Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) by Laurin Wittig Page B

gone a bit cool but I have roused the fire. It shall be warm again soon.” She adjusted the woolen blanket around Elspet better as the topic foremost on her mind begged to be broached.
    “Auntie, may I ask you something?”
    Elspet tried to smile, but it was mostly in her eyes. “Of course, my lassie.”
    “You are not too tired?”
    “Ask me now. The morn is far away.”
    Rowan swallowed. More and more, Elspet spoke as if her time were only in the here and now, not in the future.
    “Have you ever felt…” Rowan tried to find words to describe what had happened to her during the blessing. “Have you ever felt something odd,” she began again, determined to continue this time, “when you made the blessing? I felt something this time that I never have before.”
    Elspet’s eyes narrowed and she tried to sit up in the bed. Rowan helped her, noting that only yesterday her aunt had the strength to sit up on her own. Rowan settled an arisaid around Elspet’s narrow shoulders and the blankets over her lap.
    “Tell me what you felt,” Elspet said. Her voice surprised Rowan in its intensity.
    Rowan sat on the bed next to her aunt. “It was like a stream was rising through my legs and trying to push its way out of my skin, a pressure, a pulsing.” She almost added that Nicholas had had to keep her from falling but she didn’t want to share that part for some reason, not yet at any rate. She rubbed that spot between her brows that had started to ache again. “Do you ken what it was, Auntie?”
    “Were you the only one to experience such a thing?”
    Rowan shrugged and rose from the side of the bed where she had perched. “I did not see anyone else who seemed… uncomfortable. I have not spoken of this with anyone, though.” She moved back to the hearth to stir the broth that was not yet warmed. She placed another peat on the fire and knelt down to blow on the embers. “What do you think it was?”
    “What do you think it was?” Elspet asked quietly.
    Rowan swallowed hard and sat back on her heels. “I do not ken, but it raised a panic in me the like of which I have never experienced.” She stopped as that elusive memory skittered through her mind, once more slipping out of her grasp. Something about that memory was connected to what had happened to her in the bailey… and to the curtain wall falling toward her, as if both things were familiar.
    She closed her eyes and forced herself to remember the moment when she knew the wall was falling toward her. The pounding in her head had grown stronger and stronger, pulsing just as it had during the blessing in the bailey, just as it was now.
    She rubbed the spot between her brows where the pain always seemed to gather and tried to settle her mind, to think, to be ready to grab that memory and drag it into the light.
    The wall falling… The pressure building… Her head pounding…
    The image of a wall falling, hurtling toward her, burst behind her eyes. Fear writhed in her stomach. Guilt strangled her heart, and grief… so much grief. She groaned and gripped her head, pressing against unbearable pressure.
    “Do you remember?” Elspet’s voice was quiet and commanding. Like a knife, it cut through the rising panic, grounding her here in this place with this woman who had always kept her safe. “Think, Rowan.”
    “Another wall falling? Not the curtain wall. I cannot say where or when. And grief—devastating grief. And fear. And guilt.”
    Elspet was quiet for a long time and Rowan was almost afraid to ask her anything else. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know what had happened to her. Eventually, when her breath had calmed and her hands no longer shook, she looked over her shoulder at Elspet sitting in the gloom, her fingers plucking at the blanket in her lap, her brow furrowed in deep thought. Rowan filled a small earthen bowl with the tepid broth and brought it to her.
    “Auntie, what does it mean—falling walls, pressure beyond comprehension,