Page 88 of Highland Spy

Connor was too far away to help, unable do anything but watch in helpless horror. The men closed in on his father’s proud form like a circle of vultures. Their blades flashed in the weak sunlight and then emerged red before plunging in once more.

Cora cried out behind him, but he swallowed down the sound of his own grief. He needed to be strong. For Cora.

Ariana’s mouth parted in shock. “They killed him?”

Connor nodded. “Aye, and then shoved his body over the edge of the castle near the water. I went back that night—”

A warning tingled in the back of his mind and made him cut off his words.

He’d said too much.

“What happened when you went back?” Ariana asked. Concern shone in her eyes. The fire had started to die and left the glowing embers to emit their fading light into the room. “Did they capture you?”

“Nay, I was too careful.”

“Then what?” She slid closer to where he sat on the hard wooden floor and placed her hand on his. Her palm was warm and soft, as was her gaze.

Connor stared at her a long moment. He’d never told anyone about that night. Not even Cora knew.

But then, Cora didn’t know a lot of things.

No one did.

“I found his body,” he said. “And buried him.”

Connor stood in the shadowed forest on a night with no moon and stared into the freshly dug hole where his father’s twisted body lay. Death had petrified his limbs in the awkward shape he’d lain in after the fall. The famed Shadow, so strong, so proud and capable, now a twisted corpse buried in the forest like a thief.

Coarse grains of salt still clung to Connor’s palm from the small pile he’d set upon his da’s chest.

“Forgive me, Da.” But what he wanted forgiveness for, Connor did not know. His failure to protect the castle, the crude burial for the father he could not save, or for the weight of the coin and signet ring laying heavy in his pocket.

Even now, three years later, the pain of his loss crushed Connor’s heart.

He shouldn’t have shared as much as he had, yet now he couldn’t stop. Part of him wanted her to understand how awful he really was, to know the extent of his crimes against his own family. “Before I buried him, I took what coin he had on him as well as his signet ring.”

Connor’s head dropped forward with the burden of his many wrongs.

“I needed it to care for Cora,” he added. “To see her safe in a world where I trusted no one.”

The justification did little to quell his own stifling guilt. He had robbed his father of all his worldly possessions before burying his crooked body in unconsecrated ground.

Ariana squeezed his hand. “You were looking after your sister. He would have understood. In fact, I think he would have been grateful you’d even taken the risk to bury him.”

Connor thought of his father then, the towering man with dark hair and eyes crinkling at the corners. The burden of guilt had always been so present, he’d never truly thought of what his father would say.

“Nay,” Connor replied decidedly. “He’d have thought me daft for risking myself for something so foolish as a man who was dead.”

He gazed down at Ariana, wishing he could see himself as she did. Somehow she managed to find the good in him and overlook the bad.

And there was much bad to see.

He slid his hand over her cheek, intending just to touch.

But she was so sweetly soft against the pads of his fingers, he found himself caressing the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, the supple swell of her lower lip.

Her eyes fluttered closed.

And though he lowered his mouth to hers, intending just to kiss her, he knew there would be far more.