye; I was just so desperate to make sure ye werenae gray and old and hobblin’ along with a cane.”
“I’m still four!” the girl chirped, quite content to be carried back to her bed.
As Ailis tucked the child beneath the warm coverlets, she launched into a tale of a human who accidentally picked up a precious faerie jewel while wandering in the woods, and a faerie king who came in the night to take back what was his.
Only, when he saw the human woman sleeping, he immediately fell in love and stole her from her bed.
The words tumbled easily off her tongue, but as she reached the part where the faerie king was trying to woo the human girl, teaching her to swim in the faerie pools, she noticed that Skye had fallen asleep. The peaceful slumber of someone who hadn’t suffered.
“I’ll tell ye the rest another time,” she whispered, leaning down to place a gentle kiss on her niece’s brow.
Skye wrinkled her nose and snuffled in her sleep, but didn’t awaken.
There’s nothin’ I wouldnae sacrifice for ye, lassie.
With a weary sigh, Ailis rose to her feet and crept toward the door. She didn’t regret returning to make sure that Skye was safe, but she couldn’t help feeling resentful toward Murdock, who had played such a clever trick.
Killian had been right to question the severity of the threat, just as he had been right to tell her not to play into a madman’s hands. She had just focused on the wrong madman—her father instead of her brother.
Now, she was trapped here. Both she and Skye were trapped here.
“I trust ye’re pleased that the bairn wasnae harmed,” her father said, surprising her as she exited the bedchamber and closed the door behind her.
He sat on the windowsill opposite, his eyes glinting in the dark.
“I am, for now,” Ailis replied. “Then again, Murdock isnae here, so the danger isnae.”
Her father scoffed. “Ye always did spin tales. What ye think happened is probably simple to explain.”
“I ken me braither was there when I almost drowned,” she shot back, no longer as afraid as she used to be. “If it’s so simple, explain it.”
The old man shrugged. “Ye probably wandered out by yerself and got into trouble. If anythin’, ye should be thankin’ yer braither for savin’ yer life. That’s what it sounds like to me.”
“Then ye’re mistaken,” she said coldly. “I’ve had the same nightmare since I was just a bit older than Skye. I think I ken the details better than ye.”
“Aye, and memory cannae be trusted,” her father countered. “After so many years, ye’re just believin’ what ye want to believe.”
Refusing to dignify that with a response, Ailis immediately turned right and headed to her old bedchamber, aware of the footsteps following her down the hall.
In all her twenty years, she couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her father in this wing of the castle. He always left it to Murdock to lock her up, or Murdock did it without their father’s knowledge.
But it hardly mattered now.
“Are ye retirin’?” her father asked. “I expect ye’re tired after yer journey back.”
As if ye care.
Ailis rested her hand on the door handle, hesitating. What if he used the opportunity to push her inside, lock her up, and throw away the key?
“I may, I may nae,” she replied, steeling herself.
Opening the door to her bedchamber, she went straight to the box that she kept beneath her writing desk. A box filled with good memories, to help soothe her mind on the darkest of days.
There were dried flowers that Skye had picked for her, a broken hair slide that once belonged to her mother, letters from her sister, an old doll made from a twig, some wool, and scraps of fabric that she and Kristen used to play with when they were little girls.
The lock of hair was no longer there.
Murdock, ye bastard.
She felt a faint prickle of relief that it hadn’t been cut more recently from Skye’s head, but it wasn’t much. Indeed, regardless of Skye’s perceived value as a ‘worthless girl,’ Ailis should have known that neither Murdock nor her father would have done anything to harm their own flesh and blood.
The drowning that lived on in Ailis’s nightmares was different. She wasn’t Murdock’s flesh and blood, not in the same way. And he had reason to want to destroy her, considering that she was the one who had killed their mother.
One day, when she was very little, their mother had taken her out to the woods to pick blackberries.
Something had attacked—a wolf or a dog or a boar, it was never quite confirmed, only assumed from the savage wounds—and their mother had given her life to protect Ailis, who had been found hours later by soldiers that had gone out hunting, curled up at her dead mother’s side.
“Ye can leave now. I cannae do anythin’ until Murdock returns,” Ailis said, putting the box back into its hiding place and turning to her father. “But in the mornin’, I mean to visit the prisoner.”
And he had better be alive.
She knew her father was there, watching her every move. But if he tried to lock her in this time, she would climb out of the window if she had to.
Like Peter had said, she was not the same woman who had left this place. She would never be locked in again.
Her father just shrugged, his mouth twisted in a grimace. “Ye ken where to find him.”