Page 105 of The Defiant Curse

This was the last thing she needed. Ian and Gryphen had promised her that this place had calmed down, and this didn’t seem like it was calm.

It was HAUNTING HER.

Now, they needed to get to the bottom of this.

“What did she want?” Michael asked.

Elizabeth thought back to the dream.

“She wanted me to find her heart. We talked about why I was here, and we both were looking for ourselves. She told me she lost her love, and she told me Duncan never loved her. We discussed the curse a little, and how she’s the only one who can break it. She said the only way for me to break it was to find her heart.”

They listened.

“She said he took that from her, too. I just don’t know what she means. She’s dead, and her heart is LONG gone by now. She’s dust other than her bones, right? Please tell me her heart’s not in some jar somewhere. I don’t need that kind of vacation.”

They reassured her.

“When we dug her up, she was put in the crypt. We made sure she was safe in there. We took everything from her grave. There was no jar, there was no sign of anything wacky. I promise,” Graham offered.

Well, there was that.

This was all weird and a little scary. Elizabeth liked things she could explain, and this was one of those woo-woo things she could NOT explain.

Michael held her hand.

“We’ll figure it out.”

She wasn’t done.

“She said Duncan didn’t take her heart. He loved another, and I’m not supposed to believe words. So, I’m not sure what there is to figure out or where to even start that,” she admitted.

Graham knew.

“This might be the final piece of the puzzle. We thought it was all done, but there was one last part.”

She lifted a brow.

“What?”

“The painting,” Michael said. “Elizabeth, you look just like Ceit, and when you arrived, the woo-woo began again. We were down by the lake, and it began bubbling. That’s not going to be a coincidence. It calmed down UNTIL you showed up. You are the catalyst in this, somehow. That’s where we start.”

She stared at him.

“A spring bubbling up?” she asked, trying to debunk it.

Both men shook their heads.

“It’s fed from the water,” he stated. “There’s no spring over here. The waterfall and the lake have the same source, and it’s never bubbled UNLESS there was something IN the water.”

She didn’t get it.

“Why would it bubble then?”

They had a suspicion.

“You were near it. You look like her, and Catherine’s buried in there. She was calm when she found her child in there again, but she’s not at rest. She was killed and put there for betraying Duncan.”

She didn’t like any of this, simply because she didn’t know how to adjust to it.