Highland Sorcerer (8 page)

The blanket serving as a door lifted
and Shaw ducked inside, paused and scowled at her. Col entered
next, though his features lightened with a grin. "Ye look like a
fish floundering on land, lass. Here, allow me to
assist."

He crouched down and pulled her to a
sitting position to begin working on the knot behind her head. "Be
still, 'tis caught in yer hair."

"Col," Shaw's tone growled like a
worked-up watchdog. "Be careful. She's a witch."

The door blanket was thrown aside once
more.

"We'll soon know the right of that."
Stooping to enter the low entrance was the most stunning woman
Charity had ever seen. Thick auburn hair swayed around the thin yet
curvy form. All that was needed was the soft gray gown to loosen
and expose one shoulder for the woman to look like the heroine on
the cover of a historic romance novel.

Col got the gag unknotted and Charity
jerked her head away from him. "I'm not a witch." She spit out
fluff from the gag. “I’m Charity Greves from Seattle.”

“
Seattle?” Col’s nose
scrunched up. Shaw merely shook his head.

"'Course she’s no witch." The woman
crouched before her, gown puffing up around her. Her lips pressed
tight and her forehead wrinkled in thought. "Anyone can see that.
She's a Healer Enchantress. A powerful one."

"Healer?" Col's brows shot up beneath
his overlong bangs.

Powerful
? Charity restrained from snorting. The girl just proclaimed
her not a witch, which the guys seemed to buy into, so she wasn't
about to argue the point. But powerful? That was stretching it a
bit.

"Ye're certain?" Shaw
frowned.

The girl gave him a bland look that had
the perpetually angry warrior lifting his hands in a gesture of
surrender.

Across Charity, Col and the girl shared
matching grins. Both of their lips hitched up at one corner,
popping out identical dimples.

Wait a minute.
Siblings. The sister, what was her name? Irene,
Deena or something. An empath. Just by proximity, she'd be able to
feel if Charity's magic breathed of witchcraft or touched upon
healing.

"Verra well, Edeen, she's not a witch."
Shaw leaned over them all. "Then what was she doing skyclad outside
Aldreth's lair? And why was Toren's name the first to cross her
lips?"

"Now
that
is a fair question." Edeen's brow
arched just like Toren's had.

Three expectant faces turned toward
Charity. She wiggled her arms inside the cumbersome plaid. "Get me
out of this and I'll tell you."

Shaw leaned even closer, bending low
over Col's head where the young man crouched next to her. "Ye'll
tell us now."

Charity's pulse stormed to life. His
glare alone was brittle enough to crack windows.

"Ye best answer the question." Edeen
folded her arms. Where she'd seemed to be on her side for all of
half a minute before, it was clear that when it concerned her
brother, Charity's welfare wouldn't be the priority.

"I healed Toren," she blurted out. Why
not? She'd come to help Toren, and by extension, his family
anyway.

The brothers and sister glanced at each
other uncertainly, faces leaching of color.

Shaw recovered his composure first.
"The witch brought ye in to heal Toren? She's hurt him that badly
then?" Something changed in his eyes, like a flashlight beam
suddenly flickering across a raw vulnerability that lay hidden far
deep down. It tugged at something in Charity's belly.

"No," she whispered, the tone
resonating with the worry she'd glimpsed in Shaw. The last thing
she wanted to do was cause them any more concern. "Toren came to
me."

The curtain of Shaw's eyes snapped back
into place. "Our brother is imprisoned by the Alduein witch. He
could not come to you."

Charity wiggled on her bottom. It was
growing numb. She was tired of the defenseless position. Instead
she jutted out her chin. "He traveled through time. He said he
searched for a Healer who Aldreth couldn't threaten. He merely
wanted a little reprieve so he could endure longer for his clan to
get away."

The three went uncannily still, each
with varying expressions of wariness.

"That sounds like something Toren would
do." Col nodded. "Clever. Still imprisoned, yet he’s thwarting
Aldreth at every turn." He turned to Charity, one eye squinting as
he asked, "Was he hurt bad?"

The question startled her. She
swallowed. "Nothing fatal." She quickly went on at their pained
looks to get it out, like pulling off a bandaide. "He appeared
badly malnourished. His wrists are swollen and chafed where the
spelled bands bite into his skin. The worst of it was two ribs
broken and a few deep cuts. The witch is content to wear him
down."

"Spelled bands?" Shaw ran a hand across
his jaw.

"But ye healed him?" Edeen leaned
forward and her hair spilled across her knees.

Charity frowned. "I…did, but then
didn't."

"You didn't heal him?" Col’s brows
pulled together.

"I did. The first time." As the trio
studied her, Charity spilled about how Toren had first come to her
and she learned of the witch when she connected with him and healed
him. She thought that was important for them to know if they were
to trust her. The shocked disbelief on their faces as she told the
tale made her nervous. She really wished she had the use of her
hands for emphasis.

She finished with how Toren was
snatched back by Aldreth and how she had traveled back to that
first moment they met and hitched a ride on Toren's magic to end up
at this point. "So there you have it."

They just had to believe
her.

Stunned silence coated the air. Edeen's
eyelashes fluttered as though she couldn't quite grasp the truth of
it.

Col's lips twisted. He opened his mouth
to speak, but took a steadying inhalation instead and let it out in
a rush. His hand strayed back across his dark unruly waves and he
attempted to speak again. "That's quite the telling. Ye're from
centuries beyond us?" Maybe they did believe her. He shook his
head. "And ye believed ye could simply travel back here and pluck
my brother out from under the grasp of the most fearsome witch of a
hundred generations?"

It sounded dumb put like that. She
shrugged since she couldn't lift her arms, which were getting
sweaty within the thick plaid cloth, not that any of them
cared.

"What about these bands on Toren's
wrists?" Shaw said, then to Col: "Has to be how she's kept him
imprisoned him this long."

"Aye," Col agreed. "If Aldreth's
spelled them to his very person, getting Toren out won't be
enough."

Shaw went very still, the kind of still
of a predator before he gives chase. "We—" His throat worked and
his strong features seemed to close up. "We take the clan to the
standing stones."

Col and Edeen swirled to their
feet.

"What? No, Shaw," Edeen pled. "Leave
Toren with that witch? She'll kill him."

"She won't kill him." Col's voice
choked with sorrow. "Ye know that, Edeen. She's patient. She'll
wear him down, break him before it comes to that."

"No." Tears glistened in the
girl's eyes. Col took his sister's hands between his. Charity's
heart squeezed
What had she
done?

Shaw stared down at her.
"Had the
healer
not
taken back her healing, we would have more time to figure out a
proper rescue." His tone was bitter with contempt. "Toren will
break. No mortal, even a sorcerer as strong as Toren, can stand for
long against the Witch of Alduein. We'll break camp on the morrow
and begin gathering the clan."

Without another look at her, Shaw bent
and left beneath the door. Shoulders stooped, Edeen followed him
out while Col turned back, eyeing Charity with a strange look
before he too left her alone in the makeshift hut.

Charity's breasts rose and
fell with her breathing.
What had she done?
What had she done?
She just realized
something. When Shaw’s party found her near the castle, they must
have been on a type of recon mission, studying the lay of the land
and the stone castle to make plans for a rescue attempt. But she
had inadvertently gotten in the way of that. In the histories, the
entire clan disappeared. Nothing more was known of them. Nor of
what had become of Toren. She'd wanted to save him, but instead
she'd taken away any hope that his family had of rescuing
him.

Charity curled over on herself,
shaking. She'd made things far, far worse.

Chapter Ten

Toren felt so weak, he could barely
lift his head. The last round with Aldreth’s whip-master had taken
more from him than he could say. He turned his thoughts to the
puzzle of the Healer Enchantress. Truth told, he could not rid her
from his mind.

Charity
. She had freely given her name, her true source of power. Yet
she was clearly working for Aldreth or at least the witch had some
sort of hold over her, otherwise she would have healed him. ‘Twas a
healer’s creed to heal all she could.

"I'm going to save you
Toren Limont. I need you to trust me."

Trust her? She'd pretended to begin to
heal him and then sabotaged his magic and used it for her own
purposes—whatever they may be—and then slipped through time on the
strength of his power.

It didn't make sense. The flush of
fever heated his skin where the cold grainy stone dug into the whip
lashes upon his back where he hung against it from his wrists.
Aldreth had been livid upon his return. Mayhap he'd imagined the
entire happening? Mayhap he had not really traveled through time at
all? Aye, and mayhap Aldreth had set her whip master upon him for
no other reason than it pleased her.

Which it did. She had watched each
stripe of the lash with rapt attention, a heady excitement flush
upon her features. ‘Twould not amaze him had she taken up the lash
herself.

His sanity was slipping, no longer able
to tell dreams from truth.

He must conserve his
reserves, little that remained. Mayhap Shaw had already taken his
family and clan to
Reolin Skene
and from there into the Shadowrood and they were
beyond the witch’s reach. Then holding out against Aldreth would be
a moot point and at least his soul would have peace as the witch
stripped the last of his humanity from him.

If only he had a way of knowing they
were gone and safe.

I'm going to save
you.

Toren pushed his head back against the
wall.

Damn the healer and damn her soothing
healer’s voice. He did not want to think on her because her lie
pulled to him. He ached to believe her. Believe that there was
something to do that could spare him. Those dark violet eyes had
been so convincing, he’d almost fallen prey to her lies. He’d let
his guards down and let her magic touch upon his. Her magic had
been weak, insignificant, yet he’d felt…something. An allure,
something so right and familiar about her he’d opened his magic to
hers.

And what had she done with
it?

Used him.

She rode his magic back to his time and
abandoned him.

To scurry off to Aldreth and comply
with her mistress’s bidding.

‘
Twas significant that
healers were also called enchantresses.

They took a man’s hope and belief to
stomp it into the ground.

Despair pressed into his
heart.

Exhausted and shaking, Toren let his
head sink and tried to force the image of the beguiler’s sweet face
out of his thoughts.

Chapter
Eleven

It took time and an inordinate amount
of squirming and shifting into angles that would make her yoga
instructor proud, but Charity managed to finally shimmy her arms
free of the long plaid and after that the damn cloth was simple
enough to get out of. Now to figure out how to wear it properly.
The thing folded and wrapped in far too many lengths.

"Ye'll find these more to your liking."
Edeen crouched through the doorway, carrying a bundle of dark wool
and what she supposed passed for boots. Rough stitched leather with
cross-lacings. "We seem to be of a like size."

Riiiight. If Charity had been blessed
with something larger than a B cup.

"Uh, thank you." Grateful to have
anything besides an overlong blanket, Charity lifted the coarse
black dress over her head and let the plaid drop around her ankles
as the gown settled around her body. It was surprisingly
comfortable and warm.

Tapping a finger at the side of her
cheek, Edeen's brows furrowed. "Ye've put it on backwards. Let me
help. Ye're really from centuries beyond, aren't you?"

"Yes. I told you."

Edeen helped her shift the gown around
and cinch up the cross ties in the back, pulling the waist in
form-flattering tight. "'Tis difficult to think of it."