Chapter 2 #2
Some promises, it turned out, were more like prisons.
“Agnes, wait!”
I turned to see Liora, our astrologer and chartweaver, hurrying after me down the hallway.
I knew what she wanted to talk about and I took a deep breath, needing to build my walls up around the mild panic that fluttered at my throat, desperate to overflow in tears.
There was no use hashing through any of this.
It was old news, at least to me it was, and there was nothing that Liora or anyone else could do about it.
I was destined to live a life alone.
It was quite simple, really, and I didn’t know why these women needed to keep bashing me over the head with their relentless optimism that love always finds a way. Because in my case, it wasn’t possible.
They were all in love. Every last one of them. Well, except for Lottie that is, as she was grieving the loss of her husband, but she’d already experienced a great love in her life and was grateful for it.
I was learning that people newly in love also wanted everyone else around them to find the same joy. I couldn’t, no, wouldn’t, begrudge them that fact. But, at times, it wore on me.
I wasn’t stupid.
I knew everyone thought Graham and I should date again. Years ago, we’d been like two magnets snapping together, and ending things with him had been like losing an integral piece of my core.
It had taken ages for me to take a deep breath again, to be able to see him in public without feeling that desperate sensation of loss tighten across my ribs, and frankly? I wasn’t interested in dragging myself through all of that again.
No, Graham and I had found our peace. A shaky peace, at times, but we knew what we were to each other and that was all it could ever be.
Even if he liked to push against my choice at times.
It was in his nature. He’d never been one who accepted rules easily, and he understandably still blamed me for our breakup. Because I did break us up.
It was for the best.
Even if he refused to accept that.
We still flirted. We still teased each other.
We still danced around each other. But it had been enough, thus far, to never cross a line—at least not that I knew of—as Graham had never once really been threatened.
And I needed to keep it that way. I’d grown too relaxed lately, flirting with him a bit more, and what I needed to do was get my head on straight.
“The loch finds a way, Agnes. If you never believe another thing I say, know this. The loch … it always finds a way. And it does not forget.”
I wouldn’t lie and suggest I was happy about how the die had been cast—Graham was an exceptionally delicious man and for a small moment in time, I’d thought he’d be mine—but this kept him alive.
Shouldn’t we all be happy about that?
“I don’t like you leaving like that.” Liora caught up with me, concern wreathed on her pretty features.
She’d done an astrology reading for me recently, which her sister’s guide dog, Mitch, had interrupted when he alerted us that Zara was in danger.
I couldn’t help but feel like the interruption had come at a perfect time, because Liora had seen exactly what Gran had told me about loving someone.
Graham and I could never be together.
“I’m fine,” I said, automatically, waving a hand in the air. “Sometimes it just gets to be a bit much, is all.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Liora worried her lower lip, watching my expression carefully.
“There’s not much to say.” I shrugged one shoulder.
“Listen, I still think we should just…” Liora looked over her shoulder and then drew me through a doorway, flipping the lights on to reveal a small sitting room of sorts.
I’d spent a lot of time in MacAlpine Castle but still had yet to explore its many rooms. I’d probably walked past this door a hundred times and had never noticed it before.
“Huh, isn’t this pretty? I’d totally make it my office. ”
One narrow arched window overlooked Loch Mirren, its surface dark and smooth, the lights of the village reflected across the water like a shattered stained-glass window.
The village glowed beyond it, my heart and my home nestled there, and I sighed as I looked over Loren Brae.
She was as much a part of me as I was of her, and I would never get tired of living here.
“Agnes, please. Just sit for a moment.” Liora drew the door shut and I settled into one of the stiff-backed, red velvet armchairs pulled near the window, and Liora took the other.
The room had an impressive bookshelf decorated with bits and bobs, a few antiquities from times past, and on one wall hung an old, framed map of Loren Brae.
“Liora, I know you’re trying to help,” I began, twisting a beaded bracelet at my wrist, the cool moss agate stones soothing me as they always did.
“I’m not just trying,” Liora said, leaning forward. “I’m going to. Agnes, I saw something, and we need to talk about it.”
I huffed out a breath and put a hand to my mouth to stop myself from being rude. I knew she was just trying to help, and her heart was in the right place, but it just felt like picking a scab on a wound that refused to fully heal over.
“If this is about the reading—”
“It’s not just your reading, but we also need to talk about that. It’s what I saw when the Beithir came out of the loch.” Liora glanced toward the door, a guilty look on her face, as though she was worried someone would burst in and yell at her for keeping secrets.
But she’d piqued my curiosity.
“You saw something? Like, about me?” I asked, surprised that she hadn’t brought this to my attention sooner.
“Aye.” A line formed in Liora’s brow as she thought it over. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it, but we haven’t had a chance to be together, just you and me, since it happened.”
“Right, well, now I’m actually starting to worry,” I said, making a rolling motion in the air with my hand. “Go on, tell me, before I begin to panic.”
Liora drew in a breath, her eyes meeting mine with an intensity that made my stomach clench.
“When Zara was doing her thing—communicating with the Kelpies, holding them back—my chartweaving kicked in. I saw threads, Agnes. Everyone’s threads.
Like, the whole of Loren Brae, past and present, all woven together in this massive astral map.
It was kind of flung up in the air, hovering over the loch, and the threads just connected to everywhere.
It was beautiful, really…” Liora mused, her eyes going vacant as she drifted back to the image.
“Kind of poetic, I guess? In showing how we’re all connected, those who came before and those going on from us. You ken?”
I nodded slowly, not entirely sure where this was going but feeling dread pool in my gut, nonetheless.
“And the Kelpies’ threads were part of it too. They’re as much a part of this place as any of us. I think … I don’t know. It’s shifted my understanding of them a wee bit. I’m not sure they’re quite the threat that we think they are.”
“I wouldn’t get too confident about that.” I leaned forward, needing Liora to hear me. “They almost killed Luch. And have killed others. They may be telling you they’re not a threat, but that isn’t to say they aren’t lying.”
“Okay, so that’s a fair point.” Liora sucked in a breath. “I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s as black and white as we’re making it out to be.”
I paused. The historian in me understood that everything came in shades of grey. One person’s account of history did not make the happenings of that event factual. You always needed to look at things through several different lenses.
“Point taken,” I murmured, conceding that maybe I did need to look at the history of the Kelpies in Loren Brae with a fresh eye. “Not that I’m willing to agree that they aren’t still a threat. It would be foolish to not be careful around them.”
“Understood,” Liora promised me. “But back to that moment…”
Liora shifted in her chair, tucking one leg beneath her. “See the funny thing is that there was one thread that rose above all the others. It was much stronger … dynamic and glimmering. It was multiple colors—deep blue, molten gold, and moss green. Gorgeous, really.”
My eyes widened, and I motioned for her to continue.
“It connected the island—where the Truth Stone is—all the way to shore.” Liora’s voice dropped. “To you, Agnes.”
The words hung in the air between us like smoke.
I wanted to laugh it off. To wave my hand and tell her she must have been mistaken, that the turmoil of the moment had muddled what she’d seen. But the look on her face wouldn’t let me.
“To me,” I repeated, my voice coming out flatter than I’d intended. My pulse picked up and I reached for my bracelet again, twisting the strand of stones through my fingers.
“Aye. To you.” Liora leaned forward, elbows on her knees.
“It wasn’t just that you were connected, Agnes.
It was the size of it. The weight. I know I’m relatively new to reading charts and seeing the threads of fate and all that, but this?
” She shook her head slowly. “This was different. It was like ... you’re not just part of Loren Brae’s story. You’re pivotal to it.”
Pivotal.
The word landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples through everything I thought I knew.
I turned to look out the window at the loch. What Liora was describing sounded … terrifying. Pivotal.
My thoughts flashed back to that day by the loch, panic gripping me, as everyone in the Order worked to rescue Zara and Liora, while holding the Kelpies back.
And I’d been helpless. Full of heart, but empty of magick, only able to stand by and offer support where I could.
But I’d felt it, hadn’t I? That tug inside me. Like a hook beneath my ribs, pulling at something I’d spent years trying to bury.
“There’s more,” Liora said.
Of course there was.