Page 80 of A Highland Healer Captured
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Zander had climbed the stair with fire in his blood, ready to argue her into staying. Saints knew he had near torn the hinges off his study door when he’d found her gone. Every guard in the keep had looked at him with whites of eyes as he stormed past, already knowing where her feet would have taken her.
“What is it?” Mason said firmly, keeping in step with him. “The lass?”
“Aye.”
“She’s gone?”
“Aye.”
Skylar Dunlop, stubborn as the tide, would have gone to the boy before she left. He knew he should have questioned her about it two days ago when she walked the grounds with him.
“The solar?” Mason questioned, though Zander didn’t have to answer, the man was already bounding ahead of him.
He had meant to stop her. To curse her. To take her satchel from her shoulder. Force her to stay, if it came to it. But what he hadn’t meant to find was this.
The solar door gaped half-wide, lamplight spilling crooked across the flagstones. His boots pounded inside behind Mason, and his heart froze in his chest. Katie was sprawled by the hearth, hair soaked dark with blood, eyes half-rolled. Grayson’s head tucked to his knees at the far end of his bed, rocking himself violently against the headboard. And there, in the circle of firelight, Skylar straddled a cloaked figure, her knee grinding into the spine, the dirk he had given her pressed like judgment into the small of their back. Her bags discarded, strewn about carelessly, leaking even, in between them.
For a moment he didn’t move. Couldn’t. He had seen war fields, seen clans broken, seen betrayal writ large across stone and soil. But never had he seen something like this: his healer, his lover, fierce as any warrior, holding an enemy down with the blade he’d trusted to her hand.
Pride swelled in him so hard it near cracked his ribs. She was fire and iron, this woman.Hiswoman, his mind dared whisper, though he snarled the thought away as quick as it came.
Skylar didn’t move. She kept her knee planted in the stranger’s back, her grip iron, her eyes burning down into the shadowed hood.
“Lights,” she ordered, voice firm. “And cloth. Katie’s head, first. Gently. Move fast but daenae jostle her.”
Mason ran to Katie, following the directions quickly.
Zander’s gaze locked on Skylar’s, reading the scene in one sweep. His jaw went iron, and his eyes went black. “Lass?” he asked, low, dangerous.
She swallowed, lifted her chin, kept her hand firm on the knot. “A stranger,” she said. “Found by the bed.”
“Da!” Grayson said loudly, unfolding himself from the tight ball he had escaped into.
“Son, are ye well?”
“Aye,” the boy said quickly, color filling his cheeks quickly as he fought with all of his might to not look in Skylar’s direction.
“Mason—”
“Come laddie, let’s get ye out of the solar and up into yer faither’s chambers for a while.”
Zander watched as his son looked between him and Skylar and Mason before Skylar gave him a nod of encouragement, dirk pressing further into the cloak of the stranger, “Go on, little hawk. Let us come get ye after this is settled.”
Mason walked over and lifted the boy from the bed, grabbing blankets and pillows and the draught on the bedside before striding out of the room. Zander’s eyes followed until his son’s big brown eyes disappeared into the darkness of the corridor before he turned back to face Skylar.
She was breathing easily as the hooded head turned slightly, the firelight catching nothing but shadow.
Zander took a step, his whole body wound like a bow. “Who is it?” he asked.
Skylar’s grip tightened, fury sparking hotter than fear. “Let’s see —”
The figure bucked and hissed.
Skylar gripped the fabric and yanked the hood all the way back.
Her stomach turned to water.
