Page 18 of First Light

“Can you give me some privacy please?” She looked at him from the corner of her eye as she texted Laura and Kiersten her location.

“Fine, but be ready in an hour and dress warm.”

Carys told Laura and Kiersten she was going camping like Duncan had said and that if they were worried to call Mary Burris at Murrayshall House. She also told them that Lachlan and Duncan were some kind of minor Scottish royalty, that everything was fine, and she’d explain later.

She was going to come back to two hundred messages, she just knew it.

Duncan left the room, and Carys walked to the window to stare at the forest where they would meet Dru later that night.

Though the town was only a short drive away, the forest behind Murrayshall House and the old castle felt primeval. The dense forest reached up the giant hill—not quite a mountain—surrounding the ruined castle and an even older-looking fort on the hill above it. Grey stones butted up from the top of the ridge where the old fort had been built, like jagged teeth from the jawbone of a monster.

There was a stream running down the hill and into the meadow around the house, curling and bounding over moss-covered rocks and twisting between the curves of the earth. A waterfall was barely visible between the trees.

And somewhere in that forest was Lachlan, at least according to his brother.

She changed her mind.Thiswas the worst idea in her twenty-nine years of life on this planet. Going into a dark forest with her missing boyfriend’s not-twin brother.

She was following that bunny all the way into the woods, and the wolf was probably the one guiding her.

Carys changed her trousers to the heaviest khaki canvas she owned, pulled on wool socks and a microfiber undershirt, layering a wool sweater over her shirt before she donned a wool coat that Mary had loaned her.

Apparently her bright red puffer coat was a little too conspicuous.

She finished her trekking outfit with sturdy boots, then walked down the stairs to meet Duncan, who was waiting at the door in similar sturdy hiking clothes.

“Ready?” he asked.

No.

He cocked his head. “Last chance to leave it.”

Carys lifted her chin, walked past him, and opened the front door.

The forest wasdark but hardly silent. As they approached the edge of the woods, she saw Dru waiting on a fallen log. His pale skin shone in the gathering darkness, and he almost seemed to glow.

They said not a word when Dru rose, but Duncan took her hand and closed it within his own as they followed the strange man into the woods.

“Don’t let go of me,” Duncan said quietly. “Keep your eyes on Dru as we walk. Keep your wits about you, and whatever you hear, don’t react.”

“What am I going to hear?”

“Things that aren’t real.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “And some that seem too real. I’ll explain when we’re through the gate.”

Gate?Carys bit her tongue and went with it. Whatever this was, Duncan was taking it seriously, and as long as he took her to Lachlan, she’d go along with it.

Dru walked along the path through the woods, over stones and through the trees. The farther they got into the deepening darkness, the harder it was to keep her eyes on him. He seemed to blend into the trees, disappearing and reappearing as the forest grew darker and deeper.

They walked over a small bridge and down a set of carved stone steps into what looked like a grotto covered in moss where faded ribbons were tied around branches and copper pennies were pushed into tree trunks.

“Duncan?”

“Shh.” He squeezed her hand. “Don’t speak. Whatever you hear or see from now on, don’t speak to them.”

Them?

The three travelers passed through the grotto and under a narrow cut in the rocks where a fallen log had created an archway. The forest grew darker as the sun set, and the sky—which she could barely make out through the tree canopy—deepened from a faded grey to a velvety midnight blue.

There was a chittering, crawling sound in the dense brush beside her, and a branch snagged her pant leg. Duncan hissed something in Gaelic, and the noise scattered. An owl hooted, then another, the birds calling to each other over their heads while a crow squawked somewhere in the distance.