After assuring us that he could make it to his quarters to sleep after dinner in the Great Hall, Quentin left for the night. I stayed in the room. Magnus and I ate protein bars and jerky, and because there hadn’t been enough sleep for days, it was time for bed though it was still light outside.

I helped him get comfortable with the mattress behind him to lean against and the oxygen mask on his face.

Then I sat and stared at my feet.

He asked, “Are ye comin’ tae bed?”

“No, I think I’ll sit on the settee for a little bit longer.”

I woke a few hours later, pretty cold, and it was finally dark. I used my flashlight to look around the room. Magnus had taken the mask off his face but the machine was still whirring. I crept around to turn it off, then adjusted the bear skin so it covered the bare boards on my side of the bed and climbed onto it. I pulled the linen sheet and a woven blanket up over me. I left the flashlight burning to the side for some ambient light.

Just as I settled in, Magnus asked, “Dost ye think about him much?”

“Who?”

“Our bairn. I think on him a lot, how he would have been…”

I blinked back tears in the darkness. “Not really, not anymore. In the beginning I cried about it alot, but I guess I’ve had longer to deal with it.”

“Aye. Still feels verra close tae me.”

His hand reached for mine and wrapped around it. Then he pulled, trying to get me to come up, but I resisted. I shook my head rubbing my cheek into the bear fur.

He let go of my hand.

I curled it under my chin. My voice was quiet in the darkness. “Were you with her, when I was there?”

“Och Kaitlyn, what good comes of considerin’ it?” He exhaled. “We were in a different time. I dinna ken ye were there. I was strugglin’ with the idea that ye died centuries before.”

“Tell me.”

“Aye, Kaitlyn. I winna lie tae ye on it. Aye, I was.”

“You left me and I don’t know if I can ever trust you again. Did you share a bed with her?”

“Aye. She lived in my rooms. But I was a prisoner, Kaitlyn. I believed ye tae be in the past. I believed I would need tae journey tae ye. I wanted a vessel and I was willin’ tae do anythin’ tae get to it. Thinking of ye as dead in the past was breakin’ me.”

I watched the side of his face, the shadows in the semi-darkness.

He exhaled. “I married ye before God. I love ye and I was mourning ye. I was mournin’ our son. I beg of ye tae understand and forgive me.”

I sat up cross-legged beside him. “I know what it’s like to mourn you, Magnus. But I never invited someone to my bed.” I took a deep breath to swallow down the tears. “But I do know it’s really hard when someone you love is in the past.” I stared at his hand casting long shadows across the sheets. It seemed foreign and I couldn’t get used to the fact. “Zach wanted to go with me to Scotland to look for your grave. He thought that would help me deal with my sadness, to know the truth of it.”

“Sometimes tae ken the truth is tae make the sadness worse.”

“I suppose so.” I gingerly put a finger right in the middle of his palm and then slowly let my hand relax and curl up in the middle of his strong hand. I breathed and watched my hand, a perfect fit inside his. It would be good to nestle there but slowly his hand closed around mine and then flashes came — my hand, bloody, tightening, pain, the side of the face as the life drained from it inches from my own, the skin of a strange shoulder as it butted against my mouth, and also in there an imagined image, my husband’s hand wrapped around another hand, an unknown hand, securing it.

Not mine.

Mine bloodied. Her’s secure.

I pulled my hand from his grip.

“Speak tae me of it, mo reul-iuil.”

“I was so happy when I went to Scotland with Quentin and Hayley. I was so excited and hopeful. I was so sure that…”

He reached for my knee but pulled his hand back to the neutral position between us.

“Now I wonder if I’ll ever be happy again.” I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

“What do you see, Kaitlyn, that is frightenin’ ye so much?”

I shook my head.

“I canna sleep. You canna sleep. We may need tae talk of somethin’ and twould be best tae say it.”

I chewed my lip. “You don’t want to know.”

“I daena, tae tell the truth, but I have tae.”

I closed my eyes. “I see him on me. So close that it’s just pieces. His skin. I can smell him. Taste him.” I gasped for breath. “And he’s dying and struggling and…” I focused on Magnus’s hand again. “There’s blood, so much blood. And it’s on me. And then I see me, alone, underneath. It’s hard to describe, like I’m not in my body anymore. And I’m watching my body and it’s lost and afraid and begging for someone to help and there are all these faces and then nothingness.” I bowed my head. “That’s what I see. And when I see you…” I sniffled. “I want to see my husband, but instead I see you on someone else. I don’t know what she looks like, but I don’t need to. It’s just the pieces. Everything is in pieces. I’m in pieces.”

“Aye, ye sound verra broken.”

I collapsed down to the bed and clutched his hand to my lips. I cried, sobbing against his wedding band. “Why did you do it?”

“You ken why — it goes no deeper, Kaitlyn. There is nae meanin’ behind it. Nothing tae tell ye of—”

“Did I do something? Was there something I…?”

“Nae, ye ken the answer tae this, mo ghradh. Twas nae tae do with ye, twas tae survive.”

I clutched harder, his fingers wet with my tears. “I don’t know if I can bear it.”

He breathed out like a sigh. “If ye are nae strong enough, what will happen tae us?”

“I don’t know…”

He wriggled his fingers from my grasp and wiped the tears from my cheek. “Then ye need tae be strong enough, mo reul-iuil. We are countin’ on ye…”

We sat there for so long I forgot he might speak. “Where did ye find the vessel?”

“Where you buried it beside the stone wall.”

“When I buried it, I dinna ken why. I dinna ken what I would need it for, but I buried it there, a place where ye could find it. I dinna dare dream of it but ye did find it. You came, and maybe I wasna waitin’ for ye at the front gates, but I did my best when I found ye. I regret I dinna protect ye, but I am grateful ye had the strength tae protect yourself.”

His finger stretched along the edge of my lips and traced a line back and forth. Gently.

“And tis a marvel that the stone wall, old in my time was still standin’ in yours. Dost ye ken how tae build a stone wall, Kaitlyn?”

I shook my head against the fur of the bedding.

“You take all these rocks, ye place them intae piles accordin’ tae size, and then ye begin tae stack them. The rocks are the pieces. The bigger pieces go along the bottom for strength, the smaller pieces go intae the spaces between. Ye ponder it and ye listen tae the pieces. They tell ye where they should go and ye slowly build the wall higher and higher until ye have built a wall with the strength tae last centuries. You may have broken intae pieces, Kaitlyn, but we will take our time. We will talk tae each other about what happened and we will listen tae the story of it. We will laugh with our family and we will cry sometimes when we think about what might have been with our son. Soon we will build ye back tae the strength ye had before.”

“The images in my head scare me.”

“We will replace them with ones that arna frightenin’.”

“Trusting you again scares me.”

“I am grateful that ye are brave.”

I pressed my cheek to his hand. “Can we go slow?”

He smiled sadly. “Tae build a proper stone wall ye have tae go slow. And tis a good thing, my ribs are too sore tae lift many pieces right now.”

While he had been talking about rebuilding my pieces my hand relaxed and fit within his palm and he closed his hand around mine. And he held it, not tight, but enough.

I thought about the wall and the message he sent me through time — here is the vessel, I want tae be with ye again.

“Did we just place the first piece, mo reul-iuil?”

“Yes, we — yes, we placed the first piece.” I clicked off the flashlight’s beam and tucked it to my chest and slept on the bear skin rug with my hand wrapped within his.

It was all I could do, but it was enough for now.