When I was able to open my eyes, I caught glimpses of William and Nan. I saw that they had carried me to Mordag’s cottage and put me in the upstairs bedroom under layers of wool blankets and sheepskins, but when I closed my eyes I was back in the dungeons and nothing could keep me safe or warm—not the hot tea that William held to my lips or the broths that Nan brought. Just by looking at the angel stone, my soul had been pierced. How could I ever have thought I could wield it as a weapon against the nephilim? How could I ever have thought I could save my friends back in Fairwick when I couldn’t even save myself?
“Foolish girl,” my nightmare inquisitor said when at last they came to take me to the torture room. “You didn’t come here for this.” He touched the stone and I felt a cold weight against my breast, as if a heavy stone had been laid there. “You came for your demon lover, to consort with him. Look, here is his devil’s mark on you.”
I looked down and saw the dark circles on my wrist where Liam’s hand had encircled mine when I banished him to the Borderlands. As he dissolved, the shadows had bitten into my wrist.
“You see what trafficking with the devil has gotten you,” he sneered.
The weight on my chest grew heavier, crushing my lungs. My hands clawed at the stone, trying to push it away, but it was too heavy. It held the weight of every regret—banishing Liam, loving Bill too late to save him, failing to save my friends and students from the nephilim back in Fairwick.
Somewhere I heard a woman’s voice say, “She can’t breathe,” and I knew that in a sheepherder’s cottage on a Scottish hillside I was strangling to death.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped with my last breath. “I couldn’t save you.”
“But you did.” I heard a man’s voice. “You saved me.”
I felt something press into my hand. In the cottage room, warm fingers gripped my hand. In my nightmare dungeon, I looked down and saw the heart-shaped brooch, then looked up and saw the red glass eyes of my inquisitor fastened on it. The mask couldn’t hide his surprise. I wasn’t supposed to have the brooch.
I curled my fingers around it. In the cottage room, a hand closed over mine. In my nightmare, the inquisitor opened his mouth and let out a raucous caw. Black glossy wings filled the room with wind and noise. I could barely lift my hand in the tumult, but then I felt another hand on mine, guiding it to my chest. As soon as the cold silver heart touched my chest, the weight burst. I opened my eyes, gasping for breath, in the cottage. William was by my side, holding my hand.
“She’s back,” I heard Nan say.
When I saw the look of relief on William’s face, I didn’t have the heart to correct Nan. I wasn’t back. I was trapped in the seventeenth century. But I did manage to squeeze William’s hand and whisper before I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, “I think I know how to get those bastards.”
Once the immediate danger to me was past, Nan came less often, leaving William to care for me. I felt bad that William was stuck watching over an invalid—and worse that, while I lay in a warm bed, Mordag and eleven others were in the dungeons of Castle Coldclough. Nan had told me that the number of the accused was up to twelve, but she was right that I was too weak to face the nephilim now. I had to gather my strength. I sat up when William brought me oatmeal—my parritch, as he called it—in the morning and broth in the evening. During the day I watched out the window at the foot of the bed. In the morning, I followed his progress through the heather as he led Mordag’s sheep, which a neighbor had been tending since she’d been taken, into their pastureland; in the evening, I waited for the moment when I’d spy him silhouetted against the lilac sky, a lithe shape like some pastoral figure on an antique vase. In between, I thought about the vision I’d had of the inquisitor. The angel stone he wore had exerted great power over me. I didn’t even like to think of how it had made me feel, but I forced myself, remembering the cold weight of despair that had nearly crushed me. Despair, guilt, regret—the stone had evoked every mistake I’d ever made. It seemed to pull them out of me like a magnet. Only the Luckenbooth brooch had broken the spell and released me. I lay in bed each day trying to figure it out, my thoughts spinning in fruitless circles.
Then one day after a week or so, I got up to meet William downstairs as he came in the door. His eyes lit up at the sight of me; his cheeks glowed red as apples from the cold air. I felt a corresponding flare in my own heart but then a pang, because I was planning to leave as soon as I was able to get the stone away from the nephilim.
“I’ve been thinking about what happened when I saw the witch hunter,” I said, as I spooned out the stew that William had made for us.
“Are you sure you want to be thinking about that?” he asked. “You were raving as if you were being tortured …”
He paused and looked up at me, his eyes shining in the firelight, and I suddenly wondered if he spent his days thinking about his captivity with the Fairy Queen. “I mean,” he continued, “I know you are worried about your friends and that you must get this stone to save them, but perhaps it’s better if you use this time to get your strength back for when it is time to go.”
“Is that what you did when you were in Faerie?”
He looked surprised but then nodded. “Aye. I thought of what I should do if I had a chance to escape. I even dreamed sometimes of the lass who would save me …” He looked away, embarrassed. Since we’d returned to the cottage, he’d studiously avoided touching me more than he had to in the course of nursing me back to health. Sometimes I wondered if that first night we’d spent here, when we’d come together so urgently in front of the fire, had been as much a dream as the dreams of the Greenwood. “But those dreams of mine were a great deal more pleasant than the ones you were having,” he said. “I don’t like to think of you dwelling on them.”
“I have to,” I told him. “I have to understand how I broke the angel stone’s spell, so that I can get it away from the nephilim. Not just for my friends back in Fairwick but for everyone here—for Mordag and the rest.”
He nodded. “Aye, I don’t like to think of what those bastards are doing to them. But I don’t see how we can help. They’re deep in the dungeons of Castle Coldclough and guarded by a squadron of those cloaked bastards. The whole town is terrified of them, everyone afraid to speak up in the kirk session lest they’re accused next. And when someone does speak, they’re struck dumb. I went to the kirk session on Sunday and watched Donald McCreavey try to speak up for his sister, but he fell on the floor in a fit. The minister said he’d been possessed by a demon and had him taken to the dungeons to join his sister. He was babbling all the while about all the sins he’d committed, how he’d stolen from the collection plate and watched the girls swimming in the burn naked. Harmless things, but he took on like he was the devil himself.”
“It’s the stone,” I said, guiltily thinking how much worse than Donald McCreavey’s were the stains I had on my own conscience. “It makes you remember all the things you’ve done wrong—and makes them worse—until you feel like your own guilt is crushing you.”
“That’s why you were gasping for air?” he asked. “But what could you have done …” He stopped as the blood rushed to my face. “Oh,” he said, “did it have to do with me—or who I became?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I’m afraid I caused you a lot of pain.”
William smiled crookedly. “I imagine I deserved it—and I can’t imagine whatever you did to me wasn’t worth the time I got to spend with ye.” He reached across the table and took my hand. “Dinna fash yourself, lass.” As he squeezed my hand, I remembered how I’d felt his hand in mine during my vision.