Page 62 of Fallen
“This was personal to ye too,” Coira pointed out, still fighting down anger. “Ye couldn’t stand him either.”
A bitter smile twisted the abbess’s blood-splattered face. “No … few could.”
“Then surely, revenge drove ye as well?”
Mother Shona shook her head. “No … for me his death was simply necessary.”
Craeg heaved a deep breath, shattering the mounting tension between the two women. He raised a bloodied hand and raked it through his sweat-tousled hair before rising to his feet. “Well, it’s done now,” he said wearily. “Thank ye, Mother Shona … ye saved my life.”
The abbess’s smile gentled, and she favored him with a nod, accepting his thanks.
Retrieving his claidheamh-mor, Craeg swept his gaze around the valley floor. Coira did likewise, her skin prickling at the sight of so many bodies littering the ground.
Not all of them belonged to the Dunan Guard.
Her breathing hitched when she spied a small crumpled form, swathed in black, lying a few yards away.
Picking her way through the carnage, Coira went to the nun. An ache flowered across her chest when she saw that it was Sister Mina.
“Lord, no,” she whispered, hunkering down next to the novice.
Sister Mina didn’t stir. Her grey eyes stared sightlessly up at the sky, and when Coira checked her for wounds, her hands came away bloody. Someone had stabbed her through the chest with a wide blade—a claidheamh-mor. Her end had been swift.
Coira’s vision blurred then, the ache under her breastbone intensifying.
She couldn’t believe that Mother Shona had brought the Sisters of Kilbride to the outlaws’ aid.
Lifting her chin, she saw the abbess limping toward her. Now that the fighting had ended, Mother Shona’s face was slack with exhaustion and sorrow.
The abbess halted before Sister Mina, and Coira saw that she was weeping, tears running silently down her face.
The sun made its lazy progress across the sky, slowly dipping toward the western horizon. Meanwhile, the survivors had the grisly task of clearing the battlefield.
MacKinnon and his dead men were placed upon a pyre and burned at the southern end of the valley, whereas the outlaws and the five nuns that had fallen were placed upon biers to be buried back at Kilbride. There were a number of injured, including Farlan, who’d taken a nasty gash to the thigh, and Sister Elspeth, who bore a cut to her arm. Gunn, however, had come through the battle relatively unscathed.
Despite that they were the victors, it was a somber party that made their way west to Kilbride, following the course of the sun. Few of the men or the nuns conversed. Instead, they trudged onward, their heads bowed and their steps wary. Once the madness of battle had faded, exhaustion set in.
Coira walked apart from her companions, her thoughts turning inward.
MacKinnon is dead.
The realization kept hitting her, so sharply at times that her breath would sometimes catch. It seemed strange, almost like having a limb amputated. Her loathing for that man had become part of her. Knowing that he was dead, and could no longer threaten her, was a relief. And yet, her belly still clenched as she recalled the abbess snatching the dirk from her hand and finishing the deed.
He was mine to kill.
“Coira.” Craeg dropped back halfway through the journey and fell in step next to her. “Are ye well?”
She nodded before forcing herself to meet his eye. Craeg looked as exhausted as she felt, his mouth and nose bracketed with lines of tension. “Curse the abbess,” she said softly. “I hate it when she’s right.”
His mouth quirked. “I take it that she often is?”
“Aye … I lose count of how many times she’s counselled me over the years. She’s wiser than anyone I know.”
“Then perhaps she did us both a favor,” he murmured. “Revenge has a way of taking ye over, of making ye forget what really matters.”
Coira glanced up, and their gazes fused. For the first time since before the battle, Coira became acutely aware of him—like she had in that shadowed corner of the ravine before he’d kissed her.
Warmth rose within her, smoothing out the nausea that still stung the back of her throat, the tension in her muscles, and the hard knot that clenched her belly. Mother Mary, the man had a gaze that could melt a frozen loch.
