Page 29 of Only a Breath Away

I said, “I visited them.”

Emma said, “Was it empty?”

I said, “Lizbeth and Sean and the rest of the family were unaffected.”

Lady Mairead said, “I visited them as well, everyone was there, but tae be safe I dinna make contact… buthonestly, what hae the rest of ye been doing? This is a disaster! Hae ye all been here playing in the lake while every subject in Magnus’s kingdom has vanished?”

I said, “Ye canna hold any of this against us, I hae been jumping tryin’ tae reach Kaitlyn. Quentin has just returned from a rescue attempt. Someone had tae remain with the bairns. This is not a time for recriminations.”

Lady Mairead pursed her lips.

Emma put an exclamation point beside the year 1707. “What did you mean, Lady Mairead, by ‘safe you didn’t make contact…’?”

She raised her chin. “I believe that the moment this all went awry was when Master Cook began looping at Dunscaith castle tae rescue his wife, m’great-great-granddaughter Sophie. I think the times which hae been altered are ones we hae visited after that fact. I want tae make sure we arna altering more of them. I saw enough tae ken the year 1707 is nae empty.”

Quentin said, “I was in the year 1290, it is also empty.”

I said, “But I have been tae 1290, when I go tis a kingdom under my rule.”

Emma wrote the year on the paper twice and circled one and drew an exclamation point by the other.

Zach was scrutinizing her code. “Em, you think this is helping?”

She put her hands on her hips, looking at the chart. “I think so, yes.” She drew a dotted line down the middle of the timeline. “On the left side you have dates doubling, emptying, shifting, like alternate universes. On the right you have empty years, like an unraveling.”

She wrote the current year in the middle. “The present is not empty, we are all here, we are able to jump in and out of this place.”

Lady Mairead pointed, “Put the year 1589 there as well, that is, I believe, the central point of this entire situation. It was the year I told James that Sophie would be at Dunscaith.”

Chef Zach said, “Figures it would come down to James.”

Emma wrote a one then a five and—

Quentin groaned, “That’swhat James carved into the wall in the dungeon at Stirling!” He jumped up and grabbed a red marker from the box on the table. He uncapped it and wrote, JC one plus five plus eight plus nine. “I added them together. I thought it meant that was how many days he was in the cell, but that’s a year. Was he telling us to go to that year?”

Lady Mairead said, “I will go, someone needs tae tell Master Cook—”

Quentin said, “What makes you think he is there?”

“Of course he is there, he is looping! I will go and tell him tae calm his arse down, or I will be forced tae stop him with my dagger. He is ruining everything.”

I chuckled. “I think we can send someone with a better bedside manner tae intervene with Master Cook.”

I said, “Tis clear we believe 1589 is the moment when we unleashed Ormr and Domnall and certain doom?”

Colonel Quentin asked, “But what exactly happened to the timeline? And what tools do we have to fix it?”

Zach said, “We have the vessels and we have the tracker.”

Fraoch said, “We hae the atrocious Trailblazer.”

Emma said, “We have the gold strands.”

I watched Lady Mairead as she sat immobile, staring straight ahead.

I said, “Lady Mairead, where is the rest of it?”

“I daena ken what ye mean?”

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