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Maybe one day I’ll find my courage, but know that I didn’t leave because of you. Not really. I couldn’t bring myself to test fate, couldn’t make peace with not knowing what was to come—so I left. For her. The story in this journal is entirely true.All of it.Of that much, I’m sure. And that’s why I couldn’t take a chance. That’s why I had to leave while I still could.

But one thing has been, and will always be, certain.

I love you.

Duncan

I read it again, snagging the part where he says that he leftfor her, seeing it with new eyes. Bits and pieces of conversation with Rhonaflit through my thoughts, and I frown at the memory, trying to remember it more clearly.

He called me down to this very table, she’d said.He seemed…frantic. Somehow. Not quite himself. He told me that your mother was pregnant, and that they had found out it was to be a girl. I remember how shocked I was to hear the news, but Duncan…Duncan almost seemed upset by it.

For a moment, I just sit there, staring at the wall as pieces start to fall in place, realizing that my father read this journal. That he saw this curse. That when he found out that I was coming…he knew what it meant.

He didn’t leave for my mother…He left for me.

My head buzzes with so many memories—of Rhona telling me that mine and Lachlan’s dads had taken trips to Inverness after finding the journal. Lachlan telling me that Duncan abandoned his father after promising to help him. My father refusing to tell me anything about his homeland.

He abandoned Lachlan’s father to protect me. Because he didn’t know what he would do when he found out about me.

It makes my head hurt thinking about how all of this, all ofushave just been circling around one another our entire lives—bound by fate. I think of all the things that had to happen to get me here, all the pain and the suffering and the loss, not just mine but Lachlan’s…my grandparents’…mydad’s—and that’s exactly what it feels like is happening here. Fate. Like whatever comes next was meant to happen.

I feel that energy in the air, that crackling presence that urges me upward, that tells me togo—and even if I still don’t fully understand it, it feels as if there is a name to it now. One that was long forgotten.One that I almost feel a connection to. Like she’s there, quietly encouraging me to move.

Because Sorcha also gave everything for love. She gave up her freedom, then her magic, and even her life in the end—all to be with her beloved, as she called him.

I leave my bridle with my beloved—

I gasp, shooting to my feet. Like the last puzzle piece fitting into a slot—the answers come to me all at once. I see the picture clearly now, the solutions laid out neatly in a row, just waiting for me to shine a light on them. There are still tear tracks on my cheeks, and yet I find myself smiling.

Because there’s only one person I want to tell all of this to.

—for my magic is my heart, and only he can hold it.

I smile a little wider, already moving out the door.

I fly down the stairs and out the front door, my legs burning with effort as I sprint across the grass toward the groundskeeper’s cottage. I think of everything I have to tell him, every step that brings me closer making me feel that much lighter.

It’s going to be okay. I’m going to save him. It’sgoingto be okay.

I don’t bother knocking, wrenching open the door to the cottage and bursting inside to find—

Nothing.

It’s completely empty.

For a second, I’m just confused; there’s still more than an hour to sunset, so it seems unlikely that he’d already be at the shore, but maybe he went there to think? I frown, feeling a pang of guilt for how I left things, but I quickly brush it away. There will be time for that later. I step farther into the kitchen as if he might somehow magically appear, but it’s clear that the place is definitely empty. I setthe journal on his kitchen table, worried now that maybe hedidgo to the shore. Do I still have time to catch him?

I rush back out the door, taking two steps at a time as I move around the cottage with the intent of checking the barn before I go running off to the loch, but when I round the corner of the tiny house, a bright red smear on the grass makes me pause.

It takes me several seconds to make sense of what I’m seeing; it only clicks when I notice the heavy-looking piece of wood—maybe an old table leg? It’s just lying there on the ground, that same red splash coating the end as if…No.

I crouch, pressing my fingers to the red stain even as dread settles low in my gut. I bring the sticky liquid to my nose, assaulted by the scent of iron. I try to reason with the panic ratcheting higher inside me—maybe an animal got a stray chicken or something—but the same certainty that hit me back in my room whispers to me once more, telling me that isn’t the case. Somehow, without having any conclusive proof…I know that this is Lachlan’s blood. The knowledge fills me with terror, and if it weren’t for the surging energy inside me that feels supernatural in origin—I might give in to that terror.

But I know I can’t do that. Not if he needs my help.

Instead, I take a calming breath—breathing in a slow inhale before letting it out, trying to center myself. I reach for that thread of energy, the one that seems to pulse in the air around me, grabbing hold of it, urging it to guide me, to take metohim. When it takes hold, I can almost see the trail of it, like a shimmering in the air that stretches out in front of me, winding across the property and falling onto a familiar path. One that is faint, but one that I’m sure of.

And without ever being able to ascertain how it is that I know—I know exactly where to find him. I push away any fear that lingers;there’s no time for it, no use for it. I don’t know who hurt Lachlan, can’t fathom who might have a reason to…but when I find them?