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Brodie froze. The blood roared in his ears, a deafening, white-hot rush that threatened to blind him.

The man holding her wasn’t a dirty reiver or a wandering band of mercers.

It was Sir Thomas Morrison.

The distinguished, gray-haired representative of the Council of Elders stood wrapped in his fine, fur-trimmed mantle, his face pale in the flickering torchlight. In his right hand, a broad hunting dirk was pressed firmly against the soft skin beneath Sheona’s jawline, the steel glinting cold and sharp in the moonlight.

Brodie’s mind reeled, a sickening wave of utter confusion clashing against the red haze of his rage.

Thomas Morrison? The man who had sat at his high table only hours ago, drinking his mead, twirling Edith in the reel, and signing his name as an impartial witness to the peace hearing?

What madness could drive a member of the Elders’ council to stand in a drafty tower with a blade to a woman’s throat?

Thomas watched the shock ripple across Brodie’s face, and a slow, cruel smile curved his thin lips. Satisfaction gleamed bright and ugly in his pale eyes, pleased to finally see complete, unvarnished confusion break the stone mask of the man the Highlands called unbreakable.

“Ah, the proud Laird of MacKinley,” Thomas drawled softly, his voice smooth and entirely devoid of the warmth he had displayed in the great hall. He tightened his grip around Sheona’s throat just enough to draw a faint, choked gasp from her lips. “Look at ye. So swift to leap to the defense of yer little border stray, yet so agonizingly slow to see the board bein’ set around ye.”

“Step away from her, Thomas,” Brodie said, his voice dropping into a register so low and deadly it sounded like grinding granite. He did not raise his blade, but every line of his massive frame was taut, balanced on the balls of his feet, measuring the distance between them. Ten paces. Too far to strike before steel met flesh. “Put the steel down. Ye daenae ken what ye are touchin’.”

Thomas let out a low, dry chuckle that rattled in his chest. “Do I nae? I see a fragile little neck, Laird MacKinley. A very soft, very foolish point of leverage.”

He shifted his weight slightly, forcing Sheona further back against the rotten timber frame. A loose stone dislodged from the sill, tumbling silently into the abyss behind her. Sheona didn’t scream. Her eyes remained locked on Brodie, her teeth clenched against the pain of Thomas’s crushing grip.

“Ye had a grand feast downstairs, didnae ye?” Thomas sneered, his eyes dancing with malicious pleasure as he took in Brodie’s white-knuckled grip on his weapon. “The pipin’, the dancin’, the sacred linen cord wrapped so neatly around yer wrists… Ye truly believed ye could tie a simple knot and claim peace, didnae ye? Ye thought the world would hold its breath because Brodie MacKinley took a wife.”

“Whatever dispute ye have with me clan or the Council, it ends here, with me,” Brodie growled, taking a fraction of a step forward.

“Stay where ye are!” Thomas snapped, pressing the flat of the dirk harder against Sheona’s skin until a thin red line welled under the steel.

Brodie halted instantly, his heart slamming against his ribs.

Thomas smiled again, savoring the control he held over the formidable warrior. “That’s better. Ye see, I was quite touched by yer hand-bindin’ today, Brodie. Truly, I was. It is a rare thing to see a man surrender his cold, iron heart so completely. But bindings are such delicate things, are they nae? They tie two lives so closely together that if ye snap one… the other bleeds out just the same.”

“If ye harm a single hair on her head, Thomas,” Brodie whispered, the coldness in his tone making the draft in the room feel warm by comparison, “there is nay corner of the Highlands broad enough to hide ye from what I will do to ye.”

“A fierce threat from a man frozen on the floorboards,” Thomas mocked softly, his gaze darting toward the narrow stairwell behind Brodie before returning to his hostage. “Ye think yerself an unyieldin’ mountain, MacKinley. But every mountain has a fault line. I had to wait until ye bound yers right to yer side.”

“What are ye sayin’, Thomas? Why are ye doin’ this?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“Everythin’ was proceedin’ as it should until ye chose to take her hand in that chapel,” Thomas said, his voice dropping into a harsh, trembling rasp that cut through the sharp whistle of the wind.

Brodie did not shift his stance. His heavy leather boots remained planted flat against the damp, grit-covered flagstones, his left hand gripping the wooden hilt of his dirk until the leather wrap bit deep into his palm. Across the narrow chamber, Sheona gasped for air beneath the crushing weight of Thomas’s thick forearm, her fingers scratching wildly, uselessly at his heavy woolen sleeve. Her soft leather heels were dug into the rotting timber sill, half her weight suspended over the sheer, black drop beyond the watchtower wall. Every small, desperate twitch of her body rocked her closer to the endless drop below.

“Put the steel down, Thomas,” Brodie repeated, his tone stripped of all emotion, flat and cold as a grave ledger. “Ye are standin’ in me keep, surrounded by two hundred of me men. Ye willnae leave this tower alive if ye draw her blood.”

“Livin’ through the night was never the final item on me tally, MacKinley!” Thomas spat, a wild, jagged laughter rattling deep in his chest. “I kent me window for true justice was closin’ the moment ye stood before the Elders and claimed her as yer wife. I kent I had to act fast. But the heavens provided a way, didnae they? It was laughably easy to lure her up these steps. A word dropped in the right ear, a slight shift in sentry duties… and even easier to manipulate yer foolish, eager boy. Angus practically paved the path for me with his little wooden sword and grand dreams of glory.”

A dark, lethal pulse thrummed behind Brodie’s eyes at the mention of his son, but he kept his face sculpted in rigid granite. “Yer presence here was nae part of yer grand plan, Morrison. Ye meant to do this in the shadows and slip away like a thief.”

“Aye,” Thomas admitted, his thin mouth twitching into a bitter, ugly sneer as he tightened his arm around Sheona’s throat. “I hoped to complete the task before anyone noticed she had wandered from the feast. A sad tragedy, they would say, a clumsy bride slippin’ from a ruined wall in the dark. Yer appearance was an unfortunate complication, Brodie. But it matters little now. It is now or never, correct?”

Brodie’s gaze flicked to Sheona. Her face was growing pale, her bright blue eyes wide with desperate, suffocating terror as she fought to draw a single breath through the crushing iron bar of Thomas’s arm. She was losing her footing. The fine leather of her shoes scraped uselessly against the moss-covered stone of the window frame, sending small bits of dry mortar tumbling down into the abyss.

“What could ye possibly want with Lady MacKinley?” Brodie asked, forcing his voice to remain steady, buying every fraction of a second he could to measure the distance, the angle, the trajectory of a lunging throw.

“She is MacFaris!” Thomas roared, the polished facade of the Elders’ representative shattering completely, exposing a raw, blood-soaked madness beneath. “She is a MacFaris, and she will always be a MacFaris! Daenae dare speak that stolen name in me presence!”