Mounting the horse, running a hand down the animal’s warm, ebony side, he made a promise to himself. A secret promise.
Swallowing disgust with what he had to do, he took off at a gallop toward the road to find a town, a train, any path back to Edinburgh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MY ENEMY’S NIGHTMARE
AINI SAT AT A wide table in a stranger’s kitchen, looking out the window at a dead tree. Owen had caught up with them on the motorway and detailed the loss of lives, injuries, and how the Campbells had reportedly left the area to regroup, their bruised leader shouting orders to go after his son. A widow—mother to one of the rebels—had offered her house to the Dionadair, so they’d holed up here in borrowed blankets, cots, and hammocks, not far from the site of the violence. They wouldn’t be staying for long, Owen had said.
He and Vera were talking to Aini about Thane, his loyalties, and their fears. Really, they were talking at her. Toying with the bandage on her ear—it turns out, a bullet had just missed her—she was still processing, picking apart every moment she’d had with Thane.
“But he never told you a thing,” Vera said.
Neve was quiet beside Aini, her hand gently perched on Aini’s knee. An anchor Aini needed to keep from drifting into swells of hopelessness.
Owen’s voice was careful. “And he was responsible for that blinding gas, aye?”
Aini stared out the warped window panes, the dead tree’s branches black and twisting toward the sky.
What was real?
Thane had handed her Macbeth’s knife with his head bowed in the exact same manner he’d used when conning the female guard at St. Andrews. So that one, that moment she’d thought they’d had, was false. A lie. A stage direction in his play.
But their kiss. That had been real. The blood had risen to his cheeks. And the way he’d looked at her… Not even Nathair Campbell’s own master spy and son could fake that. Could he?
The memory of Father’s ring and severed finger washed the tree and the window from sight. She put her head in her hands.
Father.
She wanted to drive a knife through Nathair’s chest. She wanted to scream, hit, to destroy. Gripping her hair, she stared at the table’s deep grain, seeing veins and blood. Anger was more than a feeling. It was a person she’d become.
How could Thane have been part of kidnapping him? The way they’d been in the lab together, trading ideas… Father had loved him like a son.
But he didn’t really know anything about Thane.
She’d shared so much about her childhood. Her unjustified anger with her mother. The divorce. How she’d been angry with Father, but how she finally understood his choices. Her parents had been doing what they felt was best for the people they cared about.
Father had lived to make up for what he’d felt was a wrong choice. He’d gone out of his way to visit Aini and her mother in the colonies, month after month, year after year. Every time her mother demanded he reschedule a trip for some invented reason, he went along with it.
Her mother had been trying to protect her. She’d left her new home of Edinburgh to live in the colonies to keep Aini away from rebels and what she viewed as stains in her father’s past. She’d endured what Aini had: the pain of not fitting in anywhere.
Aini had tried to keep her sixth sense a secret to protect her father, Myles, Neve, and Thane, worrying they would go to prison just for knowing her. She’d struggled every day not to touch rings, watches, bracelets, treasured books, sentimental gifts at Christmas and birthdays. She’d been called cold more than once as she clung to rules and structure to protect herself and everyone around her, to keep from invading their privacy, to shelter them from suspicion if she were ever taken for questioning. She’d held herself back from hugs and close friendships, from spontaneity, to live a safe life.
But while she’d shared her pains and confusion, Thane hadn’t told her a thing. She knew about Bran. That awful pub. But that could’ve been a lie. She didn’t even know where Thane was from or who his mother was. And his father…she supposed Thane was from Argyll. If he was the Earl of Argyll’s son, he’d grown up at Inverness Castle, a sprawling estate where he’d have been treated like some sort of Campbell prince. But had he? Pain had always shown in his eyes, a shadow that had haunted him until he’d started to believe Aini really could find the stone and the heir.
And when Father had spoken kindly to Thane, listening to his hypotheses and working with him, Thane had seemed so unaccustomed to the behavior, so maybe he hadn’t been treated like a prince. Maybe Thane had been mistreated growing up. It was a guess she’d made long ago, why she’d never been jealous of their close relationship. Nathair had no doubt expected a lot from his son, educated him, taught him to fight, paid for amazing schooling and fine clothing, but he maybe hadn’t loved him in a healthy way. Did that excuse Thane’s betrayal?
No. No, it didn’t.
Aini pressed her fingers into her eyelids, angry tears burning out as Owen and Vera murmured a blend of kindnesses and opinions. Neve’s stillness and quiet comforted far more than anything they could say or do.
Thane had never reported discovering the Dionadair. If he had, his father’s presence wouldn’t have sparked such surprised rage in him. Thane had fallen against the tunnel’s wall, stunned, when they’d first glimpsed Nathair in the barn. The angry side of Aini demanded, It doesn’t matter. He’d lied, hidden who he was. He’d had so many chances to tell her.
This was how her mother must’ve felt when she found out Father was working with the rebels. Aini wondered if he’d told her, or if she’d discovered it on her own.
Aini pressed a fist against her chest. It just hurt so much. I’m sorry, Mother. She squeezed her eyes shut. If only Aini could’ve known, realized why her mother had never answered Father’s questions with more than a few words, why she handed the phone to Aini immediately when he called. The pain on their faces when they were together—it all made sense.
Now, the kind widow who’d invited the Dionadair in pulled a pot of oniony stew from the stove as a Dionadair with shaggy brown hair ran up to the table.
“Someone’s left a package,” he said to Owen. “Found it at the end of the road. Near the turn off.”
After glancing at the door, Owen looked to Aini, and a frisson of fear jarred her spine. He was thinking the package contained explosives.
During the Campbells’ attack, they’d lost five people and more than twenty were seriously wounded and being treated at an underground hospital near Stirling.
Thane could’ve reported the Dionadair right after they’d run into them at the club. But he hadn’t. The attack on the barn had nothing to do with him, aside from the probability that another Campbell had been watching him, an operative that did report everything to Nathair.
Vera threw her legs over the table’s rough bench and started toward the door, the kitchen light shining off her midnight hair.
“Wait,” Owen said, hurrying to follow.
Aini watched, buttoning and unbuttoning the mandarin collar of her blood-stained, sea-colored shirt. Standing, she tied her hair into a loose bun and put Owen’s pencil through it. She ran a hand over her forehead and swallowed, her throat raw from crying on and off. Her phone sat in the waistband of her leggings, still quiet, still with no word from Thane. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted a call or not.
Gritting her teeth, she closed her eyes and tumbled questions around her mind. Over and over and over as she trailed Neve to the front room.
One second, her anger with Thane blistered her skin, not caring for any cool reason. The next, she was sad, anxious, longing to have Thane here so they could spill out all their fears and worries and see what withstood the flood.
Two things bore down on her shoulders, heavy and unrelenting. One: Thane was still missing. She had no idea whether he’d go to Nathair, or if he was off on his own, hating himself, or maybe even dead by his own clan’s hand for attacking their chief.
The second item that weighted her was that Thane wasn’t just the son of a Campbell, which would’ve been bad enough. Thane was the son of their chief. No wonder he’d never come clean. If Aini hadn’t seen his fury after the explosion at the barn, the idea of him going against his own father, a man everyone in Scotland feared now more than ever, would’ve been very, very difficult to swallow. But the way Thane’s eyes had burned with the knowledge that he couldn’t change his blood, and had been trapped with his father’s mad schemes, had shown her what she needed to know: though he’d started his assigned task—it had to be spying on lab work and developing weaponized candy—as a firm Campbell follower, he’d changed.
No. Yes. Maybe. No. He was who he was. He lied again and again.
Owen and Vera had the mysterious package open and inside the door. It was a wooden crate loaded with crumpled newspaper and bags of round beads.
Aini blinked, rolling Father’s signet ring around her finger. It clicked against her mother’s wedding band. “Those are my father’s cherry drops.”
Crouching beside the crate, Owen adjusted his round wireframes. “And why are they on our doorstep?”
Vera opened one of the plastic bags and lifted a drop. “What do they do?” She began to pop it in her lipsticked mouth, but Aini knocked it from her fingers.
“Normally, they’re aphrodisiacs.”
Vera wiggled her sculpted eyebrows and went for another.
Aini put a hand on hers. “Normally. Nothing about right now is normal.”
Nodding, she pulled her hand back.
Bending, Aini looked through the crate. Under the five one-gallon bags, a square of lined paper showed scrawled writing. Slanted. Slightly looped. Thane’s hand.
She snatched it up and held it under a green glass lamp on a side table, tracing each letter with a fingertip. She could see him in her mind, holding the pen too tightly like he always did, his knuckles white. His tongue touched the inside of his bottom lip as he concentrated. His hair curled slightly around the frame of his glasses.
Neve looked over her shoulder and read the note. She let out a breath. “Aini, you know what this shows.”
“What does it say?” Vera said.
Aini had to laugh at herself, her throat tight, because she hadn’t even read it yet. She’d only pored over his handwriting, the little bit of him she had there in her hand.
“It says, If we don’t become his worst nightmare, none of us will dream again.” She shivered. “It’s from Thane.” She folded the paper into a neat square and cupped it in her palm.
Owen was beside her in a blink, his hand out like she might share the note.
Her mind brought up the memory of Thane’s face as he fought his father. Tears dragging through blood. The necklace, thrown to the mud and grass. A wrenching suck of breath as he saw Father’s ring on the ground.
“Thane wants us to somehow use these,” Neve pointed at the crate, “against the Campbells.”
“We can’t trust that git,” Vera snapped.
Neve glared even though Aini thought Vera was so, so right. “You’re not the only one with an opinion,” Neve snapped. “You don’t even know him. Nathair Campbell is his father! Can you imagine the childhood Thane probably had?”
Owen rubbed his nose, then put his hands behind him. He walked toward the kitchen and back again, giving Neve a look. “Pull the claws back in, Neve. Vera is right and you know it. He’s Nathair’s own son, for God’s sake. We won’t trust him. Not ever.”
“If Thane had a chance to alter these cherry drops, we should use them.” Neve’s voice didn’t sound like her own, the words cracking like dry branches and whipping around the room. “No matter what you think of him.” She glanced at Aini. Neve’s eyes flashed with a quiet strength and a silent question. Do you agree with me?
Out of the corner of her eye, Aini saw Dodie bend to pick up the drop she’d smacked out of Vera’s hand. “Dodie, don’t!”
He pushed it into his mouth and chewed. “What’s that?” he asked before falling promptly to the pine floor.
They rushed to him.
Vera put his head in her lap and lifted Dodie’s eyelid. “Brother!”
Owen tried digging the drop out of Dodie’s mouth, but Aini pulled his hand away. “I wouldn’t touch the inside of his mouth right now. Not if he bit the candy and released its gooey center,” she said, sitting back on her heels.
“They’re not aphrodisiacs anymore, and that’s for certain,” Vera said snidely. “Wouldn’t want a man in my bed snoring like this lout is.” She pressed a gentle hand on Dodie’s cheek and smiled. “But you think he’ll be all right, then?”
“I do.” Aini hoped. “Thane put a man at the Origin to sleep with something that acted that quickly. Maybe it was the same sort of formula, a sleep agent or some sort of paralyzing concoction.”
Owen called three men over, who took Dodie away. “Watch over him,” he called out as Dodie’s caretakers disappeared down the dark hallway. “Ring me if he seems troubled at all.”
They resumed their spots at the kitchen table. The room smelled like stew and the hot lemon water the old woman had used to clean the wooden surfaces.
Leaning forward, Owen folded his hands. A new scab covered three of his freckled knuckles, but the lean muscle and taut tendons seemed to be working fine.
“Why do you believe Nathair’s son—”
“Thane.”
Owen pressed his lips together. “Why would Thane send us a crate of weaponized candies?”
“Because he’s on our side,” Vera said, oddly quiet.
Owen probably looked as surprised as Aini.
“Exactly.” Neve crossed her arms.
Vera shrugged and picked at a nail. “Neve is right. The thing didn’t explode on us, and he left that note. The only thing that makes sense is that the lad is as Neve claims. A good man. A man for Scotland. A man for the Dionadair.” She paused, pondering something. “I saw a golden thread between our Seer and him at the Waymark Wall. Sparkled like pure gold. I’d thought it was only because of who you are to Scotland,” she said, looking at Aini, “who you are to him, to everyone, but now I think…I think it’s because he loves you.”
He loves you. Aini’s hand went to her chest.
Here was truth: it didn’t matter what Thane had or hadn’t done. She cared for him. Her heart couldn’t be bothered about evidence. It raged, beating for him and nothing else mattered.
She was an idiot. She could never forgive him. She was doomed.
“I don’t trust him,” Owen said.
Aini fisted her hands on the table. “Me either.”
Neve inhaled and exhaled slowly. “He gave us this gift, this weapon to use for our side.”
Owen looked over his glasses at Aini. “I thought you wanted nothing to do with such a thing. You were completely against using your father’s creations to fight.”
Aini swallowed, her mind and heart warring. “I don’t. But at least they don’t kill anyone. They’re not so bad, I suppose. Unless this is a trap Thane has set.”
Vera snorted. “Oh, so it’s all well and good for the Campbells to off our lot, but killing them would be bad?”
A bitter taste covered Aini’s tongue. Her head pounded. She wanted Thane here, to ask him questions. No, she wanted him gone so he could never lie to her again. Her thoughts whipped through her head, beating her with stinging truths and unbearable feelings. “I’m going to bed.”
Vera opened her mouth, but Owen gripped her wrist and shook his head. She settled down as Aini and Neve stood.
“I suppose you need some rest, Seer,” Vera said without any vinegar.
“We can talk when you’re ready,” Owen said as Aini and Neve walked toward the hallway.
“Fine.” Aini’s legs were jelly. She felt like she had sand in her eyes and down her esophagus. “Give me four hours. Then I’ll be up and ready.”
“Five.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,�
�� Vera said back in a faked northern colonial accent like Aini’s.
After washing her face in a big, white porcelain bowl and doing her very best not to disturb all the other sleepers in the front room, Aini sat on her assigned cot. Neve snored lightly two beds down, blanket tangled in her legs already. Aini’s pillowcase had a foul, brown stain so she flipped it.
A square of paper the size of her thumbnail flittered to the floor.
Across the room, Myles snorted in his sleep and she jumped. Heart racing, she picked the paper up. This wasn’t Thane’s writing. It was blocky and full of sharp edges. She squinted to read the tiny print.
We’ll trade your father for the stone’s location. All offenses wiped from the records. Meet at the bend in the road. One hour. It can be over tonight. Done.
Her heartbeat was loud enough to wake everyone. She pictured Father reading Robert Burns by the fire, his salt and pepper beard illuminated by the flames. She imagined him being hit across the face and dragged like a criminal from the MacGregor townhouse steps.
Sliding the note into her bra, she lay down, eyes wide open.
A Campbell operative had sneaked into the widow’s house, past the guards, through the hammocks and cots, and somehow found her pillow.
They’d known exactly where she was going to sleep.
The note’s words ate at her. It can be over tonight. She took a slow breath. Another. She could have Father safe in her arms, could see if he was recovering from his awful wound, could go with him back to Edinburgh and lock the door on all of this.
On all these people.
But five people had given their lives for her, for this mad quest. More would probably die from their injuries. Nathair might agree to protect her and her father, but what about Myles? Neve? Owen and Vera and Dodie? If he knew she was here, he knew they were as well and was most likely assembling another attack right this second.
The Edinburgh Seer: Edinburgh Seer Book One Page 22