Page 87 of Here in Your Arms
Her first thought, bizarrely, was that she might have fallen asleep on a camping trip. Maybe she'd gone hiking and had gotten turned around on the West Bluff Trail near Baraboo in Wisconsin. Maybe she was in the woods behind her aunt’s house in Prairie du Sac, near the Wisconsin River. Or—
But no. That wasn’t it. Everything was wrong, or rather nothing felt familiar.
She turned in a slow circle, panic starting to climb up her chest.
The last thing she remembered was the girl, Maella, how there’d been no substance to her, and then the spark of something sharp and wild crackling between them before...this. Rose could remember nothing else. Just that flash of heat and the pull in her chest. She’d felt as if she’d been falling sideways through a dream.
A wave ofdéjà vurolled over her so hard it left her dizzy. She'd been here before—not this exact place but imbued with this sensation, confusion and fright, being out of place and time. Moved.
Rose’s lips trembled while she breathed hard through her nose. A forest, she supposed, looked the same whether it was1978 or 1304. She needed to find something or someone to tell her where and when she was.
Maybe Maella had jolted her back to her own time.
Rose didn’t know whether to hope or to grieve.
The thought of Tiernan slammed into her chest like a fist. Her eyes burned.
Had that been their end two weeks ago? Had that been it? Her first foray into love already done and gone?
Rose stopped moving, her frown deepening.Love?The word came unbidden, and she recoiled from it like it burned.
No. No, that wasn’t what it had been. She hadn’t known him long enough. Just a few weeks, a handful of sharp, awkward conversations, one night tangled in each other’s arms. That wasn’t love. That was—God, she didn’t even know what it was. A lapse in judgment. A moment of weakness. A mistake.
But another part of her—quieter, but no less certain—whispered that it wasn’t just that.
She clenched her jaw and forced herself forward through the brush.
Almost from the first moment she’d seen him, felt his presence in a room, something inside her had gone still, like a compass swinging toward true north. He unnerved her, unsettled her, and challenged her, but he’d also made her feel safe in a way that was as confusing as it was undeniable. Even when she hated him and feared him, shefelthim.
Still, it wasn’t love, she told herself. It had been... proximity. Intensity. The kind of chemistry born of desperation and isolation and the madness of a world that made no sense.
Itfeltlike love, maybe. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Love was something that fought for you. It didn’t walk away without looking back. Whatever had been between her and Tiernan, brief and beautiful, it hadn’t been that.
A sudden crack of underbrush to her left snapped her out of her spiral. She paused, crouching instinctively. Another sound followed—low voices, men talking in hushed tones.
She turned, squinting through the trees.
Carefully, she edged closer, crawling on the ground, her hands and knees sinking into unimaginable forest foulness. A faint orange glow flickered between the trees ahead, the unmistakable shimmer of low-burning fires, dozens of them.
She crouched, holding her breath, and pushed aside a curtain of brambles, revealing the scene beyond.
A broad clearing stretched before her, rimmed by dense forest and bristling with activity. Canvas tents dotted the open ground, their sharp angles illuminated by firelight. Figures moved between them, men in metal helmets and glinting breastplates, the dull shine of their armor catching the light as they passed. Long spears slanted against tent poles, and rows of crossbows lay stacked beneath oilcloth coverings.
Voices drifted through the trees, low and clipped, unmistakably English in cadence and tone. Laughter rose in bursts from where a group of soldiers squatted near a pot hanging over a flame. Horses whinnied somewhere out of sight, and someone’s deep, commanding voice shouted across the scene.
There was no mistaking it—this was a military camp, a well-organized English one.
Her blood turned cold.
Definitely not 1978.
But was she in Scotland or England?
What did it matter?she decided. This was dangerous, was all she knew.
She didn’t stay to find out. Her instincts screamed, and she leapt to her feet and ran, dodging trees and roots, pushing herself through the undergrowth, thorns biting at her arms. Shedidn’t know or care where she was going, only that it had to beaway.
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