* * *
The late hours of the night had arrived when they finally found an inn in a village named Crail. Jack had been here a few times himself but only when his father had needed him to spy on the Kirkpatricks and find out what he could about their army.
The Kirkpatricks were a small clan. The smallest in the Highlands, but they were once the most powerful of all clans. Their spot on the Highland border with the Lowlands placed them at high positions with the merchants and they were also known allies for many other clans because of this.
The disaster that destroyed their clan and reduced them to what they now were was a storm. It was rumored that the Highlands had never seen anything like it.
The storm affected only their clan and wiped almost all the noble families out in their sleep. Water carried off huts and cottages, their farmlands wasted away, and the Castle was destroyed by a great lightning strike that killed the Laird in his sleep.
The rest of the Highlands had called the storm a great curse on their land. Many rumored it was because of the Laird’s strange wife who was rumored to be a witch, and they hadn’t stopped until she was stoned to death in her very own Castle’s courtyard.
The villagers celebrated her death for years. Jack had never heard a more gruesome history.
Jack remembered that history too well. The Kirkpatricks had managed to get back on their feet after many years, but nothing was the same after that storm.
“May we have a room for the night?” Jack said to the older woman that opened the door of the inn for him and Isla.
Isla gasped and took off the cloak covering her head once they entered the inn. The woman standing in front of Jack put on a smile that sent a chill through his nerves.
“You’re the gypsy,” he heard Isla say and he quickly turned to her.
Her skin had paled, and her eyes were wider than he had ever seen it. Jack saw her pupils dilate, and her lower lip trembled as she reached out and grabbed the older woman’s wrist. “You are the one who cursed me.” Isla’s voice thundered in a way Jack had never heard.
18
“Idinnae ken what ye speak off, My Lady,” the woman denied. Isla saw only black spots as she stared back at her with fury and clenched her teeth. “I can read yer fortune though if ye want. I can tell ye what fate awaits ye in the years to come.”
“I do not care for your lies,” Isla replied harshly. “I just want you to tell me how to get back to 1973 at once.”
She was a hundred percent certain this woman was the gypsy she had met in Birlet Shallows. Her fate had shone today, and she had run into her here again. The smile on the woman’s face irritated her. It showed the full set of teeth and the dimples in her left cheek.
Her eyes also gleamed with the same madness Isla had witnessed on the gypsy who cursed her, and it made her stomach form tight knots.
I am so sure it is the same woman.
“I do not believe you,” she said and tightened her grip on the woman’s hand. “You must undo what you have done and send me back to my time.”
Jack remained quiet at her side, and she moved closer to the woman, then yanked away the cloak covering her hair. Her hair was a fiery red shade too, but it was shorter and fell to a million curls that reached the side of her jaws.
“You must undo what you have done,” Isla repeated, determined not to let go of the woman’s hand even when she heard Jack call for her.
Isla’s pulse was on high speed now. She swallowed hard, shook her head, and maintained eye contact with the gypsy.
“Do ye really want to return? Is that what ye want?” the gypsy asked.
I knew it was her.
“I do,” Isla replied without hesitating. “Undo what you have done.”
The woman smiled. The kind that left Isla’s nerves feeling raw and entangled with fury. Why did she smile? What was she trying to do this time?
“Ye still think for only yerself, Child,” the woman replied. “Ye are still as selfish as ever and ye have nae learned to think of others first.”
Isla frowned in confusion. “What are you talking about—"
“Until ye learn how to be selfless, ye cannae return. I am afraid yer fate hasnae changed, Child. Ye still deserve the horrible fate with which ye were born with. If ye desperately wish to return to yer time, then ye shall return. Yer fate was to die there anyway.”
What is she talking about?Isla’s knees weakened, and she knew her face grew ashen white. When she looked at Jack, his jaw had hardened.