Overcome with fatigue, I slumped onto the ground. Against my skin the pendant Heather had given me weeks before heated and pulsed as though it were trying to tell me something. Where was Heather? Why had she left us just when I needed her? I was sure she could guide me more than my father did.
I didn’t trust him.
He’d hurt me, done something so terrible I couldn’t even think about it, and Tristram had cried with me, our blood meshed and as one, dropping to the earth in minuscule droplets at our feet; tears and blood rushing together. But there had been someone else there… someone important; someone whose blood meant something. It had rushed like a river, uncontrollable and fast. I’d cried as I watched it slither onto the ground, my cry rising into the air like a flock of birds.
“Mae!” I stirred, lifting my head, my eyes blinking as I stared into the depths of a night sky above my head. “Mae!” How had night fallen? My heard whirled with the hazy memories of my dream. Everything in the dream had hurt so much—tears and blood. My father…
I breathed in as Tristram fell to my side. “Where have you been? Everyone is looking for you.”
My head shook slowly as I tried to awaken my thoughts. “I went for a walk. I wanted to go to the river. I… I must have fallen asleep.”
Why was he here, talking to me? He hated me. His eyes told me as he looked at me from afar. My fingers rose to my lips, brushing the delicate skin. Why could I taste his kiss, when he hadn’t spoken to me in at least one cycle of the moon?
“Mae, you are alarming me. You shouldn’t be out here. No one should be out of the settlement, not now. You know the rules I have in place.”
Gods, I hated his formal tone, the way his nose pinched with stress. The way his eyes wouldn’t meet mine, dark and deep. Why couldn’t he be close to me, holding me in his arms, sleeping with his arms around my waist as he just was… my head whirled, the flat of the earth on which I sat tilted at an alarming angle as though it wished to slide me off its surface.
“Shit, Mae,” Tristram cursed and strong hands clutched my shoulders, holding me upright. “You are as pale as the moon. What is wrong?”
His hands shifted closer, fitting into the places I wanted them to be, where I had felt them be before. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the ridiculous prospects running through my memories. Tristram had only ever kissed me briefly. His hands had never held me the way I craved. The day he’d kissed me, his father had died and he’d become chief. That was the day our paths which had always been entwined diverged.
So why did I know it?
Why did I know him?
Why in my heart did I have the most awful burning truth?
“We are going to die,” I whispered the words between us, watching as his eyes flashed, hardening with resolve.
“You are unwell. Let me get you back to camp.”
I shook my head, my heart pounding with the certainty of what I said, while at the same time not knowing how I knew.
We were going to die.
“My head aches that is all.” I reached for him, my hands skimming across the warmth of his cheek. My palm fitted with perfection as it cupped his cheek. He gasped at my forward touch, his gaze holding my own, but he didn’t move away. “Tristram, you are going to try and save me, but you can’t. When the time comes you must let me go.”
Silently, he shook his head. “Come, my priestess, let me get you home.” Scooping me up, he pressed me against his chest and my heart whispered like leaves on a tree in spring. “But tomorrow you will talk; you will tell me everything.”
I closed my eyes, allowing him to hold me close. Tomorrow I wouldn’t be able to tell him anything.
The scattered images from my dream of bones on stone, blood and tears, and eyes as dark as midnight were already fading. Tomorrow I had a feeling I wouldn’t remember them at all.
Chapter Two
I awoke shivering, a wild banging had me imagining rain smattering against a window. Damn room thirteen. I was going to ask to be moved if I stayed here for one single day longer. Windows that opened of their own accord and scattered wild Scottish rain inside a bedroom were not suitable for a school building. There must be laws against it. I’d take it up with Philomena, she’d know.
I sat up bolt upright and stared wildly at the dim light of the round hut. My hair clung to my damp skin in wild tangles while my pulse raced uncontrollably. My dreams had been dark and twisted: people calling my name, dark eyes and bright smiles, worry and fear mixed with all-encompassing need and desire.
Hate and desire. I could almost taste them on my tongue.
There was something I was supposed to remember. Something I was forgetting. Breathing deep through my nose, absentmindedly twisting my animal hide bed covering between my fingers, I tried to chase the dream—the sound of rain hitting a hard surface; one I didn’t recognise but knew like I’d never known anything different.
What was I forgetting? The more I reached inside my thoughts, the further away it seemed to drift. Sighing deep I threw myself back on the rough mattress. Dawn would be breaking soon, the settlement would rise, and daily life would begin, but I still didn’t know how to help them, how to save them.
My day yesterday had been wasted by my run into the forest chasing Tristram. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. That aching despair of him ignoring me had pulled me down. But if he’d
