Page 30 of Blood of the Thistle

“I know,” she whimpered.

“The other dinna mean ye well, either.”

“I know that too. I know you didn’t have a choice. I saw them coming at you, and I heard what that man said about me. I know what would have happened if you... hadn’t...” The words died in her throat. She swallowed hard against it.

Anna looked down at the arm still braced securely around her. There was a shallow cut across the back of his hand she didn’t remember seeing before, and dried blood darkened one knuckle. She knew that some of the blood might not be his.

“Are ye afeared of me now?”

She almost denied it automatically. Instead, she sat with it, because after everything else that had happened, what was the point of lying? “A little.”

She had tried to pile ordinary facts about 2026 so high they might wall out this new reality, but the wall had crumbled. William Wallace was dead. Bram had killed two men before her eyes. The horrors were no longer outside; they were in her, and she didn’t know which to face first.

“I keep thinking I’m going to wake up,” she told him.

“Ye ken ye dream?”

“I think I’m inside a nightmare.” Her eyes burned again.

For several minutes neither spoke. The gelding picked his way between the stones while the second horse followed behind, and Anna watched the uneven ground pass beneath them.

Eventually she asked, very quietly, “Is it really 1305?”

“Aye.”

Anna closed her eyes and waited for panic to come, but what she felt instead was something stranger and infinitely sadder: a tiny measure of relief. At least she wasn’t losing her mind.

“What is amiss?” Bram asked.

She shook her head slowly. “Nothing. Everything.”

Gratitude seemed a ridiculous emotion after the morning’s horrors, yet she couldn’t deny it. For two days, she’d feared either he was mad, or she was. That she’d suffered some catastrophic break and conjured this world—and this man—from nothing.

But she hadn’t. Somehow, impossibly, she had fallen seven hundred years into the past.

The truth was preposterous, yet it settled in her with more certainty than the fear of insanity had. This one terrifying explanation was easier to bear because it didn’t require her to distrust her own mind.

But... now what?

“Where are we going?” she asked after a time.

“Home.”

“And where is home?”

“Craig na Coille. My lands lie in Buckie, east of Elgin. North of here, beyond the great forests.”

She let the conversation end there, her mind racing with questions. If this truly was the fourteenth century, every step north took her further from any landmark she might recognize, any clue that might lead her home. For now, this inscrutable man was her only guide, but she knew her ultimate goal could not be his.

She was afraid, but not of him. Not really. She feared his ruthless competence, the formidable scowl, the sheer size of him and the quiet intensity of his gaze. But not once since they’d met had she truly feared he would turn that violence upon her. From the beginning, his only concern had been her safety.

No, she concluded, resting a little more easily against his solid warmth. Bram MacCailin was not the danger. The fourteenth century was.

She sighed, watching the countryside slip past while trying not to dwell on the impossible conclusion she’d reached. After a time she glanced back over her shoulder, wondering whether the surviving Englishman—or a dozen others—might already be riding after them, but she saw no sign of pursuit.

Instead, her attention caught on Bram’s shoulder.

She saw it again in her mind’s eye—the flash of steel, Bram’s grunt of pain—and felt a fresh pang of fright, followed by shame that she had forgotten that he’d been injured until now.