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“ S omething’s wrong.”

Late in the evening, Aidan stared down into his still-full cup, disgusted at himself. He couldn’t even drink himself into a proper stupor to forget his colossal mistakes. “Aye,” he muttered. “I’m a bigger fool than even you thought.”

Nioclas slammed his hands down, causing the table to shake and Aidan to look up, startled.

“Nay, brother. Your wife has gone missing.”

“She must have left with O’Malley.”

“Nay, she hasn’t,” Nioclas shot back, his patience wearing thin. “O’Malley sits with my own sweet wife in my solar. Cian is with them, distraught, and her entire guard is searching the grounds.”

Aidan shoved back his chair and pushed Nioclas out of his way. “What the hell?”

Together, they ran to the solar, as Nioclas told him that Emma hadn’t left their chamber after Aidan. When a chambermaid entered to bring her dinner, the room was empty, and her entire guard swore up and down that she hadn’t left the room .

“The passageways?” Aidan surmised.

The castle had winding tunnels that connected the rooms, but they all eventually led outside, deep into the forest. Many times it proved a wise way to hide people and precious items when the castle was under attack.

Nioclas pushed open the door to the solar. “Aye, it’s the only logical way. She must have found it, though I don’t remember where it is in that chamber. The window is too high, and she’s angry, not suicidal.”

“How do you know she’s angry?” Aidan asked. “Eavesdropping, Nick?”

He glared at Aidan. “You left your bedchamber not more than fifteen minutes after entering it. You either shirked your duties to consummate the marriage, or you angered the lass. Either way, the entire clan is less than pleased with you.”

“That’s enough,” he snapped. “Are the guards on their way to the forest?”

“Nay. They’re searching the passageways, but she could have left hours ago,” Cian reported.

Aidan opened the door. “I’m headed for the forest.”

“We all are,” Reilly agreed. “I’ll have Bernard saddle the horses.”

“No time,” Aidan called over his shoulder, halfway down the hallway. “We’ll do it ourselves.”

“I’ll join you,” Nioclas called. He gave swift instructions to the guards, then kissed Brianagh. “Stay, in case she returns.”

She nodded. “I’ll stay. Come back safely.” She looked at Reilly. “The same to you. Bring her back. To whenever she wants to go.”

In minutes, the four men and a bevy of guards thundered out of the castle walls, toward the forest line in the distance. The closer they got, the tighter Aidan’s throat became.

Emma shivered, the chill of the night seeping in through her woolen bodice. She sat on a tree root, looking anywhere but at the silver glint of the revolver in Ben’s hand.

The unreality of facing him at this moment in this time was disorienting and terrifying.

His dark hair was almost blue in the moonlight, his skin a wrinkled mess. He looked even worse than the last time they’d come face to face.

Which she thought might truly be the last she ever saw of him.

When the wall behind the hearth in her chamber swung open, Emma was too surprised to scream for help.

And when Ben pointed the gun at her and calmly commanded her to place her hands in front of her so he could bind them, she did.

Then, when he demanded she walk, Emma’s legs did as they were told, despite their wobbly shaking the entire mile out to the forest.

A waking nightmare.

After emerging from a well-concealed exit deep within the forest, they walked down a small hill, then deeper into the trees until they approached a small clearing.

At first glance, Emma swore it looked like the fairy rings she’d read about in her traveler’s guide to Ireland.

A circle of trees, ringed inside with large mushrooms, stood before them, the air seeming to shimmer in the moonlight.

Emma got the shivers just thinking about stepping inside its circumference.

Ben forced her inside of it, then waited, looking around as though he expected something to happen. After an hour of simply standing there, he swore.

“The men you entered the rock with. How did they do that?” he demanded.

She looked at him blankly.

“The day you disappeared, Emmaline! How did they do that?! ”

She gulped. “Reilly did it, but I don’t know how. He’s a time traveler.”

“As am I,” Ben snorted. “I followed you to that rock in the ground, where he opened the crack with that strange voice. And it closed before I could get in.”

“How are you here?” Emma whispered, afraid if she spoke too quickly, he might pull the trigger.

“I told you I’d find you, Emmaline. I watched a man come in and out of the forest by your lover’s house. I followed him. I thought at first I was crazy, that I was seeing things. But no, no. It was real. He kept disappearing.”

He stepped forward and traced a hand down her face.

She shuddered, and his expression grew angry.

“I followed him the other night, this Reilly character. He did something with his voice, and he disappeared again. But this time I ran into the same spot he was and then I was falling…and there you were, in your pretty little dress, accepting a kiss from that other man . You looked so happy, like you used to with me. Are you sleeping with all of them, Emmaline?”

“No,” she started, but he cocked the gun at her and she pressed her lips shut.

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll get us back. Maybe you can get us to a different time, where I don’t have debts and you don’t have anyone else, and we can live the rest of our days together. I can forgive you for your faithlessness.”

Emma’s heart jumped into her throat.

Ben looked up to the sky. He continued calmly, “I know you think you married him today, Emmaline. See, I found that little entrance into the castle all on my own. It was overgrown, but I was so hungry. Sometimes my pills makes me hungry.”

“Pills?”

“Why do you think I need the money, Em? I need my pills. I have enough to get me through a few months. We’ll be okay.”

Drugs.

“But I’m here now, and we’ll go somewhere, and we’ll live together forever.”

“You want to kill me, Ben!”

“Oh, I did. You took another man to your bed. But I’ll move past it because you’re mine, and I don’t want you dead yet. I need your new bank password first.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open. The man was certifiably insane; she was certain of it.

“There was a large deposit placed into your account a few weeks ago. But the account has a lot of security on it now, which is unfortunate. It doesn’t matter, though, because I have you now and we can use that money to create a new life for ourselves.

If we can get to whenever we are right now, we can go anywhere.

Any time. I could be a king with the kind of money you have. ”

She glanced at the gun in his hand, but didn’t answer him. Instead, she asked, “How do you think we’re going to go back?”

“The same way I got here, I thought. But now we’ll wait for your new husband to find you. I’ll give him the choice of sending us back through this grass ring here, or I’ll just kill us all.”

Emma felt ill and covered her face.

The barrel of the gun slammed into the base of Emma’s neck, making her gasp.

“You’re not paying attention to me, Emmaline. You know how I hate it when you don’t pay attention.”

“Step away from her, MacDermott,” Aidan commanded, emerging from behind a tree. Cian, Nioclas, and Reilly followed suit, each holding their swords.

They all froze when they saw the gun. Ben leveled it at Aidan’s chest .

“Glad you could join us. Emma and I need to go somewhere a bit more futuristic, if you know what I mean. You’re going to help us get there.”

“What is that he holds?” Nioclas asked in a hushed tone.

“The deadliest, fastest weapon you were never meant to see,” Aidan muttered. He raised his voice. “What do you want?”

“The money,” Ben replied steadily. “But you’ve always known that, haven’t you?”

Aidan stepped forward and Ben tightened his grip on the gun. “One more step and I’ll shoot you. Then her.” He looked at the rest of them. “Then everyone else.”

“I can take you back,” Aidan bluffed. “I’ll give you all the money you want. Just let her go.” Aidan’s eyes met Emma’s, and hers filled with tears with his next words. “I love her, MacDermott. I’ll do whatever you want to keep her safe.”

Ben’s hand started to shake with anger. “Love her! She’s mine!” He turned to Emma, keeping the gun on Aidan. “Tell him you’re mine, Emmaline. Or I swear to God I’ll kill him for trying to steal you.”

“I’m yo—”

“No, Emma. It will never end if you tell him that,” Aidan said solemnly. “You’re not his. You belong only to you.”

“Lies. She belongs to me, and she knows it. She was mine long before you ever showed your face.”

“I’m not yours,” she whispered.

He swung his gaze to hers. “What?”

“I’m my own. But I love Aidan, not you,” she said, her voice strong. “I’ll never love you, Ben. I don’t think I ever did, not truly.”

Calmly, Ben swung the gun at her and pulled the trigger .

“No!” Aidan shouted, rushing forward as Emma crumpled to the ground.

Another shot sounded, but Aidan couldn’t look away from Emma, soaked in her own blood. “Emmaline!”

She didn’t respond, and Aidan felt for her heart.

“No healer here can help this wound,” he said, his voice raw.

He looked over at Ben, lifeless on the ground, then searched out Reilly, who placed his own weapon back under his léine.

“You’ve got to take her, O’Malley. Take her to James. ” His voice broke on a sob. “Please.”

Reilly didn’t hesitate. He knelt and slid his left arm under Emma, then held out his right hand, fingers splayed, and murmured something in a language Aidan couldn’t understand.

He quickly twisted his outstretched fingers into a tight ball, curling in from his smallest finger to his thumb, and an almost feral sound burst from his lips.

The air shimmered, and Reilly swept Emma’s lifeless body from Aidan’s arms before rushing into the fairy ring. It swallowed them both.

Aidan looked first at MacDermott’s lifeless body, then at the spot where his love had disappeared. All that was left was a puddle of blood, and his own broken heart.