CHAPTER SEVEN
ALLIE SAT THERE IN SHOCK.
Her entire life, she’d thought her mother a woman blessed with extraordinary healing powers.
Not once, however, had she guessed or even considered that Elizabeth Monroe might not be entirely human.
Although she believed in the Ancients, it hadn’t occurred to her that one of them could sire or mother a child with a human being.
Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. Her grandfather was a god.
Her mother had been a High Priestess centuries ago.
“Have some wine,” Royce said softly.
She jerked, having been entirely unaware of him. He sat beside her, a mug of wine in his hand, offering it to her. He was grim, as if her shock upset him. “I had no idea,” she whispered unsteadily. She met his gray, searching gaze. It was kind.
And she felt his concern, a soft, comforting wave, undulating in the air about her.
But she was too stunned to dwell on Royce’s sudden sympathy now. Her mother was the daughter of a god. What did that make her?
And she thought about how her mother had hidden their powers and their religion from her father, so carefully, so deliberately. She thought about the secret room where they’d prayed. “She made me take vows of secrecy,” Allie whispered. “My God, did Dad ever suspect the truth about her? About me?”
Royce clasped her shoulder. “I dinna ken, Ailios.”
She began to feel sick. Her father had been a no-nonsense, ambitious, brilliant man.
And while he had been Episcopalian, Allie was pretty certain he didn’t really believe in any god at all.
He had been a workaholic and as different from her mother as possible.
Had he suspected anything? How could he not—he had been so smart!
Allie tried to recall his life with her mother, but all she could remember was his grief over her death.
“He loved her,” she whispered. Royce didn’t answer and she met his searching gray gaze. “What does this make me?”
“A great Healer,” he said softly.
She had the odd urge to cry. But was she crying for herself—or for William Monroe, who had been betrayed by them both, in a way? “How long will I live?”
“I dinna ken.” He handed her the mug. “Take some wine, lass.”
The endearment rolled off his tongue like smooth, aged Scotch whiskey. Allie stared, then set the mug down. “Did you know her a long time?”
“Aye, for centuries.”
There was so much comfort in his presence and she felt like going into his arms. She did not. Instead she thought about how much the gods meant to her. “I’m not a Priestess, too, am I?” Was this why he was intent on refusing her advances?
His gaze was serious, moving over her face. “Yer a Healer. There has nay been a Priestess in centuries. Worshiping as we do is a grave heresy, so we follow the Catholic ways in public. Yer mother was our last Priestess.”
“Can you tell me about her? And how on earth did she wind up with my father? They were so different!” She was starting to worry about that marriage. Her mother had lived through centuries, and of all men, she had chosen someone with no faith whatsoever.
Royce began to speak, distracting her from a new, great unease. “She was a great beauty, like ye, but fair. An’ she was always spilling her pure light on those in need. Had she been ye, today, she would have healed old Coinneach, too.”
Allie smiled. “I remember that. We couldn’t even step into an ice-cream parlor without her showering someone with healing light.
She died when I was ten years old—and no one knew why.
” She wiped her cheek with her hand. “Was it her time to die, Royce? She died in her sleep! Can the daughter of a great god die that way?”
“If she died in her sleep, it was the will of the Ancients. Mayhap she was very old. The Masters are nay immortal, Ailios, even if it sometimes seems so. Yer mother was nay immortal, either.”
Allie smiled sadly, in that moment missing Elizabeth very much. “I never grieved when she died. That night, she came to me in my dreams, comforting me. And it was the first of many visits while I was a child.”
Royce was silent.
“The night we met, she suddenly appeared again—telling me to trust you.”
Royce started. “Ye saw her? Ye heard her?”
Allie nodded. “I was pretty alarmed. I hadn’t had a visit from her in at least ten years. She told me to trust a golden Master—and that night, there you were.”
Royce stared. “Mayhap she dinna come from the dead. Mayhap she came from the past.”
“Could she time travel?” Allie demanded.
Royce nodded.
Had those visits from her mother been from another time—and not from the realm of the afterlife? She began to shake. “She wore white flowing robes in my dreams. But how could she come to me from the past? How? She wouldn’t know about me. Or did she also have the Sight?”
“She dinna have the Sight an’ I dinna have the answers ye need, lass.”
He was being so kind. “She could live centuries, like you.” She took both of his hands in hers. “If I went back in time, I could find her, couldn’t I? She’d be alive, in the past. You’d know where to find her!”
Royce stood. “T’is forbidden to leap for personal gain.”
“And what if she has been trying to contact me from some past century—because something huge is going down? When she came to me in South Hampton and told me to trust you, her eyes were filled with urgency. I sensed that something was wrong!”
Royce stared, silent.
Allie hugged herself. He wasn’t going to take her back to her mother—at least, not yet. Maybe there was no point—or maybe it meant everything. “When did you last see her?”
“In the thirteenth century.” He added, “No one has seen her since then.”
Allie sat up straight. What did that mean? “Do you think she leapt from the thirteenth century to my time?”
Royce glanced aside. “I think it possible.”
He was suddenly being evasive. “What happened?” she asked with alarm.
He was slow to respond and her dread increased. “Her husband, William Macleod, an’ his eldest son, from Macleod’s first marriage, were murdered. No one has seen Elasaid since the murders, not even her own son—yer brother.”
Allie gasped. Her mother had been married in the thirteenth century.
Once she could wrap her mind around the fact that she’d had another husband—or even other husbands, given her life span—she wouldn’t be so stunned.
She’d also had a half brother. And no one had seen Elizabeth since the thirteenth century—almost two hundred years ago.
Had she leapt after the murders to the twenty-first century? “What are the facts? Who murdered her husband and stepson?”
“There are no good facts,” Royce said softly. “Only Macleod an’ his heir were found. Elasaid vanished that day. The murders weren’t evil—they were political, a part o’ border wars. At first, we thought she fled the murderer. But she never returned.”
“If she witnessed the murders, she wouldn’t have been safe anywhere,” Allie said.
“Maybe she went to my time, where she met my father and had me.” But why had Elizabeth married William Monroe?
And now, Allie realized the strange coincidence that both her husbands had the same first name. “Did she love her husband, Macleod?”
“Deeply. William the Lion was a mortal man, a great an’ powerful English baron. Still, Elasaid wasn’t meant to love a man, Ailios. Like ye, she was meant to serve the Ancients an’ mankind.”
Allie tensed. Suddenly she sensed the power of her mother’s love for Macleod.
It had been huge, consuming, the love one found once, if ever, in a lifetime.
“Don’t try to tell me the gods willed Macleod’s death in some kind of holy reprisal for her daring to find love!
And by the way? She loved my father, too.
” But she couldn’t recall her mother’s love for her father; all she could recall was her father’s grief after her death.
And she somehow knew that love had been a mere shadow of Elizabeth’s love for her English baron.
Allie rubbed her throbbing temples. Her mother had never recovered from William Macleod’s death. She was certain. “Please tell me about my half brother.”
“His name is Guy Macleod.” He added, “He’s known as Black Macleod. Most men fear him mightily.”
Allie realized Royce was speaking in the present tense.
Royce put his arm around her. “I ken yer in so much shock.”
She twisted and clutched his shoulders. “My math sucks, but he was born almost two hundred years ago. If he’s still around, that makes him godlike, too!” But it was a question.
“He’s a Master, lass.”
She had a brother, a holy warrior like Royce. Allie held on to Royce and felt him hold her in return.
“Ye need to lie down.”
Allie did not want to lie down. She wanted to think!
Another brother…her mother the daughter of a god and married to a Highland baron in the thirteenth century, a man she had truly loved…
her mother possibly fleeing the assassins of her family, into the twenty-first century…
meeting her father and giving birth to her.
And a few days ago, her mother had tried to contact her. What did it all mean? Allie’s headache became explosive.
“What should I do now?” she asked desperately, clinging to Royce’s strong arms.
“There’s naught to do now,” he said firmly. “Ye need to rest. Tomorrow yer head will clear. Ye think too hard, Ailios. Let me take ye to yer chamber.”
Their gazes locked. His power was the safest harbor she’d ever been in.
“Why are you being so kind now?” she finally asked, embarrassed by her emotional upheaval.
But her world had been turned upside down in the past few moments.
“Where is Mr. Macho? Don’t be kind if you don’t mean it.
” She didn’t know what she’d do if his cold, even cruel medieval side popped up just then.
“I had the same feelings—the same kinds of questions—ye have now,” he said.
She grew more confused. What was he talking about?
“I dinna ken the truth of my ancestors until I was chosen,” he said quietly. “I’ll never forget the shock.”