The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(127)

“Should we go?” she asked, finally.

“Probably so,” he agreed. He released her, then waited for her to settle herself in the saddle before he tried to swing up behind her. He had to jump aside to avoid being bitten by his horse. And all was as it should have been.

Bad horse, astonishing woman, no magic.

He supposed many important quests had begun with far less.





      The next Nine Kingdoms novel featuring Acair and Léirsinn is coming in the summer of 2017. In the meantime, turn the page for a sneak peek at the next Lynn Kurland novel,

   Ever My Love,

   due out in early 2017.





There were, Emma Barton had to admit, several benefits to learning how to drive on the left while in Scotland: fewer cars; fewer pedestrians; and more sheep who seemed to have absolutely no compunction about sunning themselves on tarmac.

Also, more room for almost having driven off the road while being distracted by the scenery.

She felt very fortunate that she’d eased off to the left instead of to the right, which would have left her in a long, winding river. She took a moment to indulge in a bit of deep breathing, then righted her car and continued on her way up the road toward the forest in front of her.

She paused, then considered. The forest road didn’t have any no trespassing signs posted, but she wondered if it might be wise to figure out where she was before she wandered onto someone’s private property and found herself mistaken for a grouse and shot on sight.

She pulled off the road, such as it was, and checked her phone. She had no signal, so she was obviously going to have to settle for physical maps. At least that way she could very reasonably claim ignorance if she wandered where she shouldn’t have. She mapped out a route in her head, tossed the map in the passenger seat, then opened her door. She promptly stepped into a puddle that had to have been at least a foot deep.

Hopefully that wasn’t a sign.

She took a deep breath, climbed out of that puddle and her car both, then locked the door. She put her phone in her pocket and set off in the vague direction she had chosen to go.

The forest, once she entered it, was a bit more dense than she’d expected it to be, but she supposed that had more to do with the cloudiness of the day than it did the number of trees. She zipped her slicker up and continued on, undaunted. No self-respecting Seattleite would have paid any attention to what was falling through the trees and she was nothing if not seasoned when it came to rain.

Unfortunately, having nothing to do but walk gave her far more time to think than she wanted. She’d put on a good face as she’d been bolting from her life, but now she had no choice but to have a good look at it.

The truth was, she was uneasy. She had walked away from everything because she had to. She was almost thirty years old, recently friend-zoned by her boyfriend of two years, and staring at the ruins of a business she’d built from scratch. What of her savings she hadn’t been forced to give to her unscrupulous business partner—better not to think about that, she decided firmly—she had used to buy a ticket to Scotland and pay in advance for the first week of her stay. She had two months’ worth of expenses in an account she had managed to keep separate from any business entanglements, but once that was gone, she was out of money and out of options. She had to come up with a solution and fast.

The solutions she didn’t consider were insolvency, piracy, and moving back in with her high-brow parents, who would look her up and down and sigh lightly every time they saw her.

She had to pause and take several deep, strengthening breaths. She would manage it. All she had to do was put one foot in front of the other. She had come to Scotland for inspiration for not only her life, but for a new business direction as well. She just needed some peace and quiet to get her head together and start a new chapter in her life.

Because the truth was, she didn’t have a choice. She had stepped away from a bad situation, she had paid a steep price for her exit, and now she had no choice but to go forward.

She took a deep breath and pushed aside her unhelpful thoughts. She could have been living eight hundred years earlier and on her way to the Tower of London. She could have been missing her shoes. She could have had a lifetime of the same sort of truly awful tea and stale cookies she’d made a breakfast of back in her room. When she looked at it that way, her life was looking pretty good.

In the end, where she found herself was her choice. She had chosen to take a step out into the darkness without knowing whether her foot would find solid ground or thin air.

She really wanted it to be the former.

That seemed to be the case at the moment. The ground was solid if not a little damp, the air was clean and crisp, and she had on warm clothes. Things were very good.

She continued to wander through woods that felt more like a church than just trees and sky and rain. She walked until she found herself standing on the edge of a lake. She watched the water for quite some time, hoping she wasn’t trespassing. The tracks she had begun to follow were definitely not on the map she’d left back in the car and her phone was still useless.

There was a house sitting on the shore, actually not far from where she stood. It didn’t look particularly inhabited, but maybe it was a holiday rental. She supposed she might ask around in the village and see if it was for rent. She could think of much more uncomfortable places to pass the winter.