Chapter 18
There were no stars to be seen in the sky tonight. Cassiopeia had vanished, taking Cepheus and Draco with her, and the North Star was shrouded by the heavy clouds hovering over Kildary.
Instead of the winking silver lights, the sky was tinted a thick, murky green. It was a disturbing shade, and a rare one—one that hinted at trouble. It only occurred when there was a great deal of water trapped inside the clouds.
That green could only mean one thing.
Another storm was coming, and it would be a bad one, with violent gusts of wind and torrential rains, enough of it there was a chance Balnagown River would swell until it overflowed its banks.
If they were lucky, that is. If they were unlucky, they’d have more than rain to contend with. Freya had seen that shade of green before. On one memorable occasion there’d been hail after a green sky, sharp, stinging pellets of it raining down on Dunvegan.
At least, it began as pellets. By the time the storm had reached its full fury, balls of hard ice had pummeled the ground, some of them as wide as her palm, and as solid as her fist.
Twelve people had died on Skye that day.
There was no reason to suppose they’d be any luckier in Kildary, but Aila would see to it the clan was prepared for the worst. She’d seek Aila out before she retired to her bedchamber tonight and warn her about the impending storm.
But not yet. Not yet.
For now, she’d remain where she was, alone in the small rose garden Aila had taken her to this evening. There were no flowers to be seen now, just the bare canes, the rose blossoms having been neatly pruned for the winter, but it was a lovely, quiet place.
She drew in a deep breath of the chilly air and burrowed deeper into Cat’s cloak, burying her cold hands in the pockets. She’d have a short walk, then return to the—
Wait.
There was something inside one of the pockets, something small, stuffed tightly into the corner, near the pocket’s seam.
She brushed it with her fingertips. It felt like … a scrap of paper?
She pulled out the tiny, crumpled ball, smoothed it out against her palm, and stared down at the rough drawing, a startled laugh catching in her throat when she found her own face staring back at her. “What in the world?”
Of course! It was the silly sketch she’d drawn while she’d been lazing about on the roof, the day Callum and Keir Dunn had come to Castle Cairncross.
Goodness, how long ago that day seemed now.
She traced the lines of the sketch, the fierce eyes and dark, slanted eyebrows, the curl of a wicked grin on her lips, and the lightning bolts shooting from her fingertips.
It was her face, but not her face at the same time.
Her face, but better.
At least, that’s what she’d thought when she’d drawn it, but now …
well, it wasn’t all that different from her real face.
Her features were a bit exaggerated, yes, especially her eyes and mouth.
The sketch made her look less like dull Freya MacLeod, and more like some fierce, avenging angel dropped down from the heavens, her lightning bolts at the ready.
But there was no mistaking that it was her.
Perhaps there’d never been anything wrong with her face to begin with.
There’d never been anything wrong with her.
Yet her smile faded as she stared down at this other, wilder Freya, with the power of the elements in her fingertips. She wasn’t the fierce lady in the sketch—not entirely—but neither was she the lady who’d made this drawing, all those days ago.
She was neither of them, and both of them at once.
There was a part of her that was still the quiet middle sister, the one who was afraid of her own shadow. The one who’d never been much like the rest of the MacLeods, or the Murdochs, for that matter.
She was like a redheaded child that appeared from nowhere in a family of brunettes. The child who didn’t quite fit. She’d always been that child, but in her family it wasn’t her red hair that made her different. All the MacLeods had red hair.
It was her cowardice.
At least, she’d always thought of it that way. She’d never said so aloud, not in those words, but if she had, her sisters would have expelled every breath in their lungs arguing with her.
They’d never seen her as a coward. Only she had.
After Aila had left her alone in her bedchamber this afternoon, she’d spent hours gazing out the window, telling herself she was the same Freya she’d always been.
The middle sister. The quiet one. The coward.
She’d succeeded in lying to herself, for a time. She was an expert at it, after all.
But lies were ephemeral things, apt to change as circumstances did, and now, standing here alone in the garden with the eerie green sky above her, she saw it for the lie it was.
She could never again be the girl who’d sat atop her turret rooftop and watched the world pass by her at a safe distance, as if these last few weeks had never happened.
She would never again be able to find contentment in such a lonely existence as that.
There was no going back to her old life now. How could there be, when she was no longer the lady she’d once been? After all that had happened—the fire, Sorcha’s disappearance, and the mob of villagers bent on vengeance—something fundamental had shifted inside her.
It wouldn’t ever shift back again, and there was no pretending it would.
It had been easy enough to lie to herself, once. Perhaps it still would be if it weren’t for Callum Ross.
It wasn’t that he’d changed her. How could he? No one could change another person. Not really. True change could only come from inside you.
She’d changed herself.
Yet at the same time, it never would have happened without him.
Her entire existence had been upended before Callum had ever come along, yes.
Since her father’s death her life had collapsed, piece by piece, like a child’s puzzle scattered across the floor.
Lies had turned out to be truths, and truths lies, and everything had been turned inside out until she no longer recognized it anymore.
It had changed her. Of course it had. No one could lose so much and come out unscathed on the other side.
Unscathed, but whole, and no one was more surprised at it than she was. Whoever could have guessed that fear, heartache and loss could change one for the better?
Not she. Yet it had happened, all the same.
How many times had her sisters scolded her for underestimating herself? How many times had they insisted that she was remarkable, like all the Murdoch women who came before her?
As many times as she’d refused to believe them.
Even the villagers of Dunvegan, who despised her as a witch, had given her more credit than she’d ever given herself.
But her sisters had been right. She was, every inch of her, her mother’s daughter.
There’s a tempest inside you …
It had taken its time making itself known, but it had been there all along, just waiting for the right moment to burst out of her, hair wild and lightning bolts at its fingertips.
She might still be waiting, if it hadn’t been for Callum.
It wasn’t anything he’d said to her. If wasn’t as simple as uttering a few words. If it had been that easy, her sisters would have stumbled over the right words dozens of times over by now.
No, it was more than that.
It had taken her some time to figure it out, but in the end, it came down to one thing.
Callum had believed in her. He hadn’t been the first, no. Her sisters believed in her, far more than she’d ever believed in herself, but it had been Callum’s hard, implacable conviction that she could do whatever she set her mind to that had made the difference.
He didn’t give way to doubt, and he hadn’t let her give way to it, either. When he found her under her father’s desk the night of the fire and told her they had to leave Castle Cairncross at once, she’d responded as she always did to anything that frightened her.
Which, admittedly, had been most things.
She’d told him she couldn’t do it. That she couldn’t leave her sister, her castle, her home.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t …
And he, with all the conviction of a high-handed, arrogant laird who believed himself right in every instance, had looked her in the eye and told her …
You can, and you will.
The miracle of it was that she had. She’d scrambled over the top of that wall outside the stillroom at Castle Cairncross like a monkey climbing a tree, jumped ten or more feet down to the other side, then managed that treacherous pathway over Loch Dunvegan without a word of complaint.
She’d ridden from Dunvegan to Kyleakin, and from there to Kildary.
He’d helped her, yes. He’d been there with her every step of the way, and not once since then had she ever uttered the words “I can’t” again.
And then, she’d kissed a laird.
For all her meekness, all her misgivings, all her mistrust in herself, she’d made up her mind to have that kiss, and once her mind had been made up …
She’d seized it. With both hands, and without hesitation.
It might not have made such a difference, if it had been just a usual sort of kiss.
But it hadn’t been. It had been a tender, passionate joining of mouths that had made her heart pound and set her blood alight as it rushed through her veins.
She never could have imagined such a kiss as that, but she hadn’t needed to imagine it. She’d only had to make up her mind to take it.
All this time, it had been as simple as that. Not easy, no. As Aila had said this afternoon, the right thing and the easy thing were rarely the same.
That was true of the simplest things, too.
How could she go back to her lonely rooftop, after such a realization as that? How could she go back to merely drawing life, instead of living it?
She couldn’t. Even if it had been possible, she wouldn’t.
Despite what she’d always believed, she’d never been destined for that life.