Page 35 of Her Highland Destiny

Cassandra tensed at his side.

The witch is connected to them.

Fergus flicked a glance at Cassandra. He’d thought Lachina dead beneath the vines.

Cassandra punched a man in the throat. Through her, Fergus felt the crunch of the soldier’s windpipe against her knuckles as he lurched back and disappeared.

If she is dead, they will be gone.

Fergus nodded at Cassandra’s thoughts, unspoken and yet fully understood between them. She would concentrate on her skills while he defended them both. Cassandra closed her eyes, fully trusting in his capability. He sensed the hum of energy rising in her and filling her palm, which she closed into a fist. The vines acted on her will and squeezed.

The guard in front of Fergus flickered in and out, like a sputtering candle. Lachina’s control was fading with her life.

“Harder,” Fergus demanded. He gripped Cassandra’s free hand and fought with his right hand, his blade cutting down man after man, bastards in blackened chain, a bloody endless supply of them.

The crowd of soldiers pressed forward with a renewed effort, a desperate effort, jabbing with fists and blades. With the benefit of the stone, every one of their intended actions were visible to Fergus, and easily blocked. It was a defense he didn’t have the ability to wield ten years earlier when he was not strong enough.

Blood welled between Cassandra’s fingers and dripped from her fist. She did not register the pain he felt from her, but instead tightened her fist even more. The soldiers began to fade, their movements growing slower, more clumsy.

And then one ran forward from the crowd, crisply outlined where the others blurred, his movements faster than even the stone could register. A knife glinted. Too fast. Too fast.

It punched forward, not at Fergus, but at Cassandra, and lodged in her side.

Her head fell back and a soft cry escaped her lips. All at once the soldiers faded from view and Cassandra drooped. Fergus caught her with his free arm and carefully lowered her to the ground. The breath hissed in her chest and blood bubbled at the corner of her mouth. He’d seen this type of injury before. One he knew to be fatal. Pain filled his chest, not only from the burning of the difficult breathing she suffered from, but also from the ache in his own heart.

He couldn’t lose her. Not when he’d lost so much that day. She released his hand, severing their connection, and gripped the hilt jutting from her side, her skin white against the polished onyx. “The king,” she hissed.

“Nay,” he cried. But even as he spoke, he knew he could not stop her from pulling the blade from her body. The dagger loosened with a wet sucking sound followed by a choked exhale. Blood dotted her lips.

She shoved the dagger to him, still glistening red. “The…king…” she wheezed between the words with pained breath.

As she spoke, a shuffle met Fergus’ awareness. The distinct sound of someone trying carefully and discreetly to flee. Fergus honed his attention on the slender man, and narrowed his eyes like a predator ready to catch its prey.

The king’s movements fanned out long before he took them, easily apparent after the magically imbued guards, giving Fergus enough time to properly aim his blade. He touched Cassandra’s hand, now freed of the dagger and drew from the waning power of the stone to send the dagger launching toward the king with all the force their combined strength could possess.

The weapon punched into the king’s chest with such force, it sent him careening backward into the far wall where he slunk like a discarded poppet. He did not rise. Hell, he didn’t even struggle, the bastard. So damn easy to kill without his army of magic at his back.

Cassandra choked and the hand under Fergus’ flinched. He snapped his attention to her as her body relaxed, relinquishing her mortal struggle. His heart sucked up into his throat.

“Cassandra,” he said tightly. He shook his head, unable to say more against the tension in his throat.

Her bloody fist loosened, her fingers unfurling to reveal where her fingernails had scored deep enough into her palms that the white tendons beneath showed. Immediately the vines gripping Lachina uncoiled and fell limp. The witch was nowhere in sight, the same as the men she controlled.

Fergus wrapped his hand against Cassandra’s, but felt nothing. No force of the stone, no wild connection of energy. No pulse.

Heat prickled at his eyelids. He had failed her. It was as it had been ten years before, but this time with someone real. Someone he…

Someone he loved.

She wavered, the same as the soldiers had when Lachina was dying. The stone disappeared for a moment before reappearing faintly, more like a skein of sunlight than a physical form. Cassandra was dying.

14

Fergus could not lose Cassandra. He squeezed her hand in search for the stone’s connection to flare between them, a sensation he had too often taken for granted.

Nothing happened.

He pulled deep from the anguish inside him and a cry escaped him, raw and savage. His voice echoed around him again and again and again through the vast stone chamber. A mockery of his pain, of his loss. Because he could not lose her. He would rather die than have her taken from the earth.