Page 84 of Here in Your Arms
But Rose was looking at Maella like she’d just peeled back a curtain and found something impossible staring back at her.
“Who are you?” Rose asked, her voice hollow with shock.
Maella flinched and froze. Her face went deathly pale.
“Are you a...time-traveler?” Rose asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
The question hung between them, crackling with life. Something in Maella’s expression shifted, the twitch of her jaw, the way her pupils seemed to contract ever so slightly.
“A...what?” she whispered, and her voice had changed—lower, older, as if a different part of her had stepped forward. She rose to her full height, which didn’t quite reach Rose’s chin. She was tiny, almost impossibly so, for a girl in her late teens.
“I think you just slipped up,” Rose said. “You’re not from this time, are you? It’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid. I’m in the same boat.”
“I don’t know what you’re—” Maella began, panic rising in her throat, her speech suspiciously devoid of any accent now.
“Oh, my God, “Rose breathed, incredulous. “It’s true. You’ve come from another time. Maella, don’t be scared.” She stepped forward, instinctively reaching out, placing a steady hand on the girl’s forearm.
And froze.
Her fingers touched fabric. But not skin—there was no warmth, no weight. It was like touching the memory of a person. Her palm pressed lightly against Maella’s arm, but there was no resistance, no substance beneath it—only the suggestion of form, as if Maella were made of mist and light, a sketch rather than a living thing.
A cold ripple slid down Rose’s spine. Her stomach turned over.
Maella stared at her in wide-eyed horror.
Rose looked down again, her breath catching. “What...?” she whispered, squeezing her fingers to delve further. There had to be...
Though Rose could feel nothing of substance, Maella winced and reacted sharply, her free hand flying up between them. She didn’t push and it wasn’t quite a strike, and yet Rose felt it. It felt as if shehadbeen slapped, and hard.
And then something happened, something familiar, electrifying, and yet...otherworldly. There was no flash of light, no sound, no wind, but everything around Rose seemed toshimmer and buckle. The fields lifted and rolled toward her, looking like a heat mirage on pavement, warping the edges of the world.
Rose’s breath caught, her hand still on Maella’s wrist, touching nothing, anchored to nothing.
“Mother absolve me—I’m sorry,” Maella said, covering her mouth with her hand.
Rose blinked. And then everything went black.
***
Tiernan rode hard for Dunmara, the hooves of his horse thundering against the muddied road, flanked by forty of his men who struggled to match his pace. The wind bit across the open road as Tiernan spurred his mount harder, the rough hills and scrub-covered lowlands of Druimlach blurring past. He barely registered the cold, or the ache in his shoulder, which likely would plague him for another few weeks yet. His jaw was clenched tight, his eyes narrowed against the sting of wind and worry.
Emmy MacRae’s missive arrived just after dawn. The note, scrawled in haste, and the handwriting slanted in jagged lines, suggested panic.
The words written screamed it.
We need you. Rose is gone.
Not sick. Not hurt. Gone.
More than two weeks had passed since he’d left her at Dunmara, two weeks spent trying to purge the images of their night spent together, trying to forget the look on her face in Dunmara’s yard before he’d ridden away from her. Two weeks of telling himself he’d done the right thing. And yet every night since, he’d lain awake trying to cleanse her from his mind, willing himself to forget the feel of her skin beneath his hands,the way she’d whispered his name in the dark. But the memory clung fast—worse than pain, sharper than guilt—and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the image of her body tangled with his, or the maddening quiet that had followed when he’d left her behind.
He hadn’t expected her absence to leave such a mark.
He had known loss before. He’d buried men, held brothers-in-arms as they bled out in the mud. He’d mourned Margaret with a quiet, private grief—the grief of duty unfulfilled, of intentions unkept. But this was different. Though Rose hadn’t died, her absence hung heavier on him than Margaret’s passing ever had. What he’d shared with Rose, even briefly, was previously unknown to him. It had been real, impossible to forget, and he was haunted by what had been left undone between them, unspoken.
Several times over the past fortnight, he’d nearly turned his horse toward Dunmara. Each time he’d stopped himself, telling himself it would only make things worse. She was better off at Dunmara. Druimlach was no place for her, he reminded himself again and again.
But now she was missing.
