“Going home isn’t an option,” Gavran said. “You must know of someone who can help us even if you can’t.”
The spaewife’s glance dipped towards the hidden heather in that telltale way again.
“Few things could be worse than continuing under my curse,” Ceana said. “Please. If you know who can help us, all we ask is a chance.”
The spaewife set her lips in a way that said she didn’t intend to budge regardless of threats or begging. “The one person who might be a help to you has had enough heartache thanks to the fae. You’d only stir up more by seeking her out. I won’t allow it.”
Ceana chewed the inside of her cheek. It was a stretch, but the person the spaewife fought so hard to protect could be Lady MacDonald. Wearing the MacDonald heather was too big a risk for loyalty to anyone lesser. All the rumors around Lady MacDonald hinted she’d angered the fae and that she never left Duntulm Castle.
She didn’t even need the spaewife to admit to it. She merely needed some sign that her suspicion hit the truth. “Lady MacDonald would be the first to take pity on someone cursed by the fae.”
The spaewife’s body twitched. Hardly a movement.
One she wouldn’t have paid any attention to had she not been digging. One she could have imagined. But it was enough, especially since they didn’t have any better leads.
“Where’s Duntulm Castle?” she asked Gavran.
Gavran gave her a nicely done smile.
His smile sent warmth racing up her limbs. It felt nice to make someone proud.
More importantly, if he’d seen the twitch, too, at least she hadn’t wished it into existence. Gavran had always been more perceptive than she was when it came to people.
“It’s near the northmost tip of the isle. A good two or three days by foot.” Gavran parted the tent flap no wider than a finger’s width. “They’re still out there.”
The spaewife had told them she wouldn’t allow them to bring trouble to Lady MacDonald’s doorstep. If they let her go, she’d sound the alarm before they could escape. The warmth in her veins turned to ice. “She’ll tell them where she sent us. We have to kill her.”
Gavran grabbed for his sgian. Ceana jerked it away.
He tugged at the end of the rope around her waist. “We can tie her up and gag her. You don’t need blood on your hands.”
Her hands were already so dirty no one’d even see the blood. He’d near enough said so himself. She pointed the sgian at his chest. “It’d be worth it. To be free of this curse.”
“You say that now, but you’d regret it later. I won’t let you do that to yourself.”
Movement flashed in her peripheral vision. The spaewife darted for the door, screaming.
Gavran grabbed Ceana’s arm, pocketed the sgian, and hauled her back through the rip he’d made earlier in the tent backing. Men piled through the entrance of the tent as she and Gavran fled through the back.
“Which way?” she asked.
“We need to get into the crowd. We can’t move as fast, but neither can they. Maybe we can lose them.”
Gavran sprinted to the left, and she took off after him. They dodged between a fishmonger’s stall and a cart full of last season’s withered turnips. Gavran slipped into the market-day mob.
A firm hand seized her sleeve and tugged her back.
Chapter 11
“Gavran!” Her throat felt like it would split apart with the strain. If he went too far away, she was doomed. “Gavran!”
She twisted, but the man holding her clinched a hand on her other arm. He wore the juniper clan badge of the MacLeods on his bonnet. What chance could they have of escape if the whole force of Dunvegan and the MacLeods hunted for them?
She kicked the man in the shin. He cursed her and corkscrewed her arm. She yelped.
His head snapped to the side, and his eyes rolled back. He collapsed. She stumbled backward.
Gavran caught her. “I’ve never had to hit anyone before.”
There was a lot she’d never done before the curses forced her to change the way she lived. The guilt would pass. Mostly.
“There they are,” the voice of Gavran’s dadaidh shouted. “Stop them. They’re cutpurses.”
Ceana and Gavran plunged into the crowd. She glanced back. The mass of people parted behind them, giving their pursuers a clear path.
She smashed into something solid yet soft, and juggler’s bags rained down around her. More curses filled the air.
Gavran dragged her past two musicians with fiddles still on their shoulders and their mouths gaping open. They wove through the yellow, black, and blue bolts of cloth at the next stall and came out of the other side of the market.
“Should we try to hide or make it out of the town?” Gavran asked.
“Out.” Her shoulder throbbed from where she’d collided with the juggler. She could only pray she hadn’t broken or dislocated something. “If they rally the town, all they’ll have to do is wait until we need food or water.”
They ducked underneath laundry hung between two huts to dry. The raisiny scent of fresh bread baking over a fire wafted from one window, and Ceana’s stomach pinched. She’d been more spoiled by the good cooking of Davina Anderson than she wanted to admit.
They passed the edge of town and slipped into a cove of trees.
Ceana leaned her back against a tree trunk to catch her breath. “Do you know the way to Duntulm Castle?”
“I can get us near enough.” Gavran wiped sweat from his upper lip. His sleeve left a smear visible even across the stubble. “But we can’t take the open roads.”
She pushed away from the tree and took off again. Hesitation meant certain defeat now that their pursuers knew where they were headed.
She didn’t hear him behind her. She stopped and turned. He stared back at Dunvegan. “What are you doing?”
“My dadaidh’s sure to hire at least one dog to track us. We need to figure a way to throw them off.”
“Can’t we just travel down a stream?”
Gavran rapped his fingers on the tree trunk. “That would throw off a man but won’t stop a good dog. They’re trained to follow a scent in the air, not only on the ground.”
And they’d never be able to outrun them if Tavish and Allan managed to borrow horses. It was hopeless. She kicked at a pile of dead evergreen needles. “They’ll still smell our scent?”
Gavran’s fingers continued to absently stroke the bark. “We could disguise our scent. With fish. It wouldn’t trick the dogs for long, but it might confuse them enough to give us a chance to reach Duntulm Castle.”
“Even if we had a line or a spear, we’d never have the time to catch one before they caught us.”
“I wasn’t thinking of catching one.” Gavran took her by the shoulders and maneuvered her so, in a break between the trees, she could see the main road leading from Dunvegan. A wagon bobbed along it. “I was thinking of sneaking back into Dunvegan and hiding in the cart of one of the fishmongers when they leave.”
It could work. Assuming they could get back into the market without getting caught.
Gavran stood in front of the laundry line they’d passed on their way out, his arms crossed over his chest. It seemed they couldn’t follow through on a single idea without differing on how they should go about it.
Ceana fished a woman’s leine off the line. “We have to take these. Anyone who’s still at the market will recognize us otherwise.”
“I told you before. I won’t steal from innocents.”
“We’ll leave our clothes in exchange. It’s not stealing. It’s trading.”
He raised his eyebrows and glanced significantly down at his stained trews. “Our dung-covered clothes?”
“I washed them.”
She had, but in the cold stream water, the stains hadn’t come out, nor had all the smell.
It was one thing to take money from his father, money her wishes gave them. But he wasn’t going to make someone suffer who bore no blame in their si
tuation.
Ceana couldn’t have been like this before the fairy curses. The woman in his dream was his closest friend. He’d admired her. Trusted her. Maybe even loved her.
It was hard to reconcile the woman who gave her meager food to a child with the woman willing to take clothes that didn’t belong to her. It was like she had a split personality—the woman she wanted to be and the one the curses had trained her to become.
Men’s voices and heavy footsteps plodded by on the street. Ceana and Gavran dove deeper into the shadows of the alley.
The voices faded away, and Gavran returned to the clothes. If they delayed much longer, the market would end, and the fishmonger’s cart would be gone. He had to find a way to both take the clothes and not harm the family they belonged to.
He shoved his hands into the warmth of his cloak, and his right hand bumped his coin purse. It still held the coins he’d stashed there before they visited the spaewife. Near enough coin to replace whatever they took.
He slid out two smaller coins, just enough to buy them a bite of food along the way, and slid the larger cloak off the line.
Ceana’s I-knew-you’d-see-it-my-way smile grated on him, but he didn’t bother to correct her. If she remembered the coins, she’d want to keep them all. She was better off not knowing.
He turned his back on Ceana to give her privacy and donned the man’s leine, trews, and short jacket. He wrapped the fresh cloak around his shoulders and fastened it with his own clasp.
“You may turn around,” Ceana said softly.
He did, and his brain seemed to stutter to a stop. The deep V neckline of the dress and the white sleeves of her fresh leine that flared into a bell shape from her elbows to her wrists gave Ceana’s body curves it didn’t have before. The fabric’s rich walnut color brought out the brown highlights in her red hair and made her brown eyes look almost golden.
She was beautiful.
She smoothed her hair, looped the striped cloak around her, and pinned it at her throat with the broach his mamaidh had lent her.
She looked so different that only his dadaidh and Tavish would recognize her. Hopefully the same held true about him.
They strolled out into the emptying market square like a couple headed home. He didn’t see his dadaidh or Tavish anywhere. They were likely already out trying to hunt them down, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t left others in the square.
They passed the skinner’s cart. The reek of burned skin and hair hung heavy in the air. As often as he visited the market, he never got used to certain smells, and one of them was that of hide fresh from tanning. If pain had a smell, he’d always imaged that would be it.
Ceana moved in as if examining a pelt. He joined her and glanced out of the corner of his eye toward the fishmonger he’d remembered. The man had already loaded up most of what hadn’t sold. Had they delayed any longer over the clothes, they would have missed him. He was the only one at the market that Gavran had seen whose catch looked like he’d traveled from the north, the same direction as Duntulm Castle.
The man hefted the last barrel into the back of his cart and strode to the front. He climbed into the seat and snapped the reins across his ox’s back. The cart lurched forward.
Gavran tapped Ceana’s elbow. They moved off together after the cart. They needed to wait until they were out of the market’s main thoroughfare where they’d be more likely to be spotted hopping in the fishmonger’s cart.
The cart turned down a side street. No one was around, and the near-empty barrels bounced and rattled loudly, providing the cover they’d need.
He exchanged a glance with Ceana. She took two bouncing steps, grabbed the edge of the open cart back, and rolled inside.
He kept his distance and waited. No one called out or seemed to have noticed her nabbing a ride.
He marched forward and swung up onto the back as if the cart belonged to him and it was the most natural thing in the world for him to hop in while it was already moving. As soon as he was up, he pressed himself flat against the bottom and wiggled in between the barrels next to Ceana. Hopefully the barrels would hide them from passersby. If the driver looked back into the cart, there’d be no hiding from him.
His chest pressed into Ceana’s back, and his nose buried in the top of her hair. Even with the stench of day-old fish all around them, her hair still smelled like the evergreen needles they’d slept on last night. He couldn’t help himself from taking an extra breath.
Ceana stiffened, and he cringed. She must have noticed. He was an eejit. He hadn’t meant anything by it. Assuming Tavish still allowed it, he had no choice but to wed Brighde before the next full moon. His dadaidh had given his word. A man’s word needed to mean something, or what did he have left?
A weighed-down feeling ballooned in his chest until it felt like it would force his heart and lungs from his body. He recognized it this time—sadness.
Brighde must be a good woman or the wishes wouldn’t have chosen her, but in the short time Ceana’s presence had cancelled out the wishes, he’d noticed troubling elements of Brighde’s personality. He’d no way of knowing how many more he’d discover upon returning home.
Still, Brighde loved him, and strong marriages had been built on less.
He wriggled backward to put more space between himself and Ceana, but his back hit a barrel. There was nowhere for him to go. He gave up before he accidentally rocked a barrel and drew the fishmonger’s notice. He made sure his upper arm rested flat against his side, not touching Ceana.
The clatter of wagon wheels over the cobblestones of the Dunvegan roads turned to the crunch of stones and then to the soft grind of dirt. He shifted his head for a better view. He couldn’t see over the side of the wagon, but trees hung over top of them now rather than chimneys and billows of smoke. At least they’d left town. Every mile they could gain from town made it less likely the dogs would pick up their trail.
He relaxed his head against the slimy bottom of the cart and let the rocking ease some of the strain that’d knotted his shoulders since he cut Ceana loose from the tree two nights ago. He allowed his eyes to drift shut.
Something warm and soft squirmed along the length of his body.
Gavran’s eyes flew open. He’d dozed again. He blinked to clear his eyes of the fog of sleep. Ceana lay facing him, her smooth forehead even with his lips. She was so near that every rock of the cart bumped them against each other.
“Are you awake?” she whispered into his neck.
Her warm breath brushed his skin, and his pulse spiked. He’d never been this close to a woman who wasn’t blood before. His mind might feel one way about her, but his treacherous body felt another. He nodded, his lips accidentally grazing her skin.
She recoiled somehow even though she didn’t actually move. “I think we’re headed in the wrong direction.”
It took effort to pull his thoughts away from how soft her skin was. “What?” His voice came out with extra gravel he couldn’t control.
With her top arm, she pointed above their heads. “If we were traveling towards the northern lochs, the sun should be setting on our right.” She poked a thumb to the left of the wagon. “But it’s setting that way.”
Christ defend them. They’d gambled based on what the man had been hawking that the fishmonger had come from the northern system of lochs down to Dunvegan. Instead it seemed he’d come up from the southern lochs. They couldn’t stay in the cart if it was taking them farther from Duntulm Castle and Lady MacDonald.
“How many coins have we left?” Ceana asked. “Perhaps we could pay him to take us there?”
His Adam’s apple seemed to stick down between his collarbones. “I left most all of what we had to repay the people for the clothes we took.”
She tilted her head back and stared into his eyes. Her brown eyes darkened to a shade of black.
He’d hurt her before by doing the wrong thing and hurt her now in his attempt to do the right thing. He should have been used to it, but h
er disappointment still wrapped around his heart like a noose. “We’ll have to get out and pray we’ve gone far enough to throw the dogs off long enough for us to reach Duntulm.”
She broke eye contact. “You first. I’m not climbing over you.”
He inched forward, worm-like, and slithered onto his side until he could wrap himself around the barrel behind him. He used it to push himself forward so he faced the open back of the cart. His foot connected with something, and Ceana grunted loudly. It seemed impossible the fishmonger hadn’t heard her. He didn’t wait to find out or look back to see where he’d kicked her.
He twisted his body and rolled free of the barrels and right off the end of the cart. He smashed into the ground and continued to roll. Dirt stung his eyes and ground between his teeth.
He stopped and sat up. Ceana was already on her feet. She stalked off the dirt path and headed up the grassy hill that butted up against it.
He scrambled after her. “Do you even know if you’re headed in the right direction?”
She slammed to a stop. Her chest heaved. “You had no right.”
“It’s done now, and I can’t take it back. It was only a few coins.”
“You had no right.”
She emphasized each word so strongly that he wasn’t sure they were talking only about the coins anymore.
A fish scale stuck to her right cheekbone. He reached for it.
She swatted his hand away before he made contact. “Don’t touch me.”
“I didn’t touch you.” Fever-like warmth flushed up the back of his neck and into his face. Nor had he refused to give her the potion, or forced her to take the wishes upon herself, or let her drown. “It’s not fair to keep punishing me for things I didn’t yet do, especially when you’ve no way of knowing if I would have done them or not.”
She swiped the fish scale off her cheek. “You gave away the last of our money without asking me.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do is whatever it takes to remove this curse.” She looked like she wanted to shove him but couldn’t stand to touch him even that briefly. “Which way’s Duntulm Castle?”
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