Page 5 of Her Highland Destiny

The king swept the back of his hand toward Fergus, dismissing him as one might wave away an annoying fly.

Fergus put his back to the king and walked the long stretch of flagstone leading to the door. His feet echoed off the cold stone walls. He used the sound to keep himself in the moment, to lock his concentration to hold his thoughts to himself.

“Do not let me down, Fergus the Undefeated.” The title was said with a drawn out taunt.

The Undefeated. How Fergus hated the name, the intentional mockery King Edgar had bestowed while knighting him after that damned night. For truly there was no man as defeated in all the land as he.

2

The call of the stone was stronger on Skye, pulling Cassandra beyond the desire for sleep or food. Her bones ached from the constant sway of the saddle and hunger gnawed at her belly. It had been well over a fortnight since she’d left her home in Durham, perhaps longer. Some of her travel had been ridden on the back of her horse, some thicker areas walked through by foot, and still others requiring a vessel to carry her over water.

The skies rained down upon her for the better part of a week. She was drenched and her hands were locked in clawed fists from her grip on the reins. Though it was not yet winter, the cold froze her breath and her constant shivering left her back and ribs aching.

She had not known what to expect in being the Protector, but it was certainly not this.

Her upper body lay against the horse’s neck, seeking whatever heat she might gain from it. The beast trudged along, heedless of her suffering.

Cassandra blinked her heavy eyes once, twice. The third time they remained closed and a peaceful warmth spread through her, as though she were back home in the sunlit meadow of the orchard. She tried to push that memory from her mind, for it was too painful to recall – a time when she had been warm and well fed, when expectation was the worst of her worries.

Only it was not the orchard which blossomed in her thoughts, but a terrain very much like what she traveled in presently along with a man.

His chain mail initially made her assume the knight might be Phillip. But nay, Phillip had a brown steed and this man rode one as black as night. The man’s dark hair was longer than Phillip’s, coming down to his shoulders rather than cropped neat and close. Hoofbeats echoed in her head, growing louder, faster. Closer.

His expression was ferocious where it fixed on the path before him, his jaw locked with steely determination. He straightened and turned his head toward her, his gaze so dark his eyes appeared to be black. Their stares locked and she knew he could see her from wherever he was, as clearly as she saw him.

She drew a sharp inhale and sat upright on her steed, no longer weary. The image cleared away as though it’d never been there, much as the waters with the glittering gem had done when she’d first gotten the mark. And like the gem, she knew the man to be real.

An urgency filled her, stronger than before, pulling her, driving her to make haste to the fairy pools. The horse rode onward on powerful legs as though drawn with the same level of intensity as she. The wind roared, and the landscape flashed by with incredible speed.

All at once, her horse stopped and nearly sent her flying over its neck. Mist hung in the air like a gauzy curtain, blocking their path. Cassandra rocked in the saddle and clicked her tongue. The horse did not move. She looked behind her where there had been no haze, and once more to the front where it blanketed the trail.

The horse stamped its hoof to the ground. Restless, the beast shifted, only to stop and rear back.

Clearly it would not go any further. Perhaps it could not. Cassandra patted its neck and leapt to the ground. She drew her pole arm from the saddle. If nothing else, she would not be unarmed. Not with images of the knight still pounding through her mind.

She drew a deep breath and plunged into the fog. The air within was dewy and cool and thick enough, she could scarce see two paces in front of her. She clung to her pole arm and tapped it along the ground in an effort to avoid any large objects which might impede her path.

Water trickled in the distance. Her heart pounded and her blood roared through her veins. She was close. So close.

The wall of vapor cleared away and opened to a sunlit mountainside. Emerald grass shone in the golden light and large pools of blue-green water sparkled under wide-open skies. Her racing heart slammed to a stop.

She knew this place.

The gem had been there. She surveyed frantically over the surface of the clear water to the shallow depths beneath. No stone glinted back at her. She glanced up the sloping face of the mountain and found a number of such pools, all linked together with trickling streams and waterfalls. One of them must contain the stone.

She strode up the steep side to the next bit of water and glanced about the shimmering surface. Something flew past her peripheral on the opposite side of the multi-colored pools, silent and unexpected. A man.

He raced up the side of the mountain as though his life depended upon it. She straightened in shock. His movements had been too fast, too soundless.

Without hesitation, she ran after him, following on her side of the water. Clearly he knew where the stone was, given his haste, and it was not where she had wasted time searching.

His dark gaze met hers and her step faltered. It was him. The man she had seen only moments ago in her mind.

He stopped as well and stared, his powerful chest rising and falling beneath his chain mail with rapid breath. Lines creased the skin between his heavy, dark brows, as though he were concentrating. He was larger in person than in her vision. Much larger. He could crush her if she were a normal woman. Was this man someone she ought to defeat?

They stared at one another for the span of a long heartbeat before the urgency shrieked at her, spurring her onward once more.

He darted forward the exact moment she did, as though their bodies were connected. That’s when it caught her eye. The glimmer of a sparkle in the depths of a pool between them.