The image in the mirror swirled. Slowly my reflection was replaced with that of a man. Broad-shouldered and tan, he didn’t resemble any of the men I knew. While most wore their hair long, his was cut to just below his ears though the hair on top hung long and wavy. He had no beard, but stubble lined his jaw. His eyes were kind.
The intensity of his gaze caused my breath to catch. I tried to look away, intimidated by his stare, uncomfortable with the feeling of intimacy that built between us. I couldn’t move. My eyes remained locked with the stranger’s as Grier spoke.
“Aye…’tis not yet time for him to come, but in a few years ye will be ready for him. A few minutes more and the spell will be complete.”
I didn’t want this man in my life. I could feel the chaos that his presence would bring, and it frightened me more than anything in my life ever had. I wanted to scream to stop her, but nothing would come.
Instead, everything went black as pain ripped at me from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes. I tried to breathe. When no air entered my lungs, the darkness spun.
I lost all consciousness as I faded into the nothingness that surrounded me.
* * *
I woke three days later, exhausted, confused, and totally unprepared for the hellish world that awaited me. Alasdair knelt beside my bed, both of his hands gripping mine tightly as he sobbed next to my bed.
“Morna, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Please wake up. I canna do this without ye.”
He repeated the words over and over. The dread in his voice pulled me from my deep slumber too quickly. My head ached horribly, and I could only vaguely remember where I’d been before.
The meadow. My lesson. Slowly, memory came back to me. I sat up and pulled my hands from Alasdair’s grip.
“The spell…what happened? Where’s Grier?”
His face was red, his eyes swollen from crying. Fear lodged itself deep in my chest. In that instant, I wanted nothing more than to be sleeping again, to lose myself in the darkness of my dreamless sleep.
“She…she’s gone.”
My brother was a grown man sixteen years my senior, yet he looked so young and broken that terror gripped me so tightly I trembled as I struggled to speak.
“How long have I been asleep? What do ye mean she’s gone?”
He rose from the floor and sat at the end of my bed, composing himself as best he could.
“Ye’ve been asleep for three days. I was so frightened that ye wouldna ever wake. I doona know what Grier was doing to ye, but it dinna go as she planned. Father interrupted ye both. I followed after him but I couldna stop him.
“When I reached him in the field where ye have yer lessons, Grier was standing over ye, muttering words neither of us could understand. She was pulling something from ye—a bright light poured from yer chest and ye were lifting off the ground. Grier was so lost in her spell that she dinna hear Father approach. Had she seen him, I canna imagine what she would’ve done to him.”
He shook his head and paused, struggling for composure. In his silence, I frantically sorted through my memories of that day, searching for any recollection of what Alasdair described. I found nothing. I could remember a mirror and the hazy image of a man standing before me. Then there was only darkness.
“What did he do to her?”
“He pushed her to the ground, breaking her spell. Ye fell. Then he pulled ye up and threw ye over his horse. Ye wouldna wake. Grier screamed at him over and over, telling him to put ye down. She said that if she dinna finish the spell, ’twould damage ye, but Da dinna care. He said if it damaged ye enough to rid ye of magic, ye’d be better off for it.
“He banished Grier. Dinna even allow her to take her things. He told her that if she dinna leave his land right away, he would have her burned for witchcraft.”
I swallowed. My mouth was so dry I could scarcely speak, but I couldn’t allow him to continue to tell me something I knew couldn’t be true. Grandmother would never allow Father to send Grier away.
“She canna be gone for long though, aye? Grandmother will see her back to the castle.”
I saw it then, the deep well of grief in Alasdair’s eyes. Before he could say a word, I knew what he’d been trying to tell me all along. Of course Grandmother would never allow Father to behave in such a way. If Grier was gone, Grandmother was too.
He opened his arms to me as I collapsed against him, my sobs lodging in my chest as I struggled to breathe against the shock.
“She passed in her sleep. That was why Father went to the field—to tell ye. He’s been lost in his drink ever since. I havena left yer side, Morna. I’ve been so worried for ye. If ye’d died as well, I would’ve killed him. I know I would have.”
I don’t remember how long he held me. I eventually fell asleep again, drained from a grief so deep that I feared I would never recover. When next I woke, I found the dark, angry, bloodshot eyes of my father staring down at me.
* * *
