Page 116 of Promises to Keep

“Oh no! Are you on your way? Don’t hang up. We’ll be waiting for you by the gate.”

I could hear the comforting sounds of Katie explaining, and Magnus’s voice, low and calm, James in the background asking, “What the fuck...?”

And then they were waiting while I was driving, so many miles back, feeling scared and sorry for myself.

CHAPTER 54 - KAITLYN

Afew hours later, in the middle of the night, Hayley, Beaty, and I were sitting on the porch of the lodge, looking out over the lake. Hayley and I were holding hands, Beaty had her head in my lap, Hayley had a can of soda, but I could tell she really wanted a bottle of whisky, and in times like this we needed Quentin here to be smart with her about it.

We had sent Magnus, Lochinvar, and Lady Mairead to the kingdom to get Fraoch and Quentin back.

We were being quiet. Zach stood beside us, armed, a gun in a holster, watchful and nervous. James was out by the gate across the road.

Hayley and I would take over watch from him, but first I needed to sleep, but before that I had to help Hayley, so I was sitting up, keeping her company, and comforting Beaty.

I asked, “Getting tired?”

Beaty nodded, her head rubbing up and down on my thigh.

Hayley said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again. I freaking drove my husband to a doctor’s appointment and now he’s gone.”

She sighed and put her head back on the porch wall. “This sucks.”

“Yes, it does.”

Zach said, “I’m going to go inside and relieve myself, back in a minute.”

He left us on the dark porch, a cool night, stars in the sky.

I said, “It’s always hard when Magnus leaves, and definitely harder when he’s been taken away, I don’t know what to say except I’ve been there. I know it sucks to hear someone say that, because it seems to make light of your predicament, but I don’t mean it like that at all. I just mean to commiserate, and to say, the good news is that though this has happened to me, we also got Magnus back. Do you hear that, Beaty? We always get Magnus back. We’ll get Quentin and Fraoch back, we will. Magnus and Lochinvar and Lady Mairead have gone to Riaghalbane and that’s their mission — get Fraoch and Quentin back.”

Beaty’s voice was small when she said, “His shoulder was injured, Queen Kaitlyn, he ought nae be enduring any terrible privations. I am verra worried on him.”

“Me too, sweetie, me too.”

Hayley said, joking with that end-of-the-world dark humor common in the trenches, “Fraoch’s dick was broken, I am super worried about it.”

“Me too, sweetie, me too.”

She said, “You’re worried about my husband’s dick?”

“I’m worried about your whole husband for you, his dick especially, but they said he was in the recovery room, at least his vasectomy was finished. He was probably just a little loopy still, a little numb in the crotch, this is good news.”

Her chin trembled. “Why did I insist on doing the procedure now?”

“Well, you know, you wanted control over one thing in your lives. You and Fraoch have been at the whim of our dramas and you had one thing you wanted to do for yourself. You wanted to get it done. I don’t think you should blame yourself, you had a safe place, a guard.”

“I was scrolling through Twitter!”

“Without logging in, good lord, you are riding the pity-train. Chill out, stop blaming yourself, we need to get from self-incriminations to a proper broken-hearted waiting. He will be home, they will both be home.”

“You know what we were going to do tonight?”

“What?”

“Put a bag of frozen corn on his crotch and watch a movie in bed.”

“That’s why you’re holding the thawed bag of corn?”

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