Chapter Eighteen
She was gone.
It had been three days, but Brody still found himself half-expecting to see her around every corner. The ache sat in his chest like a stone, heavy and unrelenting, refusing to let him breathe properly. He stood at the same spot in the courtyard where she’d vanished, staring at the water in the barrel as if it might offer some explanation. But it was just water—dark and cold, barely touched by today’s light wind. Cautiously, he dipped the tip of his middle finger into the water, expecting...he didn’t know what. But nothing happened, naught but several small rings that pulsed outward from the point of contact, distorting the sky’s reflection before settling again.
Much like fate itself, he thought grimly. One small disturbance, one act beyond anyone’s control, and everything changed. The ripples faded, but the disturbance had already been made—just as Emmy’s presence had altered something deep within him, something that could not be undone simply because she was no longer here.
Brody clenched his jaw and withdrew his hand, watching the last of the rings disappear. But the water remained—calm on the surface, deceptively unchanged, yet forever touched by the thing that had moved through it.
Just as he was.
He could still hear her voice. Brody! The way it had risen in panic, her eyes wide and full of fear as she was pulled from him, gone in an instant. Not running, not lost. Simply... gone.
He didn’t understand it—couldn’t wrap his head around how or why—but he’d seen it with his own eyes. No amount of logic could erase that. He had scoffed at such notions before, dismissed the old Highland tales as mere superstition. But no longer. Not after what he’d seen.
Magic. It had to be. What else could it be?
His throat tightened as the truth he had resisted for so long finally settled into place.
Emmy had been telling the truth. Every wild, impossible word of it. She was not from this time, not from the world as he knew it.
He raked a hand through his hair, his mind spinning. He had doubted her—had silently questioned her story at every turn, questioned her integrity even as he’d touched her and kissed her—but now he felt like a fool. She hadn’t been mad. She had been honest. Brutally, ridiculously honest, even as it had meant that he and others had at times silently questioned her sanity and her honor.
And now she was gone, taken back to the world she had come from—or was she? Had she been returned to where she’d come from or had the hand of Fate or another wicked force sent her elsewhere?
His hand curled into a fist at his side, his nails digging into his palm.
He ached for her in a way he couldn’t name, his body pulsing with a gnawing emptiness that had taken root the moment she disappeared. It wasn’t just the suddenness of it—or the mystery of how it happened. It was the way her absence seemed to strip Dunmara of its warmth, its light. She had brought something with her—something he hadn’t even realized was missing. Hope. Laughter. The way she had smiled at him, teasing and kind all at once, as if she’d known exactly how to pull him from his brooding silence without ever pushing too hard. He could still feel her touch, the way her fingers had traced the lines of his face four nights ago, her lips soft and warm against his.
Two nights. That was all they’d had.
And now he was left with nothing but the memory of her smile and the sharp ache of knowing she was somewhere he could never reach.
Yesterday, he’d discovered the wolf statuette on the hearth in his chamber. He’d not seen it in years, thought it might have been his father’s though he wasn’t sure. He’d stared at it, had taken it in his hand, had known almost instantly that Emmy had put it there. That had broken him, had dropped him to his knees. His palm was still indented today, for how fiercely he’d gripped the figurine for so long yesterday.
"Lad?" Duncan’s voice broke into his thoughts, hesitant.
Brody wrenched his gaze from the eerily still water to find the MacIntyre captain standing a few paces away, his expression grim.
"Ailis is at it again," Duncan said with a sigh. "Going on about how the lass disappeared into thin air. She’s got the kitchen in an uproar."
Unfortunately, Brody had not been the only one to witness Emmy’s vanishing. Duncan had been near, turned around by Brody hollering Emmy’s name. At the same moment, Ailis had stepped outside the kitchen door to empty the slop bucket, had seen the whole unbelievable event, Emmy appearing to be held prisoner by the water and the barrel, and then...simply gone.
He’d been compelled to explain—as much as he could, what little he understood—to Duncan, who had never before been so white of face, so frozen with shock. Though now he appeared as he always had, hearty and hale for his age, Brody wasn’t sure Duncan himself had recovered yet either.
Presently, Brody’s jaw tightened. Ailis had been jabbering nonstop about it since that day, reliving every detail to Maud and Agnes. Brody had admonished her curtly, with pain gnawing at him, to cease. But clearly, the warning hadn’t taken.
Brody exhaled sharply through his nose, rolling his shoulders as if to shake off the weight pressing down on him. Dunmara had enough problems—shortages, unrest, enemies beyond the walls. The last thing they needed was wild, impossible stories spreading beyond the kitchen. Already, the keep was burdened by whispers of bad luck, of omens. If word spread that their laird had harbored a woman who had vanished into thin air, it could stir fear, doubt. Superstition had a way of worming its way into peoples’ minds, making them see shadows where there were none.
And, God help him, he wasn’t ready to hear Emmy’s name on every tongue.
With a clenched jaw, he started toward the kitchens, Duncan falling into step beside him. “Ailis needs to shut her trap.”
When Brody stepped into the kitchen, he found Ailis seated at the long wooden table, hands curled around a cup of steaming broth, her expression pale but animated as she spoke. Maud and Agnes stood nearby, working at the table with slower, more deliberate motions than usual—listening, absorbing. Neither interrupted, but kept their distressed eyes fixed on their tasks.
“—still canna believe I saw it,” Ailis was saying, her voice hushed but urgent. “One moment, there, the next gone. Like mist on the loch. Do ye ken Old Fenella had anything to do with it?”
Maud's knife paused mid-chop, her lips pressing into a thin line. Agnes, kneading dough, worked much harder than necessary, as if she could press her nervous bewilderment into the flour.
Brody’s boots scraped against the stone floor and three pairs of eyes snapped to him as he stepped fully into the room.
“Enough,” he said evenly to Ailis, who slapped her hand over her heart, flinching a bit.
“But, laird—”
“Nae more talk of it.” His gaze swept over Maud and Agnes as well, making it clear that the warning extended to them. “The lass is gone. That’s all anyone outside of this room needs to ken. And dinna be making it worse by jawing on and on about it.”
Ailis looked as if she wanted to argue, her fingers tightening around the cup. “But what if she—”
“She’s nae coming back,” Brody cut in, his voice like iron.
The words sat heavy in the air, and for a long moment, no one spoke.
Maud exhaled slowly through her nose, wiping shaking hands on her apron. “Aye,” she murmured, her voice oddly resigned. “Best let the dead rest.”
Brody stiffened. His first instinct was to challenge her—Emmy wasn’t dead , damn it—but then he caught the haunted look in Maud’s eyes, the way her fingers trembled against the fabric of her apron. She didn’t mean it literally. She meant it in the way of the lost, the way of those who had vanished without explanation, never to return.
Emmy was gone, taken from them by forces none of them understood. Whether she was living and breathing somewhere beyond their reach or truly lost to time, it made no difference. To those left behind, it would feel as though she had died. Maud wasn’t speaking out of cruelty—she was speaking out of experience. About loss, knowing that some wounds never mend, and that some ghosts never return.
Brody’s own clenched jaw trembled with impotent rage.
Ailis shook her head but said nothing. Agnes’s lips quivered as she continued kneading, her knuckles white with the effort.
Brody turned, striding for the door, brushing past Duncan, unwilling to linger in a space where Emmy’s absence felt so palpable, so inescapable.
Behind him, Ailis’s voice wavered, barely more than a whisper.
“But she’s nae dead. I ken she’s nae dead.”
***
A sharp beeping sound dragged Emmy from the depths of unconsciousness. Her eyelids felt heavy, her limbs leaden, her mind thick with fog. She struggled to pry her eyes open, but the light was too bright, too sterile. The scent of antiseptic and something artificial—plastic?—filled her nose.
This wasn’t Dunmara.
Her body tensed in immediate rejection of that fact. She forced her eyes open, squinting against the glare of fluorescent lights overhead. White walls. Crisp sheets. The slow, steady beep of a heart monitor at her side.
A hospital.
Panic shot through her.
She tried to sit up, but the movement sent a sharp ache down her spine, her muscles stiff and sore as if she hadn’t moved in days. A nurse was suddenly there, pressing a gentle but firm hand to her shoulder.
“Easy, sweetheart. You’re all right.”
No. She wasn’t all right. Nothing was right.
Emmy’s pulse thundered in her ears. Her mind reeled.
Brody.
She sucked in a breath, her hands gripping the thin hospital blanket. “Where am I?” she rasped.
“You’re in Edinburgh. You’ve been here for three days.”
Three days?
Emmy’s chest tightened. She struggled to piece together how that was possible, how she could have gone from Dunmara’s great hall to a modern hospital bed, having absolutely no recollection of it.
“How did I get here?” she demanded, forcing her stiff fingers to grip the railing of the bed as if it might tether her.
The nurse gave her a practiced, soothing smile. “You were found in the woods near Pitlochry. Hikers spotted you, unconscious, suffering from exposure and dehydration. We weren’t sure how long you’d been out there, but it must have been a while. You had us worried for a bit.”
The words barely registered. Emmy stared at her, her mind spinning in frantic circles. Pitlochry? But she hadn’t been anywhere near Pitlochry as far as she’d known. She had been in the fourteenth century.
She had been with Brody.
Her breath came fast and shallow, her chest rising and falling quickly.
It had been real, hadn’t it? She was forced to question. Her head spun, memories colliding—Dunmara’s cold stone walls, the smell of peat smoke, the weight of Brody’s arms wrapped around her, holding her steady, keeping her steady. She could still hear his voice, low and rough in her ear. She could still feel the scrape of his stubble against her skin.
It had felt real. So real.
But what if...
The thought slithered through her mind like a sickness. What if it had all been a fevered dream? A hallucination brought on by exposure and dehydration? What if she’d never really left this time at all?
Her fingers tightened on the bed rail.
No. Just no. She refused to believe that. She had walked through the halls of Dunmara, had lived there, had known Brody’s kiss and his body.
Brody had been real.
He had been real.
Her heart clenched painfully.
She blinked hard. The last thing she remembered was standing in Dunmara’s courtyard, looking with desperation at Brody as if he—her own powerful, brooding warrior—could stop what had horrifyingly felt inevitable. And then... nothing. No flash of light. No whirlwind of sensation. Just... gone.
She barely registered the nurse continuing, “...your parents have been contacted. They’ll be relieved to see you awake.”
Still disoriented but grasping for clarity, Emmy forced her thoughts to focus. “My friends,” she rasped, her throat dry. “Madison, Serena, Vanessa... have they been here?”
“Ah, the American trio,” the nurse said, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Caused quite a stir, they did. Kept insisting you’d vanished into thin air right before their eyes.” She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice as if sharing a secret. “People didn’t take too kindly to that. Some thought they were attention-seekers, making up some outlandish story for the spotlight. Others just thought they were daft. Authorities didn’t like it either. Your disappearance was serious—some even suspected foul play at first. Those friends of yours were questioned—interrogated, really. Held for hours by the local authorities, asked again and again to explain what happened. When it became clear no real evidence pointed to them, they were let go—but by then, people had made up their minds. The story went viral, and I don’t think they liked the kind of attention they got. They didn’t stick around long. Flew back to New York after a few days.”
Emmy swallowed, a strange mix of emotions twisting inside her. Her friends had seen it happen. They knew —but no one had believed them. Oh, God, how awful for them. Never mind Emmy’s inexplicable disappearance, Serena was probably on antidepressants for the negative press.
The nurse exited the hospital room a few moments later, and Emmy’s mind returned to Brody.
She dropped her head in her hands and cried, her chest aching with the weight of everything she’d lost.
Soon, however, she was aware of the swift snap of high heels clicking against the tile floor, getting closer and closer. She stared at the door, and watched as her mother pushed through it, and a fresh bout of tears surfaced, erupting roughly from her.
“Oh, thank God,” Meredith Clarke breathed, pressing a hand to her chest. She looked elegant as ever—her sleek blonde hair perfectly styled, her designer coat draped over her shoulders like she’d stepped off a runway rather than rushed to her daughter’s bedside. “You scared us half to death, young lady.”
Emmy flinched at the sharp edge of her mother’s voice, at the disapproval lurking beneath her words.
Her father followed, his expression more restrained but no less intense. Henry Clarke was a man who commanded boardrooms, not hospital rooms, and his first instinct wasn’t to embrace his daughter, but to demand answers.
“What have you—My God, Emmy, where have you been?”
The question hit her like a slap, certainly as she detected more annoyance than concern in his tone.
Emmy opened her mouth, but the words tangled in her throat. How was she supposed to explain? How could she make them understand? “I don’t even know...what to say, how to explain—”
“You had better say something, Emerson Clarke,” her mother insisted.
She stared helplessly at her parents, feeling as if she were seven again, trying to tell them she didn’t want to continue the piano lessons. Or she was twelve, standing in the face of their fury when she’d told them that she no longer wanted to play tennis, despite the years of expensive lessons and country club memberships. Or seventeen, when she’d dared to suggest that maybe she didn’t want to major in business like her father had planned.
Their expressions now were eerily familiar—impatient, frustrated, disappointed—layered over what should have been relief. But relief was the one thing she didn’t see.
“I—I was lost,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I was gone —”
“Gone where , exactly?” Her father’s voice was sharp, demanding.
Emmy sucked in a breath, bracing herself. “I was in...the fourteenth century. At this castle—keep—in the middle of the war between England and Scotland. There was this—” She hesitated, knowing how insane it sounded. “There was a man, the laird....” She paused, watching as her mother’s face twisted, as if Emmy had just sprouted a second head.
A long, heavy beat of nothing. Then, her mother’s perfectly shaped brows lifted, and her lips pressed into a thin line. “Excuse me?”
“The past,” Emmy repeated weakly, her pulse pounding. “Scotland. The year 1304. I don’t know how , but it happened. I was there for weeks with Brody—”
Meredith Carter threw up her hands. “I knew it. This was about a man. You ran off and shacked up somewhere with a man while we were worried sick about you.”
“I didn’t. I was—” Emmy tried again to explain.
“Who is this guy? A nobody, I suppose,” her father snarled. “Some dirt-poor... sheep farmer from the backwoods of—"
“I didn’t run off.” Emmy’s voice cracked, and the frustration boiled up in her chest. Oh, God, why had she said anything? To her parents, of all people! “I didn’t plan this. I didn’t choose to vanish into thin air. Or to be—”
Her father’s jaw tightened. “Do you have any idea the chaos you’ve caused? The questions we’ve had to answer? The authorities—”
“The news cycle!” her mother interjected, shaking her head. “Your friends caused a spectacle, and naturally, we had to deal with it. It’s been humiliating.”
Emmy gaped at them. That was what they cared about? The inconvenience? The optics?
For one brief, foolish moment, she had hoped— really hoped—that her return would mean something to them. That they would be relieved, that they would pull her into their arms and care .
Instead, they were making this about themselves .
The contrast struck her with almost painful clarity.
Brody had believed her. He hadn’t laughed, hadn’t dismissed her as ridiculous. Sure, he might have thought it—she would have—but he hadn’t been so... heartless. Even he, a relative stranger at the moment she’d admitted her truth to him, had shown a guarded compassion.
“I’m not making it up,” Emmy said, her voice small, deflated. “I didn’t dream it. It was real.”
Meredith scoffed. “For God’s sake, Emmy. Do you even hear yourself?”
Tears burned at the back of Emmy’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She knew what she’d lived. She knew what was real. And yet, here she was, being dismissed like a foolish child.
Her mother pressed a hand to her forehead, exhaling dramatically. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s worse—the fact that you disappeared without a trace or the fact that you’re making up this insane story instead of telling us the truth.”
Properly subdued, Emmy shrunk against the hospital bed and gave up. “Maybe...I must have dreamed it. I don’t remember anything.”
They weren’t listening.
“The Clarke name is being dragged through the mud because you decided to play Gone Girl in the Scottish Highlands.”
Emmy stared at her, stunned. “You’re worried about a headline ?”
Her mother didn’t even blink.
Emmy felt something inside her crack. Weeks ago, she would have crumbled under their disappointment, would have scrambled to explain, to appease. Now? She just felt... empty .
Her mother smoothed her hand over her perfectly styled hair. “We’ll handle this, of course. But when you’re discharged, you’ll be coming home. No more reckless trips. No more disappearing acts.”
Home.
But what was home? A sleek, sterile loft in New York? A life that had never really been hers?
Her heart clenched. No. This wasn’t home.
Brody was home. Dunmara was home.
***
The luxury suite at the landmark Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh was as far from 1304 as Emmy could imagine.
Thick carpets muffled every footstep, and the air was filled with the scent of fresh-cut flowers and expensive perfume. The bathroom was stocked with high-end toiletries, and the windows offered a sweeping view of the city, the castle rising proudly in the distance. The Balmoral offered breathtaking views, exceptional hospitality, and top-tier amenities.
And Emmy hated every inch of it.
Three days after waking up in the hospital, she sat on the edge of the plush king-size bed, staring blankly at the sleek suitcase her mother had packed for her. The leather gleamed in the soft light, pristine and perfect—everything her life was supposed to be.
"We’re leaving tomorrow," her mother said from the doorway, her voice clipped, her manicured nails tapping impatiently on the doorframe. "Your father’s booked the jet. We’ll be back in New York by evening. And I don’t want to hear any more about you staying here. The very idea is ridiculous."
Emmy didn’t respond. She kept her gaze on the suitcase, her chest tightening.
"Did you hear me, Emerson?" Her mother’s tone sharpened, her eyes narrowing. "We’re leaving. You’ve been through enough. You need to be home, surrounded by people who care about you. Not... wandering around Scotland chasing ghosts."
Emmy murmured meekly, “I’m not chasing ghosts.”
Her parents’ reaction to the actual truth—what she had lived—had made it abundantly clear that repeating it to anyone else would be a mistake. Since that day, her responses to questions about the three weeks she had been missing had remained vague.
I got lost. I wandered for days. I don’t remember much, hardly anything at all.
The doctors had chalked it up to trauma, her disappearance categorized as an unsolved mystery. She knew that her return—and her baffling inability to explain it—had been splashed across the news. But Emmy didn’t care.
Investigators had visited her in the hospital shortly after she woke, bombarding her with questions. Where had she been? Had she been taken? Had she run away? Was she covering for someone? She had answered the same way each time: I don’t remember. When they pushed, insinuating that she had to recall something , she had muttered something about needing rest, and they had finally relented.
Her phone buzzed constantly, texts from worried friends pouring in. She ignored most of them, only responding to Madison, Vanessa, and Serena, apologizing for the chaos she had caused but repeating the same line: I don’t remember anything.
Nothing mattered. Not the whirlwind of speculation on social media. Not the curious whispers in the hospital corridors or the hard, suspicious stares of her parents.
Nothing mattered here.
Her heart was still in 1304.
With him.
She could still feel his arms around her, the rough warmth and steadiness of his touch. She could hear his voice, low and gruff, calling her lass , teasing her in his own quiet way. She could see the way his eyes softened when he looked at her, the way his smile—so rare, so fleeting—felt like it was meant only for her.
The brief transfer from the hospital to the hotel had been jarring for Emmy. The city felt wrong. Too loud. Too fast. It was as if she’d been dropped into a world that had moved on without her, one that no longer fit.
And soon, she’d be taken even further away. Back to New York.
She had always felt a little lost in that world—adrift, without purpose. But in Dunmara, with Brody... she had mattered. She had belonged. No one had judged her, though there had been plenty of reasons why they could have.
Her mother stepped inside and closed the door with a soft click. "Then what are you doing? Refusing to leave? Avoiding all your friends? Ignoring every call from the press? This isn’t you, Emmy. This... obsession with staying here, it’s unhealthy."
"Unhealthy," Emmy echoed, her voice almost a whisper. She lifted her gaze, meeting her mother’s with quiet defiance. "Mom, it’s not unhealthy to want something real. To not want to go back to pretending everything in my life is perfect, or that it’s even what I want ."
Her father, who had been sitting quietly in the armchair by the window, cleared his throat. "Emmy, we’re worried about you. This—whatever happened while you were gone—it changed you. But staying here won’t help. You need to come home and heal."
Emmy turned to face him, her expression softening, filled with a plea she knew they wouldn’t understand. "I can’t go home—to New York, I just can’t. I need to stay here. Let me figure this out. Because I can’t... I can’t go back to New York. Not now.”
Not ever, if she had any hope of getting back to Brody.
Her mother’s eyes widened. "Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’ll come back. Your life is there—your friends, your future."
"No." Emmy shook her head fiercely, the words spilling out in a rush, as if they had been caged inside her for years. "My life isn’t there. It never was. I was just... existing. Pretending any of it mattered. Pretending it was enough. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close.”
Desperation flared in her chest, and on a whim, she searched for something—anything—that might make them see her, truly see her. A last attempt to appeal to something deeper. To a love that surely, somewhere inside them, must still exist. “I think I finally... found myself, Mom.”
Her mother’s lips thinned. "That’s very poetic, but it’s not an acceptable answer. You can find yourself in New York, too. In fact, it’s probably the best place for you to do that. With proper therapy and—"
“You’re not listening. " Emmy’s voice rose with frustration, cutting her off. “I’m not going back. I can’t.”
A tense silence settled between them. Her mother’s expression hardened, her sharp gaze locking onto Emmy’s in a silent challenge.
Emmy did not look away this time.
Finally, her mother exhaled, her voice quieter but no less firm—laced with irritation and something dangerously close to disdain. "You’re making a mistake. A big one. But if you’re determined to ruin your life, I suppose there’s nothing we can do to stop you."
Emmy’s jaw tightened. She lifted her chin, steeling herself against the words designed to wound.
"No," she said, her voice unwavering. "There’s not."
She had never stood up to them like this before. Not when they’d dictated her future. Not when they’d pushed her into a life that had never truly been hers. But this? This was different.
For the first time, Emmy knew—without question—that this was a fight she would not back down from.
Her mother sighed dramatically, pressing a hand to her temple. "Fine. Stay. But don’t expect us to stick around while you figure out whatever it is you think you’re doing. We’ll be on the plane tomorrow, with or without you."
"I wouldn’t expect anything less," Emmy said coldly.
Her mother turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. Her father lingered a moment longer, his eyes searching hers.
"Be careful, Emmy" he said softly. "Whatever you’re looking for... make sure it’s what you need to find.”
Emmy’s throat tightened, but she nodded.
He gave her a faint smile before following her mother out, leaving Emmy alone in the suite.
For a moment, she sat there, her heart pounding, her breath coming fast and shallow. Then she sank back onto the bed, her hands curling into fists in her lap.
She had won. She was staying.
But the victory felt hollow.
The truth was, she didn’t know what to do next. How to find her way back. But she had to believe it was possible. She had to believe there was a way.
The only place she wanted to go was back to him.