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A skeptical look settled on Da’s lined face. “Ye have accepted yer fate?”

I did not believe my fate was to wed Donald, so aye, I’d accepted that. I nodded without a twinge of guilt, only determination.

“Go then,” he said, waving a dismissive hand at me.

I rushed out the door and down the torch lined passageway toward the stairs. My footfalls clacked against the wood and echoed in the empty passageway. The solitary sound of my flight made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle and gooseflesh pepper my arms underneath the heavy material of my winter gown. I rubbed at them absently for a moment, feeling silly about my uneasiness. And yet, I gathered fistfuls of my skirts to quicken my steps as if I believed that the ghosts of the lost souls roaming about on this night could snatch me.

I was brave, not cowardly. It was simply my anxiousness to get to the beach and find Vanora and my friends and speak to them. Vanora needed a proper lecture and possibly a threatening about her rash agreement to wed Donald if I would not. And I needed my friends’ counsel. I currently had no ideas how to aid my da, my clan, without sacrificing myself, but four minds would be better than one to come up with a solution.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I spotted Vanora walking backward up the stairs holding what looked to be a looking glass. She was flanked on either side by Katreine’s sisters. “Vanora!” I bellowed, all my frustration erupting.

“Oh!” Vanora cried out and jerked around. “What are ye doing inside still?”

I marched down the stairs, huffing and fuming. Glaring at her, I said, “The better question is why on earth would ye agree to wed Donald MacKinnon if I willnae?” Her cheeks splotched instantly red, but I was not feeling merciful even in the face of her embarrassment. She opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “Ye have fixed me good this time, Vanora. Unless I can find a way out of it, I will be trapped into wedding Donald to help Da and the clan.”

Vanora frowned. “Would ye nae wish to help Da and the clan nae matter what?”

“I—I—the point is, yer agreement has taken away my option nae to agree! To protect ye, ye foolish child—”

“I am nae a child!” she said, stomping her foot and proving my point.

I eyed her foot purposely before drawing my gaze to meet hers once more, and she was now glaring at me. “To protect ye, I had to agree, and now I must come up with a solution to aid Da and the clan that does nae involve my wedding Donald.”

“I think he’s handsome,” Vanora said, her tone ringing with adoration. The twins nodded their agreement.

“A pretty face masks his dark heart!” I bit out. “Do nae agree to anything else without talking to me first.” Vanora stared with that stubborn streak which only rose for me. “ Vow it on Mama’s grave!”

“Fine!” she huffed. “I vow it.”

I started to brush past them, saw the looking glass clutched in Vanora’s hand, and paused with the suspicion this somehow boded trouble for her, which meant trouble for me. “Whatever are the three of you doing?” I demanded.

Vanora’s cheeks burned redder than they had been. “Euphemia says if we walk backwards holding a looking glass we’ll see our next—”

Euphemia clamped a hand over Vanora’s mouth and blurted, “Hound we shall own!”

I eyed the known mischief maker. “What are ye really hoping to see?” I asked, sweeping my gaze over the three of them.

“Our next lover,” Millicent pronounced with an air of authority I knew to be false.

I hitched an eyebrow. “Hmm…” I said, tapping my lip. “Last I saw Katreine at the king’s castle, she said yer mama had left the two of ye home”—I motioned between Millicent and Euphemia—“because she feared ye would embarrass her at court, because ye were still too shy to speak to boys.”

“Katreine is a liar,” Millicent huffed.

I plucked the looking glass out of Vanora’s hands and said, over Vanora, Millicent, and Euphemia’s loud protest, “I will tell yer elder sister ye think so when I find her at the festival.”

Millicent went pale. I had to bite my cheek not to laugh. After ten years of friendship with Katreine, I knew well her temper. I was certain it was even more forceful with her pesky younger sisters.

“Do nae do that,” Millicent said, her tone pleading.

“I’ll consider keeping silent, but ye must tell me why the three of ye were walking backward up the stairs holding this looking glass?”

“To see the man we will wed in the looking glass.”

I frowned. “Where did ye get such nonsense?”

“Morgana,” Vanora said, exchanging a look with Millicent and Euphemia.

“Morgana is here? At our stronghold?” I could not keep the awe out of my tone. I’d only ever seen the witch in person once, and that was when I’d gotten lost in the dark woods I was not supposed to be in ever without Da and a score of warriors.

All three of them nodded.

“Where?”

“Near the herb trail on the east side of the castle,” Vanora replied.

“How do ye ken it was her?”

“She told us,” Vanora said. “In exchange for showing her where the herb garden is.”

“Whyever would she want to ken where our herb garden is?”

“To save her mama.”

“Are ye making this up?” I demanded.

“Nay!” Vanora cried out, crossing her arms over her chest. “She said she’d come for an herb that only grew in our herb garden. In exchange for promising nae to tell anyone she was here; she told us how we could discover who we would wed, if we held up a looking glass and walked backwards up or down the stairs.”

“Fine,” I replied, a hope forming. “Go on with the three of ye and get to the festival.”

“Are ye nae coming?” Vanora asked.

“I’ll be along after I put yer looking glass up,” I supplied.

“Might I have the looking glass back?” Vanora asked, eyeing it .

“Absolutely nae,” I replied. “Morgana duped ye,” I supplied. It could be true, then again, mayhap it wasn’t. And I was anxious to see if it wasn’t or was. Maybe I would not see Donald, then I could rest easy and enjoy the festival and my friends who I so rarely got to see with their living a good distance from my clan. “Now off with ye before I lose the little bit of patience I have left.”

Vanora pressed her lips together, but said, “Come along. She can be horrid to deal with when she’s vexed at ye.”

I listened to them argue over who was worse to deal with, myself or their sister, as they tromped down the stairs. When I could hear them no more, I held the cracked looking glass up and backed down the steps, taking care to go slow. I got all the way to the bottom of the first flight, and all I’d seen in that looking glass was me. Maybe, I wasn’t concentrating hard enough.

I focused all my thoughts on what my husband might look like, whilst also fervently hoping I did not see Donald. I concentrated so hard my head began to ache, and my vision blurred from my intense, unblinking staring. I shuffled backward down the sharp curve in the stairs. Suddenly, two men appeared in my looking glass. Gasping, I jerked around, my foot caught in my gown, and I slid forward off the edge of the step to collide into the tallest of the men. The hard hit knocked the air out of my lungs.

Solid arms wrapped around me for a moment before the man set me to the side of him while righting me. Heat singed my cheeks, neck, and chest as I stared at them. They had on hooded cloaks like Yennifer had worn and had their faces stained with berries just as Yennifer had. I resisted the urge to scoff at two men believing in tales of the dead rising to snatch their souls. My gaze moved from their faces to their cloaks, and I immediately recognized the emblem of a small, simple crown with an armored hand holding a cross that was sewn into the shoulder of their cloaks.

MacDonald warriors!

Panic sent me scrambling backward, feet scrabbling on the wooden planks as I held the looking glass in front of me like a weapon. “I’ll scream!” I hissed through clenched teeth, my voice rising to an unbecoming pitch that made the blood rush to my cheeks.

“Ye already are, ye daft lass,” said the tallest of the two men.

I glared daggers at him, eyes narrowing into slits. “What are ye doing here?” I demanded, trying to inject as much authority as I could into my shaky voice.

“We’re emissaries from MacDonald,” the same man supplied, his tone bordering on insolence. I made a derisive noise, a sound caught somewhere between a gasp and a scoff, and he hitched an eyebrow at me, not hiding his amusement. “Ye’ve a frog caught in yer throat, do ye?” he asked with a lazy drawl that made my skin prickle.

“Yer amusing,” I replied, letting my voice convey the sarcasm that my words had not. “I’ll ask again. Why are ye here? Has yer lying, thieving, honorless laird come to his senses and sent ye to surrender Eilean Donnan?” The heat in my cheeks intensified as I threw the words at him like stones.

“Nay. My b—” The shorter man gave a shake of his head before continuing. “The lying, thieving, honorless, foolish laird has sent us with an offer for the laird’s eldest daughter,” the man blurted.

For a moment, my mind went blank, and I was certain that I had misheard. Then clarity returned like the shattering of glass, and I felt the blood drain from my face. My lips parted as did the taller man’s for the barest of breaths, before he clamped his mouth shut and visibly clenched and unclenched it, as if uncertain what to say next. My nostrils flared like those of a tethered mare. The notion of being wed to my family’s enemy was a horror worse than being wed to Donald himself. “If yer laird wanted to make an offer for my laird’s eldest daughter he should have at the verra least sought out the laird’s eldest daughter. She’s a mind and a mouth of her own, and she is more than capable of answering any question he was to pose to her! But here’s a little hint: her answer would be nay, so do nae bother to seek her da out.” The disgust in my voice was uncontrolled, shocking even to me. I turned to stalk away, fury propelling my feet, but a hand clamped on my elbow like a steel vise.

Anger burst from me like a thunderclap, and I jerked around, tugging my elbow free of the tall man’s grip. “How dare ye touch me!” I spat, my voice reaching a shrillness that echoed in the hall like a scream.

The man gave me a steely look and slowly peeled back his fingers one by one. “Beg pardon.” How was it possible to beg someone’s pardon with the right words yet convey the message that you were not sorry at all? I opened my mouth to hurl an insult, but he spoke. “I simply wished to ken if ye are the laird’s eldest daughter?”

“Do ye think if I was the daughter of the laird I’d be stuck inside during this festival cleaning that spoiled woman’s bedchamber?” I was amazed how easily I’d thought of the lie and spit it out. But I had no intention of standing here any longer. My da would not accept this envoy’s offer. That much I knew. It was too late for that. The MacDonalds had broken the treaty, and Da would not enter one with them again. Without waiting for a reply, I turned away, not caring what the stranger might have said. All I cared about was finding my friends and getting their counsel on how I could possibly avoid wedding Donald.

It wasn’t until I stepped into the inner courtyard, breathless from the confrontation, that I realized I was still clutching the looking glass, my knuckles white and tight around its polished frame. In an explosion of anger, I hurled it into the darkening woods, its gleam catching the last breath of dusk before disappearing into the tangled night. I started away but stopped dead with a sharp intake of breath.

What had I done? In one reckless moment, I’d thrown away the only thing my sister possessed of our mama’s! I turned back, my heart drumming a frantic beat. The courtyard lay ghostly and bare, shadows stretching ominously across the stone. And then a woman appeared from thin air, seeming to float just above the ground, holding Vanora’s looking glass.

“Morgana,” I murmured, the witch’s name falling from my lips as gooseflesh prickled along my arms.

The witch’s silvery purple eyes shone at me from across the courtyard. Her presence was spectral, eerie in the sepulchral light. “Ye lost this,” she said, a smirk twisting her lips.

“Ye lied to my sister and her friends,” I flung out, each word a desperate volley to mask my own fear. I was vexed that all I’d seen in the looking glass was the two envoys, and I needed to know the truth. Morgana’s eyes turned hard; sharp, twin daggers aimed at my heart. I backed up a step, realizing too late the mistake I’d made in calling someone like her a liar.

She snapped her fingers with a commanding flick, and my hand opened without my doing it, the looking glass flew straight into my palm, my fingers closing around it like a trap. I could feel my eyes widen with shock, my heart drumming, wild and untamed, as if it might escape my chest. “I do nae lie,” Morgana said. Her voice was a low jagged edge, each word jabbing me with all the weight of her wrath. “Those words were nae for ye, the looking glass is nae yers—’tis yer sister’s.”

Her disdainful sneer made me feel small, a scolded child whose complaint had been dismissed. Yet still, something brash made me press Morgana, a defiance borne of desperation. “I saw two men in the looking glass. Envoys from the MacDonald laird. I ken I will nae wed those men. I wish to see who I’ll wed.”

“Do nae wish to see the future, Freya MacLeod.” Her tone was a warning like the thunder before a great storm. “Such a gift is a burden.” With that, she waved her hands, and I was forcefully shoved back from her by the air. “Go now,” she said, whipping her hand in a circle, so that my body was turned away from her. “I have many herbs to find, and they are hiding from me.”

The wind pushed me across the pebbled stones so that I slid more than walked. I held my breath, heart racing, but as I reached the end of the path the wind was suddenly gone. Fearful to turn back, I started toward my friends once more, my steps quick and earnest. They were my only hope, the only faces I could trust, unless some magical solution fell into my lap and offered a relief that seemed more distant and impossible by the moment.