Shades of Doon

by Carey Corp

  Kenna’s gaze darkened and her voice dipped an octave as she replied, “Into the woods . . .”

  CHAPTER 28

  Mackenna

  We rode in relative silence through the wintery woodlands to Gregory and Drew Forresters’ mill. The wind tugged at the hood of my fur-lined cloak, boxing my ears until my eyes watered. Duncan pulled me closer to him, but it did little good against the storm. At a farm just outside of the village, we’d switched our carriage for a sled and two sturdy work horses that plodded along unaffected by weather.

  “Maybe we should turn back.” Although Vee shouted, I had to strain to catch each word before the wind snatched it away.

  Jamie and Duncan shook their heads in unison. Bending his head toward my ear, Duncan said, “Can ye not see how the storm’s picked up since we set off on this course? The witch wants us ta turn back.”

  I assumed Jamie, who was talking to Vee, was saying something similar. When his lips stopped moving, she nodded and pointed over my shoulder. Sitting backward in the sled had its disadvantages, like not being able to get that first glimpse of our destination.

  Abandoning the battle to keep my hood up, I twisted in my seat to see the mill in the distance. Blessed Leonard Bernstein, we’d arrived! As soon as the horses came to a stop, the MacCrae brothers catapulted over the sides of the sled.

  I watched as Duncan and his brother efficiently hitched the horses to a post. Then Duncan jogged back to help me out of the sled. Other than a slight stiffness in his gait, there were no outward signs of the burns across his back. Still, I was attuned enough to catch how he occasionally stifled a wince when he moved the wrong way.

  Not wanting to cause him any further pain, I readied myself to jump down. Before I could leap, Duncan dug both hands into the slope of my hips and hoisted me out as effortlessly as if I were a doll, which I certainly was not. He set me on the snowy ground but kept his hold of my hips. Leaning his face to mine he said, “Jamie and I want to have a wee word with the mill foreman. His cottage is just over yon bridge. You and Veronica go inta the office and get warm. We’ll join ye shortly.”

  Anxious to get inside, I looped my arm through Vee’s and propelled us toward the little office. As we staggered forward, stray bits of hair escaped, our matching ponytails lashing our faces. Like Side Show’s conjoined sisters, we pushed our way inside as a single being. Vee, the Violet to my Daisy, shrank against me as she blinked into the dark, enclosed space. “Brrr. It’s cold in here,” she lamented, her words accompanied by white bursts of breath.

  My teeth chattered in agreement. “Where are all the workers?”

  “Jamie said they won’t come back. They believe the mill is cursed.”

  “Smart guys.” I pulled my cloak tighter about my shoulders, scanning the walls of the Forresters’ office. “Is there a thermostat in this place?”

  “We have to make a fire,” she replied.

  “And you know how to do that?”

  “Yup. Jamie taught me.” She pointed to a pile of sticks in the corner. “Grab some kindling, please, while I get the tinderbox.”

  I grabbed an armful of branches and turned back to Vee, who was staring thoughtfully at the fireplace. “What is it?”

  “There’s something in the ashes. Hand me a stick, please.” Her focus didn’t leave the charred remains in the fireplace.

  I placed a long twig in her outstretched hand, watching as she knelt to stir the cinders. “Any idea what it was?”

  “Paper,” she mused. “Maybe letters. Looks like parchment. But it’s hard to tell. Maybe Fiona will be able to see something.” Vee set down the stick and began to scoop the ashes into a copper bucket next to the hearth.

  When she was finished, I set the stack of kindling next to her. Since I couldn’t make a fire without matches or a lighter, I decided to put the bucket by the door, so we wouldn’t forget it. The ashes weren’t heavy — nevertheless, handling them made me feel vaguely uneasy — kind of the way I felt if I was forced to handle raw meat.

  Holding my breath, I crossed to the door in long strides. I set the bucket near the entrance and the discomfort lifted. With Vee thoroughly occupied across the room, I decided to try an experiment. I touched the handle of the bucket, and the unpleasant sensations returned. As soon as I lifted my hand, they were gone. Staring at the ashes, I noticed tiny bits of purple, shimmering like glitter. Strange that Vee hadn’t mentioned them.

  When I asked her as much, she looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head. With the fire crackling in the hearth, she stood and crossed to me. “What are you talking about, Ken?”

  “There,” I said, pointing into the bucket of ashes. “See those tiny purple sparks?”

  Vee shook her head. “Nope.”

  It was like the zombie fungus all over again. I was seeing things that no one else could. Then it hit me. “The purple in the ashes — it’s magic. The witch must’ve burned the papers.”

  Vee’s eyes widened as she filled in more gaps. “They must be related to whatever Gregory wanted to tell me.”

  “You said he didn’t want to talk in the castle, right?”

  She nodded. “He said it wasn’t safe.”

  “Out of all the places you guys could have met, he asked you to come all the way to the mill,” I said thinking aloud. “What if there’s more here? Some kind of hidden clue?”

  Vee chuckled. “I think you’ve seen one too many episodes of Scooby Doo, Ken. Life is never that convenient.”

  “Still,” I said with a shrug. “We’re here and we’ve got nothing better to do, do we?”

  “Okay,” she sighed. “We might as well search the office. You take the desk and I’ll examine the bookcase.”

  I walked over to the desk and began to carefully sift through the contents of each drawer, taking extra care to discover any secret compartments. There were ledgers and invoices, ink and quills, and even an odd button or two, but no hidden spaces and nothing resembling a clue.

  Just as I finished with the last drawer, Duncan and Jamie returned. Stamping off snow, they gravitated toward the fireplace, and Vee and I gravitated toward them. In tandem, Jamie wrapped his arm around Vee as Duncan pulled me against his side. For some minutes we stood in silence, enjoying the peace, warmth, and relative safety of the moment. At last Vee asked, “Did you find out anything?”

  Jamie continued to stare at the fire, his voice low. “Aye. The foreman said that Gregory had been acting peculiar all morn’. Then when the rest of the lads were preparing a wagon with a shipment of lumber, Gregory started up the saw. A moment later, he was dead . . .”

  After Jamie paused again, Duncan continued. “He also said that the lad seemed to just lay down on the rollers. Before any o’ the others could get to him, he was sawn in half.”

  I could feel his tremor of revulsion as it moved through him. I knew Duncan well enough to guess that he was wondering if he could have saved poor Gregory by being at the mill. But there was nothing that anyone could have done.

  To ease his needless guilt, I laid my head on his shoulder, saying, “Vee noticed paper fragments in the fireplace. Whatever burned there bore the markings of Addie’s magic — I saw little purple sparks in the ashes. We put everything in a bucket to take back to the castle.”

  Duncan placed a soft kiss on the top of my head. “Did ye find anything else?”

  “Nope. Vee and I searched the desk and the bookshelf, but there’s not much else here.”

  Duncan turned in a slow circle, his face pinched in confusion, “What happened to the bunkhouse?”

  Vee blinked from one brother to the other. “The what?”

  “The bunkhouse,” Jamie explained. “It’s a small barracks. The Forresters sometimes slept here when they were particularly busy. That’s odd. The entrance used to be right where that bookshelf is.”

  Duncan and Jamie crossed to the shelves. On the count of three they hoisted and moved it to the side, revealing a dark space. Before Jamie could even ask for a little illu
mination, Duncan had lit a candle from the hearth. He handed it to his brother and then lit another for himself.

  Both princes disappeared into the gloom as Vee and I hovered at the opening. The room was rectangular, narrow with a wooden bunk on each side and just enough room in the middle to walk. In the flickering light, words were visible on the walls. The same sentence written over and over — hundreds of times in the cramped space.

  She asked me to.

  Pointing to the words with a shiver, Vee asked, “Is that blood?”

  “Aye,” Duncan answered while turning in a circle. “And there are two sets of handwriting, Drew’s and Gregory’s most likely.”

  “So Addie got to both of them.” Vee’s grave face looked sunken in the candlelight.

  Jamie hastily blew out his candle and exited the bunkhouse to take his queen’s arm. “I think we’ve seen enough. Let’s go home.”

  Following in his brother’s wake, Duncan slipped his arm through mine. He paused long enough to grab the bucket of magic ashes, and then escorted me from the mill. As soon as we shut the door behind us, the weather picked up like a ferocious beast. Before we could get to the sled, the wind captured the bucket in Duncan’s hand. His arm wrenched behind him, aggravating his recent back injury. With a yelp of pain, he let the ashes go.

  The bucket tumbled to the ground and the wind caught the ashes, sucking them up into a purple cyclone. We stared in shock as the tempest lifted the debris into the sky. Within seconds, all evidence of what had burned in the Forrester’s fireplace was gone.

  As Jamie helped Vee into the sled and untethered the horses, I stopped Duncan in his tracks. “I can’t help but wonder if we should be drawing Addie out. She got to Adam and Gregory — maybe even Drew. What happens when we provoke her? We have to assume she’s even more powerful than when we faced her in Alloway. Doesn’t this seem like a reckless idea?”

  “Aye.” He grimaced, his dark features even more pronounced against his pain-paled skin. “But what other choice do we have? We canna just sit around and wait for her to kill again.”

  He cupped the sides of my face, tipping my head up while he looked down at me. “We’ll have six dozen men on alert, and I canna believe she’ll show her true self in front of everyone. The witch not only wants the kingdom, she wants the souls in it. She’ll need to proceed carefully.”

  I wanted — desperately — to believe him. That our crazy plan would work. “But what if she doesn’t? What if she goes full-on big-bad in front of everyone?”

  Duncan’s warm fingers lingered against my cheeks. His eyes drank me in like a condemned man saying his final good-byes. “I pray that it never comes to that.” Which wasn’t an answer.

  CHAPTER 29

  Veronica

  My grandfather once told me that our character is defined in the moments when we think we can’t go on: when we’re terrified to give a presentation, or stand up to the person we’re most afraid of, or lay dying of cancer in a hospital bed. In those moments we choose weakness or courage. When my grandpa passed on, he looked death in the face and welcomed it, because even though he couldn’t see what waited for him on the other side, he had faith — a belief that had sprouted from thousands of choices, tiny seeds that had grown into an unshakable oak tree.

  In the antechamber off the throne room, I took my last few minutes alone to examine my reflection. The fiery jewels of my new tiara glinted against the dark hair piled on top of my head, the up-do creating an illusion of height. I adjusted the folds of my regal, floor-length mantle, and the tiny gemstones and gold thread swirling over the snowy fabric sparkled in the light. I lifted my chin, set my jaw, and gazed into my determined eyes. And a queen stared back.

  But on the inside I trembled like a sapling in the wind. I faced an opponent that was not only a psychotic killer with the aspirations of Hitler and the powers of Voldemort, she was invisible. When I stepped into the throne room, I might as well be wearing a red and white bull’s-eye. Addie could be anywhere — watching me from the audience and guffawing at my feeble attempts to draw her out, or lurking in the shadows ready to zap me dead on the spot.

  Squeezing my eyes closed, my heart beat a tattoo that stole my breath. Why had I been chosen for this role? Why would Doon’s Protector choose a young, broken girl from the Midwest with no magic, and no special skills outside of executing a perfect pirouette, to lead a kingdom into war? I balled my hands into fists and flung my head back, ranting at the twenty-foot ceiling, “How am I supposed to do this?”

  “With our help.”

  I glanced in the mirror to find my best friend and my fiancé entering the room. I whirled around, too grateful to have them with me to be embarrassed that they’d witnessed my moment of weakness.

  Jamie moved to my side. “You’re no’ alone, Verranica.”

  Kenna’s eyes latched onto mine. “We’re all in this together.”

  “My ma always said there is power in unity.” Jamie’s voice was soft, but firm. “Individually, we may be no match for the witch, but woven together we’re unbreakable.”

  “Like a four-stranded cord,” Duncan said as he entered the room.

  Or a wolf pack, I thought with a secret smile.

  “Make tha’ seven.” We all turned to see Fergus and Fiona slip through the door before Duncan closed it.

  Kenna, utilizing her brilliant observations skills, commented, “I may not be a math girl, but I think you just skipped a number.”

  “Donna ever forget the Protector.” Fiona took my hand and then Kenna’s and lifted our rings into the light, their stones shining pure and strong. “There is untapped power in each o’ you that you only need call on at the appropriate time.”

  Kenna and I exchanged a long look. Together, we could do this. We had to.

  “Speakin’ o’ the time.” Fergus tilted his head toward the doorway. “Everyone is assembled.”

  “All of the Destined?” I asked.

  My enormous friend bowed. “Aye, Yer Majesty, they’re all here.”

  Jamie stepped forward. “Are the guards stationed around the perimeter?”

  “And interspersed among the crowd?” Duncan added.

  “Aye, my lairds,” Fergus responded with a nod.

  Kenna bumped my shoulder and muttered, “Why do I feel like we’re the last people on the Titanic? Clearly, I get to be the Unsinkable Molly Brown.” She flipped her red hair over her shoulder with a flourish and batted her eyes at me. “You can be Kate Winslet. Sorry about your luck, Jamie.”

  I rolled my eyes and bit my lip against a grin. Her grim humor had a way of forcing me outside of myself — lacing even the darkest circumstances with hope. I grabbed her hand and pulled her close.

  Fiona took Fergus’s hand and gathered us all into a tight circle where she said a quick, ardent prayer. As she asked for the witch to be revealed and for each of us to have the strength and wisdom to stop Addie’s evil plans, something bloomed inside of me, fortifying my spine and pushing out my fear.

  I’d been Called here for a purpose — a destiny that was inexplicably linked with not only my best friend and my prince, but a malevolent force that had stalked Doon for centuries. I didn’t understand why I’d been made queen at this moment in time. But the choice of how I would face the challenge was mine — and I chose to stand as an unwavering oak.

  Lifting my head, I leveled my gaze on each one of my loved ones’ faces in turn. “Addie may have thought she gained the advantage by entering Doon, but she’s on our turf now.” There were several impassioned ‘Ayes’ before I continued. “We’re about to bring that witch’s reign of terror to its final end. No more epilogues, sequels, or comebacks. This is it.” I lifted my chin, my next words ringing out, “We do this for Doon.”

  Jamie’s eyes blazed into mine, his voice deep and strong. “For Doon.”

  Our fingers still linked, Kenna raised my and Duncan’s hands above our heads. “For Doon!”

  Then everyone lifted their arms into the air and decla
red in unison, “For Doon!”

  Following a few more encouraging words, we broke our huddle and my friends began to file out of the room. I was to wait until Reverend Guthrie spoke his piece about the fealty being a covenant with the Protector before making my grand entrance. I’d turned to look over my notes for the ceremony when warm fingers wrapped my upper arm. Despite the gravity of the moment, I smiled — I would know his touch a thousand feet beneath the ocean.

  “I’ve a gift for ye.”

  I set down my paper and looked up into Jamie’s eyes, so often hard and guarded, shining bright with love, and perhaps a hint of anguish. After being queen, I understood why he’d learned to hide his feelings from the world. But I could read his beautiful face like a favorite book, and it made me giddy knowing I was the only one.

  “You do?”

  He released my arm to withdraw something from his pocket, and I noticed his appearance for the first time that evening. He wore his dress kilt, a formal black jacket draped with the MacCrae tartan, a jeweled sword at his hip — and he’d cut his hair. The short layers were swept up and off of his forehead, the sides and back trimmed close. I stepped into him and ran my hand down the nape of his broad neck, missing the way the strands used to curl around my fingers. The style accentuated his sharp cheekbones and strong nose, making him appear older, and somehow more . . . Jamie. “Why did you cut your hair?”

  A muscle flexed in his jaw, a furrow appearing above his left brow. “For battle.”

  My gut tightened, and I felt the blood drain from my face. I knew it was coming, the vision had been crystal clear, but I still hoped it could be avoided somehow. That we could take the witch by surprise and end this before it spiraled out of control.

  “Hey.” He cupped my cheek, his hand dwarfing my face. “Donna lose courage, love. I’ve been preparin’ for this all of my life. But I donna want to talk about that right now.” His thumb brushed over my cheek, setting my skin on fire despite all the other emotions fighting for my attention. Intensity tightening his lips, he released my face and then placed something in my hand.