Page 41 of Shaw

He realized now that some of the nonsensical things the melia had uttered could have been presaging. Before they had cursed themselves and their forest, they might have looked into the future, for when they retreated into their beloved trees the woodland Fae did not exist in any one time, but in all times.

Never follow a melia when she enters the forest world, son, his sire had told him. For if she dies for any reason while you remain inside the tree, you shall never again escape.

“Fletcher, you’re starting to scare me,” Lark’s sweet voice said.

He looked at his wife, who was standing in front of him and holding both of his hands in hers. Her eyes shimmered with a fear he hadn’t seen since they had wed.

“Forgive me, my uiseag. My memories blinded me for a time.” He pulled her into his arms, as holding her petite, slender body gave him more comfort than anything else in the mortal realm.

“As long as you’re seeing me now,” she said, hugging him tightly.

Against her bright copper hair he murmured, “Shaw’s disappeared with Mistress Scott. Would you come with me to the Stone Forest?”

His wife drew back and frowned. “You think your brother took Julianne back there?”

“I cannae tell you. I only ken I must go there, but I need you with me.” When she nodded he bent to kiss her mouth. “Ever and always I need you.”

“It’s the same for me, my love.” Fear still flickered in her eyes, but the expression on her pretty face grew determined. “We’ve got this. Let’s go.”

Fletcher stopped at the stables to get a horse and a double saddle, and rode with his wife along the trail leading to the Stone Forest. As soon as they came within sight of the cursed place he noticed again the same scent that had been in Shaw’s bed chamber.

“Do you smell that?” Lark asked as he reined in the mare. “It’s like the forest is alive again.”

“I think ’tis the scent of melia magic.” He dismounted and lifted her down to the ground before tethering the horse to a trail post. “Duncan and Nyall came here some days past to hunt a woodland imp. Before it died, it spoke to them through their thoughts, which such creatures cannae do.”

“Then maybe it wasn’t a woodland imp.” Lark took a few steps toward the petrified trees before she glanced back at him. “Fletcher, come here and hold my hand.” When he did she twined her fingers through his. “Something seems wrong here, so don’t let go of me, okay?”

“Aye, Wife.” Discreetly he drew his dagger with his free hand, and held it ready but out of her sight as he walked with her.

A terrible sense of sadness always came over Fletcher when he visited the Stone Forest, as the day the melia had cursed it and themselves had been one of the worst of his young life. After seeing Prince Mar end himself, Shaw had been so out of his mind with grief that Connal had asked Fletcher to take his place during the clan’s succession ceremony. He had placed their sire’s ring on their older brother’s hand, and was the first to pledge his loyalty to the new laird. A moment after he did the skies had turned dark, and dozens of lightning bolts had crashed down in the waters around Caladh. Later Fletcher would learn that a dozen young Finfolk had been badly burned by the terrible strikes.

It had been Shaw, he recalled, who had found all the melia gone, and their forest turned to stone.

Today the fading sunlight scattered through the stone trees, making their glassy trunks gleam, and yet here and there he saw the same faint sparkling that he’d noticed on the bed linens in Shaw’s chamber. His impulse was to blame Julianne for everything, for these changes had come only after her arrival on Caladh. Yet she had been proven mortal by Duncan, and as such could not have affected the island or Dun Ard.

“’Tis Shaw,” he muttered, and then noticed how closely his wife was watching him. “Dinnae fret, my love. I but wish reckon the source of the enchantment, if ’tis one.”

“It’s definitely here,” Lark told him, tugging him to a stop by an ancient stone willow. She gestured toward the glassy trunk. “Look.”

Upon closer scrutiny, what he assumed a layering of the bark instead appeared to be cracks in the surface of the trunk, as if someone had struck it with a hammer. In the very center of the crack a tiny twig with two leaf buds had been placed.

“When the melia cursed this entire forest to turn to stone, they killed everything, didn’t they?” his wife asked. When he nodded she frowned at the crack. “Then why is this tree blooming again?”

Chapter Eleven

Unwilling to wake up from what seemed like the best dream ever, Julianne snuggled closer to her man. He was holding her under a soft blanket atop a beyond comfortable bed. This had to be one of those thirty-thousand-dollar Swedish deals that only the insanely rich could buy, she decided, but she wasn’t with her ex. Mitch wouldn’t have spent that much, and besides, he hated cuddling. No, she was somewhere else, with someone else, and she wondered why she even had to wake up.

I could nap with this guy forever.

In the soft darkness of sleep she waited for a good dream to whisk her off; maybe she’d have that one she loved when she was a little girl. Everyone in Napa turned into puppies, kittens or bunnies that never grew up, but came to live on the farm with her and her parents.

You’re being an airhead again, Scott.

The exasperated tone of Eva’s voice made her heart hurt. “Sorry, girl. You okay? Still in Sacramento running the government’s computers, right?”

I moved away from Cali right after your wedding. I’m living in Canada now. I had to leave right after the ceremony or I would have killed that bastard.

So that was why her friend hadn’t stayed. “You didn’t miss much. The chicken at the reception was terrible. It had the weirdest purple sauce, like that TV dinosaur made it.” She owed Eva more than a sad food joke. “You were right about Mitchell, too. Sorry I didn’t listen.”