Rolling to her side, Charity tried to figure out where the end of the plaid she was mummified within was so she could get her arms free. She gouged at the dirt with her heels while she squirmed side-to-side in an attempt to loosen the overly long cloth.
The blanket serving as a door lifted and Shaw ducked inside, paused and scowled at her. Col entered next, though his features lightened with an amused grin. "Ye look like a fish floundering on land, lass. Here, allow me to assist."
He crouched down and pulled her to a sitting position to begin working on the knot behind her head. "Be still, 'tis caught in your hair."
"Col." Shaw growled like a worked-up watchdog. "Be wary. She's a witch."
The door-blanket-plaid-whatever was thrown aside once more.
"We'll soon know the right of that." Stooping to enter the low entrance was the most stunning woman Charity had ever seen. Thick auburn hair swayed around the thin yet curvy form. All that was needed was the soft gray gown to loosen and expose one shoulder and a bit of breast for the woman to look like the heroine on the cover of a historic romance novel.
Col got the gag unknotted and pulled it roughly out. Charity jerked her head away from him. "I'm not a witch." She spit out fluff from the gag. “I’m Charity Greves from Seattle and all of you are brutes and morons.”
“Sea-at-all?” Col’s nose scrunched up. Shaw merely shook his head, arms folded over his broad chest.
"'Course she’s no witch." The cover model crouched before her, gown puffing up around her. Her lips pressed tight and her forehead wrinkled in thought. "Anyone can see that. She's a Healer Enchantress. A powerful one."
"Healer?" Col's brows shot up, disappearing beneath his overlong bangs.
Powerful? Charity restrained from snorting. The girl just proclaimed her not a witch, which the guys seemed to buy into, so she wasn't about to argue the point. But powerful? That was stretching it a bit.
"You're certain?" Shaw frowned.
The girl gave him a bland look that had the perpetually angry warrior lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Across Charity, Col and the girl shared matching grins. Both of their lips hitched up at one corner, popping out identical dimples.
Wait a minute. Siblings. The sister, what was her name? Irene, Deena or something. An empath. Just by proximity, she'd be able to feel if Charity's magic breathed of witchcraft or touched upon healing.
"Verra well, Edeen, she's not a witch." Shaw leaned over them all. "Then what was she doing traipsing about skyclad outside Aldreth's lair? And why was Toren's name the first to cross her lips?"
"Now that is a fair question." Edeen's brow arched just like Toren's had.
Three expectant faces turned toward Charity. She wiggled her arms inside the cumbersome plaid. "Get me out of this and I'll tell you. And for the record, I don’t traipse."
Shaw leaned even closer, bending low over Col's head where the young man crouched next to her. "You'll tell us now."
Charity's pulse stormed to life. His glare alone was brittle enough to crack windows.
"Ye best answer the question." Edeen folded her arms. Where she'd seemed to be on her side for all of half a minute before, it was clear that when it concerned her brother, Charity's welfare wouldn't be the priority.
"I healed Toren," she blurted out. Why not? She'd come to help Toren, and by extension, his family anyway. They should be grateful to her.
The brothers and sister glanced at each other uncertainly, faces leaching of color.
Shaw recovered his composure first. Of course he did. "The witch brought ye in to heal Toren? She's hurt him that badly then?" Something changed in his eyes, like a flashlight beam suddenly flickering across a raw vulnerability that lay hidden far deep down. It tugged at something in Charity's belly. Seeing it was difficult so she looked to the others who wore their concern openly. Nope, that wasn’t much better.
"No," she whispered, the tone resonating with the worry she'd glimpsed in the siblings. The last thing she wanted to do was cause them any more concern, their rough treatment aside. "Toren came to me."
The dark veil in Shaw's eyes snapped back into place. "Our brother is imprisoned by the Alduein witch. He could not come to you."
Charity wiggled on her bottom. It was growing numb. She was tired of the defenseless position. Instead she jutted out her chin. "He traveled through a time rift. He said he searched for a healer who Aldreth couldn't threaten. He merely wanted a little reprieve so he could endure longer for his clan to get away."
The three went uncannily still, each with varying expressions of wariness.
"That sounds like something Toren would do." Col nodded. "Clever. Still imprisoned, yet he’s thwarting Aldreth at every turn." He turned to Charity, one eye squinting as he asked, "Was he hurt terribly?"
The question startled her. She swallowed. "Nothing fatal." She quickly went on at their pained looks to get it out, like pulling off a bandaide. "He appeared badly malnourished. His wrists are swollen and chafed where the spelled bands bite into his skin. The worst of it was two ribs broken and a few deep cuts. The witch is content to wear him down I think."
"Spelled bands?" Shaw ran a hand across his jaw. “Yet Toren got past them to open a rift?”
“He did.” She nodded. “But for a short time only. The glowing bands pulled him to the witch after I was able to help him.”
"But ye healed him?" Edeen leaned forward and her hair spilled across her folded knees.
Charity frowned. "I…did, but then didn't."
"You didn't heal him?" Col’s brows pulled together above startling green eyes.
"I did. The first time." As the trio studied her, Charity told them about how Toren had first come to her and she learned of the witch when she connected with him and healed him. She thought that was important for them to know if they were to trust her. She needed them to trust her. The shocked disbelief on their faces as she told the tale made her nervous. She really wished she had the use of her hands for emphasis.
She finished with how Toren was snatched back by Aldreth and how she had traveled back to that first moment they met, didn’t heal him the second time, well, much, and hitched a ride through that crazy abnormal time rift on Toren's magic to end up at this point. Only outside of the witch’s castle instead of inside with him. "So there you have it."
They just had to believe her.
Stunned silence coated the air. Edeen's eyelashes fluttered as though she couldn't quite grasp the truth of it.
Col's lips twisted. He opened his mouth to speak, but took a steadying inhalation instead and let it out in a rush. His hand strayed back across his dark unruly waves and he attempted to speak again. "That's quite the telling. You're from centuries beyond us?" Maybe they did believe her. He shook his head. "And you believed ye could simply travel back here and pluck my brother out from under the grasp of the most fearsome witch of a hundred generations?"
It sounded stupid put like that. She shrugged since she couldn't lift her arms, which were getting sweaty within the thick plaid cloth, not that any of them cared.
"What about these leather bands on Toren's wrists?" Shaw said, then to Col: "Has to be how she's kept him imprisoned him this long."
"Aye," Col agreed. "If Aldreth's spelled them to his very person, getting Toren out won't be enough. Our plan of rescue won’t be enough. We have to think of something else."
Shaw went very still, carved in stone still. "We—" His throat worked and his strong features seemed to close up. "We take the clan to the standing stones."
Col and Edeen swirled to their feet, fluid motions of skirts and kilt entangling.
"What? No, Shaw," Edeen pled. "Leave Toren with that witch? She'll kill him."
"She won't kill him." Col's voice choked with sorrow. "Ye know that, Edeen. She's patient. She'll wear him down, break him before it comes to that."
"Even worse. Nay." Tears glistened in the girl's eyes. Col took his sister's hands between his. Charity's heart
squeezed
Shaw stared down at her. "Had the healer not taken back her healing, we would have more time to figure out a proper rescue." His tone was bitter with contempt. "Toren will break. No mortal, even a sorcerer as strong as Toren, can stand for long against the Witch of Alduein. We'll break camp on the morrow and begin gathering the clan."
Without another look at her, Shaw bent and left beneath the doorway. Shoulders stooped, Edeen followed him out, calling after him while Col turned back, eyeing Charity with a strange look before he too left her alone in the makeshift hut.
Charity's breasts rose and fell with her breathing. What had she done? What had she done? She’d made things worse. Their whole clan was going to disappear just like in Lenore’s book because of what she’d just told his family. It would have been better if she hadn’t said anything, or if they hadn’t found her…which…wait. What was Shaw’s party doing near the castle?
Oh crap, they must have been on a type of recon mission, studying the lay of the land and the stone castle to make plans for a rescue attempt. But she had inadvertently gotten in the way of that. In the histories, the entire clan disappeared. Nothing more was known of them. Nor of what had become of Toren. She'd wanted to save him, but instead she'd taken away any hope that his family had of rescuing him.
They weren’t even going to try now, but leave him abandoned to the witch.
Charity curled over on herself, shaking. She never should have come because she'd singlehandedly just made things far, far worse.
Chapter Ten