Chapter 36
Skye had thought being home would bring her some happiness, but all it did was make her wish that she was back at Castle MacKinnon.
Of course she missed Dougal, but thinking about him evoked conflicted feelings inside her. He had broken her heart, and she was still trying to put the pieces together. It was starting to feel impossible.
Freya tended to her, fussing over her in a way she hadn’t done in years. It made Skye weep harder that her sister was spending time worrying and comforting her. Freya had done so much for her. It wasn’t fair that she had to tend to her now.
Then there was Emily, who fussed over Skye as much as she was able. She and Freya took turns watching over her, making sure that she was faring better than she had been when she arrived.
She had only been at Castle MacKinnon for a month, but it felt as if she had been there for years.
She had built a life there, spending time with Lily and showing her that there was a world outside the walls.
Kenna had been like a second mother to her, and the two of them had enjoyed many thought-provoking conversations.
Then there was Dougal, a subject her mind considered taboo.
She rolled over in bed when a soft knock sounded at the door.
“Skye, it’s Freya. Dinner is ready.”
“I shall eat later if that is all right, Freya.”
Skye did not have to see her sister’s face to know she had that familiar look of disappointment. Freya was trying her best to get her to eat properly, but it already took so much effort to get out of bed every morning and get dressed.
Kaden was worried about her, too. He was furious with Dougal for hurting her and blamed himself for allowing her to go with him in the first place.
She had told him that he was not to blame. When it came down to it, he had only wanted to make sure she was happy, and thus had agreed to her engagement to Dougal.
None of them were to blame. Even Dougal wasn’t. He had done what he thought was best, no matter who it hurt.
That was why Skye did not blame him, not really. She loved him more than anything, but now she would never have a chance to tell him how she truly felt.
She had just nodded off when Emily woke her.
It wasn’t her fault. It was too early to sleep, but Skye had been sleeping during the day a lot lately, unable to sleep at night for Dougal kept haunting her dreams, much to her dismay.
“Skye! Skye, ye willnae believe this. Where are ye?”
Emily burst through the door without so much as a knock, a pamphlet clutched tight in both hands, her cheeks flushed with an excitement Skye hadn’t seen on her in weeks, not since she had come back home pale and silent and refusing supper—refusing everything, really, that didn’t involve staring at the same chipped patch on her ceiling.
It was strange to see Emily so frazzled. She was rarely so excited, most often the calm one among them. But here she was, bursting into her room, disturbing Skye’s sleep.
Skye’s first thought was that something was wrong, but Emily did not look upset or troubled. She looked more confused than anything.
It was an expression Skye couldn’t quite decipher.
“What happened?” She slowly pushed herself up from where she’d been lying listless atop the coverlet, her hair mussed and her eyes still swollen from crying the night before. And the night before that, if she was being honest with herself, which she tried not to be too often these days.
“Someone’s claimed yer work, Skye. Continued it, rather, without asking yer leave first.”
Skye’s stomach dropped. She could not believe what she was hearing.
Was Emily truly telling her that someone had claimed her work, and not only that, continued it? It was devastating.
She had sworn off writing the story, but it did not mean she was not proud of what she had created. It was her story, and for someone to come out of nowhere and claim her work was something difficult for her to fathom.
“The Lion of the Highlands?” She was on her feet before she’d even finished asking the question, some old, familiar fire sparking back to life behind her eyes for the first time in what felt like an age.
“What? How dare they—that’s—why in God’s name are ye smiling like that, when ye’ve just told me I’ve been robbed of the one thing I had left of him? ”
Emily smiled. “Ye need to read it, Skye.”
“I daenae want to read it! How can ye suggest such a thing?”
“Skye, I am telling ye that ye should read it. It will surprise ye.”
Skye snatched the pamphlet from her sister-in-law’s hands and scanned it. The title stared back at her in bold, unmistakable print: The Lion of the Highlands Finds Love.
Her mind went blank, almost as if she couldn’t process what she was reading. It seemed almost too good to be true.
Her stomach dropped straight through the floor.
“I daenae understand. Who would even ken enough of the story to?—”
“I can explain,” rumbled a deep, achingly familiar voice, and all of her thoughts flew away like birds taking wing, startled from their perches in her mind. Her heart was pounding hard.
It was almost too wonderful to be true. She was tempted to pinch herself, just to be sure that this wasn’t a dream like all the others, that this was not another dream of her reuniting with Dougal.
Too many times she had awoken mere moments before they could embrace, cheated of the dream of holding him close. It was a sick joke fate played on her, and now it seemed that she was being cheated of the same in wakefulness.
Slowly, she turned around, unsure if she was imagining it, if loss and lack of sleep had finally created him from nothing more than her desperate longing.
Dougal stood before her, filling up the doorway as he always did, tall and tired. She immediately noticed the absence of his mask. His whole face was bare.
This time, she did reach up to pinch herself. It hurt, but at least it proved to her that this wasn’t a dream.
Dougal was really here. He’d come all the way here to see her without the mask he’d worn for eight long years. It really was something she had never thought would happen after she woke up depressed that morning.
“Dougal.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, and she hated it, hated how easily just hearing his voice managed to destroy three weeks’ worth of carefully built composure.
Emily, with the good sense of a woman who’d clearly been expecting exactly this, slipped quietly out of the room and pulled the door shut behind her, leaving the two of them alone with nothing between them but a pamphlet, an unfinished story, and everything they had left unsaid.
Skye curled her fingers tight around the pamphlet, half to keep them from shaking, half because it was the only thing steady enough to hold onto. “What are ye doing here, Dougal? It’s been three weeks. I thought?—”
“I ken what ye thought.” He stepped further into the room, and she noticed with a fresh jolt how tired he looked, how the absence of his mask left nothing to hide the shadows beneath his eyes. “I thought it too, for a time. That I’d done the right thing by sending ye home.”
“And now?”
He grew quiet. Whatever he had prepared himself to say had died in his throat before he had the chance to say it.
Skye stood there patiently, not wanting to ruin the moment. She would stand here as long as it took for him to say his piece. This was what she had dreamed of over the past few weeks, after all, whether she wanted to admit it or not.