Page 1 of All The Time You Need (Magic of Time #1)

Highlands of Scotland

1295

Alexander MacKillican sat stiffly in the big wooden chair stationed in the center of the dais, doing his best to blank his features of the emotions pummeling his mind. He would never feel comfortable in his father’s seat. No more comfortable than he felt listening to the two bickering idiots in front of him. He’d tried logic and conciliation to end their argument repeatedly over the past half-hour, and still they fussed on.

“Enough,” he bellowed at last, his emotions getting the better of him.

No one—not his father, not him, not even the greatest of all the saints—should be forced to endure this lunacy for even one minute longer. How could he ever have imagined this was how he would spend the rest of his days?

“This is the second time in as many weeks that the two of you have stood here before me, locked in battle over who owns what. If you canna come to an agreement over which of you is the true owner of the beast in question, I’ll settle it myself.”

Though he doubted they’d be happy with his solution to their disagreement.

“Which is why we brought our dispute to the Clan seat to begin with,” the older of the two men yelled, his voice surly in his displeasure. “Yer father would have ended this long past so that Angus and me could be making our way home to the chores that await us instead of standing here in yer great hall wasting the whole of our day while you dither over what’s to be done with us.”

Alex sat back in his seat, positive his mask of calm had cracked wide open at that one. Wasting the whole of their day? How dare they take that tone with him? He was trying to work out an equitable settlement for both of them and this was what he got. They criticized him! It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t have much preferred that it was his father sitting here rather than him.

“Very well, then.” Alex leaned toward the men, fighting to keep his temper in check. “If that’s the way it’s to be, then here’s my decision. The ewe is mine. Neither of you deserve her. Now go home the both of you and think upon what you’ve brought down upon yerselves this day with yer petty bickering.”

“So be it, then,” Angus said with finality. “It’s as Alexander the Elder would have done himself.”

“So it is,” the other man agreed.

Without another word, seemingly satisfied with Alex’s pronouncement, the two of them left the hall together without so much as a harsh word between them.

Though his whole life had been spent in preparing Alex to one day replace his father as the laird of their clan, he’d known since the day he’d ridden out of Dunellen’s gates headed for Edinburgh to continue his education that he wanted something different for his future. He wanted something different from the boring day-to-day sameness that had made up the world of his father and his grandfather before him. Alex dreaded a life without challenge. But more than anything, more even than he dreaded the day he would become the true laird of Dunellen, he did not want that day to come now. Nothing felt less desirable to him at this moment than a lifetime spent in dealing with such as he’d just experienced. Two short weeks at home had served to prove to him, even if to no other in the great hall, that he lacked the patience and the wisdom to be laird of Clan MacKillican. And yet, here he was, forced to shoulder the obligation of this burdensome responsibility.

No wonder his father had taken to his bed. Much more of this mind-numbing, soul-killing, unimportant drivel and Alex would be ready to join him.

He’d had such exciting plans for his life when he’d ridden back through the gates of Castle Dunellen. Just a day to spend at home he’d told the friends who traveled with him. Just a day to inform his father of his intention to return with them to Edinburgh. There they would join the forces that gathered to repel the English threat growing at their borders. In those last moments of unfettered freedom, his life had stretched out before him like a shining path, filled with the golden promise of exciting adventures and surprises of all sorts lying in wait around every corner.

Instead, he’d returned home to find his familiar world in total disarray: his father taken to his sickbed with little hope of recovery, his brothers bickering over who should take control in Alex’s absence, his sister blethering on about Faeries roaming their forest, and, worst of all, rumblings of attacks on his people by Clan Gordon.

In the two weeks he’d been home, uncomfortably occupying his father’s seat of power, wasting his time on the likes of Angus and Oren, visions of his future had begun to slip through his fingers like dust and cobwebs. And though his friends, the brothers of his heart, Jamesy MacCulloch and Finn MacCormack, remained steadfastly at his side, united in their support, he was losing any hope of his days ever again holding the sweet promise of adventure or surprise.