Chapter 7 #3
“What matters is that I love you, and I’m always going to love you, and nothing you say or do is going to change that.”
“I think,” I said softly, pushing the memory of his words aside, “that we should get the bill.”
Graham watched me for a long moment, and I could see the frustration warring with something gentler in his expression—disappointment, maybe, or resignation. The look of a man who’d pushed as far as he dared and knew he wouldn’t get any further tonight.
“Aye,” he said finally. “That’s fine, then.”
He signaled Marco, paid the bill despite my protests, and helped me into my coat. We walked to the car in silence, the night air cool against my flushed cheeks, and I was grateful for the dark to hide my face.
The drive back to Loren Brae was quiet, but not uncomfortable. Graham kept the music on, and I watched the dark countryside roll past the window, trying not to think about how much I wished this night didn’t have to end.
When we crested the hill and Loch Mirren came into view, I felt the familiar prickle at the back of my neck. The water was soft and still, reflecting the lights of the village in small smudges across its surface, and for a moment I could have sworn I saw something move.
I blinked, and it was gone.
“You okay?” Graham asked, glancing over.
“Aye, all good.”
He pulled up outside Bonnie Books a few minutes later, turning off the engine but making no move to get out. We sat in the dark, the ticking of the cooling engine the only sound.
“Thank you for dinner,” I said, my hand on the door handle. “It was ... it was really nice.”
“Nice.” He huffed a laugh. “There’s that word again.”
“Graham—”
“I know. It wasn’t a date. That it’s not supposed to mean anything.” He turned to face me, and even in the dim light from the streetlamp, I could see the emotion in his eyes. “But Agnes. You are never not going to mean something to me.”
I was frozen, unable to make myself move. He was killing me with his words, slowly and surely, with no clue how he was twisting the knife.
“I had a really good time,” I whispered. “I always have a good time with you. That was never the problem.”
“Then what is the problem?”
Everything. The curse. The promise I’d made.
The generations of my family who’d watched the men they loved disappear beneath dark water.
The certainty that if I let myself have this—have him—the loch would take him the way it had taken everyone else.
And the deep-rooted understanding that if I told him all of this, Graham would ignore every warning and insist on being with me anyway. To his own demise.
“I can’t explain,” I said. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”
Graham leaned in and pressed his lips to my forehead in a kiss so tender, that it shattered me.
“I’ll still be here, Agnes,” he murmured against my skin. “I’m not giving up on this. On us. Someday, you’re going to tell me why. Until then, I’ll be waiting.”
He released me and sat back, and I immediately felt the loss of his warmth like a physical ache. Fumbling for the door, I pushed it open before I did something stupid like straddling him in the car and kissing him until I couldn’t remember my own name.
I climbed out on shaking legs, fumbled for my keys, and somehow made it to my door and climbed the stairs to my flat, my mind spinning, my heart in pieces.
At my door, I paused. I didn’t want to go inside. Alone.
I heard Graham’s car pull away, knowing he was parking it in the lot behind the pub.
What I needed was fresh air and a moment to calm my racing heart. I hated feeling trapped. I was trapped by a promise I’d made and a curse I didn’t understand—and going inside just now would make me scream.
So, instead, I slipped back downstairs and out onto the pavement, pulling my coat more tightly around me as I sucked in the cold night air.
The streets of Loren Brae were quiet, most sensible people already home and tucked up for the evening. A cat watched me from a windowsill as I passed, its eyes gleaming as a streetlamp spilled light into the window.
Maybe it was stupid.
Okay, it was definitely stupid.
But, damn it, I was mad.
And sad.
And so I went and stood at the edge of Loch Mirren, staring across her dark expanse, the surface of the water rippling in the icy winter wind. The moon was just a sliver tonight, casting barely enough light to see by, and the lights from the village shimmered across the surface of the water.
“Why?” I whispered. “What am I missing?”
The researcher in me hated that I had no answers to why my family had been plagued with these deaths. Certainly I’d looked into it in the years since my gran had died, but I’d kept running into dead ends.
And then life had gotten in the way. The Kelpies had surfaced, the Order had needed my help, and I’d pushed my own issues aside. What did my happiness matter when Kelpies were threatening Loren Brae?
I needed to go home. I was being stupid, and I could already hear Sophie yelling at me for coming here on my own in the darkness.
Thoughts of the Kelpies had my shoulders straightening, bracing as though they were barreling across the water toward me.
But I couldn’t seem to make my feet move.
Something seemed to hold me there and I gasped as the water began to change.
It started as a ripple—just a small disturbance near the center of the loch, barely visible in the darkness. But the ripples grew, spreading outward in concentric circles, and beneath them something began to glow.
A pale, flickering light, deep underwater, rising slowly toward the surface.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I should run. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to run.
Yet, bloody eejit that I was, I stayed.
The light broke the surface, and with it came something that made my breath stop entirely.
It was enormous. A serpent made of kelp and shiny scales, its body coiling and uncoiling as it slipped silently across the surface of the water. Its scales shimmered with an otherworldly luminescence, and its eyes—two great orbs of ancient, terrible intelligence—fixed directly on me.
The Beithir.
I’d seen it before, during the battle at the loch, but only from a distance. At the time, we’d been terrified, and rightly so.
Which was what I should be right now.
Instead, I stared at the beast, oddly fascinated by its horrific beauty.
And, to my surprise, it didn’t do anything. It just ... watched me. Its massive head swayed slightly, water streaming from its scales, those ancient eyes boring into mine like it could see straight through to my soul.
A hook seemed to dig beneath my ribs, tugging at something buried deep inside me.
The Beithir opened its mouth, and I braced for a roar, for flames, for something terrible.
Instead, I felt words. Not heard—felt—pressing into my mind like stones dropped into still water.
Daughter of lies.
I couldn’t breathe. My thoughts scrambled in my brain.
“I don’t understand?” I asked, my voice thin and strange. “What lies? Please can you tell me—”
The water remembers. The water waits.
The Beithir’s eyes rippled with light, and for one heart-stopping moment, I saw something—a flash of images, too fast to comprehend. A woman in old-fashioned clothes, standing before a great stone. A betrayal. Blood in the water.
Then it was gone.
The Beithir sank slowly back beneath the surface, its light fading, the water closing over it as if it had never been there at all. The loch went still and dark and ordinary, just a body of water reflecting the thin slice of moon.
I stood frozen on the shore, my heart pounding, my mind reeling.
Daughter of lies.
I walked home on shaking legs, the Beithir’s words echoing in my skull. Whatever hope I’d allowed myself to feel during dinner, whatever crack had opened in my carefully constructed walls, it sealed over now, cold and final.
I couldn’t pursue this thing with Graham. I couldn’t let myself love him, no matter how much I wanted to.
The water was watching.
And the water would wait.