Is he the one?
She didn't know. God help her, she didn't know. But she knew one thing, and it filled her with sadness.
If he was the one?her soul mate?it was too late.
Chapter Fifteen
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Viloula stood in the center of her cabin, alone. The sounds of the night filtered to her ears. Next door the party was just starting. From somewhere far away, some darkened edge of the canyon, came the hooting, lonely cry of an owl. Chilly night air closed around Viloula, pressed icy fingers around her bare throat.
She wished fleetingly, and not for the first time, that her mama were still alive. Genvieve would know how to interpret Viloula's strange, fitful visions, would understand her apprehension.
Something terrible was going to happen; she was certain of it. The moment she'd looked into Alaina's eyes, she'd seen the terrifying truth, heard the whispered words.
There would be a death....
She didn't question her knowledge, though she knew that others would. She had been taught since childhood to trust in her feelings, in the innate knowledge that remained hidden in the furthest reaches of her mind, seeping forward into the cold, hard daylight only when it must.
For generations, men?who had lesser access to these memories?had scoffed at such knowledge, labeling it women's intuition and discarding it as worthless.
But Viloula knew better, as had Genvieve before her, 183
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and innumerable generations of women before her. Intuition was knowledge, as certain as anything learned from any book and infinitely more powerful.
They had known each other before, she and Alaina and Killian, and now they were moving toward a danger, all three of them. A danger that couldn't be avoided.
There would be a death. . .,
Goose bumps crawled across Viloula's flesh. The time had come for Viloula to look into a place she'd studiously avoided all her life. A place that terrified her with its darkness, its uncertainty. A place where the past and the present and the future coexisted, a tangled web of lives over and lives yet to be.
She glanced at the small glass vial on her windowsill. Soon, when the camp fell once again into quiet, she would reach for it. And having once taken hold of the glass, there would be no turning back.
"Please, God," she whispered, her voice broken and throaty in the darkness, "let me have the strength to help her."
The strength to help us all ...
Everything was ready. It was time.
Lainie let out a heavy breath and glanced at the supplies at her feet. A ragged sack lay on the floor, its dirty sides bulging with supplies she'd gathered from the cabin, its mouth tied tight with a fraying scrap of rope. The canteen hung at her right hip; the wide leather strap pulled taut between her breasts and bit into the tender flesh at her throat.
Lainie went to the window and pushed aside the rough burlap curtain. The camp was empty, quiet except for the hum of raised voices and laughter coming from the drinking tent. Light seeped through the tent, silhouetted
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the crush of people moving inside. The tinny whine of a fiddle floated on the air.
Killian was in there.
She leaned forward a little, touched the tip of her nose to the cold glass. Her breath fogged the pane, turned the world into a hazy surreal smear. She wondered what he was doing, what he was thinking.
Yet, somehow, she knew. He was distant, untouched by the crowd of humanity swirling around him. Like her, he was always alone, no matter who was around him. It should have surprised her, the innate knowledge of a man she couldn't possibly understand, but it didn't. Viloula's words came back to her, filled her with a terrible longing. What if . . . soul mates ... a love that won't ever die .. .
For a second, it hurt to breathe. She could admit to herself, alone and in the dark, that she wished Viloula were right. She'd always wanted to believe in a fairytale love, wanted to believe it was possible. Long ago, before life crushed her spirit so completely, she'd believed in a million moments like this, in the hot magic of possibility.
Amazingly, she was beginning to believe in it again. And?naturally?it was too late. Sadness pulled at her lips, turned them down at the corners. Regret was a hard knot in the pit of her stomach.