Page 49 of Dark Rival

Allie nodded. “I was pretty alarmed. I hadn’t had a visit from her in at least ten years. She told me to trust a golden Master—and that night, there you were.”

Royce stared. “Mayhap she dinna come from the dead. Mayhap she came from the past.”

“Could she time travel?” Allie demanded.

Royce nodded.

Had those visits from her mother been from another time—and not from the realm of the afterlife? She began to shake. “She wore white flowing robes in my dreams. But how could she come to me from the past? How? She wouldn’t know about me. Or did she also have the Sight?”

“She dinna have the Sight an’ I dinna have the answers ye need, lass.”

He was being so kind. “She could live centuries, like you.” She took both of his hands in hers. “If I went back in time, I could find her, couldn’t I? She’d be alive, in the past. You’d know where to find her!”

Royce stood. “T’is forbidden to leap for personal gain.”

“And what if she has been trying to contact me from some past century—because something huge is going down? When she came to me in South Hampton and told me to trust you, her eyes were filled with urgency. I sensed that something was wrong!”

Royce stared, silent.

Allie hugged herself. He wasn’t going to take her back to her mother—at least, not yet. Maybe there was no point—or maybe it meant everything. “When did you last see her?”

“In the thirteenth century.” He added, “No one has seen her since then.”

Allie sat up straight. What did that mean? “Do you think she leapt from the thirteenth century to my time?”

Royce glanced aside. “I think it possible.”

He was suddenly being evasive. “What happened?” she asked with alarm.

He was slow to respond and her dread increased. “Her husband, William Macleod, an’ his eldest son, from Macleod’s first marriage, were murdered. No one has seen Elasaid since the murders, not even her own son—yer brother.”

Allie gasped. Her mother had been married in the thirteenth century. Once she could wrap her mind around the fact that she’d had another husband—or even other husbands, given her life span—she wouldn’t be so stunned. She’d also had a half brother. And no one had seen Elizabeth since the thirteenth century—almost two hundred years ago.

Had she leapt after the murders to the twenty-first century? “What are the facts? Who murdered her husband and stepson?”

“There are no good facts,” Royce said softly. “Only Macleod an’ his heir were found. Elasaid vanished that day. The murders weren’t evil—they were political, a part o’ border wars. At first, we thought she fled the murderer. But she never returned.”

“If she witnessed the murders, she wouldn’t have been safe anywhere,” Allie said. “Maybe she went to my time, where she met my father and had me.” But why had Elizabeth married William Monroe? And now, Allie realized the strange coincidence that both her husbands had the same first name. “Did she love her husband, Macleod?”

“Deeply. William the Lion was a mortal man, a great an’ powerful English baron. Still, Elasaid wasn’t meant to love a man, Ailios. Like ye, she was meant to serve the Ancients an’ mankind.”

Allie tensed. Suddenly she sensed the power of her mother’s love for Macleod. It had been huge, consuming, the love one found once, if ever, in a lifetime. “Don’t try to tell me the gods willed Macleod’s death in some kind of holy reprisal for her daring to find love! And by the way? She loved my father, too.” But she couldn’t recall her mother’s love for her father; all she could recall was her father’s grief after her death. And she somehow knew that love had been a mere shadow of Elizabeth’s love for her English baron.

Allie rubbed her throbbing temples. Her mother had never recovered from William Macleod’s death. She was certain. “Please tell me about my half brother.”

“His name is Guy Macleod.” He added, “He’s known as Black Macleod. Most men fear him mightily.”

Allie realized Royce was speaking in the present tense.

Royce put his arm around her. “I ken yer in so much shock.”

She twisted and clutched his shoulders. “My math sucks, but he was born almost two hundred years ago. If he’s still around, that makes him godlike, too!” But it was a question.

“He’s a Master, lass.”

She had a brother, a holy warrior like Royce. Allie held on to Royce and felt him hold her in return.

“Ye need to lie down.”