Page 149 of Promises to Keep

I ate quietly. Everyone here was going to go home to a family, waiting babies, except me. I was going to be all alone. I glared at Lochie. He was quiet and thoughtful. He had been training all day. Training to kill Fraoch.

While the men talked, I considered killing him.

I had a gun.

I glanced up and Quentin was giving me a look. “Whatcha thinking about, Hayley?”

“Murder and mayhem.”

He said, simply, “I can see, but the thing to remember is you have men from every century here, they’ve tried war, spy-craft, subterfuge, negotiation, and now an archaic arena battle, all the while trying to figure a way around Fraoch, a way to solve this in which he survives, and this is what they’ve come up with. You have a long slow march of war with all that death, or this. You might want to accept—”

“How can you be so chill about this?”

“I am not chill. I am losing my shit, but what is it going to help if I do it publicly,anything?”

“No, nothing.”

“Yeah, I’m not chill, Magnus is not chill, Lochie is not chill. We are all very un-chill.” He took the last small bite of his ration. “If you still want to try murder and mayhem, you have to go through me.”

A messenger ran into the command center, “General Wallace, Colonel Peters, King Magnus, you have to see something!”

We all went out to stand in the street surrounded by a large crowd of soldiers all looking up at the large projection, which had changed from the usual propaganda to a new kind.

Now on a black background the words:

Ian I

vs.

Magnus

And then it shifted to Fraoch holding a hammer, he looked badass, and I had never been more afraid for him.

I watched Magnus’s face, stoic, as he watched the video, Fraoch glaring down on us, shifting his hammer from hand to hand.

I blinked. I glanced around at the giant war machine, the surrounding army, the weapons, the signs of months of battle and war, the men all facing a frontline, a projected piece of propaganda, all glaring at their common enemy, my husband.

I exhaled.

Fraoch’s voice amplified. “Are ye ready tae fight, usurper? Just you and me in the arena, boy, hammer tae hammer.”

Ugh. There would be no way to talk Lochinvar down now—

But then I glanced at Lochinvar and he was grinning, “Ye see the sign, Madame Hayley? Ye asked me tae look for it, dost ye see it?”

“No, what sign? What do you mean?”

He asked Magnus, “Do ye see it?”

“Aye, I see it, Lochinvar, I am relieved tae see it.”

I said, “What? Relief — what? Do you see it, Quentin?”

Quentin said, “Yes, absolutely, you can’t see it?”

Magnus said, “The hammer is Fraoch’s specialty, Madame Hayley. He is carrying it as a sign tae Lochie, remember what he said about it?”

Lochie said, “He said he would never use it in hand-to-hand combat, he would only use it for distance.”

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