Page 52 of Dark Side of the Laird
“The difference between you and I, Emma, is that ye care too much. Ye care too much for others, and ye care too much about your own soul.” She smiled cruelly. “I dinna care for anything other than getting what I want.”
“Pity, then, that I’ve made it my life’s ambition to see that you get nothing you desire.” I sneered. “Evil will not triumph.”
Isabella threw her head back and laughed. A bone-chilling evil sound that made my heart leap into my throat. I was mesmerized, horrified, watching her. It was unreal. She shook her head and wiped at her eyes.
“Pity,” she mocked, “that ye dinna have the power to see your pathetic threats realized.”
Isabella held her hand out and wiggled her fingers, showing me the ring settled beneath her middle knuckle. It was hard to keep my mouth from dropping when Logan’s ring gleamed from that long, dagger-like appendage.
“Ye see it?” she asked, her voice overly excited.
I glared at her, refusing to speak.
How had she gotten his ring?
Any trace of soul—if there’d ever been one—left her face, evil coming into her eyes, flattening her lips. “Ye’re too late. Your laird is dead. Gealach is mine.”
There were no words to express the severe panic and pain that wrenched itself viciously through my body. There was no other way she could have gotten his ring, than if he was dead. He never took it off, joked that it had permanently become a part of him he’d worn it so long.
I started to shake. And no amount of trying to still my trembling body worked.
“That’s a forgery,” I said through bared teeth as they, too, had started to chatter.
Isabella chuckled. “Ye may wish it were so, but that will not make it be.”
She held it up closer, and I could see where a deep groove in the gold near the ruby had been cut—just like in Logan’s. He’d sustained it during a battle, nearly lost the finger. A small detail like that… Could it have been forged? Or would something like that have been missed. Was this ring his? Was he…dead?
Numbness filled me. “Get out,” I said, coldly. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Isabella laughed her way to the door. Rage, raw and reckless took hold and I lunged toward the mattress, frantically searching for the blade so I could cut her throat.
“Looking for this?” she taunted, holding up the dagger. “Dinna even think,” she spat, “of trying to kill me ye little bitch.”
The door slammed shut behind her, and she issued orders, loud enough for me to hear, that the guard was not to let me out.
“Fucking bitch,” I said through gritted teeth. Would have screamed it, but my voice escaped me.
I collapsed onto my knees upon the soft carpet at the foot of my bed. The one Logan and I had made frenzied love on more than once. I fell to my side, curled up in a ball and let the tears that I’d been fighting fall. My entire body shook with my grief. It was too late. I’d not been able to save him.
Even if he wasn’t dead yet, he would be soon. Isabella had seen to that by butchering Ewan alive.
God. I was crushed, devastated. Ruined.
Logan was gone to me forever. And I’d been the one to push him away. I’d encouraged him to go seek out the king, to make his own way in this world. In essence, I’d killed him.
And Ewan. I was pretty damn sure he wouldn’t pull through. Not with how mangled his body was. Almost like Isabella turned into some sort of were-creature and tore the shit out of him with her teeth. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was the devil herself.
Was she now telling everyone that Logan was dead? I was next. With Logan gone and Ewan nearly, there was nothing left here for me, and no one left to protect me from the evils of this era. Logan had asked me to save Scotland, but I… I didn’t have it in me. I wasn’t here for Scotland. I was here for him, and just because I’d traveled back in time didn’t mean I could somehow miraculously save them all. Besides, in present times, Scotland was still around, and strong, and without me.
Or was that because of me?
Fuck! I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t be made to make decisions. Logan was everything to me, and now I’d lost her.
My insides hurt, my head pounded, my heart literally ached. I clutched at my chest, knees bunched up in my middle. I might as well throw myself from the window now. Just end it.
I rushed to the window. Tore open the shutters and let the icy winter air into the room. Watched as the sun took its leave. Darkening the room and sending little comfort to my distraught mind. Everywhere I looked reminded me of Logan. Everything about this place, about even myself, reminded me of him.
As the room grew darker, the moon rose, until it was high in the sky. Round, silver and—full.
