Page 63 of Blood of the Thistle

“Jesu, lass, but there were bairns at the table.”

Okay, so he was upset that those weirdos meant to kidnap her or keep her, or whatever, but he’d controlled his temper for the sake of the children. Maybe she believed him, she wasn’t sure. Honestly, after how cool he’d been to her for three days, she rather thought he’d only been frustrated at the inconvenience of it, to have his meal disturbed, but not much else.

“I might say the same of ye, lass,” Bram remarked after a long pause. “Ye held yerself in guid stead.”

She shrugged, a gesture that felt disconnected from her body. A sudden, sharp need to cry burned at the back of her throat. “I was so shocked... I didn’t understand what was happening. And you... you always seem to know what to do.” She shook her head, the words tumbling out. “I shouldn’t get used to that. It’s not a good idea, relying on you to fix everything.”

“Nae,” he agreed.

She didn’t know what to make of his mood, what seemed an utter and inexplicable disinterest, when her heart still pounded in her chest. Sure, she’d seen plenty of violence in this century, but this was different. This wasn’t the detached duty of soldiers; it was the hungry, possessive way the old man had looked at her. Whatever those people had intended, she knew with sickening certainty it began and ended with her suffering.

She fought against tears still, but could no longer hold them off. Her entire body sank, shoulders, arms, and head drooping with despair. The tears came then, hot and sudden, spilling over before she could stop them. Her nose burned and her chest tightened, as if the air inside her lungs was choked. She swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand, but the tears kept coming, stupid and relentless.

I can’t do this anymore.

She’d been holding on—or rather blindly following along—telling herself she could endure this century, this danger, this man who’d kissed her and then acted as if it had never happened. But now, after the farmhouse, and with Bram speaking to her with an infuriating detachment, something inside her snapped.

“I just—” Her voice broke. She swallowed hard, trying to steady it. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Bram was quiet behind her, as rigid as the tree trunks they passed. The horse’s steady gait did nothing to soothe the storm inside her. She pressed her lips together and stared at the horse’s mane, but the tears kept coming anyway.

She was utterly, completely alone.

The realization washed over her with a crushing weight she had somehow managed to avoid until now. From the first moment she arrived in the forest, in the fourteenth century, there had always been something more immediate demanding her attention. She had been too frightened, too confused, too exhausted, too busy simply surviving to allow herself to think much beyond the next hour.

But now, in her misery, she dwelled upon the enormity of it. What if this was her life now?

What if there was no way back?

Her parents. Dear God, by now they had to be beside themselves.

She pictured her mother pacing the kitchen floor, telephone clutched in one hand while dialing yet another friend, another hospital, another police officer who most certainly wouldn’t be able to offer any answers. Her father was incapable of sitting still on a good day. He would fly to England, she imagined, organize searches, insist something must be done, something had been overlooked, that his daughter could not simply vanish into thin air. Mallory... Mallory would be terrified. She would be trying to reassure their parents while privately imagining every horrible possibility that could have befallen her little sister.

None of them would ever imagine the truth—how could they?

There would never be a body to bury, never an explanation, and never even the smallest measure of peace.

Somewhere, seven hundred years in the future, life would continue without her. Birthdays would come and go. Christmases would pass. Her parents would age quickly now, and maybe struggle to find joy. Her students would grow up, scarcely remembering the teacher who had disappeared when they were third-graders. New families would move into her apartment. Someone would pack her belongings into cardboard boxes. Her life would slowly become a collection of photographs and unanswered questions.

And she would still be here.

The tears came harder then, supposing she might never again hear her mother’s voice or her father’s laugh. She might never hug either of them again, never sit around the dinner table listening to the easy, familiar conversations she’d possibly taken for granted in the past.

She had spent the last week ignoring the larger picture, focusing only on getting through each day. It had never truly occurred to her that there might be no miraculous return home—that this impossible journey might simply be the rest of her life. The loneliness of that possibility was a weight that threatened to crush her.

She swallowed a sob, but it clawed its way back up, raw and ugly.

The horse’s hooves thudded dully against the damp earth, a slow, relentless rhythm that only made the silence between them heavier. Anna’s chest ached, her ribs pressing in as if trying to contain the storm of tears that refused to stop. She didn’t bother wiping them away anymore. What was the point? Who cared?

The forest blurred around her, a smear of green and gray, the scent of wet pine and rotting leaves thick in her nose. She swallowed another sob, her throat raw. The weight of it all pressed down—this place, this man, the way he sat behind her, unmoving, as if her breaking was nothing more than the wind rustling the branches.

Then, at last, Bram’s voice cut through her tears.

“Dinna weep, lass.” His voice was quiet, almost awkward, as though he had no more idea what to do with a crying woman than she had any idea how to stop crying. “The danger’s past.”

Anna laughed through her tears, the sound sharp and entirely without humor.

“Oh, well... great.” She scrubbed impatiently at her eyes. “Sure. Everything’s better.”