She put a hand on Thane’s back and eyed Vera. “Please, stop. We’re in this together, for the moment anyway. There’s no purpose in fighting right now.”
Thane twisted. His nostrils flared out and in. “Are you ready to do as the Dionadair do and risk all? Because these people, they’re not putting your father first. I can tell you that.”
Vera snorted. “You think the Campbells are just going to hand him back? He’s good as dead if we don’t take all of them down.”
The truck bounced, sending Aini’s apple to the floor. Myles retrieved it and traded fruit with her.
“Please,” she said. “I need to think. To remember the vision so I can find the wall.”
“Aye. Of course,” Thane and Vera said in unison.
Sighing, Aini put her head in her hands.
Neve whispered, her tone joking but her words shaky. “For a lady so lovely, Vera sure can give a mean growler. What a scowl.”
Peering at the expression Vera directed at Thane in the rearview mirror, Aini laughed shakily, agreeing, then closed her eyes to try and bring every detail of the vision to mind.
Thane’s mouth was suddenly at Aini’s ear, his soft lips moving and making her breathe unevenly. “Take this,” he said and handed her something small.
It was a square of tablet, the sugar and butter candy Father altered to negate the effects of the golden taffy. “Why?”
Keeping an eye on Vera, Thane handed a piece of the tablet to Myles and Neve too. “Just keep it. Eat if I ask you to.”
Neve stared at it.
“What are you up to?” Aini asked.
Thane shuffled on the seat and adjusted the hidden bag under his sweater as Vera swore at Dodie. Myles shrugged and slipped the candy into his shirt pocket.
“I’m just making sure we have an escape plan if we need it,” Thane said.
“Escape from who exactly?” Myles asked.
Aini studied Thane’s serious face. “He’s worried about the Campbells. But how will this help—”
Vera had stopped fighting with her brother. She turned. “What’s this you’re blethering on about?”
“Nothing,” Neve and Aini said.
Thane rolled his eyes.
Vera sniffed. “Right,” she said, but she did drop it, thankfully.
Aini pretended to cough and stored the tablet in her bra, wondering what Thane had in mind. Especially considering he hadn’t shared the plan with the Dionadair. She didn’t like this. Not one bit. Too many variables clashed around, too many things not planned out or reasoned properly. What she wouldn’t give to spend a week figuring this all out and writing a proper list, a plan of attack.
Dodie drove them into a parking lot framed by tall grass. Thane, Myles, Neve, and Aini piled out of the truck. The moonlit ruins of Tantallon Castle loomed past a tourist shop and a mown field.
“Go on ahead, Seer.” Vera locked the vehicle’s loading doors and nodded to Dodie. “My brother and I’ll keep watch. Our other truck will be here soon.”
Tantallon was a child’s sand creation made real in the starlight. Below lacy clouds, a curtain wall of red sandstone reached across the headland, a gatehouse at its front. Aini shivered. It was just like the vision. The North Sea hissed at the cliffs beside and behind the old castle.
“That’s the Douglas Tower,” Neve whispered as they walked through the clipped lawn. Grass snicked at their shoes. She pointed up to the left. “Seven stories. Circular, originally. There’s a pit prison down below.”
Myles looked at his feet and smiled. “I’ll stay near you, Neve. Don’t be so nervous. There aren’t any Campbells out here as of yet. Plus, we’ve got two truckloads of black market, gun-wielding rebels on our side even if they do show.”
Neve sighed heavily and put her hand in the crook of his arm. “You do know how to sweet-talk a lady.” She rolled her eyes.
Taking a breath of the briny air, Aini studied the uneven line of the ruins. A far-off noise hovered in the air like someone plucking poorly tuned guitar strings. Sea birds. Beyond the castle, an island sat in the waves. The moon lit its sloped face as well as the water that rolled around the island’s base.
Aini pressed her fingers into her eyelids, picturing Father the last time she’d seen him. His bushy gray eyebrows. His salt and pepper beard. His sparkling, smart eyes surrounded by new wrinkles that made her want to take his hand and ask him about his day. In her mind, he called her squirrel again, the childhood nickname she’d earned by climbing the maple in front of the townhouse. Her throat convulsed, but she pulled air in through her nose.
They passed through the time-chewed gatehouse.
“Look for a spiral in the stone,” Aini said. The wind was chilly and salty. She pulled her sweater more tightly around her. “I think it was at the base of a wall inside a room. I’m going up.”
“I’m coming with you.” Thane’s voice was low and strained.
A retort rose inside her mouth. She wanted to tell him she was fine on her own, that she’d be all right, but he looked like he needed the company and his worry had just washed his tone in acid.
Myles and Neve walked through the open grass of the courtyard toward the shell of rooms near the sea cliff.
With Thane, grouchy but quiet at her back, Aini found a stone, spiral staircase, much like the one leading to the tower lab. They wound up and up and up. These ruins were huge. Desperation weighed down her shoulders and eyelids.
They reached the summit of the castle. The parapet stretched along the top, a slim road of stone and low wall, overlooking the courtyard. Myles and Neve’s silhouettes moved far below Aini, and farther still, the North Sea’s waves shifted. The wind tugged Aini’s hair, and water crashed beyond and below, its surface as silver as the dress she’d worn to King John’s birthday masquerade last year in London. The king had accidentally brushed her arm during one of the dances that night, and his smile had given her chills. Pushing the memory away, she ran a hand along the base of the wall. Thane knelt beside her and did the same.
“When did you start seeing visions?” he asked, his words nearly lost in the wind and his hair flying around his head. He took his glasses from his pocket and slid them on.
“My visions…um…around my sixteenth birthday.”
“Does your father know you’re a sixth-senser? Tell me the truth. Please.” Thane moved into a crouch to examine the middle row of stone.
Touching the gritty top of the wall, Aini stood, stepped closer. Dust and grime from centuries ago fell away where she rubbed the stone.
“I couldn’t tell him. I was afraid it would somehow get him in trouble. And I was afraid of what he would think of me.”
“So, you lied to keep him safe and to maintain his high regard for you.” There was no questioning tone in his voice. “Because you...you love him.”
Aini glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. The wind threw his hair sideways. The moon danced over his shoulders, across his glasses, and the line of his crouched shape. What was he getting at?
“I hated hiding my ability from Father,” she said. “He would’ve loved me anyway—I know that now—but he was terrible about keeping quiet when it came to any kind of surprise. At Christmas or with things in the lab. I was afraid kingsmen would question him and he wouldn’t be able to keep my secret.” She laughed, but it wasn’t funny at all. “Guess he kept the secrets he really needed to.”
Thane gaze went to hers. “We all have secrets.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “I’m not mad at him for hiding his past. Not anymore. He’s a good man. He took care of me. Spent so much time and money to travel overseas to visit me every month. He never said a mean word to Mother, even during the divorce. He did what he thought was best for us.”
Thane reached out a hand and touched her cheek, and she shivered under the wonderful heat of his skin.
“To have you think like that of me…” he whispered.
The wind gusted, and rain drifted down in a cold, mi
sty sheet, covering the castle grounds.
One hand running along the pitted wall, Aini pulled him to the staircase. Halfway down, they ducked into a small, circular chamber. A glassless window opened to the fields out front and the grassy lawn beyond the gatehouse. With bobbing flashlights, the Dionadair waited in clusters. Her neck and shoulders tensed.
Myles and Neve ran into the room, their hair hanging wet over their foreheads.
“Find anything?” Myles slicked his green spikes back.
Talking over the search so far, the four of them scoured the walls as the rain lashed in through the window. The wind howled once, loud and long, around the ruins.
Vera appeared in the doorway. “We need to go. The wind’s rising. There’s a doister coming.”
“We can’t go yet.”
“What’s a doister?” Myles asked.
“A big storm. A nasty one,” Neve said.
Aini’s head began to pound. If she didn’t find the wall tonight, the Campbells would track her down. The Dionadair would be destroyed, along with her only chance at getting her father back.
“I’ll just go look at a few more places.” Aini tore past the rest of them and ran down the stairs.
The only room they hadn’t collectively checked at all was the rectangular space that used to serve as the great hall, where people had once feasted and drank by the massive hearth.
The roof was long gone. The hall stood open to the churning clouds overhead. Rounded supports protruded from the walls where thick beams once ran side to side. The place looked like the rest of Tantallon, the skeleton of something that had once been powerful, protective, a shield against the storm of armies and intrigue.
With the rain increasing, Aini worked her way to the base of the closest wall. The salty water lashed out, fogged the stones in front of her, and flavored the moisture that ran into her mouth.
Thane ran up, rain streaming down his face and sticking his sweater to his strong chest, revealing the edges of the bag he’d hidden beneath.
“We need to go. The storm is—”
A gust ran fingers through her hair and yanked out her scarlet ribbon. The slip of fabric flew through the storm, catching the diffused moonlight, until it snagged the nearby corner where the back wall and the outer met in a triangle of darkness. She couldn’t stand the thought of leaving it out here in the cold rain near the crashing ocean. A hard shiver rocked her and she fought a sob, Father’s face in her mind, bleeding and dirty.
She raced to retrieve the ribbon, and crouching, curled her hand around the soft fabric. Her fingers brushed a curving indentation in the sandstone. She pressed a hand fully against the wall.
It was a spiral.
The wind kicked up, and the stone bones of Tantallon’s ancient great hall cooled her flesh. Everyone else ran into the great hall and crowded around her. Excitement buzzed through her veins.
A looping shape had been carved into the base of the open room’s back wall. She traced the curve and remembered her vision of the Coronation Stone, the one imprinted on the brooch. As her finger dragged into the heart of the spiral, Thane’s furrowed brow, the rain falling sideways around him, Myles, Neve, Vera, and the ruined castle walls—it all shimmered and disappeared, leaving the world gray around the edges.
A man’s face appeared.
Angus Bethune, the first of the Dionadair.
Angus raised his chin. His palm lay against the spiral in the wall. Closing his eyes, he pictured the black stone with its metallic flecks. The Coronation Stone. A hollow sat in the stone’s center, more circles and spiraling shapes decorating its exterior. Over the stone, a shape came into focus, a black and white space surrounded by churning movement.
The island.
A bird darted to the crashing sea. The air was thick with briny moisture. A stone building sat against the island’s rough terrain. Inside, there was a small, underground room lit by candles. A chapel? There. Seer. Seer! Angus called out.
The earthen floor of the small room grew hazy, but there, somewhere, was the stone. Sitting, waiting like a beast in hibernation. Power hummed around the ancient throne like the black rock was alive, breathing, ready to strike. Tear our land from the wrongful king! You are the Seer. You have the gift! Angus shouted. His words became unintelligible, his brain flying through pictures. Emotions like colors streaked the scene.
Murky yellow fear, blue truth, green trust.
Faster. Faster.
A shout tore out of Aini. Thoughts brushed along her mind too quickly like she was running through a forest and any minute she’d slam into a tree. She shook her head, and at last, the vision faded.
As she tilted to the side, nausea squirmed in her middle, but a sense of joy soaked through her, waiting for the sick feeling to pass.
Her hope roared to life.
The man from the vision—Angus Bethune—had been so sure, so very sure, about her role to play as Macbeth’s descendant, the Seer. His faith lifted her to her feet. The strength she’d felt in the Coronation Stone poured steel into her limbs and steadied her.
Maybe the Dionadair, with her help, really could succeed in their quest to free Scotland. She could find the stone, find the Heir, and take down the Campbells and the king. But before the rebellion, and so much sooner, maybe Father would be in her arms again.
“Aini.”
She whirled around and Thane stood there, waiting. The wind whipped his hair, and his eyes matched the tumultuous sea beyond. The darkness that had always hounded his features cleared. He smiled, and her heart surged. It was a real smile, like he somehow realized what this vision had meant to her.
“You truly think this can be done,” he said over the weather. “You can change everything.”
Myles and Neve stared, wide-eyed. Vera, Dodie, and several other Dionadair surrounded them, awe coloring their faces.
“I…I do,” Aini said, shocking herself. For a breath, she imagined a Scotland with a good ruler and a Parliament, a place where people had a voice.
Vera took a step forward and held out a hand. “Let’s get you out of this weather, Seer.”
The rain unleashed its wrath then and came down in lashing whips. They splashed into the muddy courtyard. The storm nearly obscured the island from the vision—Neve had called it Bass Rock. Aini kept glancing at it as they hurried through the towering gatehouse and sped toward the trucks’ yellow headlamps.
The rain tasted bright and salty on her tongue and the world was suddenly sharper. Like everything they’d been through shone in stronger contrast.
Chapter 23
Revelations
Back at the Dionadair’s barn and underground facility, Aini squeezed rain from her hair. The wind howled through the double doors until Dodie latched them tight.
“Did you see it?” Neve asked. Her clothes hung on her like a wet rag.
“I did,” Aini said, turning to Owen, who’d come from the entrance to the tunnels. “It’s on Bass Rock, the island off the coast near Tantallon. It’s in a chapel. Some sort of buried chapel.”
“I know about that place!” Neve said. She began telling Myles about some saint and the history of the island.
Thane came up and took Aini’s hands, warming them. Wonder had replaced the darkness in his eyes.
“It’s amazing,” Aini said. Everyone had gone quiet and turned an ear toward her. “The Coronation Stone has this...power to it.” Goosebumps ran over her skin.
A tentative grin spread over Thane’s mouth. “I cannot believe I’m saying this, but if we can get it and find the Heir…things might truly change.”
Thane cupped her chin, his eyes light gray and brimming with concern. The circles under his eyes said he needed rest, though he was nearly buzzing with energy. Or was that her?
He leaned in and spoke near her mouth, throwing shivers down her neck and chest and shoulders. “I’m proud of you. None of what I’ve been worried about will really matter if—”
Owen clapped his hands together once, s
hattering the moment between Thane and her. “If you’ll follow Vera to the sleeping quarters,” he said, checking his phone, “she’ll find you some dry clothing.” He addressed the teeming mass of Dionadair. “Once the storm has passed, we head to Bass Rock!”
As they made their way through the tunnel attached to the barn, Myles whistled a southern colonial tune, punctuated with lines that rhymed with Neve’s last name Moore.
“I only wished my sweet faced Neve would give me more, my heart is sore, my Neve thinks I’m a bore, to love me be a chore!”
Thane muttered something about strangling, then looked over his shoulder at the circle of light coming from the main tunnel they’d just left.
“Hey, if this doesn’t go the way we want it to or if the Campbells find this place,” Thane whispered, his lips grazing Aini’s cheek and making her mouth go dry, “eat that tablet I gave you and get Myles and Neve to the truck. Dodie leaves the key in his. Go toward a port city. Get out of Scotland.”
Any warmth she’d found faded fast. Her teeth chattered from both fear and her wet clothes. “How can I do that? It’d be—”
“Mr. Moray,” Vera said, her voice singsong and falsely sweet. Aini spent half her time hating that woman and the other half deciding whether she should be her next hero. “It’s not polite to share secrets in front of others.”
“You need to teach your wandering hands about manners before you can do any preaching on the matter,” he spat back.
Myles and Aini laughed as they came to the sleeping quarters.
Vera snorted. “You are a spicy one, Thane Moray.” She pointed to a rack of hanging shirts, coats, pants, and dresses at the back wall. “Grab something to wear. All of you.”
Securing some dry clothing, Aini and Neve went behind the hanging drop cloth on one side of the room. The guys found their own screened area on the other. Aini pulled a sea-colored long shirt over some dark blue leggings, and after grabbing a pair of unmatching but clean socks, put her damp boots back on since there weren’t any shoes available in her size.
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