Undine heard Michael’s swallowed gasps each time the horses’ hooves hit the ground. He wouldn’t die from bleeding to death—though she’d seen it happen even with a wound in the extremities—but he might from the infection that would follow, and she’d have only herself to blame. She’d brought him here, to this world, and he’d come to Morebright’s home to protect her. Thank the skies he had. And thank the skies he’d stopped the carriage. Bridgewater had been in the sort of fury she’d only seen once before, and that time it had taken almost a month before she’d been able to walk again.
Michael’s arms were around her waist. She laid her hand on top of his to get a sense of him. She didn’t possess healing powers. There were women who did—and men too—but the closest one was in Jedburgh, miles from here. There were things she could read from his touch, though, because she was a naiad—and because she was a woman.
He started when their hands met, and she wondered for an instant if he’d been passed out.
“What are you doing?” he said, his voice strained but amused. “I’m not yours for the taking.”
“Ha,” she said, adding, “What makes you think I’m taking something?”
“You’re hardly the first woman who’s wanted me for my aura.”
“I have no idea what an aura is, but I can assure you, I don’t want it.”
“Oh, you’d want mine.”
There was illness there, she thought, and the sharpness of pain as well as warm, glowing affection and—she flushed—ravenous lust. Sorrow and the soaring blue of joy lived there too. It was a beautiful narrative of his person, though she wished she could ease the jagged pain. When she wiped away the surface layer of what she sensed and reached deeper, she saw the gnawing emptiness and sorrow. The sadness was a shiny void, as tall as a cliff and as sleek and cold as black marble, and she could see herself in it as well.
She released his hand.
“We can change what you see,” he said.
She wanted to believe him and that what he said was true, but what she’d sensed was an immovable as anything she’d ever seen or felt. “Aye,” she said, “we can.”
“We’ll fight.”
Did he mean the army, Bridgewater, or the vision? Of the three, only one truly terrified her. “We’ll do what we can every moment that we are able. ’Tis all anyone can do.”
They’d reached the road that ran between Morebright’s home and Coldstream.
“North to Morebright’s,” Michael asked, “or south to Edinburgh and Coldstream?”
She felt danger in both directions, but one was worse.
“Right,” she said with a sigh. “There’s going to be trouble.”
“Let us be the ones making it.”