The Brides Black Mirror by Kalani Madden

Author:Kalani Madden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-24T19:04:34+00:00

Chapter 8

The days went by without any second or third kisses.

Though, to be fair, that had been all of Alana’s doing. When she’d start down a hall and find Shaw at the other end, she’d turn around and find another path that wouldn’t cross with his. Alana would promptly excuse herself to the ladies’ room when he’d approached her in the great hall. And when Shaw tried to sit her down to talk, Alana would flag down Una and pull her into the conversation so they wouldn’t have to talk about what happened on those stairs.

The fact that he kissed her—and she liked it.

An impossibility, not when she had a life to return to in the twenty-first century. Not when she’d let him down kindly, gently. This whole sojourn to fourteenth-century Scotland was just a dream, a blip in her life, an anecdote for later. Nobody would believe her, but that was fine with Alana; she was made for modern life. For the trappings of technology, electricity—and, her favorite—indoor plumbing.

It had been two weeks since Alana had taken a hot shower. She yearned to feel water running over her body again instead of the tepid baths Una had arranged for her.

Rotheimurchus and the fog were waiting—the least she could do was see out this whole debacle with the Camerons.

“Yanno, ye don’t have to return,” Una said one afternoon as they walked the ramparts of Inverness castle. Summer was at its height, and all around them, the Highlands had bloomed into a lush, verdant landscape of green grasses and purple heather, the River Ness glittering in the mid-day sunlight. Down by the banks, fishermen cast their nets into the calm blue waters and hauled bony little fish from its depths.

“Return?” Alana asked, her arm linked with Una’s.

“Back to yer time, that is.” Una had been pressing this same topic since the night of the feast. Since Shaw pressed his lips to Alana’s in a searing kiss, it would forever be burned into her memory as one of the top five kisses she’d had. Alana absentmindedly brushed her hands over her lips at the thought of it. Una caught the gesture, her eyes narrowing and her mouth quirking into one of those secretive smiles she was so good at. “Ye don’t feel it like ah do?”

“You’re going to have to be less vague, Una Shaw,” Alana said.

“Ach, the fact that ye want to stay wi’ us! It ain’t a pithy thing, I get that as much, but—” she breathed through her nose as if struggling to find the right words. “I havnae seen Shaw nearly as lively as he’s been since you came back with those prisoners. It’s like a shroud has been weighin’ heavily on his shoulders since the death of our parents, and now that’s…somehow lifted?”

“Maybe he just sees an end to the war with the Cameron’s?” Alana suggested. “A light at the end of the tunnel.”

“A what?” Una wrinkled her nose. “That’s a funny saying. Ah, but no. I think it’s all to do with ye, Alana Hunter.

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