Chapter 30 The Witch and The Goddess
THE WITCH AND THE GODDESS
Baird's phone chimed with a text from a number he didn't know. Just six words. No name. Still, he knew it was Sorcha.
Meet at Robbie's pub this afternoon.
Baird arrived with Bunny at his heels, fresh from supervising the harvest of a winter barley field.
The moment he stepped inside, he spotted Robbie behind the bar.
Robbie gave a sharp, single tilt of his head, directing Baird toward a small table tucked into a dark corner, where Sorcha sat nursing a pint of ale.
Baird sat and immediately caught the nervous tap of Sorcha's nails against the wood.
The woman who was usually so at ease in any room looked unsettled now, her calm stripped away.
He'd been about to signal for a pint, but the tension in her face stopped him short.
“What is it, Sorcha? Is everything alright?”
The witch sat across from him, middle-aged today, dressed in her usual no-nonsense trousers and blouse, her strawberry-blonde hair pulled into a bun streaked with gray.
“I'll tell ye what I can,” she said quietly, and the way she said it made dread coil in his chest. “The goddess wants ye to live yer life, Baird Campbell.
To love Mira fully. To give her yer heart and soul—no' to ruin today by mournin' something that's no yet come to pass.
That's the human part of ye, Baird. The part that grieves the future before it's ever had the decency to arrive.” Her words were hushed, careful. But beneath them was fear.
“Ye make it sound like something's coming for her,” Baird said. It came out harsher than he meant, fear bleeding into the edges of the words. “Is that what this is? This chosen business—Brigid picking Mira for some purpose? What is it?”
“There's a debt the Garvies owe the goddess,” Sorcha said.
“I don't know how it was forged, or why—only that it exists. And the goddess has been watching, waiting. Waiting for centuries, for the right Garvie.” Her voice softened.
“It appears that one is Mira.” Only then did she exhale, the tension finally slipping from her frame, as though saying the words aloud had been a burden she'd carried too long.
“What do I do—just wait?” Baird asked, the question stripped bare by the need to do something—anything—that might tip the scales.
“Ye’ve completed the bond with her,” Sorcha said softly.
“So ye'd best learn to stop poisoning her with your fear. The goddess wants ye walking forward together.” She leaned in slightly.
“But if ye do anything—anything at all—to turn Mira from her path, the goddess won't hesitate to remove ye from the equation.”
The realization left Baird unsteady—that somehow Sorcha, or Brigid, or both, knew he'd completed the Sanguis Amantium bond with Mira. Poison was the only word for what followed. The first thing Mira had felt through the bond hadn't been love—but his fear.
Fear of losing her. Fear of a world without the one thing that made him want to keep going. He'd meant for her to feel his love first—fierce, consuming, unshakable—but the fear had been louder, stronger for having grown alongside it.
“How did ye learn this?” Baird asked, trying to force down the fear the goddess said would only serve to destroy what they'd built.
“I talked to a being who speaks for the gods.
He told me what he could—and no more. But he sent me off with a warning; that he'd never speak to me of this again, and to take the message straight to ye. And that the day would come when Mira needed more answers, he would speak to her when that time came, but that time was not now.” Sorcha stood, her purse hanging from her wrist, her expression gentler now but no less serious.
“Love her, Baird,” she said. “She needs it more than ye ken.
The kind of love that brings her joy. That feeds her magic.
The kind of love that comes from the part ye're ashamed to name.” She stepped closer.
“That part of ye gives her power. Dinnae let it fight the rest of you. Find a way to make them one—because when it comes to Mira, that part of ye is never wrong.”
Baird woke in the darkest part of the night to light.
Blinding, pulsing light, filling the dark stone room as Mira stood at the end of the bed, glowing with an energy that throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
Her eyes had turned to molten gold, whirling and alive, waves of her long, dark hair lifting as if caught in an unseen current, the tips flickering with flame.
Power rolled off her in waves.
He knew—instinctively—the being in front of him wasn't entirely Mira. The Goddess was using Mira, her shape wavering like heat rising off stone. When she spoke, it was not loud—but it settled deep, burrowing beneath bone, Mira's voice and yet not—not quite.
“You are too close,” she said plainly.
“Too close?” Baird stiffened when he found he couldn't move, some unseen force holding him fast. “To Mira? Never—I'd die for her.” That was it really. He wanted the goddess to know.
A flicker passed through the goddess's gaze. Not anger. Something older. Sadder. She nodded in affirmation. “That is precisely the danger.”
The air thickened, heavy with meaning he couldn't grasp. “You see threats where there are none,” she continued. “And miss the ones that matter most.”
His jaw clenched as he strained against the unseen force binding him in place.
“Then tell me what I've missed.” He'd never considered himself weak—not in life, not even after being turned.
The only moments that had ever come close were the ones where he'd failed to protect those he loved.
But this was different: helplessness made physical, a goddess's will pressing him into stillness.
And with a twist of bitter clarity, he understood it.
His greatest weakness had never been his strength or his fear. It was his love for Mira.
She stepped closer. The light dimmed around them, as though the world itself leaned in to listen. “The woman who watched from the edges. Who warned you. Your instincts failed you then, but no longer.”
Agnes? Did she mean Agnes?
A pause. “She merely saw what was to come. That was her curse—knowledge—and it broke her.”
“What do ye want with Mira?” he demanded. “Because this”—he struggled against the force restraining him—“this is more than just a bloody ruby ring, eh?”
Brigid's gaze lingered on Baird, ancient and unblinking, peering out from behind Mira's eyes. “The ring is nothing more than a lesson,” she said. “A means by which Mira learns to surrender to my will—and, in doing so, becomes the vessel through which my gifts are given.”
“Promise me ye willnae hurt her,” he pleaded.
“I cannot promise that. No one can.” Brigid shook her head sadly. “This is her destiny. You would try to shield her from what's coming,” Brigid went on, the voice that had been stern gentle now. “You would pull her back from the fire and call it love.”
“I do love her,” he said, the words bare and desperate.
“I'd do anything for her. Anything.” The pain that bloomed in his chest at the thought of existing—of enduring—without her was excruciating.
Only now did he truly understand what Bastien had meant when he'd begged Baird to end his life, when he'd said he could not go on without Clémence at his side.
The agony Baird had once seen in another vampire's eyes—one he'd believed long stripped of all humanity—now lived in him with startling clarity.
That was what love did. It upended everything—turned the world inside out, made survival itself feel impossible.
Her gaze softened, her tone gentle as a mother soothing a frightened child—yet weighted with something deeper. “That is plain for the world to see.”
He thought of what he'd told Mira once—that he could never bring himself to turn her. And yet, with the weight of loss that hadn't happened already hollowing him out, despite Sorcha's warnings, he realized that perhaps Bastien's bargain had been the only mercy left to him after all.
The invisible restraints eased, as though Brigid had decided he was safe enough to listen rather than fight. He pushed himself upright, the sheet falling away unnoticed.
His jaw tightened. “I willnae let her be used.”
A strange expression crossed her face—something like pity. “You already are,” she said softly. “Just not in the way you fear.”
He let out a breath, full of frustration. “Then tell me! Tell me what she'll become.”
Brigid's answer came slowly. “She is not yours to guard. Not yours to save. Not yours to lose.”
The words struck him like blows. And then, almost kindly: “Step back, Baird. Let what is meant to unfold do so.”
The light began to fade. “If you interfere,” she added, her voice thinning like smoke, “you will not stop what is coming. You will only ensure it comes broken. Face this at her side, and do not make her choose.”
Just as Sorcha had said.
And just before she vanished: “Trust me when I say this—what you fear will take Mira from you…” A pause, deliberate. “…is the very thing that will give you more than you ever dreamed to ask.”
Then she was gone.
Mira stood there, emptied of light, her eyes distant and glassy.
When her knees buckled, Baird surged forward, catching her as she crumpled, gathering her against him before she hit the floor.
Disoriented, her eyes unfocused, she took in her surroundings—head turning slowly right, then left—confusion flashing as her vision cleared and she realized she was cradled in Baird's arms at the foot of the bed, not in it.
“What's happening, Baird?” she asked, her voice slowly returning to the one he knew.
He hesitated, considering whether to brush it off—to tell her she'd been sleepwalking, to offer one of those half-truths that had always come so easily to him.
But he knew he couldn't. Not this time. Even if the future was shrouded in shadow, even if he didn't yet understand it himself, she deserved more than that.
And every time he'd tried to protect Mira with silence, it had ended the same way—with her hurt, furious, the truth tearing through them eventually.
He looked at her, lifting a hand to her cheek, his thumb settling into the small dimple in her chin.
He stroked the soft skin there—more to steady himself than her—and a quiet sound of relief escaped him before he answered.
“The Goddess,” he said, carefully stripping the panic from his voice.
“She kent I'd been worried since your dream.”
Mira sat up sharply, but still confused, questions circling in her eyes. Baird knew he needed to do his best to give Mira what he could from the encounter. Maybe it would make sense to her.
“She spoke through ye—like the night of your dream. Her voice from your lips. Your—her—the light”—Baird shook his head, trying to sort ownership of the power and realizing it didn't really matter—“comin' from ye, so bright it woke me.”
Mira only rolled her eyes. “Well, it would have been nice to be conscious so that I could ask my own questions. Did she mention more about the ruby? She dodged my ruby questions—except for telling me to bless it with my blood that day she appeared to me in the studio, when I was setting the yellow diamond.”
“Aye. Said it is some sort of test for ye—one that'll show ye how you will bestow her blessings on others,” he said, trying to make sense of Brigid's cryptic prophecies, connect dots in a picture he wasn't sure the goddess was ready to reveal.
“Well that tracks, kind of what she said that day.” Mira looked at Baird and blanched when she saw something in Baird's eyes. “What is it?”
Baird's emotions twisted in on themselves, a tangled mess he couldn't break apart. “I dinnae understand most of what she said,” he murmured. “But I think she confirmed what I feared about Agnes. She saw the future—and it broke her.”
A tear escaped him, sliding down his cheek before he could stop it.
Mira lifted her hand, brushing it away with gentle fingers before pressing a kiss to his skin, lips warm. “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I'm so sorry, Baird.”
He drew back to look at her, searching her eyes. “What are ye sorry for?” he asked quietly, unsettled by how quickly the roles had shifted—the woman he'd been trying to steady suddenly the one holding him together.
“I'm sorry,” she said softly. “Sometimes I think if you'd never met me—“
“Dinnae.” The word tore out of him—rough, urgent, stripped of gentleness.
He caught her face between his hands, not cruelly but firmly, forcing her to look at him.
His forehead pressed against hers, breath unsteady, restraint fraying at the edges.
“Dinnae ever say that again.” It was not anger that sharpened his voice, but desperation—the raw command of a man who had already endured too much loss and refused to let fear or guilt come between them.
An ache threaded through his voice, stripping it of pride. “I'd relive every moment—gladly—just to love ye, Mira Garvie.”
Her smile—vulnerable, luminous with relief—spread slowly across her face, and the sight of it struck him with unexpected force. The joy it stirred in him was bright enough to burn, stirring regret for the weeks he had allowed to slip past without giving her reason to wear it.
“Something she said settled inside me—that the thing I fear will take ye away is the very thing that will give me something so great I couldn't even dream it—and we needed to be in this together.”
Sorcha's words echoed in his mind. Love her.
And he knew that was it, the thing he needed to do above all else.
Right then, without fear. Without holding back.
He let go of the part of himself that had been bracing for loss, knowing it had no place here—no place with her.
He pulled her close, fierce and certain—and the moment he did, the light of Mira's magic surged in answer.