The time had come to end this.
Gavran sat silently beside her, on her right, leaning back on his hands, eyes closed. His sgian created a slight bulge from the underarm pocket on his left side. It’d be so easy to take it. With him nearby, she could kill herself successfully. All she had to do was slip far enough away that he wouldn’t catch her in time to stop her, while staying near enough to keep the wishes at bay.
It was her only remaining choice.
Ceana rested a hand on his shoulder and pushed herself up, her skirts brushing against his side. He opened his eyes.
She stared down at him with dry, empty eyes. “I need a moment’s privacy.”
He’d expected she’d want to grieve alone once the initial shock had passed. “I’ll wait here for you. Don’t go far.”
She walked back into the outskirts of Dunvegan and turned down between a row of houses. He didn’t close his eyes again. He didn’t need to now. Watching her crumble, he’d felt like someone cracked all his ribs. He couldn’t draw a full breath without an unbearable ache.
Yet he could do nothing for her. His family wouldn’t believe she wasn’t a witch, and nothing he could say or do would change that. Once his mamaidh’s mind was made up, she didn’t change it, and he’d only made it worse by stealing Ceana from his dadaidh and Tavish. Brighde…he didn’t even want to think what Brighde and Tavish would do.
Even if he tried to hide Ceana near him to cancel out the wishes, he couldn’t keep her with him when he needed to take the sheep out to pasture or travel to town. Or when he and Brighde went to visit her family. Assuming Tavish didn’t call off the betrothal because of what had already happened.
A course racket of laughter billowed from two streets over, and a pig squealed. It wasn’t safe to rest here too long after dark. He touched the pocket sheath where his sgian should have been. It was empty.
Ceana’s words from the day before about how many times she’d tried to kill herself came back to him, and heat flooded his head, sending a tingling sensation across his scalp and down into his fingers. She knew there was no going back to his home as well as he did.
He sprinted towards where she’d disappeared.
A glow from the window of one of the homes gave enough light for him to make out her figure, back turned to him, shoulders stooped. He barreled into her from the side, knocking her off balance. His sgian flew from her hand.
She dove after it, fingers groping in the dark. He yanked her back, and she turned on him. Her fist slammed into his cheek, and pain vibrated through his jaw, ten toothaches in a second’s time.
He lost his grip on her and cupped his face with one hand. She’d actually hit him.
She lunged for the sgian again. He tackled her and pinned her face-down. She writhed under him, but he trapped both her arms to the ground and used his body weight to hold her in place.
If his mamaidh could see him now, rough-handling a woman, she’d box his ears no matter his age. “Did you injure yourself?”
She bucked beneath him again, weaker this time. He held on.
She stilled. He’d expected her to yell at him, but she didn’t speak at all.
He lifted his weight enough to flip her over. He ran his hands over her stomach. They came away damp and sticky, but he couldn’t see if it was blood. He brought his hand up to his face and gagged. Not blood. At least not blood alone.
He shifted back onto her hips and glanced over his shoulder. He had to hope no one passed by and spotted them. His intentions could easily be mistaken for something else.
He pulled up one of her sleeves. No cuts. The other arm was clean as well.
His muscles relaxed. He’d found her in time. “If it was your time to die, the Almighty would have called you home.”
He slid off of her and grabbed the sgian.
She rolled to her side but made no move to get out of the filth beneath her. “You have no idea what it’s like. You couldn’t imagine it if you tried.”
He took a step back. He didn’t, and he couldn’t.
She was right. It took despair beyond his understanding to prefer to die in a puddle of excrement over facing another day. He couldn’t even imagine it because he’d been shielded from every unhappiness and failure by the wishes she’d given up for him.
He’d thought his dreams were nightmares, but they weren’t. She was the one who’d gotten the nightmare, and his entire past was a fantasy she’d created. He didn’t know anything about life outside of it. What he and his family had wasn’t right or natural. It wasn’t what the Almighty intended for them.
He didn’t even know anything about himself. The Holy Scriptures said it was in suffering that a man developed perseverance and an upright character. He’d never had to develop character or perseverance or any of the other qualities that could only be tested and known through hardship.
He knelt beside her. If this was his first true test, it’d surely be a failure if he let her kill herself. The only reason to do that was to keep the wishes for himself. In doing so, he’d show himself to be made of everything he’d feared lurked inside—selfishness and cowardice and greed.
He held up the sgian. “There has to be a better solution than this.”
“We both know I can’t go home with you.”
He did know. He’d already considered and dismissed that option.
“Please, let me die.” She looked up at him with eyes filled with grief also beyond his comprehension. “I can’t do this anymore.”
He couldn’t put down a human the way he did an animal, but he couldn’t expect her to continue on as she had, either. That left one solution. When a wolf discovered their sheep, and the barriers they constructed against it failed, they hunted down the wolf and killed it. “We can find the fairy and make her take back the wishes.”
Something sparked in her eyes—hope? Whatever it was, she doused it as quickly as it appeared. She sat up. “You’ll snatch that offer back as soon as you think through the consequences.”
Whatever they’d been to each other before, Ceana Campbell didn’t think very highly of him now. He tried to pull up a memory of Brighde’s adoring smile to replace the discomfort in his chest Ceana’s glare left behind, but the way Brighde looked at him didn’t give him the same walk-on-water feeling it had before.
Maybe it wouldn’t again until he could prove to himself he was the kind of man who deserved such admiration. First he had to convince Ceana that he understood the ramifications of his offer.
He’d survived life without the wishes once, as had his family. Maybe he could win her over by showing her as much. “What was our life like before the wishes?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” She raised her shoulders up to her ears, held them there for a second, then flopped them down. “It’d be like explaining snow to someone who’s never seen it. You don’t even know what daily sorrows can be like. It’s better for everyone, including your family, if we end this now.”
“It’s not better for you.”
“I don’t matter.”
Those words sounded eerily familiar as well, an echo of something in his dream.
The urge to shelter her face in his hand and tell her she did matter hit him out of nowhere. It was as if the part of him that remembered her fought back against the part that couldn’t.
She wedged her back against the wood-slatted wall of a lightless house, knees curled in to her chest and chin resting on her knees. The same way she’d sat in his dream after taking the curse of the wishes on herself and giving him the best. Giving him every joy that could have been hers.
He couldn’t remember his real past, and she was right about his present, but he could remember the dream about what had happened that night. “When you used your wishes to bless me, I argued with you—begged you to take back what you’d done while the fairy would still allow it. I wouldn’t have done that had I not been prepared to continue my life as a normal man. I knew what I was doing then.”
S
he sucked in a breath, and for a second he thought she might burst into tears—or spit in his face. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You took the wishes and left me to face the consequences.”
He hadn’t exactly had a choice. They hadn’t been able to stop the fairy at the time, and that had left her to suffer under the curse-side. That didn’t mean they couldn’t do something about it now.
She’d put him before herself for long enough. It was his turn to take care of her—to care about her life when she wasn’t able to.
The problem was that no argument he made based on saving her was likely to change her mind because she placed no value on her life, especially since she thought saving herself would mean harming his family. There seemed to be only one person she might be willing to find and fight this fairy for.
“It’s not better for your brother, either.”
Her eyes fluttered closed, and her chest rose and fell with lurching movements.
“If we rid you of the curse, you could find him and care for him.” He moved a step closer. “You can still do right by him.”
She opened her eyes again. They seemed to glow around the edges. “I’ll do it.”
Chapter 8
Ceana let Gavran lead her from the alleyway. Believing him might make her the biggest eejit to walk the moors. He’d promised her once before, right after the fairy forced the wishes on them, that he’d help her find a way out. He’d broken his promise when it mattered the most, just like her dadaidh broke promise after promise to her mamaidh, breaking her spirit in the process.
She wanted to believe this time would be different. That Gavran was the man he seemed to be in their daily life rather than who he seemed to be when he let her down in her moment of need. She needed to believe it. For the sake of her brother. She couldn’t help him alone.
But this time, she’d be watchful as well in case Gavran tried to betray his promise again.
Gavran jabbed his thumb towards the edge of town. “We need to find someplace safe to sleep.”
She tested out a smile. It felt foreign to her lips. “I guess that means we don’t have money to stay at an inn.”
“No money. No food. No blankets.”
She almost laughed. No money, food, or blankets described most of her last year of life. She was used to it, but he wasn’t. She wasn’t going to let herself hope yet. One night on the hard ground might be what it took to show him how cruel life could be without the wishes to protect him.
“Here’s our real problem,” he said. “How do we catch a fairy?”
Should she find that humorous or idiotic? “Do you expect me to know because I was the one the fairy targeted?”
Gavran’s shoulders hunched.
She pressed her lips together and gave a silent snort. He had thought it. He had no concept of life when you weren’t fated to succeed at everything you tried. He thought the solution to this would drop at their feet and he’d be home by week’s end.
They passed the outlying buildings, leaving Dunvegan behind.
He seemed to do a mental pick-up and dust-off. The hound-dog droopiness in his face vanished. “Then what we need to figure out is who would know the most about fairies. We can’t succeed in this without aid.”
True enough. If they were going to find the fairy and make her take back the wishes, they’d need an ally who knew more about the fae than they did. He was sure to balk at her suggestion of who to approach first, but it was the obvious choice. “We could go to a spaewife. Like as not, we’d be able to buy a cure for the curse.”
Gavran coughed like he’d choked on his own tongue. “You want us to make a deal with the devil? How’s that any better than being cursed by a fae?”
“We’re not making a deal with the devil by speaking to a spaewife.”
“She’s sold her soul to him.” Gavran crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s close enough.”
A tingle swept up the back of her neck and spread across her face. It’s the Almighty wanting to catch your attention, her mamaidh told her when she was a little girl.
She kicked a rock. It tumbled down the dirt road in front of them. Some things were a luxury. Only people like Gavran could afford them. Her mamaidh certainly paid the price for trying to. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake. She had to be practical. “Then you figure out how to learn about the fae. Anyone but the spaewife and we’ll get more tall tales than fact.”
The hoo, hoo, hoo of a male horned owl interrupted them from between the mite-blistered leaves and black, woody cones of the alder tree next to the road. From the top of the hill to their left, the raspy buzz of a female owl echoed back. The male took flight, his long ears looking like real horns in the moonlight.
Gavran rubbed his forehead right above his eyebrows, his eye-edges crinkling the way they used to when he worked hard sums. “If all it took was buying a cure from the spaewife, why didn’t you do that before?”
Ceana tilted her chin down to keep from shaking her head. The curses weren’t this difficult to understand. He was an intelligent man. Maybe he was looking for an excuse to abandon her again that would also leave his conscience appeased. “I couldn’t so much as find a dry place to sleep if I wanted one.”
Gavran gave one brisk nod and fell silent.
Guilt nipped at the edges of her heart, and she brutally kicked it down. He deserved to feel the reality of what he’d done. Still… “And I don’t know if even a spaewife will have a cure for us. But she’s certain to have information on the fae.”
Gavran drew in a breath that sounded like surrender. “Maybe we ought to figure out how we’re going to pay first.”
Why did she suddenly feel like a bully? “We’ll have to steal it.”
Gavran stuck an arm out in front of her and stopped her progress. “I’m sure you must have done things to survive that you wouldn’t normally do, but I won’t be part of that now. We have to find a way to do this that doesn’t violate every right notion.”
Her teeth ground together involuntarily. She’d done what she had to, and in many cases, she’d had no choice. When she wanted to do the right thing, the curse blocked her path.
Even though he acknowledged that, he’d still basically said some lines shouldn’t be crossed, no matter the circumstances. He clearly thought that even the curses didn’t justify the actions she had to take. He likely had no idea how what he said made her feel, and she shouldn’t have cared what he thought, but it stung in her belly, and she couldn’t shake it.
He strode off again. She hesitated a second, then scrambled after him. As much as she wished to be alone for a minute, she couldn’t let him get too far away. She might never find him again.
They passed into the surrounding hills.
Gavran slowed his pace. “We’ll have to pick up work until we earn enough.”
“Your dadaidh will find us long before we manage that.”
“My dadaidh.” His grin made him more handsome than he had a right to be. “That’s how we’ll get the money.”
Aye, that sounded like a wise idea. “We’ll ask your dadaidh for it,” she said deadpan. “Did I hit you too hard in the head back in the alley?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her as if to ask Are you an eejit? “We’ll take the money from my dadaidh. We won’t ask him for it.”
“I thought you said you wouldn’t steal.”
“It’s not the same. We have what we do in part because of you. So we owe you what he’s carrying with him.”
Hearing her sacrifice acknowledged and valued, some of the tightness in her chest bubbled away. “How do we find them? Would they have traveled home?”
“Aye. Home thinking you’d gone back for me.” Gavran scratched the side of his nose for a second. “But when they found I’d gone in the night, they’re wise enough to figure I’m the one who set you free. They’ll have headed back to Dunvegan without resting. I’m certain Tavish will have sent one of his sons to our croft to fill my dadaidh’s absence, so they’ll hunt f
or us as long as it takes. My dadaidh will, at least.”
Gavran’s dadaidh had always been a supporter of Brigdhe’s infatuation of Gavran because of Tavish’s many sons. Linking the families meant more male hands in time of crisis. Before the wishes, Gavran had been his only boy, and even now, Finn was years from working alongside them. The wishes had given Gavran the woman who would best help his family. “So where would they camp?”
“In the same spot my dadaidh and I bed down when we come to town for market, I suspect.”
“Then we should go now. We’ll have to do it while they sleep.”
Gavran changed directions. The moon was almost directly overhead by the time he pressed a finger to his lips and pointed in front of them. They crouched down and crept forward. Gavran dropped to his belly behind a thick patch of blackthorn bushes, and she mimicked him.
She pushed a clump of blackthorn leaves with their tiny white flowers out of her way to get a better look at the clearing. Only one man sat by the fire, his back propped against a wagon wheel and his head tilted back. The fire at his feet smoldered with coals that had only an hour or so left on their life. They must have decided to set a watch in case she came back to curse them in their sleep, and the one who took the first watch dozed off.
She raised her eyebrows at Gavran as a question. He shrugged and leaned forward. His lips touched her ear. Her stomach betrayed her, sending flutters up into her chest. She wanted to shove him away, but forced herself to stay still.
“Looks like Tavish.” His breath was warm and moist against her skin. Even with his lips touching her, she strained to hear him. “Dadaidh must be asleep in the wagon.”
He pointed at the birch tree above them, at her, and then at his eyes. She shook her head emphatically and pointed from him to the tree. Even if she hadn’t been able to succeed because of the wishes, she had more experience trying to nab items that didn’t belong to her than he did. He should be the lookout.
His jaw tensed, and he shook his head as well.
This was foolish. She wasn’t going to waste time arguing a plan with him in hand movements. Either of the men could wake and have trouble falling back asleep, and then they’d be stuck waiting for the next night, increasing their chances of being caught and separated in the meantime.
Cursed Wishes (Three Wishes Book 1) Page 6