The Healer’s Wish (Legends of the Miracle Stone #2)

Prologue

Spring arrived in Tokavaig like a whispered promise.

Blue skies stretched wide and endless above the village, and the earth answered in color.

Fresh green pushed through dark soil, and wildflowers dotted the fields with soft purples and golds.

To Camden, it meant more than the turning of the season.

It meant Eara. Long walks beneath the warming sun, laughter carried on the breeze, and hidden corners in a world that they had claimed as their own.

Where time seemed to pause just for them.

He rose from his bedchamber with the scent of herbs already clinging to him. The familiar comfort of the apothecary filling the air. The quiet sounds of night faded into birdsong and the gentle stir of the village waking. Doors opening, voices drifting, life unfolding and beginning again.

There was much to do, and for once, it didn’t feel like a burden. He welcomed the list of villagers who needed him, knowing each visit carried him closer to the moment he could finally go to her.

Eara was constantly in his thoughts, an obsession perhaps, but he didn’t care. Even when he wasn’t with her, she walked beside him in memory and anticipation.

Camden opened the wooden chest that held the tools of his trade.

Sunlight spilled across glass vials and small cloth sacks, catching on the shimmer of tinctures and the dull gleam of needles and blades.

He moved with practiced care, selecting what he’d need, adding a few extra bandages, a pinch more herbs, best to be prepared for whatever would be required that day.

He stepped outside and let the warmth of the sun wash over him. The aroma of freshly baked bread made his stomach grumble. Next door, at the bakery his aunt would insist on feeding him, and cousin, Beitris, would tease him for working too hard and smiling too much as of late.

Ten years in Tokavaig had given him more than a place to live; it had given him a home. Even the ache of old wounds—his mother’s passing and distance from his father—felt softer here. Gentled by routine, by kindness, and by love.

Later that morning, after doing all he could, Camden paused just outside the door of a quiet house, save for the muffled sobs of a family preparing to say goodbye. One of the man’s sons gave him a grateful look. “Thank ye for seeing about Da’s last moments.”

The young man hurried off to fetch the village vicar to perform the man’s last rites.

Camden looked across the road where a team of oxen pulled a plow through dark waiting earth. The rich soil was turned in long deep lines, ready to receive seed and promised a harvest yet unseen. Somewhere nearby, a bird burst into song, bright and cheerful.

Behind him, a life was fading. In front of him, the world was being made new.

Camden drew in a slow breath, holding both truths in his chest at once. Sorrow and beauty. Endings and beginnings. He squared his shoulders and started down the path to his next visit, a woman heavy with child, a new life preparing to enter the world.

And as he walked, his heart lifted, light and full, already reaching toward the moment he would see Eara again. Life went on.

The sun was already sinking low when Camden guided his steed from the village toward the small farm on the edge of the fields.

His body ached with the long day’s work, but as tired as he was the familiar pull of Eara’s smile, her laugh, the way her eyes lit up when she saw him, those thoughts carried him forward when his muscles begged him to stop.

He imagined her waiting by the fence, pretending not to watch the road while watching it all the same. But when the farmhouse came into view, something inside him went cold.

The air felt wrong. Heavy. As if the land itself had drawn a breath and was holding it. His stomach knotted, not with anticipation, but with a sudden, unwelcome dread. Camden urged his horse into a quicker pace, the thud of hooves loud in the stillness.

He dismounted before the horse had fully stopped.

A curtain shifted in one of the windows. Just a flicker. Whoever stood there turned away instead of looking out.

That alone struck him like a blow. Eara’s brothers usually came running the moment they saw him, eager for talk and laughter and anything that broke the long hours of farm work.

This time, the door creaked open and only Quinlen, Eara’s father, appeared.

Eara’s father stood broad and solid in the doorway, his thick arms folded across his chest, his usual easy grin nowhere to be found. He lifted a hand in greeting, but the motion was stiff, uncertain. Then he gestured toward the bench beside the door.

Camden didn’t move, remained standing.

“What’s happened?” he demanded, his voice already tight. “Is Eara hurt?”

“Nae.” Quinlen shook his head, but the answer brought no relief. His eyes were dull, shadowed. “No one is hurt.”

That tone, flat and strained, set Camden’s nerves on edge.

“I must speak to ye,” the man said, his voice flat.

Camden exhaled sharply, his gaze darting past the man, to the dark doorway behind him. Why wasn’t she there? Why wasn’t Eara pushing past her father, calling his name, smiling as if he were the best part of her day?

Quinlen swallowed, then forced the words out as if they burned his tongue.

“Eara is gone.”

The world tilted.

“She left early this morn. Eoghan Crag came for her. She had her things in a bundle and said… said they were in love. That they had planned it.”

Each word landed like a stone thrown into Camden’s chest. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Quinlen kept talking, his voice rushed, almost desperate. “Her mother is in pieces. I cannae calm her. I cannae understand it. Why would our lass…”

“My lass is gone, Camden,” he finished hoarsely. “She’s left with that man.”

Camden took a step back, then another.

His gaze slid past Quinlen, across the familiar yard, the worn fence, the barn doors hanging crooked on their hinges.

The sheep grazed in the field as if nothing in the world had changed.

To the left, having stopped plowing, Eara’s brothers stood frozen, watching him in silence, their faces drawn with either anger or grief, probably both.

It wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be.

This was some cruel trick, a jest taken too far. Eara would be inside, hiding, waiting to burst out laughing at the look on his face.

“I dinnae believe ye,” Camden said, the words tearing from his throat.

He brushed past Quinlen and strode into the house.

The kitchen smelled of bread gone cold, and too much sorrow in the air. Eara’s mother sat at the table, a cloth crushed in her hands, her face red and swollen from weeping.

When she saw Camden, she rose with a broken sound and hurried to him, clutching at his tunic as if he was a beacon of hope amidst her sorrow.

“Oh, dear lad,” she sobbed. “Our Eara is gone. She’s gone with that horrible Eoghan.”

That was when something inside Camden finally shattered.

He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The room felt too small.

The air too thick. This wasn’t how it was meant to be.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. They’d talked about marriage, about bairns, about life together.

This had to be a horrible dream. He pulled himself free from the sobbing woman’s grasp.

Not trusting himself to speak. Not trusting himself to stay.

Outside his horse grazed peacefully, unaware that Camden’s world had just been ripped apart. He mounted in a blur and kicked the steed into a gallop.

The wind tore at his face, stealing the sound of the cry that broke from his chest. Tears burned his eyes, blurred the path ahead. Pain clawed through him—deep and merciless—as if something vital had been torn out and left bleeding in its place.

He didnae care where the horse carried him. If it galloped off the side of a cliff, it would be a welcome reprieve.