Page 76 of Highlander’s Bride

Hope filled Raghnall’s chest like hot air. “Dinna play with me, faerie…”

She stood up abruptly, and there was no gentleness in her face anymore. Her face was like polished ivory, her eyes expressionless, looking somewhere he couldn’t see. “But everything has its price, and ye’ll have to pay dearly for me breaking this rule for ye.”

Raghnall swallowed. “Anything. Name yer price.”

She came closer, and suddenly, she didn’t look human. She looked transparent and glowed, just like the carving.

“Something that is dear to ye, Raghnall. Something ye least want to forget. Yer song.”

He blinked. “Which one?”

“Ye ken which one. The one that still tears yer heart like an iron splinter set too deep. But I want that. Human emotions…they’re still new to me. I understand love a wee bit, but the other side of love is darkness to me. Yer grief, yer sadness are strong in ye. They smell silvery, like the pure rays of a full moon. I want to taste them fully while I think of the man that made these rocks.”

Raghnall did know exactly which song she was talking about. The song that was his connection to Mòrag. The song that had gotten him through the years. The song that still pained him the most, and yet it was the most beautiful one he’d ever written.

His fists clenched. “Nae that one.”

“The price for breaking rules of magic is high. I paid a high price myself once. ’Tis why ye can see me. ’Tis why ye met Bryanna at all. Ye and I have much in common. Give me yer song and ye may be forever with the woman ye love. What do ye say?”

Raghnall felt his jaw working. Did he love Bryanna enough to let go of the ballad that had been his lifeline for the past four years?

“Would I remember Mòrag?”

“Aye. Of course. But nae that song. And that sadness and grief, ye’ll forget them, too.”

The carvings on the rock were glowing, calling him. The handprint was dark, shadows from the torch dancing in its depths. There, on the other side of it, was Bryanna. Was his new life. If he forever forgot that song, would he even be who he was?

And then he knew. The guilt, the self-loathing in that song were his armor, his protection against the pain of losing the one he loved. It was a reminder to him to protect his heart, to avoid love.

But he didn’t need that protection anymore. Because he was ready. A single day with Bryanna would be worth it. If this would be all he’d get, he’d take it.

“Aye,” Raghnall said. “My song is yers.”

Sìneag clapped her hands in delight. “Good. Please, sing it to me. For the last time.”

Raghnall took a deep breath. He didn’t have his lute with him, but he didn’t need it. For the last time, he let the music and the words come to him and he sang. Music poured through him, sinking him into the despair and the guilt, taking his fear, taking his pain. With every word, with every note, something shifted within him, and when he finished, his last words echoed from the stone walls, and then complete silence pressed on his ears.

He was empty. Scraped clean from the inside. But it wasn’t a devastating emptiness.

On the contrary, it was the emptiness of a beginning.

Sìneag’s eyes shone, her face serene, hands pressed to her chest. “Yer tunnel through the river of time is open.”

Light-headed, Raghnall walked towards the rock, but before he sank to his knees in front of the carving, he turned his face to her. “Wait…what about David? Can he come with me?”

She winked. “’Tis nae David’s time yet,” she said. And disappeared.

Raghnall’s head fell between his shoulders for a moment. He liked the idea of a wee club, as David had called it, and he hated that David had to stay behind.

But he could now go and find Bryanna and ask her to spend the rest of her life with him.

* * *

Two weeks later…

Bryanna ran her fingers through the strings of the clàrsach, the beams cast by the concert lights of the Old Rowan pub illuminated them like sunlight lit the strings of a spiderweb. The clàrsach was the Celtic harp. One of the musicians who was supposed to play after her during the concert had let her try her instrument.

The sound came quiet and round, beautiful, and mysterious. She tried another combination. “I can’t wait for you to play this properly,” she said to Jessica, the musician. “I can just imagine how well this will go with your Gaelic ballad.”