“A bit. Ye see, we all have been accursed in some way.” Sorcha stopped in front of a pool of water and sank to her knees. “It started long ago. Morrigan had always wanted a child, but found her womb could not hold seed. She approached each one of the gods but none could help. At last, she went to Rhiannon for aid.”
The name was immediately familiar to Evina through the many days she’d spent reading the books on mythology. “The goddess of fertility,” she surmised. “The underworld.”
Evina settled beside Sorcha at the pool and the girl beamed a smile up at her. “Exactly. Morrigan begged her for a child. Rhiannon agreed, but warned her joy came at a cost. Morrigan would only ever bear daughters, and those daughters would be tempered with a curse, each one different.”
“Ye have one too then?” Evina frowned.
Sorcha’s mouth pulled into a hard line and she lifted her face up with bravado. “Aye.”
Evina wanted to wrap her arms around the brave child to keep the small girl from harm, as if she might be able to fend off her sister from any harm.
Sorcha swept a small hand over the pool where the stillness of water mirrored the sky. She circled her fingers and small waves appeared, lapping in a cyclone until an image came into view. “Ye are only here visiting, and canna visit the whole of our home, but I can show you much of what ye may want to see in the pools.”
A woman with brilliant red hair and an arrow slung over her shoulder stalked through snow-covered woods with a white fox at her heels. “This is how we can observe our sisters.”
Evina leaned over and stared at the red-haired woman. Her mouth was wide, and set with determination.
“She only recently left.” A sadness to Sorcha’s eyes let Evina know she missed the woman. “She is only just beginning to experience the world. It has been inspiring to see it through her eyes.”
“Does she know her curse yet?”
Sorcha shook her head. “I sense she will discover it soon.”
“Is there any way to break it?” Evina asked.
“Of course.” Sorcha gazed down at their red-haired sister. “But it comes at the greatest of all sacrifices.”
CHAPTER 12
DUNCAN REMAINED at the window with his shoulders uncomfortably jammed against the stone frame. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, but the pinch in his back did not abate. His head ached, his pulse thundered in his skull and his nerves unraveled thread by thread.
He knew he should walk away, perhaps seek the companionship of Gillespie, mayhap even help the loyal servant in his last attempts to find a way to save him. Yet even with these precious few minutes of his life, he could not walk away. He could not abandon his post.
His stare trained on the single remaining leaf quivering on an otherwise empty branch. The entire tree was almost completely bare now, thrusting from the tender green earth like a skeletal hand with one lone leaf. The last.
Duncan had turned thirty that morning. The day had arrived with an ominous silence that rattled his soul.
He pressed his cheek to the stonework. It rasped against his skin, coarse and cool. It was amazing how much more he appreciated sensations in these final days. The stroke of a breeze against his face, the sweetness of a pastry melting against his tongue, the brilliant green of the sunlit grass around the rowan tree.
It was beautiful, but it was painful.
Evina.
How he missed her. He hadn’t expected her home in time, he’d known better. But it wasn’t the hope for continued life he missed. It was her.
Evina’s presence lingered in the castle though her warmth had long since faded. Memories that both haunted him and comforted him.
Her soft feminine and leather scent had remained somehow, caught in scant whiffs he could not trace. Some days, he reviled it, unable to take the ragged pull at his heart, and some days – most days - he revered it, craved it.
Through it all, he had never stopped missing her.
A glint of light winked below his window, beside the thick trunk of the rowan tree. Duncan straightened. It flashed again. His pulse raced, charged with life and hope.
He might see Evina one last time before he died. He pushed himself from the window and raced down the stairs taking them two at a time. The same as he had when he first met her.
Evina. Beautiful, strong, brash and so damn perfect. To hold her one last time, to relish in the pulse of her heart against his chest and lose himself in her gray eyes – it was more a dream come true than he had allowed himself to wish for.
He pushed through the side door to the garden. Sunlight splashed against his vision, filling it with golden fire and reminding him how long he’d been indoors, staring out at his destiny.
He swept the heel of his palm against his eyes to clear them.
“Evina,” he cried. “Evina, come back to me.”
The light flickered once more and went out, snuffed out by an unseen force. Duncan stopped and stared at the nothing that had once been his hope.
Silence pressed on his ears.
No leaves remained to rustle and whisper against one another. Even the clusters of berries that had gashed the branches of the tree like fresh wounds had withered and fallen away.
A quiet snap sounded above him. He tilted his head upward and his heart slid into his belly. The final leaf had begun to fall. It sailed to the ground with the slow, graceful ease of a feather. Duncan watched every flip and twirl, sure he could hear the caress of wind play over its glossy surface.
It fell past his face and dodged the swipe of his hand as he sought desperately to stave off his destiny for at least a few moments more.
After all, a few more moments could bring him
