Page 22 of Blood of the Thistle

Anna didn’t startle at the sound of his voice. It was so low and measured and seemed to blend with the darkness itself. She lifted her head and found him watching her, his eyes open now, though his posture hadn’t changed.

“At least it’s not raining,” she said, latching onto the only positive thing she could think of at the moment.

He lifted his hands and rubbed the heels of them over his brows, the chain attached to one wrist making a small clinking noise.

She wanted very badly to ask him how he’d managed to escape, or how he’d gotten one cuff unlocked, but didn’t want to remind him of any trauma. Part of her hoped that today he would be more himself, whatever that meant. She hoped the horrors of his captivity would loosen their grip long enough for him to understand what year it was, and that England wasn’t hunting him.

“We should move,” he said next, coming to his feet, “ere the militia down there does.”

So much for hope, she thought dejectedly, rising to her feet. He, apparently, was still lost somewhere else, but with luck they would walk right into some town, where she could direct him toward the help he so desperately needed.

As they walked, the silence between them was a vast, empty space. Anna’s thoughts churned, circling back to the moment everything changed. Ryan’s hand on her arm, a sudden blink, and then... this. The forest. Bram. It was impossible, unless she accepted the kind of dark, genuine magic she didn’t believe in.

She watched Bram’s steady pace, the iron shackle on his wrist a glinting, undeniable fact. The alternative was even more terrifying: that she was the one who had lost her grip. The strangeness wasn’t just the forest, it was him. He felt too real, too authentic in a way that made her own world feel thin and distant. The unsettling thought took root: maybe he wasn’t the one who was lost.

Thankfully, after a while, the rising sun distracted her from the endless cycle of questions. After setting out in the darkness, they had descended into a shallow valley before climbing again, but not half as high as they had yesterday.

From the crest of the hill, the countryside unfolded in every direction, a succession of broad ridges, wooded valleys, and vast stretches of farmland fading into the morning haze. The landscape was beautiful, almost impossibly so, with the rising sun painting it with strokes of gold and white light. Yet as Anna slowly turned in a circle, the beauty gave way to unease. It was England... and yet somehow it wasn’t.

“Where is... everything?”

Bram stopped and turned, his expression unreadable. “What thing?”

She swept an arm toward the vast, empty horizon. “Roads. Houses. Power lines. Signs of life.” Her voice cracked on the last word as she stared out at the unbroken wilderness.

Not a single road threaded through the valley below, no farmhouses dotted the hillsides or the plains, no fences divided fields—as far as she could see, there wasn’t any sign of life, of civilization.

What the hell had happened to her?

Before panic could settle, a more practical consideration came to her. She curled her fingers around the strap of her bag as it crossed her chest and pinned Bram with a stupefied glare. “Where are we going? There’s nothing out there. It’ll take us days to cross all this,” she said, a bit of panic creeping in after all. “And to get to what? To where?”

His ensuing scowl looked more annoyed than angry. “I dinna ken what ye expected to see.”

She held up her hands with some growing frustration—he hadn’t answered any question she’d asked—but just as quickly recalled his predicament, and knew she didn’t want her anxiety to affect him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, using a calm tone. “Just tell me—where are we?”

“North of York is all I ken,” he supplied.

Her shoulders slumped, and she gazed out over the vista again. “But... it looks like the end of the world.”

“If York is where ye need to be,” he said, shifting his weight onto his left hip and leg, but otherwise unmoving, “I might suggest we part ways here.”

She couldn’t read his tone, couldn’t say if he might prefer that or not. She considered the endless, uninhabited landscape before her and warred with indecision.

“York is behind us, I suppose,” she said then, meeting his gaze.

He nodded.

But she couldn’t leave him, not in his condition... could she?

Not with her conscience intact, she decided. It would be fine. It had to be. As vast and empty as this all seemed, eventually they had to find a road, a town—something. From there, she could find a phone, call a cab, and get back to her hotel. She just had to get him to civilization first.

Forcing what she hoped was a convincing smile, she said, “It’s fine. I’ll—we can keep going.”

Either he didn’t want to debate it more, or he simply didn’t care. He turned and carried on, thankfully seeming unbothered by her tiny outburst.

Anna shifted the bag from her right shoulder, where she always carried it, and slung the strap over her left, hoping to ease the ache that had settled along the right side of her neck and into her head.