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own evil purposes.”
    Vían was quiet behind him.  Offering no words of sympathy, no empty platitudes, and somehow that prompted him to continue. 
    “I had no concept of time when I was in their clutches.  They held me for months, but it felt like an eternity…”  His hands tightened on his reins as the memories washed over him, spilling chill bumps over his flesh.  “The worst of it is, I would have been able to break any chains wrought of iron or prison of stone, but… they didna imprison my body, they invaded my mind, held it captive with their black Magick.”
    Vían’s arms tightened around his middle, offering him more comfort than any words.
    “They tried to rip me from myself.  To bring me to their side.  And when they failed to do that, they used… terrible means to trick me into giving up my Druid powers to them.”
    “Obviously, they failed,” she offered, her voice tighter than he’d yet heard it.
    “Aye,” he ground out.  “But their attempts they… changed me… and not for the better.” Bit by bit, Malcolm had felt his heart grow colder, his thoughts more bitter.  He’d nearly lost himself in that place, in his own head, and the abyss he found within frightened him more than any physical pain he could imagine. 
    Even more than death.
    “You ask me why I’m taking ye home,” he murmured, placing a hand over the soft arms banded about his waist.  “It’s because when I’m with ye, I feel like myself for the first time in ages, and that is the most precious gift anyone could give.”
    Her breath had sped behind him, and she gave a few suspiciously rapid sniffs.  It melted his heart that she was touched on his behalf.  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll come for you again?”
    “They will,” he shrugged.  “They already have.  But we’re all stronger with someone by our sides to remind us what we’re fighting for.  I see that now.”  He cast another look at Bael and Morgana, who were locked in a conversation of their own a ways off.
    “You… know what they’re after?” she asked. 
    Malcolm realized that this was a lot for a wee lass to take in, and that he’d likely just gave her cause to fear for her life.  The best thing he knew to combat fear was information. 
    “There is a prophecy in the de Moray Grimoire that says that when four elemental de Moray Druids cast behind one gate, they are fated to bring about the Apocalypse,” he explained.  “We are only three.  My sister, Morgana, my cousin, Kenna, and I.  As long as one of us are behind castle grounds, we are able to ward them off, for now.  ‘Tis why Kenna didna join the search for me, I expect.”
    “How do you know the Wyrd Sisters cannot come for you?” she queried.
    “Because my castle is warded.”
    “Warded how?”
    “Do ye see the symbols carved in those stones?” He pointed to impossibly sized monoliths that they were beginning to pass.  “They’re placed all around the valley, and are strong enough that neither the Wyrd Sisters nor their minions can cross—.”
    With a cry, Vían’s arms were jerked from around his waist as she was thrown from his horse and into the grass by the invisible barrier that protected his lands. 
    Malcolm slowly turned his horse, meeting Morgana’s wide, blue eyes before he could bring himself to look at the woman who stared up at him from the ground.
    A cold, bitter fury built in his gut as he realized, he’d never told her the names of his enemies, and yet she’d called them the Wyrd Sisters.
    Because she was in league with them.

Chapter Five
     
    Vían turned her shackled wrists this way and that, testing the security of the iron and her ability to slip out of it.  Of course, it would figure that Malcolm’s chains would hold fast, that his dungeon would be as absolute as the void had been.  It was almost worse, because she could mark the passing of time through the narrow barred window at the top of the tall stone wall. The sunlight crept in a