Page 7 of Highlander Unraveled
Yestermorn. So, she’d not come down the stairs. I regarded the men, puzzled. “’Haps ye fell asleep and missed her.”
“Nay, my laird,” the alert guard responded. “I’ve been awake the whole time.”
“As have I, my laird.” The second guard looked slightly worried that I wouldn’t believe him. “She’s not come this way. Shall we help ye to find her?”
I frowned. She could have gone down the servant’s stair, but why would she do an odd thing like that?
“Nay. Man your posts and if ye do see her, please ask her to wait for me in our chamber, and one of ye come to find me.”
The guards nodded their agreement.
I made my way toward the kitchens, finding it empty save for the sleeping form of a couple kitchen boys by the hearth. In an hour or so, Cook would wake and begin the days’ baking, and the lads would rise to help her.
I cleared my throat, approaching the lads who leapt to their feet, swiping hands over their grimy faces, rubbing crust from their eyes.
“Have ye seen Lady Emma?” I asked them, though I doubted either of them would have woken had she come inside, since they’d not even stirred when I entered the kitchens.
“Nay, my laird,” they both said in unison.
“Ballocks!” Where the hell was she? I scraped a hand through my hair, that one fear, that she’d disappeared niggling at the base of my skull, a fingernail scratching at an open wound.
Rory had disappeared from the Highlands for five long years. Shona had gone back to the present to find Moira. They’d all returned. But that didn’t mean that Emma would, and even if she did, it might be years. I shook my head.Nay, nay, nay.She was here. I just hadn’t found her yet.
I circled back to the servants’ stair, checking with the guard posted there who also hadn’t seen her, either. If none of the guards posted at the stairs had seen her come down, then ’haps she’d gone up?
She liked to take walks on the battlements often, breathing in the fresh air, taking a few private moments to think.
I took the stairs three at a time, once more, all the way to the top, but the door to the battlements was bolted. Was it possible she’d gone out and someone bolted it behind her?
Doubtful, but possible.
I unlocked the door and pushed it open, feeling the coolness of the summer night wash over my skin. This side of the castle was empty of guards at this time of night. Several others were stationed at key points, but since Emma liked it up here, and I sometimes joined her for privacy, this particular turret was often unmanned.
And it was empty now.
“Emma?” I called anyway, hoping she’d poke her head from some crevice I couldn’t see her behind.
Guards on the other walls turned toward me, and I raised my arm in greeting. I’d have to question each one of them. Someone must have seen something.
I made my way around the unoccupied turret. Panic, which had started the moment I found her side of the bed empty, curled deep in my gut, shredding me from the inside out.
She was gone.
People often disappeared in the Highlands, but there was only one reason for a person to vanish into thin air and I didn’t want to think about what that meant.
Fatecould nothave recalled her.
I refused to believe it. Refused to allow such a horrifying notion to even take root—but it already had. For, when I’d found out about Emma, wasn’t this the one thing I’d feared the most?
I approached each guard on the battlements, every guard at the front gates, the postern gate, and the water gate… None had seen her. Murmurings of the castle walls being breached by the enemy sent up a panic. And it wasn’t like I could quell that panic or naysay their assumptions. They didn’t know about time travel, or about Emma’s past. To them, their mistress had been taken, secreted away from the castle by some nefarious criminal.
“What’s going on?” Ewan approached from the castle, looking harried. The sun was starting to rise, but the shadows on his features were all concern.
I gritted my teeth and then finally put my voice to work, hearing the way I sounded choked when I spoke. “I canna find Emma.”
Ewan’s face paled, visible in the dim dawn light. The way his eyes shuttered, I knew he had the same fear as I. Emma was his sister. If she could disappear, it meant he could—or his wife. Hell. Ewan wasn’t even from this time. He’d traveled years ago and never returned—save for a twenty-four hour period.
“When was the last time ye saw her?” Ewan asked.
