Page 67 of Highlander of Steel
The man-at-arms toppled forward, landing on the cobbles of the courtyard with a dull thud. He lay there, crooked and motionless, and Ailis knew he wouldn’t rise again.
A scream tried to escape her throat, but it wouldn’t come. It stayed lodged in there, a jagged lump that made it hard to breathe, hard to swallow, hard to muster a single word.
Why did ye insist on comin’ with me? Why did ye nae leave when ye had the chance?
A loyal man lay dead. A man who had deemed her worthy of protection, who had stayed at her side because she belonged to his clan, acting on the instructions of the husband she had begun to fall in love with.
There was something metaphorical about it ending in blood and death.
“Why?” she rasped, her cold eyes narrowing on her father.
“He was a MacNairn,” he replied simply.
“He wasnae a threat,” she hissed. “He didnae raise his sword or bow. What did ye kill him for?”
She knew all too well that her father would take her protest as a sign of misplaced loyalty, but at that moment, she didn’t care. Peter wasn’t someone she had known well, but he had been important to Killian, a friend to him. And he had made her feel less afraid on the road to a place that no longer felt like home. Hadneverfelt like home.
“He was at our gates this very day, tryin’ to sneak in and kill me,” her father shot back. “I daenae forget a face, Ailis. Those arrows had his name on the shafts the moment he crept up to harm me and me kin.”
He made another strange gesture, and Ailis braced herself for the bite of more arrows. Her eyes squeezed shut, her breath caught, the only thought in her mind of Killian.
I’ll leave him a widower on our weddin’ night.
How she longed to be back in her bedchamber, with him, experiencing the pleasure between a husband and wife. Desperately, she wished that Peter had burst in an hour later, or not until dawn, and that the wretched box could havewaited until the marriage was consummated, before it ruined everything.
I should have marched here with an army. Ended it for good. At the very least, I should have sent Peter back.
But it was too late now.
Instead of arrows piercing through her, rough hands grabbed her. Her father’s soldiers wrestled her down from the saddle, though she wasn’t putting up a fight. They grasped her and touched her in places they shouldn’t, smirks on their lips as they shoved her toward her waiting father.
One man kicked her in the back of the legs, sending her crashing to her knees. A dull pain splintered down to her ankles, but she didn’t wince or flinch.
What right did she have to cry out in pain when Peter was lying a short distance away, no longer able to feel anything at all? Snuffed out, just like that.
Because of me.
How many more would die if she didn’t proceed with caution?
“Where is—” she tried to say, but her father cut her off.
“Did ye let the enemy touch ye? Are ye sullied? Me spies saw ye go in and out of the chapel, so I ken ye said yer traitorous vows. But tell me, did that beast have his vile way with ye?”
Coming from any father, it would have been a mortifying question. Coming from herfather, it was asickeningaccusation.
There was nothing beastly about Killian. No, the true beast stood before her, sneering and spitting, his eyes so devoid of emotion that she wondered if there was even a soul in there or if he had sold it to the Devil long ago.
“Nay,” she replied as calmly as she could. “The marriage isnae… binding.”
Her father nodded as if the news pleased him. “That is fortunate. I might yet have use for ye. Aye, there’ll be a rich old laird somewhere that’ll have ye in exchange for coin and soldiers.”
The threat turned Ailis’s stomach, her thoughts drifting to her sister’s fate. Laird Drummond wasn’t old, but the stories about him weren’t at all comforting.
After Killian, Ailis knew she wouldn’t survive being sent off to wed whomever her father pleased. Nor would Killian tolerate it. There would be another war before this one had even come to an end.
“Keep yer head up. Ye’re nae the lass ye were when ye left here. Show him that ye’re nae afraid.”
Peter’s words came back to strengthen her, just as much as the memory of Killian’s kiss and touch bolstered her resolve to neverbe a pawn in her father’s schemes.
