Chapter 31
31
Keyanna
The door to my bedroom—or rather my dad’s bedroom—rattles on its hinges when I slam it behind me, and I’m grateful that Finlay’s truck was missing from the front yard, that they’ve apparently gone into town. I need to be by myself for a bit.
I swipe at my eyes, wondering how I could have any more tears to shed after the last twenty-four hours; it hurt me to leave Lachlan like that, and part of me might even understand why he kept these things from me. I know he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and that despite his gruff demeanor, he’s always willing to add more if it means protecting someone he cares about. I see it in the way he doesn’t blame his mother for leaving him, in the way he still tries to reach his father, despite all the evidence pointing to him being lost.
I know deep down that he didn’t mean to hurt me, but that doesn’t change the fact that he did.
I think I just feel stupid more than anything. Here I am, having just given him this grand speech about how it felt to know that he trusted me, and he was still holding on to secrets. Important secrets. I mean, you don’t just forget to tell someone that their entire existence was fucking foretold in some insane curse passed down through the generations. I mean, it has to be me…doesn’t it?
I drop down to the floor, crossing my legs as I hold the journal in my lap. I rub my thumb over the leather cover, thinking about everything I learned moments before Lachlan had woken up and rocked my shit all over again. I didn’t even tell him what Sorcha wrote about the bridle. Not that I’m even sure what it means. Maybe that was selfish of me, putting my own feelings before his when he’s already suffered so much. I’d just been so angry, so hurt —I reacted without thinking.
And now here I am, sitting alone and sulking. Great.
God, what am I supposed to do? I don’t even know how to begin to process the fact that some magical being hundreds of years ago literally wrote me into existence. It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it. And supposedly I’m going to bring about the end ? What does that even mean? I’ve done nothing but promise Lachlan that we would find answers, that we would fix this—but what if I’m destined to do the exact opposite? What if by simply being near him, I only make things worse ?
I couldn’t bear it.
It’s moments like these when I feel the loss of my dad the hardest; these are the moments when I would run to ask him for advice. I don’t even think I had a boyfriend long enough to introduce him to before he got sick. I spent most of my twenties taking care of him. What would Dad think of all this? I close my eyes, trying to picture his eyes, trying to hear his laugh. What would he tell me right now?
Och, lass. Don’t cry. What do we do when we take a tumble?
I picture his soft smile as he fusses over my skinned knee, a pink bike only a few feet away, turned on its side. I can see him drying my tears, his fingers tucking under my chin to force my eyes up.
We get back up again.
Well, fuck. Definitely not helping with the crying.
A thought occurs to me then, and I crawl closer to the bed to sift through the scattered papers there, pulling out one in particular that had fallen in all the excitement of finding the journal. I settle back in to reread my dad’s words in the letter he left for Rhona, feeling a slight comfort at being so close to something he actually touched.
Mum,
I don’t know if you’ll ever find this. I’m not even sure if I want you to. If you read what’s inside this journal, you’ll know the truth of why I left, and I don’t know what’s preferable—you being disappointed in me for leaving, or knowing with certainty that I left because I’m a coward.
Maybe one day I’ll find my courage, but know that I didn’t leave because of you. Not really. I couldn’t bring myself to test fate, couldn’t make peace with not knowing what was to come—so I left. For her. The story in this journal is entirely true. All of it. Of that much, I’m sure. And that’s why I couldn’t take a chance. That’s why I had to leave while I still could.
But one thing has been, and will always be, certain.
I love you.
Duncan
I read it again, snagging the part where he says that he left for her , seeing it with new eyes. Bits and pieces of conversation with Rhona flit through my thoughts, and I frown at the memory, trying to remember it more clearly.
He called me down to this very table , she’d said. He seemed…frantic. Somehow. Not quite himself. He told me that your mother was pregnant, and that they had found out it was to be a girl. I remember how shocked I was to hear the news, but Duncan…Duncan almost seemed upset by it.
For a moment, I just sit there, staring at the wall as pieces start to fall in place, realizing that my father read this journal. That he saw this curse. That when he found out that I was coming…he knew what it meant.
He didn’t leave for my mother… He left for me.
My head buzzes with so many memories—of Rhona telling me that mine and Lachlan’s dads had taken trips to Inverness after finding the journal. Lachlan telling me that Duncan abandoned his father after promising to help him. My father refusing to tell me anything about his homeland.
He abandoned Lachlan’s father to protect me. Because he didn’t know what he would do when he found out about me.
It makes my head hurt thinking about how all of this, all of us have just been circling around one another our entire lives—bound by fate. I think of all the things that had to happen to get me here, all the pain and the suffering and the loss, not just mine but Lachlan’s…my grandparents’…my dad’s —and that’s exactly what it feels like is happening here. Fate. Like whatever comes next was meant to happen.
I feel that energy in the air, that crackling presence that urges me upward, that tells me to go —and even if I still don’t fully understand it, it feels as if there is a name to it now. One that was long forgotten. One that I almost feel a connection to. Like she’s there, quietly encouraging me to move.
Because Sorcha also gave everything for love. She gave up her freedom, then her magic, and even her life in the end—all to be with her beloved, as she called him.
I leave my bridle with my beloved—
I gasp, shooting to my feet. Like the last puzzle piece fitting into a slot—the answers come to me all at once. I see the picture clearly now, the solutions laid out neatly in a row, just waiting for me to shine a light on them. There are still tear tracks on my cheeks, and yet I find myself smiling.
Because there’s only one person I want to tell all of this to.
—for my magic is my heart, and only he can hold it.
I smile a little wider, already moving out the door.
I fly down the stairs and out the front door, my legs burning with effort as I sprint across the grass toward the groundskeeper’s cottage. I think of everything I have to tell him, every step that brings me closer making me feel that much lighter.
It’s going to be okay. I’m going to save him. It’s going to be okay.
I don’t bother knocking, wrenching open the door to the cottage and bursting inside to find—
Nothing.
It’s completely empty.
For a second, I’m just confused; there’s still more than an hour to sunset, so it seems unlikely that he’d already be at the shore, but maybe he went there to think? I frown, feeling a pang of guilt for how I left things, but I quickly brush it away. There will be time for that later. I step farther into the kitchen as if he might somehow magically appear, but it’s clear that the place is definitely empty. I set the journal on his kitchen table, worried now that maybe he did go to the shore. Do I still have time to catch him?
I rush back out the door, taking two steps at a time as I move around the cottage with the intent of checking the barn before I go running off to the loch, but when I round the corner of the tiny house, a bright red smear on the grass makes me pause.
It takes me several seconds to make sense of what I’m seeing; it only clicks when I notice the heavy-looking piece of wood—maybe an old table leg? It’s just lying there on the ground, that same red splash coating the end as if…No.
I crouch, pressing my fingers to the red stain even as dread settles low in my gut. I bring the sticky liquid to my nose, assaulted by the scent of iron. I try to reason with the panic ratcheting higher inside me—maybe an animal got a stray chicken or something—but the same certainty that hit me back in my room whispers to me once more, telling me that isn’t the case. Somehow, without having any conclusive proof…I know that this is Lachlan’s blood. The knowledge fills me with terror, and if it weren’t for the surging energy inside me that feels supernatural in origin—I might give in to that terror.
But I know I can’t do that. Not if he needs my help.
Instead, I take a calming breath—breathing in a slow inhale before letting it out, trying to center myself. I reach for that thread of energy, the one that seems to pulse in the air around me, grabbing hold of it, urging it to guide me, to take me to him. When it takes hold, I can almost see the trail of it, like a shimmering in the air that stretches out in front of me, winding across the property and falling onto a familiar path. One that is faint, but one that I’m sure of.
And without ever being able to ascertain how it is that I know—I know exactly where to find him. I push away any fear that lingers; there’s no time for it, no use for it. I don’t know who hurt Lachlan, can’t fathom who might have a reason to…but when I find them?
I’m going to make sure they regret it.
The path to the graveyard feels longer when I’m walking it alone, but I can feel with every step a growing certainty that I’m headed in the right direction, the shimmering air that guides my way growing clearer the farther I go down the trail. I should probably be a little stealthier in my approach as I stomp on dry leaves, snapping twigs under my feet and pushing through branches without thought. The air in my lungs burns with the pace I’m setting, but I can’t seem to slow down. I feel like I’m tied to the end of a thread, someone at the other end pulling me along.
I spot a marker I recognize from when I came here with Lachlan, and I pick up the pace even more as I hurry toward the end. That last thick patch of branches gives way when I push through them, and then I burst into the clearing—dying sunlight trying its best to filter through the canopy overhead. It doesn’t take me any time at all to spot them. Lachlan isn’t alone here, currently sitting slumped against a giant tombstone, his eyes shut and his mouth slack. It takes me a lot longer than it probably should to clock who is crouching next to him with a wheelbarrow on his other side, which he no doubt used to carry Lachlan here, seeming to be chaining Lachlan’s wrists.
I search my memory for any indication of this, for any hints that would have led me to believe that he would be capable of this, that he would have any reason for this—but I come up empty. I can do little more than gape, my brain going offline for a good ten seconds before it all comes rushing back, and I finally remember how to use my words.
“…Brodie?”
He dusts his hands on his jeans before rising to his full height, turning to face me with an expression that hints he’s surprised to see me here, but isn’t at all apologetic to be here in the first place. And then I notice the large knife in his hand, a chill shooting down my spine.
“Hello, Key. I…didn’t expect you.”
Well , I think dazedly. That makes two of us.