“Did it keep me here?”
He looked over her shoulder, his stare tightening in concentration before he returned his attention to her. “I’m no’ certain. Let’s get ye inside by the fire.”
Evina allowed him to lead her into the castle. If he would be willing to be open with her, she would be willing to listen, to possibly stay. She cast a glance at the rowan tree, taking in the spartan smattering of green leaves before finally walking from the brilliance of the sun to the blissful heat of a crackling fire.
Duncan followed and bade her settle into a large chair before the fire. She removed her cloak and did as he suggested, grateful the cuts she’d sustained had already healed. Duncan did not sit. He braced one hand over the top of her chair and gazed down at his fingers.
“Ye were right,” he said again. “This castle is cursed.”
DUNCAN HAD NOT TOLD his tale aloud before. He’d explained it to Gillespie over time, but he’d omitted the part about the girl. The most shameful part. How he’d abandoned his mother and her maid in a dangerous forest for the hope of saving a maiden.
After all, hadn’t he had enough women?
And yet, it hadn’t merely been the hope of another conquest. It had been the idea of being a hero.
The witch’s accusations had shamed him. They weren’t words hurtled at him, easily deflected; it was the truth ringing in his soul and the realization the consequences could not be refuted. He had let his mother and the sorceress she kept as a lady’s maid die because he’d wanted to be a hero.
Evina watched him, her eyes a stormy gray and sharp with intelligence. She did not press him to continue despite the weight of silence filling the space between them.
“I was charged with escorting my mother and her lady’s maid home from a neighboring castle,” he said finally. “The woods outside were always rumored to be thick with outlaws and thieves. I left them alone for only a bit of time, but…” he trailed off, unable to say the words aloud.
The last time he had shared the grisly details, it had taken years to loosen his tongue.
“…But it was enough for harm to befall them,” Evina surmised.
Relief eased some of the tension from Duncan’s shoulders. Evina was a warrior. She understood the ugliness of death, and Duncan expected she would not press him for details of gore. Surely she’d had her fair share in her life.
He nodded. “It was too late to help them, and the men who had attacked them had fled. I was aware my mother’s maid was a witch, but I hadna expected her to ever curse me.”
“What was the curse?” Evina crossed her long legs under the heavy skirt of her kirtle. Duncan tried not to envision the way they looked beneath the cloth. A feat not easily done when the garment draped over the outline of her shapely legs.
It was far easier to observe Evina than to answer her. For this was where explaining the spell became difficult. If Gillespie was right, and somehow Evina might possibly be a daughter of Morrigan, telling her of the enchantment would strip away her freedom to fall in love of her own choosing.
Not that Duncan believed Gillespie. He didn’t possess the strength to hope. Not again. Not when it was so debilitating to have it shattered.
He looked up and out the window several feet away in time to catch a leaf spiraling from the tree. He didn’t see it land, but knew regardless how it would crumble to ash upon its landing and blow away on an unseen breeze.
The tree. He had been its prisoner. He was so damn obsessed with watching it, ticking off every leaf to fall, he’d never once left the castle. Even when faced with Evina leaving, with the threat of her not returning, stripping away what might be his only prospect at living in his miserably short life - even then he could not bring himself to leave that accursed tree.
“I canna leave the castle grounds,” he said. It was not a lie. There was far more truth in his words than he wanted to admit.
“And the rowan tree…” Evina gestured to the window. “It’s to deflect any powerful countering enchantment, I assume. Rowan trees are difficult to curse or imbue with magic. Anyone attempting to thwart the spell would have to be quite formidable.”
“Exactly,” Duncan agreed. Truthfully, he hadn’t considered it. Magic had been a fascination of his mother’s, even Gillespie’s, but never had it held his interest. Especially after having been on the receiving end of it. The very thought of enchantments and spells repelled him.
Evina swung her gaze to him. “And people can come in, like me and the servants. But ye canna leave.”
She was filling in all the pieces for him. He couldn’t have planned the story better himself.
“Aye,” he said simply.
Evina eased deeper into her seat in apparent contemplation. “It must have been hard to lose your mother and your freedom on the same day.”
Duncan swallowed, unable to reply. What could he say? That regardless of the passage of time, the pain was as raw, the guilt as weighty? “What of yer mother?” he asked.
It was not only a way to direct the conversation from the emotional wound he did not want ripped open anew, but also a chance to find out more about this mysterious woman. Surely it was not by coincidence that she was able to find the castle when not one soul in over fourteen years had managed to do so.
“I dinna know my mother.” Evina’s answer came with indifference.
Duncan straightened in spite of himself. “Yer father raised ye?” If she didn’t know for certain, her mother could be anyone.
Even a goddess.
Mayhap even Morrigan.
“I didn’t know my father either,” Evina said. “I was found by a monastery when I was a girl. I dinna remember anything before then.”
“How old were ye when it happened?”
“Too
