Fingers of Mist #2
“Aye,” Taran’s gruff voice sounded from across the fire. “I see now that there truly are those who carry the fairy blood.”
Alec raised a brow at the man, torn between amusement and surprise at his uncharacteristic confession.
“’Tis a curse,” Sorcha said.
“Nay, lass,” Alec disagreed, brushing his lips against her forehead. “’Tis what saved your life.”
Her face crumpled.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Taran announced. Rising to his feet and wrapping himself in his plaid, he withdrew to the far end of the croft to sit outside the circle of firelight.
Silence fell then, a peaceful one, and Alec lay back, taking Sorcha with him, cradling her close. With gentle, methodical strokes, he trailed his fingers along the outline of her jaw and up over her temple and into her hair.
Gradually, her weeping slowed to a sniffle and, soon after, she fell into an exhausted slumber.
It was some time before he joined her. As the fire died, he pulled his cloak over them both to ward off the cold and, lulled by the soft incessant music of the burn trickling outside the croft, fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
Alec woke to see a glimmering wave of auburn hair spread over his chest, and it took him several long moments to realize that the nightmare of the past days was truly over. At last.
Aye, he was a rebel. Likely, he’d be outlawed by the king within the day—if he hadn’t been already. And as such, he’d lost all claims to the earldom of Eglinton.
But a smile tugged his lips all the same, even as a voice slid through his mind, reaching out from the past.
Aye, and because of it, your own true love is now your enemy, lad, an enemy ye can only save if ye leave all ye possess, all ye desire, afore the flames devour her.
Auld Bertha.
He shivered. Then his smile broadened. “She’s wrong,” he chuckled aloud. “Finally, she’s wrong.” True, he’d left all he’d possessed to save Sorcha—but not all he desired.
He desired only her.
“Who?” Taran’s voice asked.
Still smiling, Alec glanced over to where his cousin sat at the edge of the croft, the mists of the night before had only thickened, swirling around him like a white, roiling cloud.
“Is it day already?” Alec asked, propping himself up on an elbow. “Ach, did ye stand watch all night?”
The highlander shrugged and cocked a brow at the fog. “No one can find us in this weather,” he replied, drawing his lips into a thin, grim line. “Mayhap even ourselves.”
Alec snorted and feeling Sorcha stir at his side, turned to peer down at her.
Her face was pinched, her lips badly cracked, and her blue, luminous eyes filled with pain, causing his heart to burst. But she was there, at his side. Wordlessly, he gathered her in a long, quiet embrace. ‘Twould take time to ease her sorrow, but he would spend the rest of his life trying.
Kissing her cheek, he rose and pulled her to her feet. “’Tis time to ride,” he said.
A film of ice had crept over the small burn during the night, and shards of it clung to the heather lining its banks. Long smoky fingers of fog crept along the ground, and the peat crackled beneath their feet as they silently saddled the horses, readying for the journey.
They set off and for a time, they rode in silence, the chill spray of the mist dampening their faces.
Sorcha laid her head against his chest, taking comfort in his presence at first, but later, she began to speak, recounting the unspeakable nightmare she’d suffered at Hugh Cunningham’s hands.
Alec could do naught but listen—and dream of justice. At intervals, he couldn’t help but growl, “Anger consumes me like fire, lass.”
At the fifth such time, they came up to Taran, pausing at the crest of a hill.
The highlander sat in the saddle, clearly puzzled. He nodded at the fissured rocks overhanging the path and the glen spreading out below them, shrouded in vast clouds of white, curling fog. “I’ve never seen those rocks afore,” he admitted. “Nor this glen. I must confess … I dinna know the way.”
“Lost?” Alec glanced at his cousin, astonished and—in spite of the heavy emotions of the day—somewhat amused. “I’ve never known ye to get lost, Taran. Ever.”
“Nay, nor have I,” he muttered in outright disbelief.
Alec eyed the surroundings, still smiling, but then paused. “I canna but think I’ve been here afore,” he murmured, overcome with a sudden, strange feeling he couldn’t name.
“Well, I have not,” Taran growled, his temper flaring. “We should find shelter until these infernal mists lift. We might be headed back to Edinburgh—or worse, England.”
“Aye,” Alec agreed, amusement distracting him once again.
Sorcha stirred in his arms.
He tightened his arm around her waist and pulled his plaid around her closer. “Rest, my love,” he whispered, dropping a quick, fleeting kiss over the tip of her ear.
They urged their horses forward as the mist closed around them in eerie silence. But with each step, the road they took dwindled, turning first into a path, and then as they entered a ring of trees, disappearing altogether.
Taran swore.
“Aye, let us stop here awhile,” Alec yawned, dismounting from the black warhorse to stretch his legs before swinging Sorcha down by his side. “I’ll gather wood for a fire. Why dinna ye find something for us to eat, Taran?”
The highlander scowled and moved off as Alec moved towards a fallen tree.
Sorcha caught his wrist. “Let me come with ye, aye?” she asked, digging her fingers into his plaid.
He looked down into her pinched, pale face. “Aye,” he smiled, holding out his arms.
Together, they moved under the trees, the only sound, the soft, damp rustling of brown pine needles covering the forest floor.
The fresh, earthy scent of the air made Alec feel strangely alive. Curiously, he glanced around, unable to shake the feeling that he knew the place, even as he knew he’d never been there before.
Suddenly, Sorcha halted and gasped. “Nay, it canna be!” she whispered, horror-struck and glancing around frantically. “What have we done?”
Alarmed, he drew his dirk. “What? What is it, lass?” He spun in a circle, but failed to find any source of impending danger. Puzzled, he glanced back to see her staring. “What is it?” he asked again.
She pointed.
He followed the line of her finger to see a circle of stones through a break in the trees ahead. A large willow bowed over the largest stone, a stone of his own height.
Shoving his dirk back into its sheath, he said, “’Tis a fairy circle. Quite common enough in the highlands, lass. We must be closer than Taran thinks.”
“Nay,” she replied as if in a trance. “’Tis Heather House, Alec.
We’ve come to Heather House. I canna come back here.
” She shuddered and then rousing herself, grabbed his wrists, pulling him back towards the horses.
“We have to leave, Alec. Christine warned if I ever returned here, I wouldna last the day!”
“Aye, and that was true enough,” a familiar nasal voice said, followed by the unmistakable rasp of steel.
Alec whirled to see Hugh Cunningham stepping out from the trees behind him.