Page 59 of Leila’s Legacy

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Niall stared at Lady Davina with confusion. Before he could speak, she rushed over to him with a candle in her hand.

“Forgive me,” she said softly. “I tried to see Lady Leila, but the guards wouldna allow me.”

Even in the flickering candlelight he could see the healthy pink to her cheeks and the glossiness restored to her red hair. She had recovered fully from the pestilence. Because of Leila.

“How can they do this to her after what she did to save ye?” Niall asked, his rage tearing through any flimsy attempts at control.

Lady Davina’s eyes filled with tears. “They are going to kill her, Niall. I tried to ask my father for mercy, but he wouldna hear it. I awoke to the sounds of Lady Leila being returned to the castle and I understood then what had happened. Especially when I heard of yer arrest as well.” She scoffed in a manner very much unlike her. “They never pay any mind to the woman around them when they speak.”

“Do ye know what he has ordered me to do?” Niall asked, still reeling at the horror of the demand.

The earl’s daughter slowly shook her head.

“Yer da thinks me bewitched.” Niall stared off at a distant wall, not seeing it or even caring to see it. “Or he believes the people will think I am. He insists I be the one to drown Leila, so that her spell on me will be broken.”

“Niall, ye canna do it.”

He took a pained breath. “If I dinna do it, they’ll kill Brodie’s wee sister.”

Lady Davina put her hand to her lips. “Nay.”

The weight of the situation settled across his shoulders once more, crushing him with its burden. Leila. Dead. By his own hands.

The woman he loved, snuffed out from the world. No longer in his life. By his own hands.

The fear, the suffering she would endure before she was finally gone. By his own hands.

“On the morrow.” His voice cracked with emotion and he rested his forehead against the palm of his hand.

“I have seen someone brought back after drowning afore,” Lady Davina said carefully.

Niall slowly lifted his head. “Brought back from the dead?”

She shrugged with a helpless look. “I dinna know, but he had been in the water for some time. A healer aided him, a woman who left at the onset of the pestilence, but one who was strong in the knowledge of healing.”

“How?” Niall demanded.

“She pushed the water from his chest. Hard and fast.” Lady Davina pushed the heels of her hands down in the air in rapid succession. “I was a girl, but I remember it well. It was a miracle, seeing a person brought back to life.”

Niall rubbed his forefinger and thumb over his forehead, but the tension squeezing there did not abate. “There has to be another way.” He looked toward the open door. He could walk out now, go to the dungeon, kill a dozen of his clansmen, rescue her from the cell, and battle through several dozen more men to rescue her.

Except he’d be killing his own men, and he would leave Brodie and Bonnie to face Lord Armstrong’s wrath.

He hissed out a frustrated exhale.

“I want to save Bonnie,” Lady Davina said. “And I want ye to save Leila.”

Niall straightened, eager to start a plan, to have something in place to keep Leila and Bonnie alive. He nodded his assent. “I’ll do anything.”

Leila sat with her back against the cold cell wall. She’d been thus through the night. Alban’s eyes glittered in the darkness from where he watched her through the barred window of the door. He’d entered the dungeon several minutes prior, relieving her guard and positioning himself in front of the barred window of her door. Watching her with a reptilian gaze, cold and calculating; a predator marking its prey.

Though Leila had tried to ignore it, the pierce of his stare was beginning to fray her nerves, one ragged thread at a time.

“’Tis morn,” Alban said.

Leila’s heartbeat thrummed harder despite her resolve to remain calm.