Page 39 of Highlander’s Protector

“Are there so many? And why are ye searching for them?” she asked.

He swallowed and sat in front of her, cross-legged, on the ground. It was cool now that the sun had set. He wanted to tell her, and yet uneasiness crippled him. She wouldn’t believe him. She’d think he was insane. He’d lose her trust forever.

“Because what you heard is true,” he said. “Faeries do make people disappear near them. Well, not faeries. One faerie. Her name is Sìneag. The rocks are for traveling in time. They’re ancient Pictish rocks that open the river of time.”

A heaviness at the back of his spine prickled. Was someone watching them? Sìneag? He looked around and saw nothing but the shadows of trees and bushes.

No Sìneag.

He looked back at Anna, who kept frowning at him, her eyes wide.

“People don’t just disappear near those rocks,” he said. “They travel through time. I’m one such time traveler, from the future.”

She blinked and frowned, looking as though she wondered if she’d misheard him. In a moment, she might tell him he’d gone insane.

“I’ve been searching for a way to return to my time because I don’t belong here. I’m stuck here, imprisoned, held back from living my life.”

She didn’t contradict him, didn’t call him crazy or a demon caster, like Catrìona had called James. She looked at the rock and said, “Sìneag?”

And then words poured out of him. He told her about his parents, about Rogene, about dyslexia, about his struggle living in a family of geniuses. About football and about the scholarship to Northwestern that would finally allow him to live and to be something. Make something out of himself.

She listened.

“I don’t remember Rogene saying anything about you playing a role in the Bruce’s victory. But I may be wrong.”

He sighed. Darkness had descended around them, and he could see one half of her face in shadows and one half in golden firelight.

“I dinna ken if I believe ye or nae,” she said. “But I ken yer pain, David. The pain of never being good enough.”

He swallowed. “Sìneag, she sends people through time to find the person destined for them. If I do indeed have such a person in this age, it’s you, Anna. It’s you.”

She began shaking. “Sìneag…she’s real, is she nae?”

“Yeah. She is.”

Anna clenched her hands. “She came to me in the oubliette. I didna think she was real. I thought she was a vision. My insanity born of the darkness.”

His heart ached for her. “Anna…”

“She told me the same thing. There’s a man for ye, she said, David, and he’ll save ye.”

She went silent. Fire seethed in David’s body, and yet his mind told him to shut up, to withdraw, to go to the rock and put his hand into the handprint.

But his heart… Anna had changed everything. His heart knew it even if his mind refused to accept it.

Damned Sìneag. She was right. Right all along. Anna might be the woman for him.

If she wasn’t getting married to someone else.

If that marriage wasn’t intended to save Scotland.

And if she wasn’t from the Middle Ages, a time from which he desperately wanted to escape.

Her chest rose and fell quickly under her red dress, and he was hopelessly trying to keep one memory at bay. The memory of her naked breasts glistening with water in the moonlight…

There she was, beautiful and brilliant, and not calling him crazy after the stuff he’d told her.

“I dinna ken if I believe ye,” she repeated. “But I ken I dinna want to be with anyone but ye, David,” she said.