“I can try.”
He said nothing but lifted me with ease, holding onto my thighs as I reached for the rock. It wobbled when my fingers gripped it.
“Orick, I don’t think it’s sturdy enough. It might give way.”
“Pull on it for me, lass.” His voice sounded as if it were far, far away. I knew that once I was on solid ground, it would be even more challenging for him to find a way up on his own. Still, we could only solve one problem at a time so I pulled on the rock as he asked. It wiggled but didn’t give.
“I think it can hold ye as wee as ye are. Grip it and pull yerself up quickly.”
Being thin didn’t equate to being strong, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever done a real pull-up. Whether it was fear or adrenaline, I didn’t know, but I pulled myself up with little effort. When I was high enough to push myself up onto level ground, the large stone came loose, and I had to scramble up onto the grass to keep from falling with it.
Shaking, I stood and turned to give Orick a triumphant smile.
Instead, all I could see was the blood running from Orick’s brow where the rock had hit him. His eyes were already closed as he fell backwards. I screamed, but no one save Cooper could hear me, his trembling arms wrapping around my leg as we watched Orick’s unconscious body crash onto the jagged rocks near the sea.
*
“Orick! Orick!” Cooper called his name endlessly, tears streaming down his face as he trembled by my side.
I fell to my knees and sobbed as I looked over the edge. I could no longer feel the wind or hear the sound of the waves. Only Cooper’s screams penetrated the fog of my brain. I could see nothing but the broken form of Orick’s body down below. He lay unmoving. Even from a hundred yards away, I could see the vast pool of blood that formed around him.
From where the blood came, I didn’t know, but he needed help, needed to be carried up from the precarious ledge. Even if I could manage to make it down to him, I would be of little help. I couldn’t leave him, couldn’t let him lay out there alone, unconscious or not.
“Cooper, you have to stop crying. Run inside as fast as you can and get all of the men—Adwen, Gregor, Callum—go now.”
I didn’t see him leave, but I knew he was gone when I could no longer hear him calling Orick’s name.
Amidst the sudden silence, a new noise reached my ears. For a moment, I allowed myself to hope it was Orick, awake and calling for help. It took only one terrifying moment for me to realize the real source of the noise.
Rocks clanking together as they fell in a disastrous slide—one that within seconds, despite my screams and prayers for them to stop—covered Orick entirely.
When the slide stopped, I sat back shaking, my tears suddenly dry as shock sank in. Whatever chance Orick had of surviving the fall were crushed with the weight of the rocks that fell upon him.
It was Callum’s arms that lifted me from the ground, pulling me into his arms as I watched Adwen and Gregor take off down the cliffside after Orick.
There was no point. I knew what they would find. I collapsed against Callum’s shoulder, shaking as my heart broke into a million pieces.
“He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone.” I whispered the words on an endless loop, every part of me hoping that somehow they would not be true.
I don’t know how long Adwen and Gregor were gone, but when they returned to us, I knew my foolish hope was for naught.
Adwen said nothing. Such pain and horror lay in his eyes that I couldn’t bring myself to reach for him as he walked past us into the castle. Gregor came up to where Callum held me, brushing his hand up and down my arm as he spoke.
“The rocks have pushed him from the ledge for his body is gone, though enough blood remains that I doona believe he lived when the rocks hit him.” Gregor hesitated and let loose a sob that only deepened the knife in my heart. “The ocean has claimed him now. Neither will of man nor Brighid can save him.”
CHAPTER 42
One Week Later
I never experienced true grief before Orick. I realized that in the days after his death—the cold that lingers in your bones, the moments during the night when you forget and then the memories crash in on you in a way that leaves you empty and shaking, the loss of appetite, the fog that each day is covered in, the tears that never seem to run dry—those were the symptoms of grief, and it described everyone within the walls of Cagair Castle.