Page 37 of Highlander’s Protector

As he turned at her, the haunted look on his handsome face made her stomach drop. Why did she have the feeling she had almost lost him?

“Yeah,” he said and backed away. “Let’s stop for the night. Eat. Rest.”

He looked like a ghost. And why did that scent of lavender, so strong now, turn her stomach upside down? “Tell me what’s the matter!”

“Let’s just start the fire…” He leaned down and picked up a branch, then stared at it as though it pulsed a miasma of pestilence. “I might even tell you.”

CHAPTER 14

The sky above them was gray and fading to indigo as the daylight died in the west. David cut a stick into shavings to make kindling.

His hands hurt as he ran the knife along the bark of the birch branch over and over, watching the shavings separate and fall into the pile. They were all wrong. Too thin or too thick. The blade of the knife came dangerously close to his thumb holding the stick. His fingers shook as tension hardened his muscles and sinews. Sweat covered his face, droplets falling onto the shavings.

He fought the allure of the rock ten steps away. The tug had the force of a bulldozer, insistent and unstoppable. The smell of lavender made him sick. Was Sìneag somewhere nearby? Was she watching from behind one of the rocks or trees? Was she lurking in the bushes?

Was she finally opening the tunnel for him?

And if so, what the hell was he still doing here, cutting this goddamn stick?

The next slice of his knife tore a white-hot pain through his thumb. He grunted as a line of blood flowed from the cut.

He sucked it, the taste warm and salty.

“’Tis enough kindling, David,” came Anna’s worried voice as she rose from the travel sack she’d been rummaging through and came to him. “Dinna hurt yerself. Come, show me.”

“It’s nothing,” he said with his thumb still in his mouth.

As she lowered herself in front of him, shielding the rock behind herself, he felt easier. He could drown in her big eyes, shiny and glistening, the long lashes, the arches of her eyebrows. Her high cheekbones and the delicate bone structure that gave that otherworldly look. Why did he keep searching for a faerie when he had her right by his side?

“Let me see,” she insisted, and, as though enchanted, he stretched his hand out to her.

She took it gently in her hands, her touch like silk against his rough skin. As she looked down at his thumb, he couldn’t turn his eyes away from her. She was by no means Instagram perfect. She had smooth skin, but the tiny, silvery traces from old blemishes, perhaps teenage acne, were visible on her chin.

They were like flecks on a panther’s fur. Awe-striking.

A few scratches on her cheekbone, perhaps from the oubliette or from when she’d been kidnapped, were the battle markings of a warrior. The signs of her unbendable spirit shining through.

Her fingernails were chipped and partly torn off, with dark crusts. She must have tried to claw her way out of her prison.

How could he not admire her, stare in awe at her every hair, every eyelash, the very shadow she cast over the ground? He didn’t know how light didn’t glow through the pores of her skin. What was that dumb rock compared to this girl?

“The bleeding stopped,” she said and met his gaze. Her lips were just an inch away. The pull to taste them was like the force of a storm pushing him in the back. “Let me put a bandage over it.”

“Don’t,” he said. Don’t move, he wanted to say.

He could swear she swayed just a little bit towards him, as though a wind pushed her forward. But she didn’t move closer.

Instead, she rose to her feet. “I’ll start the fire. Yer kindling is ready.”

She went to the travel pouch and took out the fire steel. As she hit the carbon steel against the piece of flint, sparks flew and landed on the dry moss and shavings.

“That rock,” she said as the kindling caught fire. “Have ye seen those before?”

He poured water he’d previously boiled from his uisge horn flask over his cut. He hadn’t had uisge in days. The horse Anna had stolen had some provisions in the travel sack; perhaps there was some uisge he’d missed. He desperately needed some.

Strangely, he hadn’t craved alcohol as much. Not until now. Not until the rock he’d been searching years for was right in front of him, and he wasn’t doing anything to pass through it.

He opened the MacDowell travel sack and retrieved the cheese, which was a bit moldy and sweaty but still edible. A little loaf of stale bread. Dried fish. A small horn flask. He opened it…uisge… Part of him wanted to drink it, but he couldn’t allow his mind to be clouded. Not tonight. He put the cork back in.