Chapter 41
CHAPTER 41
CLOVER
In the hills at the foot of a plum mountain peak
Lies a sleepy old town where the dead never sleep.
The villagers know to stay out of the wood.
That’s where the spirits are up to no good.
Especially one, they confess with a shiver.
Born with the Devil inside him, they whisper.
Eyes gray as smoke, hair like black flames.
He killed the town priest and died with him that day.
Damned for eternity, refusing to burn,
He waits in the woods for his love to return.
Out where the bluebells grow high as your knee
And the clover and moss blanket every tree
Lies a ring made of stone where no fairies dare tread.
That’s where you’ll find him, the ghost of the glen.
I recited the epigraph from The Ghost of Glenshire over and over in my mind as I raced up the hill behind Darby and Kellen’s house. My house. It was the only thing keeping me going.
My mother had named me Clover because of that poem. Little did she know that I’d written it myself just a few years before. Or that I was destined to meet and fall in love with the man it was written about. Or that one day, she’d be gone, and I’d be trudging through those very woods alone, in search of that exact same enigma of a man, and that the memory of her voice, reading that poem, would be my only source of comfort in the entire world.
There was just enough daylight left to find my way, but I could hardly see a thing through my incessant stream of tears. The forest was nothing more than a blur of greens and browns, and when I finally crested the top of the hill … purple. Wiping my eyes, I found a sea of bluebells carpeting the woods. Their trumpeted blossoms hung like church bells at noon, swaying back and forth in the summer breeze, but they didn’t make a sound. And why should they? Damien was gone. There was nothing left to celebrate.
There was also no trail left to follow, not anymore, but I knew where to go. It wasn’t a memory; it was a knowing. A download from the very spirit I was going to consult.
Out where the bluebells grow high as your knee,
And the clover and moss blanket every tree …
Following a row of trees with moss-covered trunks, I came across the cottage ruins we’d discovered the night before. I was definitely headed in the right direction.
Lies a ring made of stone where no fairies dare tread.
That’s where you’ll find him, the ghost of the glen.
“No, I won’t,” I whispered to Darby, staring at the crumbling structure where Kellen had always been waiting for her.
But Damien wasn’t Kellen. He didn’t wait for me. Not in this lifetime. Damien came for me.
He came for me when I leaped off a cliff. He came for me when I was captured. He came for me when I was trapped. And now, it was my turn to come for him.
As soon as I figured out where the hell he was.
The mist on the surface of the water ebbed and flowed, as if the lake itself were breathing.
“Saoirse?” I asked, not knowing what I expected to hear in return.
When nothing happened, I glanced at the cottage on the far side of the lake, wondering if perhaps I should risk another interaction with the old woman, but where I’d seen a quaint little dwelling the day before now sat a crumbling pile of stones that hadn’t been home to anything other than squirrels and spiders in centuries.
My mouth fell open as my gaze darted around the perimeter of the lake, but I knew there wasn’t another cottage. Just like I knew better than to ask Saoirse for a favor without bringing a gift.
I didn’t have a thing to give her, other than the clothes on my back, and as much as she might like them, I needed them more.
Then, I remembered the part in The Lady in the Lough , where Darby wrote about the accidental marriage ritual that she and Kellen had performed. Couples would wade into the lake and prick their fingers on blackberry thorns, hoping that by shedding blood together, they could prove to Saoirse that their love was true.
The first time my soul had encountered Saoirse, she’d blessed me, and it wasn’t because I’d brought her a gift. It was because Kellen and I had shed blood together and proven our love to her.
Snapping off a particularly thorny twig from one of the overgrown bushes, I rushed over to Kellen’s bench and began stripping off my— Darby’s —clothes. When I draped Kellen’s jacket over the intricately carved back, the pang of grief that sliced through my heart nearly brought me to my knees.
After twenty years of waiting, searching, mourning for someone I hadn’t even thought existed, I’d finally found him. And I’d already lost him all over again.
The pain was excruciating. It hurt to breathe, knowing that, soon, I would be breathing on my own. It hurt to stand, knowing that, soon, I would have to face a world without him in it. It hurt to be naked without his soft gaze caressing my skin and his lips healing every wound that someone else had caused.
“Saoirse,” I whispered, unable to push my voice through the knotted lump in my throat as I waded into her cold embrace. “Saoirse, please. I need your help.”
When I didn’t get a response, I lifted the twig in my hand and stabbed a particularly sharp thorn into the tip of my ring finger—the one with the freckles.
The blood came slowly, probably due to my dehydration, but when it did, I waded in deeper and swirled my hand on the top of the water.
My heart thundered in my chest, and tears stung my eyes as I waited to be grabbed by my ankles and dragged under water.
What if she was angry this time, like she had been with Damien? What if she decided not to let me go?
What if …
“Saoirse, please!” I cried, scooping my hands through the water now, searching for a trace of blue, a patch of bubbles. “Please, I need you! Damien’s gone! I have to find him. Help me find him!”
But the only response I got was my own voice echoing through the woods.
“Saoirse!” I slapped my hands on the surface of the lake before diving headfirst into the ripples.
The water was colder this time, making my muscles seize and shiver, but I pushed through the pain, peering into the murkiness and finding nothing staring back but a void as deep and wide as the one in my chest.
Coming up for air, I sucked in as much as my lungs could hold before diving in again. Maybe she would be at the bottom. I just had to make it to the bottom. Again and again, I tried to swim down there, but it was as if the lake suddenly had no end.
Once I was physically incapable of swimming another stroke, I hauled my exhausted body onto the bank, collapsed next to the bench, and stared up at the twilight sky through stinging, tear-filled eyes.
They were gone too. Saoirse, the old woman … what if they’d never existed? What if I really was having some kind of mental breakdown? I’d disappeared into Darby’s world—her village, her house, her bleeding clothes. All to distract myself from this exact feeling.
The realization that everyone I’d ever loved was gone.
I didn’t remember getting dressed or walking back to the house. I didn’t know if I’d tiptoed around the bluebells or stomped right through them. I didn’t remember passing the cottage or if there was even a whisper of daylight left as I emerged from the woods and waded across Darby’s overgrown pasture. My entire awareness had shrunk to the size of a human heart and was now occupying the space where mine would have been if I hadn’t left it behind on the bank of the lake.
Now, I felt nothing.
I didn’t bother lighting a candle when I got back inside. I didn’t want to see another space without Damien in it.
Or Odie.
Or my ma.
God, how I wanted my ma.
As I walked toward the bedroom, I caught myself wondering if Kellen had left any guns in the house.
If the Bratva is going to kill Damien, I can join him , I thought. Like Kellen had done for Darby. I could put an end to all of this suffering and just …
A sudden burst of blue light exploded from the bedroom, illuminating the hallway and causing me to scream and shield my eyes. It was gone in a flash, followed by the sound of glass breaking.
I ran into the room, hoping to see that Damien had found his way home while I was in the woods, but the room was just as dark and quiet as the rest of the house.
“Damien?”
No response.
“Hello?”
Tiptoeing into the space, I crossed the room to light a candle on the bookshelf and heard glass crunch under my feet when I got there. I froze on the spot, waiting, listening, and when I heard nothing but the sound of blood rushing in my own ears, I struck a match.
I was too impatient to light a candle before I glanced down at the mess on the wooden floor. Using the light from the match, I bent down to find a framed photograph shattered at my feet. I managed to set it back on the shelf before the flame began to burn my fingers.
Lighting another, I investigated the photo more closely, and what I saw would have stopped my heart … if I’d still had one.
A man who looked a lot like Damien, but with longer, wavier hair, stared through me with haunting gray eyes and his arm around the shoulders of a smaller, middle-aged woman. She looked a bit like him—pale skin, light eyes, dark, wavy hair—but unlike him, the woman was smiling. She didn’t want to be though. I could see it in the tightness of her features. There was a sadness that betrayed her attempt to be pleasant that struck me as horribly familiar.
“Ow!”
Shaking the match violently, I quickly lit another.
Sweeping the flame over the rest of the photo, I noticed that the two were standing outside of a bakery, and Kellen was wearing a white button-down shirt and a pair of black trousers …
That looked exactly like the ones Kate had given Damien to wear.
“Shite!”
Lighting one of the last matches in the pack, I studied the woman’s face more closely until I was absolutely sure. She had fewer wrinkles than the woman I’d met in Wexford, and her hair was dark instead of white, but the way she carried herself, the way she smiled through her sadness, was unmistakable. She held Kellen like she was already grieving him—and I’d seen that grief firsthand, every time Kate looked at Damien.
Cracking the frame in half on the edge of the shelf, I pulled the photo out and tucked it into the inside pocket of Kellen’s black jacket.
Then, for the first time all day, I smiled.
“Thank you,” I whispered through the lump in my throat.
And that time, I knew Saoirse heard me.