Page 85 of Enchantment of a Highlander

The darkness was wielded like a weapon in the pits of this prison, this hell.

The quiet sobs of prisoners in other cells whispered in the blackness and a woman newly arrested cried in jerky breaths.

Celia had been spared the inquisition thus far because of her age, but she did not consider herself fortunate. Night after night, she’d sat in the frigid cell with rats tugging her hair in sharp nips, bearing witness to sounds of horrors she was helpless to stop—the sickening crack of breaking bone, the hiss of hot metal to flesh, the raw, animalistic screams of the tortured.

A familiar wail echoed down the hall and sliced deep into Celia’s heart. Her body jerked instinctively against the pain. Tears ran warm down her face and soaked ice cold into the fabric of her dress.

Fiona.

Kind, caring Fiona, who had taken Celia in as a child when no one else wanted her, the only mother she had ever known.

They would bring Fiona back at dawn when they returned the others, some bleeding, some broken, some dead.

The guards wanted their souls. Confessions lay at the ready, waiting for signatures, of heinous and cruel deeds and consorting with the devil.

They promised a quick death for signatures.

Fiona wouldn’t let anything break her and, judging by the faces that came and went through the bowels of their hell, she hadn’t.

A scream ripped through the darkness and the sobs around Celia pitched into terrified keens.

When would they understand?

She was not a witch.

• • •

Alec knelt next to Celia’s still form. Her eyes were squeezed shut.

Cold dread coiled in his chest. She’d crumpled so suddenly he hadn’t had a chance to catch her.

He gathered her in his arms and carried her back to the stone windowsill where he could see better. Her skin glistened with a sheen of sweat in the pale glow of the moon.

“Celia,” he said in a hoarse voice. He’d called her name countless times and still she did not respond.

A strangled cry escaped her lips. “Fiona.”

He gathered Celia closer and shushed quietly in her ear.

For all his strength and power, he could do nothing to stop Celia’s trembling.

She gripped his arm as if letting go would be her death. Her throat worked in a slow swallow. “It’s too dark in your room. I can’t…I can’t see. Like the prison.”

His gut wrenched against her words. People who wanted to escape the law had congregated on his lands. Outlaws, rogues, criminals.

Surely she was none of those things.

“What do you mean, ‘prison’?” he asked in a soft voice.

Her gaze turned pleading. “The one in North Berwick. Where they put all the witches.” She shook her head and tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.

“That was fifteen years ago,” he said, unable to keep the shock from his voice. “How old were ye when they put ye in there?”

Her gaze went distant, staring at the wall and seeing something he could not. “It was sixteen years ago, toward the end of the trials. I was seven.”

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. “Ye were a child?”

She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to.