Last Wish (Highland Magic #4)(2)

‘You don’t know that.’

She smiled serenely. ‘Yes, I do. It’s all in the wording.’

‘One Adair will save Alba. Yeah, yeah. That’s what I was told. I saved the Foinse, therefore I saved Alba.’

Morna patted my shoulder. ‘Alba doesn’t just mean the Highlands. It means all of Scotland.’

I wrinkled my nose, my scepticism palpable. Scotland hadn’t been a whole country since the Fissure – and that was almost three centuries ago. Scotland, in the sense that Morna meant, no longer existed. ‘There are a hundred thousand Fomori demons in the Lowlands. At least. Even if I weren’t a pacifist, there’s not a single thing I could do that would change that.’

Despite my dismissive reply, the thought of all those demons and the people they’d effectively enslaved – and conditioned not to question their enslavement – continued to gnaw at me. I wasn’t about to abandon them to their fate but, even with an army of trolls at my back, I couldn’t see a way to help them. Yet. I clung onto that word every night when my churning thoughts refused to let me sleep: yet.

Morna shrugged. ‘I didn’t say I had all the answers. But with the Foinse here, I’m now more inclined to believe in the prophecy than to discard it out of hand.’ She pointed at the patch of green by our feet. ‘Now come on. Before you save anyone, I’d like to see you rescue yourself. Bring this land back to life.’

‘You’re a real pain in the arse, Morna.’

Her smile spread. ‘I know, dear.’

I returned my gaze to the signs of growth. It was slow going but, thus far, I was rather impressed with my efforts. Aifric Moncrieffe had ordered this ground salted after the massacre which took place on the day of my birth. Normally that would mean many generations’ worth of unusable land. With the help of Morna’s Gift, however, I was reversing the effects. From what had once been the sacred Adair grove to down here by the old mansion, there was now a swathe of green. Morna was a hard taskmaster though; she expected more.

I reached down inside myself and concentrated. Her Gift buzzed through my blood, my veins and my very soul. I had to admit that it was getting easier, although I could still feel the queasy light-headedness. I had little choice but to embrace it.

‘Good,’ the older woman said. ‘Search for the power in the earth and draw it out.’

I swayed. When you knew what you were looking for, it was quite remarkable. I could feel the throb of life from Mother Nature calling out to me, asking to be restored in much the same way that a desert flower will stay dormant for months and even years, waiting for the rain that finally brings it to blossom. I was the rain. Here, at least, I was life.

Lights exploded behind my eyes and I gasped. My body fizzed with the sudden surge of magic. Goosebumps rose across my skin, pricking me with their intensity.

‘Not too much,’ Morna warned.

As more blades of grass and green shoots sprang up, I yanked on the threads of power inside me before carefully dampening them down. I might have Morna’s Sidhe-given magic but, unless I ripped it all from her, it was a finite source. I had to use it sparingly. Breathing hard, I struggled for control while the ground continued to transform into a blanket of spring. I staggered.

‘You’re getting there,’ she said approvingly.

I clutched at my chest, my heart hammering against my ribcage. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to take over,’ I enquired when I could finally speak again.

‘I could,’ she answered. ‘But then you’d never learn anything.’ She looked at me searchingly. ‘Your magic is running out. You need to take more.’

‘No, I have enough.’

‘Not for the whole Adair lands, you don’t.’ She took my hands in hers and squeezed. ‘Take,’ she ordered. ‘You have enough control.’

She had considerably more faith in my abilities than I did. I was tempted to refuse but her eyes were hard and insistent. I swallowed and focused on the glow inside her. It wasn’t that I could see it, as such, more that I could sense it. Like all acts of thievery, the more often I drew from the Gifts of other Sidhe, the better I became at it. I tugged at wisps of her magic, pulling them gently into myself as if by osmosis. I had to be careful – the last thing I wanted to do was to take too much. My soul hungered to grab and guzzle but I pushed down my primal urges and sucked in a breath, stopping when I felt the nausea.

‘You should take more,’ Morna chided gently.

I pressed my lips together and shook my head. ‘No. You need it. It’s yours.’

She let out a bark of laughter. ‘I’m an old woman. There’s a whole wellspring of magic inside me which is untouched. Better that it gets used than it seeps away into the ether when I finally quit this body.’

I glanced at her, alarmed. Surely she didn’t think she was at death’s door? Her expression was calm and placid. ‘How long till you go?’ I asked. Then I realised how that sounded and said quickly, ‘I mean how long till you go back home?’

She frowned as she considered my question. ‘Soon,’ she said eventually. ‘But we should conduct a field test first and see how adept you’ve really become at stealing.’

There was a certain irony in that, given what I used to do for a living and how good I’d been at it. I rubbed my chin. ‘I can’t be seen. And we should wait until after the next visit.’