Page 15 of I Loved You Then (Far From Home #12)

“Friend or nae, I’ll run ye through if ye’ve insulted Ivy in any fashion,” threatened Alaric, going to stand beside her.

“And now let’s make sense of this,” Ciaran said hotly, coming to a hard stop several feet inside the door.

“Hush, all of you! You startled poor Lily!” Was Claire’s angry reprimand, last to be heard.

Ciaran ignored the last, and Claire’s attempts to soothe the whimpering bairn, though he did lower his voice.

“Say it again,” He instructed Ivy.

Ivy wrung her hands, color flooding her cheeks. “I don’t...” She faltered, her eyes lifting helplessly to Alaric.

“ We’ve learned so much over the centuries ,” Ciaran repeated for her, his tone biting, his gaze locked with Alaric. “From now, she said, until whenever they,” he paused, stabbing his finger at Ivy and then Claire, “come from. ‘When they come from’, she said.”

Alaric’s sigh was slow and heavy. “Bluidy hell.”

“Aye, that it is.” Ciaran’s voice was like ice. Though he still didn’t understand...anything, Alaric hadn’t denied one bit of it. “If ye canna explain so that I dinna want to strike ye through or command pyres to be lit in the bailey, then I suggest ye pack up, mount up, and take yer leave. Now.”

Once more, nearly in tears, Ivy whispered, “Alaric, I thought you would have told him.”

Alaric shook his head and showed Ivy a grim smile, expected to assuage her guilt, Ciaran assumed. “Dinna fret, lass. I should have told him—Ciaran at least.”

Through gritted teeth, Ciaran was forced to inquire. “Told me what?”

Alaric rubbed a hand over his jaw, his shoulders heavy. “It’s nae simple telling. But since the words are out, better ye hear it straight than twisted.”

Ciaran’s patience was gone. “Then speak it plain.”

Alaric’s gaze flicked to Ivy, who nodded with resignation, before locking eyes with Ciaran. “Ivy and apparently Claire as well are nae from here. This time. They are...from elsewhere. From a time far ahead of ours.”

Ciaran was not amused. He was beyond befuddled, having no idea why Alaric risked his life by provoking him, and that of Ivy and the child by spewing such madness. “Try again,” he suggested abrasively.

Ivy’s eyes filled, but her voice broke in, nearly indignant.

“It’s true. I’m not from this...century.

I was born hundreds of years in the future.

I don’t know how it happened or...or why, but I found myself here.

Years—centuries—back. I thought I was going mad until Alaric found me.

” She glanced at Claire, seeking courage.

“She came the same—under similar circumstances, I mean. Pulled out of her life—the year she lived in—and dropped into this one.”

As she spoke, Alaric moved to the foot of the bed, meaning not only to shield Ivy, but to place himself where he could guard both her and the bairn at once, on opposite sides of the bed.

Ciaran turned his thunderous glower onto Claire, who stiffened in reaction. Her hand on the babe’s back went still for a moment. And then her jaw tightened. “It’s true,” she confirmed. “Our circumstances were similar, though not exactly the same. But I’m not from...here either.”

When his stony expression did not shift, she spoke again, her voice lifting with a flash of indignation that mirrored Ivy’s. It struck him almost as a rebuke—how dare he refuse her words.

“I didn’t do this myself,” she said. “I didn’t ask to be snatched from my own time and plunged into this one. But why would we make this up?”

Ciaran stared at them both, his disbelief grinding against the seeming sincerity of Ivy’s slip— we’ve learned so much over the centuries . The conviction in both their gazes and the steadiness in Claire’s tone prickled his skin.

Alaric exhaled, the sound rough, resigned. “?Tis nae witchcraft. Nae trick, save for what was done to them. I kent ye’d find it impossible to believe—God’s bluid, I can hardly accept it myself.”

This wrung a small gasp from Ivy.

Alaric turned to her, defending, “What? It’s simply too difficult to comprehend, love. I...” He shrugged but said no more.

And now Ciaran had to wonder if these were lies Ivy had invented for Alaric to hear and know—but for what reason? And how did Claire play into it?

Ciaran’s chest heaved once, twice, as he looked from Ivy, pale and trembling, to Claire, who held his gaze as if daring him to call her a liar outright.

“Shite,” he muttered. “And now I, too, am expected to believe that the pair of ye are—what? Spirits? Fae? Persons displaced...people out of time?”

Furthering his contempt, Claire and Ivy nodded solemnly.

“Time-travelers,” Claire named them.

“But not willing time-travelers,” Ivy was quick to insist.

“If nae witchcraft, then what? I’ve seen men bewitched, aye, and the fae are whispered of in every glen. Should I believe ye’re neither, yet something worse?”

Claire’s frown became sullen. “We are not witches,” she insisted. “Not fae or anything but...real people. We didn’t do this. It was done to us.”

He faced Alaric, nearly sick to his stomach for what felt like a betrayal from his oldest friend and greatest ally.

“And ye,” he ground out, “the man I trusted above any other—ye kept this secret from me? Ye’d share my table, fight at my side, and never once speak it?”

“Aye, I kept it from ye—for this verra reason. Look at ye now, nae willing to conceive it could be truth, wanting to reach for yer sword, to see danger where there’s none.”

Ciaran considered him at length, displeasure shadowing every inch of his face. He honestly couldn’t decide if Alaric was merely a pawn in some wicked game of Ivy and Claire, or if worse, he was an enemy now known.

“I ken it’s time to take yer army and...” he inclined his head at Ivy, “them away.”

Alaric nodded, his expression grim. “Aye.”

With that, Ciaran pivoted on his heel and quit the chamber, fury warring with disappointment.

***

Claire’s arms tightened around Lily as Ciaran’s words struck. His voice was ice, his glare colder still, causing Claire to reevaluate her perception of him once again.

The baby whimpered, possibly incited by Claire’s rigidity. Claire startled, her chest tight, and strode to where Ivy stood. “Here—take her.” She eased Lily into her mother’s arms and gave chase to Ciaran, Ivy’s concerned call chasing her from the room.

“Claire, no!”

Claire hurried after him all the same, chasing the drumbeat of sound that was his boots on the stairs. “Ciaran!”

She had thought Alaric the dangerous one—towering, broad, his features so often carved into something brutal.

Ciaran’s danger had always seemed quieter, brooding.

But what she had just witnessed inside Ivy’s chamber stripped away any illusion.

He had cut off his oldest friend without hesitation, cast judgment over her and Ivy as though they were instant and treacherous enemies, and his eyes—God, his eyes had glowed with a fire that made her shiver.

He was every bit as frightening as Alaric had once seemed to her, and perhaps more so, for there was no mercy in the coldness with which he wielded his rage.

She quickened her pace, nearly tripping down the stairs as he was already across the hall and headed outside.

“Wait—please!”

He didn’t slow, didn’t turn. Claire forced herself into a run, and caught up with him halfway across the yard, reaching for his arm. Her fingers had barely brushed the heavy fabric of his sleeve when he turned, so suddenly that she nearly collided with him.

The look he gave her, the burning intensity of his gaze, stopped her breath

“Please don’t do this,” she blurted, words tumbling out before she lost her nerve.

“Don’t send them away. Ivy’s barely recovered from the birth, and Lily—she’s so small, too fragile to be sent out there just yet.

” She pointed vaguely beyond the open gate.

“Please, laird. Whatever you think of me and Ivy, or even Alaric right now—though I promise you we are not lying about what happened to us—please don’t take it out on that baby.

” When he seemed unmoved, appeared about to snarl at her and walk away, Claire added, “Neither Ivy nor I are...a danger to anyone here.” She shrugged.

“We’re not dangerous, we’re just... lost.”

His eyes narrowed even further, suspicion hard as stone. “Ye mean to sway me with pity?”

“I’d like to think,” she said, forcing herself to meet his glare, “that you’re not heartless. And sending a newborn out, away from Caeravorn, is heartless. You know it is. And what of your friendship with Alaric—”

He did snarl now. “Again, ye impose yer will, yer bluidy insignificant views on me and mine. At the verra least, if what ye say is true, it demonstrates even more how ill-suited ye are to judge me or even the smallest matter of my time.”

The muscle in his jaw twitched. For a moment, she feared she’d pushed him too far.

And yet she pressed on, though softer this time.

“When I came to Caeravorn, you looked at me as if you’d seen a ghost. That’s what I was told.

And I saw it myself, the day you returned from campaigning with your army.

We have met before,” she dared. “Whether it was actually you and me, or... I don’t know, some version of us, we’ve met before.

” She swallowed and revealed what she’d been keeping so close for so many years.

“I know you were—are—familiar to me. Nine years ago, I was in a terrible car accident. I know you don’t know what that is, but picture it as a.

..a wreck of carriages, but with two tons of metal.

” She spoke quickly, fearful he might cut her off, or yet turn and walk away.

“It was dark and isolated, and I was pinned in the wreckage, bleeding, and so terrified that I would die before anyone discovered me. And a man came to me—like, literally, appeared out of thin air. He never spoke a word, but he...he held me. He calmed me and stayed until help arrived. And Ciaran...” she said, taking great liberty with his name today, her throat tight. “That man looked exactly like you.”

His brows drew together, his fury cooling to something icier. “Ye’re wrong. I dinna ken ye, lass. Nae nine years ago, nae ever ere ye came to Caeravorn. Whoever ye saw, it wasnae me.”

The denial landed heavy and yet it rang untrue—belied by the look in his eyes, narrowed and sharp, with what Claire was sure was a flare of recognition that was banked quickly beneath the frost of suspicion.

She wanted to argue, to insist that memory didn’t lie, but the storm in his gaze silenced her.

She’d taken a chance, had put it all out there, had tried to if not change his mind, at least have him concede and let Ivy and the baby remain until the infant was not so new and fragile.

She sighed, realizing she’d not succeeded at all.

“Fine. But if you won’t believe me about.

..anything else—even though all of it is true; I’ve not lied about anything,” she said, a resentful bite to her words, “at least believe me about the wounded. Please, Ciaran. If nothing else, make the doctor boil the rags, clean the tools, sterilize what he can after we leave. It will save lives, I promise you.”

He said nothing, neither committed to nor acknowledged anything, and finally, turned and strode away, outside the gates.