Chapter Fourteen
Rose used to like walking in the rain. Back home, when it was raining she would often take a stroll around the lake, watching how the surface danced and shimmered as the raindrops hit it. Elise had told her she was crazy, but she had always found it relaxing.
Now though, she was beginning to wonder if Elise hadn’t been right all along.
Walking around the lake in the soft, gentle showers that they often got back home was vastly different to riding through this wild, angry maelstrom that seemed intent on ripping her from the saddle and dumping her in the mud.
And yet, it was exhilarating too. The storm was alive with power and potential. It sang along her senses, stirring her blood. It was so raw. So present. No past. No future. Just the vast powers of the earth singing along her nerves.
Poor Snip though was not sharing Rose’s enthusiasm. The horse’s head was hanging down as she plodded along the muddy track looking thoroughly miserable. Rose patted the beast’s neck.
“Sorry, girl. I promise you a nice extra big bag of oats when we get back. How about that? And maybe some apples if I can pilfer them from the kitchen. Eh?”
Snip flicked her ears and carried on plodding.
Rose’s hood had blown back ages ago and she’d given up trying to keep it in place.
Now her hair was plastered to the sides of her face and droplets kept running down her back, making her shiver.
Still, they had made good time, despite the weather.
Rose had needed no maps to know where she was going.
Her destination pulled at her like a lodestone.
She was pretty sure she could find the place even with her eyes closed.
The path sloped down through two high banks topped with stunted trees. She was close now—she recognized the bend in the track where the gorse bushes thickened and the ground dipped toward the low stone wall that marked the boundary of the village of Hemkirk.
Finally, she rode in among the first of the houses.
The place was eerily deserted. No candlelight shone from the windows and no voices could be heard from within the buildings.
Even the dog that had barked at her and Cailean last time they were here was gone.
The wind had ripped one of the doors of the wooden houses open and now it banged incessantly in the wind.
Rose pulled the horse to a stop in the muddy street between two houses and gazed out at the bay. The wind was so fierce now that it squeezed tears from the corners of her eyes and whipped her hair out behind her like a banner. She shaded her eyes with one arm—and then she saw it.
Out in the bay, the waves were a lashing gray maelstrom. They thrashed against the rocks that littered the shore, sending up spumes of white foam. Breakers roared as they crashed onto the beach, leaving behind streamers of seaweed and bits of flotsam as they retreated.
And above it all, dancing across the surface of the water, was light. It was not jagged or actinic like lightning but rather formed a shimmery curtain of opalescent green, blue, and purple that flickered and danced like an aurora.
The hairs rose on the back of Rose’s neck.
“Stormlights,” she murmured.
She could feel the power in that light. It was vast and alien, not part of the magic that thrummed through the bedrock of this island. It was something… other.
And it was angry.
She dismounted and led the mare into an abandoned cottage. Taking off the saddle, she quickly rubbed her down, and then ducked back outside into the tempest. Rain streamed down her face, chilling her skin and blurring her vision, but she didn’t feel cold. Not really. Not anymore.
All she felt was the power of the storm.
Her boots slipped on the mud and slick stone as she walked down to the water and followed the curve of the shoreline. Waves crashed against the jagged rocks, foaming white and wild. The bay loomed just ahead, shrouded in mist and glowing with an eerie shimmer that pulsed like a heartbeat.
A narrow spit of rock stuck out into the bay like an accusing finger.
She picked her way along the beach until she reached it and then stepped up onto the black rocks, slick with seaweed and rain.
Lightning forked overhead, illuminating the dark sea—and the shimmering light down in the depths.
Rose walked right to the end of the spur of rock and gazed down at the thrashing sea.
A pale-green light spiralled just beneath the waves, moving like something alive.
She stared down at it, mesmerized. Some deep part of her whispered a warning.
She was very close to the edge, and all that lay beneath her was the thrashing waves.
One tiny slip, that’s all it would take, and she would be gone into the grasping water.
But she seemed unable to move back. The pulsing of the power filled her, and the light in the depths held her in a spell.
The storm faded from her mind. The thunder, the rain, the wind—all of it melted away beneath the song she now heard. Not with her ears, but with her blood. A hum in her veins. A call in her bones.
And old magic. Ancient. Hungry.
The stormlights began to move, the green glow to gather in the water below her. The lights swirled and flickered in a hypnotic dance, like smoke trapped under glass. She found herself leaning forward, watching its slow dance.
It seemed to coalesce into a shape—a figure?—before breaking apart and swirling once more, beautiful, bright movement in the darkness.
“Who are you?” she whispered, the words snatched away by the wind and scattered out over the thrashing waves. “Why are you hurting the people of this island?”
There was no answer. At least, not one spoken aloud. Yet she heard a response all the same. Inside her head she heard a voice, like the roll of waves against a distant shore.
Come to me.
The voice was like silk and thunder all wrapped into one. It wound around her, through her, promising warmth and sweet oblivion. It seeped into her, filling the empty places in her heart she didn’t even know were there.
Come to me.
She took a step closer to the edge until her toes were sticking out beyond the lip.
Join me. Be part of my song, daughter of the Isles. I will end your suffering.
All thought vanished. There was only the irresistible pull of the stormlights and the roar of the water.
She lifted one foot, prepared to take the step that would send her down to join the lights—but a hand seized her wrist.
She jerked in surprise, spun—and found herself staring into Cailean’s storm-dark eyes.
The spell of the stormlight shattered.
Rose gasped, her eyes snapping wide. The world came rushing back in—the roar of the wind, the rain pounding her skin, the cold. She staggered back from the edge, her knees buckling as realization struck her like a blow.
She had been about to jump.
Around them the storm’s fury redoubled. Waves crashed against the rocks they were standing on, sending freezing spray over both of them. The wind howled, and to Rose’s mind it sounded like thwarted fury.
Cailean didn’t hesitate. He reached down, got his arms around her, and lifted her into his arms. Fighting through the spray and wind, he carried down the headland and back into the village while the sea screamed behind them.
He shouldered open the door of the nearest cottage, kicked it shut, and dropped the bolt, cutting out the scream of the wind.
Only then did he set her down.
He was drenched to the bone, his clothes plastered to his big frame, and water was running from his hair in rivulets. His presence seemed to fill the room every bit as much as the storm outside did.
She wanted to run to him. To throw her arms around him. To bury her face in his shoulders and revel in the solid, reassuring safety of his presence. But something stopped her.
Cailean’s expression was tight and his eyes flashed with something that went beyond anger into cold, hard fury.
“Do ye mind telling me,” he growled, his voice sounding like part of the wild storm outside, “what in God’s name ye thought ye were doing?”
*
Rose stared up at him and it was all Cailean could do to keep hold of his anger.
He wanted to shake her. He wanted to rage and rant and tell her how stupid she’d been.
But he also wanted to hold her, to pull her into his arms and let the feel of her wash away the terror that had squeezed his heart when he’d seen her standing on the rocks.
She could have drowned, been washed out to sea. He could have lost her and that thought was strong enough to snap him in half.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I… I don’t know what I was doing.” She shook her head as though trying to clear it of disquieting thoughts. “It’s like… like I didn’t have control anymore. Something was calling to me. There was a voice…”
Cailean scrubbed a hand through his wet hair. That hand was trembling. Hell, his whole body was trembling. With anger. With fear. With relief.
“Aye, well perhaps next time ye hear a damned whisper in yer head try not to follow out into a storm, especially when I’ve expressly told ye no!”
She flinched in the face of his anger. “But you came for me.”
“Of course I did.”
Did she really expect anything else? Did she really think he would let her go riding off into a danger alone? Did she not understand what she meant to him? Did she really not know how he felt?
He turned his back on her, afraid of the look in her eyes. He needed something to do, or he’d go mad. His knees thumped to the floor in front of the hearth and he began fumbling with the stacked wood inside.
Flint. Spark. Smoke. Flame.
Focus.
Behind him, Rose hadn’t moved. He could hear her breathing, shaky and shallow. He wanted to rage. He wanted to hold her. And that war inside him was tearing him apart.