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She bit him and he yelled and weakened his grip. She wriggled free like a fish and ran.
“Fuck!” he cursed and lunged after her.
He caught her after a few steps and fell with her to the ground, pinning her under him. She screamed again, and he clamped his hand over her mouth.
And then he heard them. The hooves.
The English…or the MacDowells…
The enemy.
“Not a sound,” he told her as he dragged her into a two-foot-deep gully under the roots of a tree.
He lay on top of her to shield her from the enemy. She watched him with wide, frightened eyes, and he couldn’t breathe. The sounds of the hooves of several horsemen sounded right above them.
She was so beautiful, her eyes big and long-lashed, and almost translucent. She was breathing hard under him; he felt her chest rising and falling quickly.
The hooves slowly faded into the distance, and after a few moments, David knew they were alone again.
“If I remove my hand,” he whispered, “will you promise not to fucking scream? I’m on your side. I’m the one who rescued you, remember? I’m the one Colum asked to bring you to safety.”
She nodded. He nodded, too, and let go of her mouth. She didn’t scream, just stared at him like a frightened animal.
“Okay,” he said. “Good.”
He sat up and let go of her completely. Slowly, she sat up, too, still staring at him.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Can you walk? Or ride?”
She cleared her throat. “Aye.”
“Good. Then there’s a hiding place nearby. I’m supposed to take you there to wait for Colum and Iàcob. Come on.”
He stood and stretched out his hand to her. She took it, reluctantly, and they walked to the cave, which was about a hundred feet away. Her hand was trembling, and he squeezed it reassuringly.
With a bitter taste in his mouth, he watched Anna’s proud profile. Despite having been kidnapped, despite having been imprisoned in darkness and isolation, her back was straight and her head was held high.
He liked her.
Of course he liked her. Right, Sìneag? Why else had he found her on top of a time traveling rock, blabbering about Sìneag and the river of time?
Why else was he stuck with this pretty princess, with no way to return to his own time?
CHAPTER 6
Anna hugged her knees in front of the fire. She couldn’t stop the tremors that racked her body. The cave around her was the echo of the stone coffin she’d spent an eternity in, and only firelight chased the darkness away.
She supposed David thought it was quiet. But to Anna, everything around her was alive with sound. The murmur of leaves in the wind, the distant snapping of twigs, mosquitoes buzzing, owls hooting, hedgehogs rustling about. Somewhere very far away, a deer bellowed a mating call, sounding like a creature from another world.
It was both scary and reassuring. Hearing all that meant she wasn’t in the oubliette anymore. She was free.
But after days of complete silence, the gurgling of the waterfall outside of the cave and the water starting to boil in the cauldron scraped against her senses like laundry against a rock.
David, her savior, sat a step away, his gaze wandering between the fire, her, and the darkness beyond the mouth of the cave. He had descended into the oubliette like an angel casting light into darkness, and from then on everything was a blur. It was as though her sanity had finally snapped and broken. Or what was left of it, especially after her vision of Sìneag.
What had she told Anna? Her one true love was coming for her. No, surely not. That was such an odd thing to say in an oubliette, down in the belly of solid rock. And there was no way anyone could have been down there with her. She must have imagined it. Was she still having visions now? She’d never seen David before in her life and had never heard of him.
“Who are ye?” she asked.
