‘Beautiful,’ Bróccin breathed. He stretched out a hand, struck with awe and greed. ‘All that power. How many lifetimes could it fuel, do you think?’
Elspaith grasped his palm. It began to scorch and wither, though Bróccin didn’t appear to notice. If anything, he looked triumphant. His veins glowed brighter under his skin, drawing light from where he touched Elspaith’s form. His expression was manic, pure elation.
Elspaith stepped closer and folded him into an embrace. She spoke softly in his ear:
‘We shall find out together, brother.’
With that, she pushed off from the cliff’s edge. Bróccin toppled backward, now screaming, held in her flaming arms. They crashed into the water with a thunderous splash, sending a tidal wave hurtling against the shore. The water hissed and steamed where it closed over their heads.
The light of Elspaith’s fire dimmed under the surface as the two witches sank. Eventually it winked out, consumed by the darkness in Loch Ness.
It consumed Cam too, drawing him back down into its depths.
He was blind, once again unsure of his shape. Spread thin, as though he was a part of the darkness itself. A part of the loch. Some piece of him existed always in the water. That’s why it constantly tried to drag him back. Some piece of him…
The water pushed at Cam’s mouth insistently. He felt his physical body shift in its sleep, resisting the sensation. Afraid of drowning. Afraid of burning.
Where had his fire gone, when this curse took him? The same curse which Elspaith had conjured as a prison. Was she still here, acting as its warden?
Was Elspaith trying to show him… ?
Cam had always considered the fire magic in his blood to be his own curse. A different kind of prison—one with a ticking clock, waiting to seal his fate. He’d fought against it, shoved it down, even run away from it in the hope of escaping.
But now he knew the truth. The real curse had always been Bróccin, Bryce, feeding on that fire. Stealing the power for himself. Cam’s Scorch marks were scars from Bryce’s meddling. There was no inevitable Walker fate, only a murderer who had manipulated his entire family.
Since that night, when he’d confronted Bryce with Lachlan, Cam’s emotions had mostly centred around a kind of regretful peace. He was relieved they’d all survived. He was happy that Lachlan wasn’t cursed any more. He was content, he told himself, just to exist in the same space as the man he loved. So, he’d counted his blessings and tried to convince himself he was grateful for how everything had turned out.
But Cam saw the sadness in Lachlan’s eyes every time he had to return to the water. He saw it in Meredith’s each time she glanced at his Scorch marks. The shadow of Bryce still hung over them all.
The deepest sorrow, the one he sorely didn’t want to face, was his own.
The darkness shifted again, producing two heart-wrenchingly familiar shapes. Cam’s parents. They were seated either side of a desk, adding notes to a red ledger in the cottage at Glencoe. His mother looked up, and Cam found his eye level several feet closer to the floor.
‘Hey, Cam. What’s wrong?’ Amelie asked with a gentle smile. She rose, ready to gather him into a hug. ‘Did you have another nightmare?’
The memory was soft and painful. It faded, replaced by another.
‘You can kip here as long as you like, lad,’ Bryce was saying. ‘I won’t tell your parents where you’ve run off to. What do they know, eh? You’re safe here. On my life.’
Cam’s nails bit into his palms. Simultaneously, his plesiosaur shape bared its teeth in a snarl.
For the first time in a long time, Cam feltangry.
It bubbled up from his core, buoyed on a hot tide of grief. When he’d faced Bryce, he thought he’d stopped running away. Thought he’d finally faced his fears, and his fate.
But instead, he’d just accepted the hand he was dealt with once again. It was Lachlan who’d saved them both that night. Cam had felt useless ever since. Like a failure of a witch. He’d lost his magic, and his freedom. Could he even call himself a witch any more?
But witches chose their own fate. Elspaith was trying to show him that.
Cam could feel the fire building on the edge of awareness. It had been in his dreams, trying to tell him it was still there. He’d locked it out, pushed it into the loch with the other part of him that was trapped there.
Now, he was going to take it back.
The water began to hiss and boil. He opened his mouth to it, allowed himself to drown in the dream and let the fire fill him again.
Elspaith, or her flaming ghost, floated in the gloom, watching. She was the essence of her own magic; connected irrefutably to Cam by blood and fire. They shared the same power. It forged a link between them, just as it had for Bryce and every other Walker witch across centuries.
Cam understood, then. The reason why it had been so easy for Bryce to harvest life from his own relatives. He’d been exploiting that bond, using it like a ready-made channel to drain the power he needed.
