Page 70 of Lost with a Scot
“Aiden!” she rasped, her voice hoarse.
Fain sneered at her, then Aiden. “So this is the man you chose...” Fain smiled coldly at Aiden. “She will never be yours.” He struck Aiden in the jaw, and Aiden stumbled back. Everything seemed to slow down as Anna screamed a warning, but it was too late.
Aiden fell back over the edge of the well and vanished into the darkness of that terrible void.
Anna’s world closed in around her, shrinking from a vast life of endless joys and possibilities to one small, dark space that barely left her room to breathe. She had survived losing her parents, her home, being separated from her brother, leaving everything behind, even her own memories.
But Aiden... Aiden was the one thing she could not lose, the one thing she had jealously guarded as her gift from the heavens. But she’d thought she could deny destiny, and now it had cost her everything.
“You will kill him,”a woman’s voice said in her head.“But death is perhaps not the end...”
Anna lifted her face up as Fain stepped toward her. Her hands were still on the blade. She tried to stand, tried and failed to wield the sword, but the pain in her head and arm were too much for her, and she was off balance. He wrestled it from her hands. She collapsed, her knees too weak to fight anymore. Fain lifted the blade, the dying light of the setting sun flashing a stark red-gold over the steel of the sword.
Her gaze fell on the well. If fate had any mercy left, she prayed that her soul would join Aiden’s in that quiet, dark mystery of things that continued beyond death.
CHAPTER18
Aiden was sinking into darkness. The cold black well water swirled over his head as he was lost in that place between the living and the dead. Every moment of his life, both large and small, good and bad, played across his mind in brilliant colors, as if in one final quest to find meaning in it all.
He felt each lash of his father’s whipping cane, the cool water of the fairy pools knitting his soul back together, the smiles on his brothers’ faces as the three of them ran free in the hills in those rare moments when they knew peace. The feel of the fresh heather in his hands as he presented a bouquet to his mother. The way she smiled as if that simple act had taken every sorrow away from her, even if only for a few hours.
He relived the night Rosalind had fled into the darkness and the letter he’d received a month later saying she had married an Englishman and would not be coming home. He remembered his father’s deathbed, watched as the man drew his last breath and a flame guttered on a candle that burned too low nearby.
It seemed as if his life had only ever held darkness, but then he saw the light, the love that had always been there for him. His friends and siblings had never truly left him. It was he who had left the world... until Anna. She had chased him back into the light. She had given him back his life, and now he had failed her...
“Death is perhaps not the end...”The Romani woman’s voice echoed around his head. She had never said those words to him the night she’d cast her warning, when he’d been but a boy, yet he heard her voice now clear as a bell, as though she were speaking in his ear.“Pass through the water and save her...”
He pushed away the encroaching darkness and the weariness of death stealing through his limbs. His hands spread out, catching on the rough stones of the walls of the well, and he pulled himself up, breaking the surface of the water as if breaking the barrier between worlds. He gasped, drawing air into his lungs. That sweet, glorious air sent strength back into his arms and legs. He climbed, gripping the cracks and crevices with his fingers, and fought against the pain in his abdomen where the dagger had pierced him. His body shook violently with pain and weakness as he tried to force his way up the steep stones. The opening of the well seemed so far away, and he was so very tired, but the Romani woman’s voice urged him ever onward.
“Save her.”
He reached the top of the well. The last princess of Ruritania was on her knees, hands digging into the soil as Fain wielded a broadsword high over her head. The small dagger still gleamed red with Aiden’s blood, abandoned on the ground by the base of the well. Aiden climbed over the top of the well and fell to his knees, grasping the dagger in his hand. Then he pulled back his arm and summoned the strength of every Kincade ancestor into that single throw.
The blade sailed true and sank deep into Fain’s back. For a second, Aiden feared the blade hadn’t gone as deep as he thought. But then the broadsword slipped free of Fain’s hands, and he stumbled a few steps before collapsing to the ground.
Aiden leaned back against the well, breathing hard as the pain in his lower belly grew too great for him to ignore. He covered the wound with his hand, trying to keep pressure on it. He didn’t think the blade had gone that deep, since the dagger was small, but he wouldn’t be sure until he saw a doctor.
“Anna... it’s all right, lass,” he gasped.
She opened her eyes and stared at him in shock. “Am I dead? Are we...?” She blinked as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“No, lass. Ye’re not dead.” He held out his free hand to her. “Do ye trust me?”
Her tawny brown eyes moved from his face long enough to see his outstretched hand. Then she was on her feet, running to him, and she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Oof.” He winced as his wife settled against him and buried her face in his neck.
“You came back,” she whispered over and over. He curled one arm tight around her.
“I promised I would never leave ye.” He took in the scent of her hair, the soil, and the trees. The once frightening forest seemed to have softened around them, now feeling more like a peaceful ancient wood. A soft breeze blew in from the north that smelled of the ocean and dreams of distant hills and fairy pools. For the first time in his life, there was no room for sorrow. No room for the demons of the past to haunt him. There was only room for love and hope for the future.
He wasn’t sure how long he and Anna sat by the old stone well, but after a time, she wiped her eyes and then kissed him sweetly upon his brow, then his closed eyelids, then his cheeks and finally his lips.
“You died for me.”
“Only a little,” he teased, but she didn’t laugh.
“I tried to stop you from coming here...,” she sniffled.
