Page 88 of Here in Your Arms
The day bled into night, but Tiernan did not stop.
He'd ridden with fury in his veins throughout the day and night, pressing for answers, commanding searches along every road and trail for miles in every direction. But there had been nothing—no signs of passage, no witnesses, no tracks. Only her absence.
His cloak was soaked from the shoulders down, the spring rain falling steady now, thin but ceaseless, seeping into every seam of his clothes. The forest around him grew darker by the minute, the wet canopy overhead trapping the shadows and the scent of damp moss and smoke. Still, he pressed on, his horse forging through the undergrowth with stubborn footing.
He had dismounted an hour ago, letting the gelding rest while he scoured through the brush himself, having found a track—one small imprint in the muddy earth that might have been hers. One but no more, and possibly old, unrelated to Rose. But he’d chased it anyway, even as he knew...this wasn’t working.
He had no idea where to search, or even if his search of this time would only ever be fruitless.
According to Emmy, Rose could be anywhere—in any time.
The thought twisted in his gut as he crouched near a stream, bracing one hand on a slick stone and reaching the other into the water. It was cold and fast, biting at his fingers. He brought a handful to his mouth, drank, then splashed more over his face, rubbing the water into his eyes, trying to force the fatigue out of them.
He stayed on his haunches for a moment longer, the sound of the stream the only noise in the stillness around him.
Then something shifted, raising the hair on the back of his neck. He didn’t hear it—there was no snap of twigs, no breeze through the trees, no voice—but hefeltit.
A stirring. A presence.
His spine stiffened as the air seemed to change around him. He rose slowly, water dripping from his chin, his hand instinctively brushing the hilt of his sword. His eyes swept the clearing, every sense sharp, scanning the woods around him—but nothing moved.
Still, something pressed at him. Not from without, butwithin. A sensation more than a thought.
He turned his head, slowly, scanning the woodland surrounding him. There was nothing.
And yet... the feeling lingered, prickling at his skin, sliding through his blood.
A thought came to him. A whisper, maybe. Or not quite a whisper. More like a nudge from inside, a sudden knowing where there had been none. It was akin to recovering a memory, but one he’d not lived. As if something—or someone—had placed a thought in his mind.
South.
He couldn’t say why he thought it, or why or how the image came to him. But he saw it in his mind’s eye as clear as day: the curve of a wooded hill, a crooked tree bent like a bow, red clay streaking the earth. He didn’t recognize the place—not exactly—but something in him stirred with certainty.
His heart hammered now for a new reason. This wasn’t the way a rational man made decisions. This wasn’t reasoned or strategic. But he knew. Somehow, heknew.
She was there.
He turned back toward his horse, calling out to men in the vicinity, soaked to the bone and slumped wearily in the saddle.
“We ride south,” Tiernan said, already swinging back onto his mount.
“South?” one of his men echoed, confused. “What’s there?”
“Rose is there,” Tiernan said with certainty.
And he spurred his horse into motion again, cutting through the shadows of the forest with a new direction—and an unshakable sense that something, or someone, had just pointed him toward Rose.
***
Rose had walked for most of the day, her sneakers sodden from the waterlogged ground, the fine mist of rain having turned needling and cold sometime before midday. She didn’t know how long she’d slept after Maella had moved her—minutes or hours? days?—but the sun had been low when she stirred, and now it was slipping once more behind a line of mountains to her left, the light fading fast. She pressed onward anyway.
She didn’t know why she was heading north—only that she felt she must. Some unshakable instinct whispered that Dunmara lay in that direction, though she had no real proof of that except the quiet urging in her chest. The forest thickened, the trees growing dense and tangled, and she kept her arms and Emmy’s plaid tight around herself to preserve whatever warmth she had left. Her hands were red from the cold, her knuckles aching, and her cheeks stung where the wind had chafed them raw.
Everything hurt. But she kept walking.
She began to think she’d have to find shelter, some hollow or overhang where she could wait out the night, and despaired at the idea of being stranded out here, in the middle of nowhere.She wondered if it were cold enough that she might die of exposure.
She heard the approach before she saw it—hoofbeats, distant at first, then pounding closer, echoing off the hills and trees like a call to arms. She’d ducked in the brush, her body tense, unsure if it was English or Scots, friend or foe. But the second she caught sight of the mounted figure as it came into view—tall and unmistakable atop his dark mount, his posture rigid, his gaze scanning the woods with deadly focus—she knew. Her heart surged painfully in her chest, the relief so sharp it left her breathless.
