A Laird and a Gentleman (All the King's Men #4) - Gerri Russell Page 0,79

focused her efforts on trapping the ash and the sickness in the cairn for all eternity.

Using the last reserves of strength in her body, she visualized the cairn reassembling itself overhead and all around her. Pain cascaded down her spine and into her limbs as she crumpled to the ground. Her heartbeat fumbled and her breath came in ragged gasps as the last stones slipped into place.

Despite being alone in the cairn, Mariam thought she heard the swoosh of wings. Silence followed as ice slithered through her limbs. Breath slipped from her lungs, and she surrendered to eternal darkness.

Chapter Twenty

Cameron reached the cairn as the last stone settled, blocking Mariam within. She could not live alone, in the darkness, locked inside the tomb.

“Mariam!” The sound of his ragged breathing punctuated the air and mingled with the thudding of his heart. He skidded to a stop. His hands shot out as he thumped the solid stones before him. Pain rippled through his hands to his forearms, but it did not stop him.

“Release her!” He continued to assault the stone with his bare flesh until his fingers bled. When finally his attack on the cairn yielded no results, he drew his sword and thrashed at the stone with even more force.

He had to reach her. He could not leave her in there alone in the darkness.

Pain jabbed at his side as he threw his sword to the ground and started digging with bloody fingers, loosening the stones until one slipped out and then another. He had dislodged a dozen stones before he felt a presence at his side. “Help me reach her. Use your magic to free her,” he demanded of the woman he had known as Mistress MacInnes.

“You really love her, don’t you?”

“More than life itself,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. He pounded the stones before him. “Take me. Take me instead . . .”

Beside him, Mariam’s mother stretched an arm out to the sea and pulled it back along with an arc of seawater. With another wave of her hand, the wave crashed against the stones, creating an opening. Cameron jumped over the rock and ran to Mariam’s side, falling to his knees beside her. He cradled her in his arms. “I’m here. I’m here, Mariam.”

Bathed in moonlight, Cameron could clearly see the paleness of her face, the stillness of her chest. Fear and horror and panic coiled in his stomach. The light that had filled her when she’d summoned the wind had gone out of her fully now. She looked as fragile as a shell upon the beach. He looked up to see her mother standing beside them. “Use your magic. Bring her back to me!”

She looked stricken. “That I cannot do. Mariam has destroyed our power over life and death.” Her gaze moved to the back of the cairn, to where the cauldron used to reside. In its place was now a crater in the earth, surrounded by a light dusting of ash. The cauldron and all Mariam had flung inside it had vanished.

Her sacrifice had worked for everyone except herself.

A bleakness like none Cameron had ever known invaded his soul. For the first time in his life he had nothing to cling to, nothing to hope for as he stared down into the vacant, green eyes of the woman he loved.

She was so cold. He rubbed her hands. He caressed her cheeks.

There was no response.

“We are in a place of magic, and yet nothing can save her?” The words felt as though they were ripped from his throat. Tears welled in his eyes as an unbearable ache twisted his insides into a fiery knot.

“There is nothing more for us to do but say our goodbyes.” Sorrow laced her voice.

Cameron’s throat tightened, closed. He could not find the words to bid his love farewell. Instead, he bent his head and placed one last kiss upon her lips.

*

Mariam fought her way through the darkness, clawing with as much tenacity to reach Cameron as he had used to reach her inside the clutches of death. She fought the lethargy that weighed her down until she could summon a simple whisper of air. She pulled it into her lungs and breathed.

*

Cameron felt a hint of breeze upon his cheek. It was so soft at first that he dismissed it as only a figment of his imagination, then it came again, more forceful this time. He pulled back to see Mariam’s cheeks were tinged with pink. Her eyelids fluttered. His