Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
AGNES
The box was on my kitchen table, daring me to open it.
It was stupid, really, this reluctance I had to digging through it again.
What if I’d missed something that could have changed everything for me years ago? And it had just been sitting here all along? Annoyed, I circled the table, trying desperately not to think about the almost-kiss that had happened in my bookshop today.
What had Graham even been doing?
Coming in all sexy and brooding and just … taking care of me?
It was decidedly flustering, that’s what it was, and I’d already sent him a text message reminding him not to come in the next day.
He hadn’t replied. Of course he hadn’t. The man was infuriating on a good day.
Sighing, I returned to the box and brushed off a fine layer of dust that made me feel guilty.
How long had it been since I’d opened it?
Two years? Three? After Gran died, I’d gone through everything once.
I’d found letters and photographs and a pressed flower from her honeymoon—all the artifacts of her life that had made me tear up.
I’d opened it a couple of times since then, lightly sifting through, but hadn’t found anything specific that spoke about the loch.
Maybe I hadn’t been looking for the right things. Maybe I’d just been missing the woman who had meant so much to me to be able to delve for more.
I poured myself a glass of wine, pulled the box toward me, and lifted the lid.
The smell hit me first, that soft dried lavender. Gran had kept sachets of lavender in all her storage boxes and drawers, and it instantly transformed me back to being a wee girl, reading at her knee as she knitted.
She was the one who made me believe in magick.
She’d listened as I told her about the fairytales I was reading, often adding her own spin or Scottish myth to it, and she’d told me, repeatedly, to always believe that there was more to the world than I could see.
I’d spent my childhood looking for fairies in the trees and dragons rising from the mist that clung to the shores of Loch Mirren because of Gran.
I missed her.
The top layer was photographs, all of which I’d seen before.
Gran as a young woman, standing outside this very building before it was a bookshop.
Gran and Grandad on their wedding day, both of them squinting into the sun, looking impossibly young and happy.
Gran holding my mother as a baby, her expression fierce with love.
I set the photographs aside and dug deeper.
Her letters were next. Bundles of them, tied with faded ribbon.
I’d skimmed these before—most were correspondence between Gran and her sister, who’d moved to Edinburgh after her husband drowned.
The letters were full of ordinary things like recipes, gossip, and the favorite pastime of complaining about the weather.
I’d found them comforting the first time I’d read them, evidence that life went on even after tragedy.
“You need to think like a researcher, Agnes.” I gently scolded myself and untied the first bundle and spread the letters across the table, scanning for anything I might have missed. Dates, names, references to the family history, anything that might make any sense or offer a clue.
...the anniversary is always hard, but I find if I keep busy...
...do you ever wonder if we’re meant to be alone? Sometimes I think the choosing was done for us long ago...
I paused on that last line. The choosing was done for us long ago. What did that mean?
Had her sister known about it too? Had all the Wright women known, passing the warning down like a poisoned, unwanted inheritance?
I kept reading, but the letters grew more mundane as the years went on.
“There’s nothing here.” I sighed and took a sip of my wine, frustrated. “Did you think it would be easy, Agnes?”
I set the letters aside and reached deeper into the box.
My fingers brushed leather.
I pulled out a small book, barely larger than my palm, bound in dark brown leather worn soft with age. The cover was blank—no title, no markings—and when I opened it, the spine cracked like it hadn’t been touched in decades.
The handwriting inside was old-fashioned, the letters formed in a style I associated with Victorian documents. But the date on the first page made my breath catch.
March 1817
This wasn’t Gran’s diary. This was something much older.
How had I missed this before? Had it been tucked beneath something else, hidden in a corner I hadn’t bothered to explore? Or had I simply not been ready to find it?
I flipped to the first entry, my heart pounding.
3rd March, 1817
Mother insists I write this down. For those who come after, she says. I think she just wants someone to believe her before she goes.
I’m not sure I do. But she’s dying, and what harm can it do?
I turned the page.
7th March, 1817
Mother spoke of one of our great-grandmothers today.
Mother says she was once greatly respected …
until she wasn’t. I asked what happened, but Mother just shook her head, her eyes going out to the loch.
Always to the loch. She told me, as part of her sacred duty, she’s kept the records.
The history is written, if I want to learn it.
I fear I would rather not know, though I suspect it upsets Mother. I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.
“What do you mean you’d rather not know?” I complained. “We need you to know! This is ridiculous. Be curious! Damn it.” Somewhere there were records. Annoyed, I shifted in my seat and took another sip of my wine, hoping the diary would give me more information.
12th March, 1817
Mother is worse. She grabbed my wrist this morning and wouldn’t let go.
‘She killed it,’ Mother whispered. ‘And it’s cursed us. Her daughters.’
I told her she was frightening me. She said I should be frightened.
“Och, that’s bloody grand, isn’t it then?” I said, raising my eyebrow.
A creature. The Beithir’s voice echoed in my memory.
Had an ancestor of mine killed one of theirs?
The very idea of even managing to kill the massive serpent was enough to have me drain my glass of wine and gulp a few steadying breaths, before I kept reading.
But the entries grew sparse after that. Fragments, really.
The writer’s mother had died shortly after, and whatever else she might have explained went with her.
April 1817
Mother is gone.
I keep thinking about what she said about the loch taking what we love.
Thomas has proposed marriage, and I told him I need time to consider his proposal. It causes me grave concern to know that I might lose him by choosing to enter into marriage with him.
I do not know how to tell him what I fear loving him might cost.
My throat tightened. I could very well be writing this journal entry in the here and now it seemed.
June 1817
I married Thomas. God help us both.
Nothing for months and months after that. Then:
November 1818
Thomas drowned yesterday.
I don’t even know how I can pen this, as my hand shakes so terribly. The water was calm. It was calm. There was simply no explanation. An act of God some people say. But others … they whisper her name.
Mother was right.
I should have listened.
The entries stopped entirely after that. I flipped through blank page after blank page, hoping for something more.
Near the back, I found one final entry. The handwriting was shakier now, dated years later.
I have a wee granddaughter.
I’ve told her mother everything I know, which isn’t much. She thinks I’m a mad old woman, and perhaps I am.
But if anyone finds this? The Order keeps records of everything, or they should.
I was too afraid to look.
Maybe you’ll be braver than I.
The diary ended there.
I sat back, gently closed the book, and blew out a long breath.
So it was real.
Just like we’d thought. Just like Liora had shown me with the threads of my fate.
It was all real. And somewhere in the castle archives, the full story was waiting. Well, it might be waiting. I had to find it first.
I could no longer deny that keeping Graham at arm’s length was the right move. Loving him would kill him. It was written right here, wasn’t it? Gran had never mentioned any of this. Why hadn’t she shared it with me? Let alone my mum?
I sighed, picturing my mum’s lips pressed tightly together.
Every time I questioned her about my father or my grandfather, she’d pushed it aside.
I’d long thought it was because there was a coldness to my mum, but as I’d grown older, I’d learned it was because the hurt had welled too deep for her.
Mum had stayed in Loren Brae for me, but any talk of the two great losses of her life—her husband and her father—was entirely off limits.
It was a staunchly Scottish way, I supposed, to push feelings under the rug, and now I wished she’d been brave enough to tell me more.
That I’d been brave enough to press her for more.
All those years I’d spent pushing Graham away. All those nights lying awake, telling myself it was for his own good. I’d never once thought to ask why. Never thought to dig deeper than Gran’s warning.
The loch takes what we love.
That had been enough for me to trust that I needed to keep from loving Graham. For his own protection. And that had been that.
But it wasn’t the whole story, was it? Not even close.
I looked at the diary again, at that final plea scrawled in shaking handwriting.
Maybe you’ll be braver than I.
“I guess we’ll find out,” I murmured to no one.
Tomorrow, I’d go to the castle. Tomorrow, I’d dig through the archives until I found every record with the Wright name attached to it.
And maybe—finally—I’d learn what my ancestor had done.
And whether I could undo it.