The priest sighed, walked over to the woodstove, and peered into the pan of soggy bacon. “My breakfast is ruined,” he muttered.
“So’s my daughter’s life!” Grace shot back, going to the pegs on the wall and taking down her jacket. “I want to leave now,” she said. “I have to go to the gallery and explain this to Megan.” Grey helped her slip into the jacket, then turned her to face him. “Megan will worry herself sick if she doesn’t hear from her sister,” Grace continued as she buttoned up her jacket. “She was likely in on Winter’s spying this morning.”
Grey moved her hands out of the way and buttoned the last two buttons, holding her collar in his fists as he pulled her forward to kiss her frowning forehead. “I’ll go with ye to see Megan,” he said before looking at Robbie and nodding. “Thank ye, MacBain, for being the voice of reason this morning.
We’ll try our damnedest to give Winter the time she needs.”
Robbie nodded. “If she’s not back in a few days, I’ll help ye go get her.”
Grey took his own jacket down from the peg, shrugged into it, and pointed at Daar. “Ye leave her alone, priest. She’ll come to ye when she’s done cursing ye out. Then she’ll probably plague ye with questions.” He grinned. “She’ll likely come back with a plan to make her destiny fit her desires.” Grey suddenly frowned. “Now what in hell are ye grinning at?” he snapped at Daar. “Ye look as pleased as a cat in a milk jug.”
Daar had his hands clasped to his chest, standing in front of the woodstove, smiling quite smugly. “I just realized something,” he said, his bright blue eyes sparkling. “For as distraught as Winter was when she left here, I notice she took her staff.”
Unable to do more than simply hold on to her horse’s mane as violent sobs wracked her body, Winter didn’t know and didn’t care where Gesader was leading Snowball. A raw northeast wind blew down from the summit, ripping what few leaves remained from the trees as it raked through the denuded branches with an eerie, ominous moan. Winter was oblivious to the building storm as she fought the emotional maelstrom howling inside her.
How could this be happening? How could her parents have kept such a terrible secret from her for twenty-four years? And Robbie. How could her cousin have betrayed her so wretchedly?
But even more horrifying, why her? Why had she been cursed with such an unimaginable destiny? She was nothing more than a dot of paint on a three-story-tall mural, not even significant enough to warrant a complete brushstroke. One human being in billions, and her parents dared to tell her the fate of the world lay in her hands?
And the power of knowledge? Most days she wasn’t bright enough to come in from the cold when her passion for her work kept her focused only on her canvas. She certainly wasn’t smart enough to find, much less defeat Cùram de Gairn.
Winter recalled the stories Robbie had told her about the young powerful wizard, when Robbie had given her the tiny black panther cub he’d brought back from medieval Scotland two and a half years ago. He’d returned from his eight-hundred-year journey not only with the tap root he’d stolen from Cùram’s tree of life, but with the hissing, squirming bundle of fluff she’d named Gesader.
Cùram was a tricky bastard, Robbie had told her, his description conveying a perverse sense of admiration as much as distrust. Diabolical, he’d called Cùram, powerful enough to move mountains and cunning enough to hide his precious tree in a cave in the center of a lake he’d created.
One day when Robbie had come across Winter sketching in the woods and shared her lunch, he had told her he’d actually seen Cùram. And despite there being hundreds of yards separating the two men eight hundred years ago, Robbie told Winter how he’d still been able to feel the young drùidh’s anger. But he’d also sensed that the centuries-old war between Cùram and Pendaär was not over, but truly just beginning.
Untangling herself from Snowball’s mane to close her collar against the chill settling in her bones, Winter suddenly realized she was still clutching the pinewood staff in her hand. She immediately tossed it to the ground.
Gesader stopped, which caused Snowball to stop. The panther padded back beside her, picked up the staff in his mouth, looked up to give her a deep rumbling snarl, and once again headed up the trail.
“I don’t want it!” she shouted to his back, quickly grabbing the reins when Snowball started after Gesader. “Spit it out!”
Her pet ignored her, her words uselessly carried away on the wind. Winter hunched low in her saddle, burying her face in Snowball’s neck as tears overwhelmed her in another wrenching fit of self-pity.
She didn’t want to be a wizard. She didn’t want to live for centuries, to become old and cranky and barely tolerated by people who provided for her from a sense of obligation. She would watch her parents die, and her sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews, until she was left alone with only Daar.
She might love the old priest despite himself, but she didn’t want to emulate him. She sure as heck didn’t want to become him.
She wouldn’t do it, she decided. Providence had no right to saddle her with such an impossible duty. She was only a young, untried woman against a powerful drùidh,no matter that her parents and Robbie had promised to help her. She didn’t even know what she was supposed to do, much less how to do it.
Darn it, she had just started to get her life on track. She’d just found Matheson Gregor and fallen so deeply in love with the man, the mere thought of knowing he’d die a timely death while she went on living without him made her heart wrench in despair. There had to be a way around this mess, a way she could help Daar and Robbie defeat Cùram without completely binding herself to Providence.
Winter bolted upright in the saddle. That was it. She would find a way to lure Cùram into the open so her cousin could finish him off. Aye, Robbie was a guardian, and guardians had the power to protect mankind from drùidhs. He could defeat Cùram. He’d done so once before, he could do it again.
But cùramwas Gaelic for guardian. Was it possible to be both a guardian and a wizard? Was that why even Robbie needed her help?
So many questions with only more questions for answers.
Snowball suddenly stopped, and Winter blinked at her surroundings. How long had she been riding? She was still on TarStone, but she couldn’t recognize where exactly.
And then she saw it, just off to her right, the broad trunk of a majestic white pine. She moved her gaze up the perfectly straight trunk, from the fluffy pile of leaves and pine needles at the bottom, up past several jutting branches as thick as her waist, all the way up to the piece of tin covering the bluntly cut top. Broad fingers of dried pitch oozed down several feet from under the cap, mingling with shiny wet slivers of fresh sap.
This was it. Gesader had brought her to Daar’s tree of life. He must have followed the priest or her papa or Robbie here at some time. But why had he brought her here now?
Gesader sat down in front of the pile of leaves at the base of the pine, the thin, puny staff still held in his mouth. It stuck out over two feet on each side of his head, a pale contrast to his solid-black fur.
“What?” she snapped, scrubbing tears off her face. “Leave it with the pine,” she told him. “I want nothing to do with the magic.”
Gesader emitted a rattling growl from deep in his chest as his long thick tail whipped angrily back and forth, stirring a flurry of leaves behind him.
“I don’t care. I want to go—” She snapped her mouth shut. Where didshe want to go? Not home. Nor to her gallery; she couldn’t face Megan right now. She couldn’t face anyone, not even Robbie. Whenever she had been beside herself with grief or worry or excitement or joy, she had always gone to Robbie. But she couldn’t even seek comfort in her dearest cousin. Not yet. Not until she could sort out the mess she was in.
Tom, then. She would go stay with her good friend.