Page 144 of Blood & Claw

He’d tried to shift earlier, when they dragged him from the hall, but the iron collar around his neck had prevented it. Curse it, he should have listened to Ailsa; he should have changed back in that clearing. Aye, they’d been seriously outnumbered, but death in combat was far preferable to this fate. At his brother’s hands.

Niall.

He’d failed to kill him years ago, and had paid for bungling his chance ever since.

His chest tightened then. Guilt. I should have told Ailsa.

He’d seen the shock in her eyes, her sharp disappointment.

Why hadn’t he said anything? Had he worried she’d think badly of him? Surely not …

Fuck.

He’d underestimated his brother. For years, he’d written him off as an insecure, vainglorious sack of shit. But no, he was far more dangerous than he’d realized, his ambitions far greater. He didn’t just want the Kingdom of Braewall to prosper; he wanted more. He wanted Duncrag, to become High King.

And he was well on the way to getting his desires.

Darach had been fucking around and making costly mistakes, while his brother had built himself a secret base in the North. Niall had recruited a rogue sacrificer and started gathering an army of warriors, which he then, somehow, magically enhanced.

The more he turned the situation over in his mind, the worse it became.

Niall had to die.

Darach should have been the one to wield the blade, but he’d messed up, and now, he was in this festering hole.

Not for long, a cruel voice whispered. Soon, you’ll be pissing yourself as you swing by your neck from a gibbet.

His pulse became sluggish at the chilling thought.

The scuff of a boot on dirt jerked him from his brooding.

Eyes snapping open, he craned his neck, staring up at the iron grate above, at where torchlight and shadow played. And there, a dark shape loomed. He knew who it was before the visitor spoke.

“Comfortable down there?”

Movement followed, and then something fell through the grate, hitting him in the face before bouncing onto his lap. His fingers closed around a hunk of bread.

“Thought you might be hungry.”

Darach didn’t answer. Instead, he started tearing into the bread with his teeth. It could be moldy, infested with maggots, or poisoned. He didn’t care. His belly was so empty it ached. Chewing, he continued to glare up at his brother’s shadowy outline.

Had he come to gloat?

Another scuff sounded, and then a flare of torchlight that made him squint.

Niall’s handsome face hove into view then. He’d lowered himself to a crouch before the pit and was peering down at him.

“You’re a difficult man to kill, Darach,” he said, his dark-blue eyes almost black in the flickering torchlight. His expression was veiled.

“Not any longer,” Darach replied with his mouth full. “You have me now.”

“I do.”

He didn’t ask Niall what he intended to do with him. Whatever the answer was, he wouldn’t like it.

“You shouldn’t have tried to kill me,” his brother said then. “We could have been allies, you and I.”

Darach swallowed more bread before answering, “Never.”