Page 157 of The Washwoman at the River’s End

The world stops. The wind stills, and the rush of the river ceases to exist. Even the After seems to go completely still, waiting on bated breath. There is nothing but the pounding of my heart and Bea’s anguish.

There is only her and me.

“What do you mean it wasnae you?” I whisper.

She finally looks at me, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She tries to speak again, but only another sob escapes.

I cup the sides of her face, forcing her to meet my gaze. “Breathe, mo chridhe. You’re alright. I’m right here.”

Taking a deep breath in, I wait for her to follow. It takes a few tries, but eventually, she matches her inhales to mine. Her breathing slows, but she doesnae stop crying.

Bea wraps her arms around herself, pinching at the skin of her arms as if her whole world is falling apart and she's trying to piece it back together.

I tuck her hair behind her ears, desperate for her to go on. For her to tell me what she saw, because surely what she’s saying cannae be possible. I have spent the last six years hunting her. Believing she so cruelly murdered the woman I loved. She admitted it, more than once.

And it wasn’t even the truth?

“I dinnae understand,” I say, my voice strained, as if my life is fracturing in two alongside hers. Into before and after.

She takes a slow, shaky breath, trying to find the words. “I— That night came back to me when you asked. All of it. Every horrible moment.”

She pauses, then meets my eyes. “Brennen, it was Cailleach who killed them. She’s the one who killed Marsaili.”

My vision goes red, my heart stopping.

Cailleach. The woman I have dedicated my life to serving. The one who sent me here, using my vow to avenge Marsaili to find a way to kill Bea.

Unfettered rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt before builds inside me, multiplying until I fear I might explode.

“Cailleach,” I growl, her name a threat as it comes off my tongue. I will end her for this.

Bea nods, sniffling as she wipes at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I escaped as I remembered. A ward failed, and I was able to pass through. I fled. Ran for days, trying to get to the Measurer’s domain, and I bumped into a woman. Your Marsaili.” She grabs my arms, closing her eyes. “She saw I was afraid and offered to help me. And then I heard the beat of dragon wings. I knew the Cutter was coming for me.” She winces, as if the memory causes her physical pain. “I told her to run. To ring the warning bell by the cairn at the entrance to the village, and that I would wake her family.”

She shakes her head, and the air is stolen from my lungs. Is that why she builds them? Because her mind has been desperately trying to pull her memories of that night back to her? To help her remember? I try to ask, but my voice sticks in my throat.

“I told her I’d come get her when it was safe. She didn’t want to leave them, but she could see my panic, I think. Hear in my voice that the entire village was in real danger.”

Her bottom lip begins to tremble. “Cailleach burned her family alive, and then made me—” Bea’s voice breaks on a sob. “She used her magic to try to make me kill Marsaili. But I fought it. I was winning, and the Cutter knew it. She grabbed my hand,” Bea stares down at her stained palms. Another guttural sob escapes, and it breaks me. “She grabbed my hand and pulled the blade across Marsaili’s neck.”

Her face crumples. “How could I have forgotten this? The way it felt to have no control, to be forced to feel what it’s like to end a life. All that blood…”

“No,” I say, my voice a rough whisper, and Bea closes her eyes—I think, because she cannae bear to hear my pain. But it isnae my pain I care about. It’s hers.

It doesn’t feel like you think, cutting through a throat, she’d said. But she shouldn’t have to know how that feels. How much blood comes from a severed vessel.

“She slit my throat as well, but I didn’t die. She used her magic to make me think—” She can’t even say the words.

Every breath is a struggle as my reality shatters. My identity. The torment I have felt about my feelings for Bea these past months over something she didn't even do pressing against the inside of my skin, eating me alive. The fact that she’d not only been forced to witness Marsaili’s death, but feel it beneath her hands, is unthinkable.

And yet, I believe her story. Every detail.

She hadn’t been the one to kill Marsaili. She’d been fighting it so hard, she was somehow resisting Cailleach’s magic—a Fate’s magic—and still, she’d been forced to experience every moment of it.

“Bea,” I whisper, pulling her forehead to mine, our sorrow and pain morphing together, building and thickening until it lodges in my throat.

“She couldn't kill me, so she made me think I did it. Made the entire kingdom think I did it so they would fear me. But I did nothing. How could she violate my mind like that. My body.” Her voice cracks. I wipe her tears with my thumbs, and she grabs my forearms. “I tried to help Marsaili, but I couldn’t stop the bleeding, and then Cailleach took me away. I couldn’t get her help. I would have⁠—”

“I know. I know you would have.” Marsaili’s face flashes in my mind. The blood on her neck. On the ground. Her lifeless eyes. I have spent years grieving her death. Years blaming the woman in my arms for it. Wasted so much time seeking revenge on the wrong person.