Lissa had been in bad situations before—ambushes, break-ins, life-or-death standoffs where one wrong move meant game over. But this?
She stood in the middle of the thick Scottish fog, her boots pressing into damp earth that should have been asphalt. She had walked this path only minutes ago, following the road toward Weatherby Manor, the luxury historical hotel she had, in a moment of drunken impulse, booked for herself. But now—
The iron gates ahead loomed open, the towering stone pillars at their sides cracked and ancient, slick with moss and decay. Beyond them, a castle rose in the mist, massive and foreboding. Its stone walls were lit with the flickering glow of torches, not modern lights. Smoke curled from the towers, rising into the storm-heavy sky.
Lissa’s breath came sharp and shallow.
This wasn’t Weatherby Manor.
This wasn’t the place she had seen in the glossy pictures online.
And yet, somehow, it was familiar.
Not in a way she could explain—not in a way that made sense.
She had seen this place before.
In paintings. In old, weathered sketches from the 1600s.
And in dreams she never spoke of.
A heavy bell tolled in the distance.
A shiver snaked down her spine as the fog pressed closer. The air smelled different now—earthy and raw, like damp stone and burning wood, with an underlying hint of something else. Something metallic.
Her instincts flared to life. She wasn’t alone.
And found herself face-to-face with a man.
He was tall and broad, his shoulders squared with the effortless power of someone who had spent his life fighting. His face was all sharp angles and dark stubble, his eyes a piercing shade of blue-green, burning like fire against the pale mist. His long, golden-brown hair was unbound, damp from the mist, framing a face that was both familiar and impossibly wrong.
His clothes were all wrong for a tour guide, or for anyone who should exist in the present—heavy Highland plaid, a leather strap slung across his chest, a massive sword strapped to his waist. The blade was old, well-worn, its hilt polished from centuries of use.
No, no, no. This was impossible.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Lissa whispered, her voice barely more than breath.
The Highlander’s expression darkened. His jaw clenched, his fingers twitching toward his weapon.
Then, in a voice low and edged like steel, he spoke.
A gust of wind tore through the trees, pushing the fog aside just enough for her to see what lay beyond the gates.
It wasn’t just the castle that looked wrong.
The landscape had changed.
The paved road was gone, replaced by a narrow dirt path. The rolling green fields that had stretched for miles on her drive in were now dense woodland, thick and untouched by time.
A horse-drawn cart trundled in the distance. The figures riding it wore cloaks, not jackets.
And as the Highlander reached for his sword, his voice filled with something between fury and disbelief, the reality slammed into her like a fist.
She wasn’t just in the wrong place.
She was in the wrong time.
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