Page 21 of Highlander Unraveled
That was why the new king, and the old, had trusted me as the guardian. The one who could keep him on the throne.
Even though it could have been mine. Everything. I didn’t want it—a notion that shocked most. But not Emma. She knew me inside and out.
I kicked the boat toward the shore. Still full of fury. The pound of my foot and scrape of the boat’s bottom masked the night sounds of bugs and animals.
All was silent on the wall across the way, patrolled by a few guards who remained hidden from those who might wish to attempt a siege.
And I was suddenly enraged at the injustice of this. That my wife should be missing, taken from me by the whim of Fate, and the world did not rage with me. The world was silent, sleeping, unknowing of my pain.
I fisted my hands at my sides, let my head fall back and a bellow loud enough to make the trees and ground shudder, erupted from my throat.
“Why?” I shouted.
Forget the boat.
I needed the cold of the loch sluicing over my skin, to calm me. I couldn’t return to the castle like this. I was ill composed, and of such a mind, my men would likely think I’d lost all sense and reason. I stripped, tossing my things into the rowboat that was moored up on the shore, and dove in.
The loch was frigid and churned with the same ferocity I felt. How many times had I used the loch and her angry current to battle the demons inside? To freeze the fiery anger? To work out the madness? An ire that had been present, before Emma, before she’d healed me, made me whole, found a crack in my fortitude and crept back in, causing me to feel as though I were balancing on the edge of a sword’s blade. Since I could remember, night swimming was routine for me. Nearly daily, even when snow fell upon my head and chunks of ice floated past. The cold focused me. Helped me to think, to work through whatever issue needed deciphering.
There was no ice now. The water was almost pleasant, allowing me more energy to think than to concentrate on staying warm.
But how could I think my way through this situation? Fate had stolen my wife from me. There was no way to grasp hold, to control the outcome.
I dove deeper, letting the cooler temperatures of the deeper water sink into my skin, down to my bones. This time, the water did nothing to quell the heat that raged in my veins.
God, I wanted her back. Needed her.
My life had been so different before she’d appeared. So lacking. I’d been on a downward spiral with no coming back, until she’d steadied me.
Emma.
I still remembered vividly the very first time I’d seen her, tumbling backward, end over end, long, shapely legs exposed. Her modern blouse stretched across her breasts—at the time I’d had no idea my wife had come from another time. She was simply an enigma. A unicorn. A thing of beauty thrust into a world of darkness and gore. She’d looked up at me with her large, almond-shaped blue eyes. Eyes that I looked into every morning since. Seductive eyes. Soulful eyes. When she looked at me, even now, I felt as though she saw right inside me, to the very core of my darkest secrets. But even knowing what those deep, dark secrets were, she’d not run away, she’d let me take her hand in mine. Let me touch her. Let me breathe in her sweet scent. Let me love her. Marry her. Create a child with her. Our son.
Soul mates, we were.
And now Fate was trying to rip her from me—had done so, in fact.
Kicking harder, arms pulling me deeper in a routine as familiar as my wife’s face, I touched the bottom, before shooting back to the top, lungs burning for a breath of air. Finally, I burst upon the surface, taking that much-needed gulp, flicking wet hair from my face.
The mountain that housed the stone circle jutted upward before me, the castle was at my back. Trees swayed in the breeze and the moon lit a path to the very top, to the glen, where I’d made love to my wife not an hour before.
I could still see her rising over me. Eyes hooded with desire, teeth biting her lower lip, creamy skin glowing with perspiration.
“Where are ye, Emma? When will ye come back to me?”
I smoothed away the water that dripped into my eyes. There had only been a few times in my life that I felt emotional enough to be brought to tears, and knowing for certain now, that Emma was no longer here, that brought me to my knees. I shuddered. ’Twas time to head back to shore. To take the boat back to Castle Gealach. To speak with Ewan about what I knew now to be a certainty.
She was in another time. Another world that I couldn’t reach. A place I’d never been, nor could fathom. Aye, she’d told me stories of her world. Of the modernizations I couldn’t comprehend. The values, the politics. None of it seemed real, most of it I couldn’t imagine. How had she survived in a world like that? How had any of them?
’Twas a miracle the earth still existed with the weapons she said they used. The way they could travel by air from one place to the next, a speed at which I could barely grasp.
We lived so much more simply here. And yet, infinitely more complicated.
I pulled my arms through the water, rotating my shoulders, twisting from side to side, legs kicking powerfully. Every stroke, every kick, was me pounding Fate into bloody submission. At least, for my own sanity.
When I reached the shore, dripping wet, I didn’t bother to dress. I simply yanked the boat back into the water, and hopped in. By the time I reached the shore, I was dry enough to put on my breeches.
Ewan approached from out of the dark. His feet silent on the grass and sand.
