Page 63

The gale whipped through the broken frame, howling like a vengeful spirit, tossing loose strands of Sheona’s dark hair across her face.

“I was nae always Sir Thomas Morrison, the meek servant of the Elders’ Council,” he sneered, his breath hot and ragged against the back of Sheona’s neck. “Before her father brought his iron and his fire to our glen, I was the heir to a proud house! A clan with deep roots, fertile valleys, and a future! But her monster of a father destroyed everythin’ I loved. He massacred me kin in their beds, burned our hall to ash, and took our lands and me future. He left me to crawl through the mud as a nameless beggar!”

Sheona let out a strangled, breathless cry as the dirk pressed harder into her skin, a single bead of crimson welling beneath the edge of the steel.

“Her father died in the dirt, escapin’ the rope,” Thomas whispered, his pale eyes burning with an unholy light in the dim torchlight. “He died without answerin’ for the blood he had spilled. But tonight… tonight the ledger is balanced. Tonight, the last drop of vile MacFaris blood dies right here with her.”

The word hung suspended in the drafty room, thick with the stench of old bile and long-festering hatred. Brodie did not let his eyes leave the red bead forming on Sheona’s neck. He felt every tendon in his broad shoulders stretch taut as a bowstring, his leather boots shifting an unnoticeable inch forward on the grit.

“Ye speak of ledgers, Thomas,” Brodie said softly, his voice dropping into that dark, terrifying abyss that made seasoned warriors back away in fear. “Ye speak of her father’s sins as if she carried the torch that burned yer hall. Look at her. Look at the woman ye hold over the edge. She was a bairn when those fires burned. She bled just as ye bled, starved just as ye starved, under the shadow of a man who cared nothin’ for blood or kin.”

“She carries his name!” Thomas shrieked, his voice cracking against the stone vaulting. “She carries his legacy! It is in her bones, in her eyes!”

“She carries me name,” Brodie countered, taking a slow, deliberate half-step, forcing Thomas’s focus to lock back onto him. “She bound her wrist to mine before the altar today. The blood ye speak of strippin’ away is protected by every sword in this keep. If ye spill a single drop of it, ye daenae balance a debt; ye start a war with the MacKinley that willnae end until yer name is scrubbed from the rocks.”

Thomas sneered, though a faint flicker of doubt twitched near his pale cheekbone. He looked from Brodie’s unyielding, iron face down to the woman clutching his forearm.

Sheona was no longer clawing aimlessly. Her small fingers had shifted, anchoring themselves firmly around the thick woolen fabric near his elbow, her blue eyes narrowing through the pain, searching Brodie’s face for the signal. She wasn’t yielding. She was holding herself steady, waiting for the split-second opening she knew her husband would create.

“Ye think yer threats frighten me?” Thomas whispered, his knuckles turning white around the hilt of his weapon. “I have lived twenty years as a ghost, wearin’ the clothes of a man I hated, bowing to fools in court while I waited for this moment. I have nothin’ left to lose. If I go over this ledge with her, me ancestors will welcome me home with open arms.”

He began to shift his weight backward, dragging Sheona’s heels across the internal timber flooring, tipping her head toward the black void outside.

“Brodie!” she managed to gasp out, the sound raw and broken.

“Thomas!” Brodie’s voice boomed through the tower, stopping the man’s movement for a fraction of a heartbeat. Brodie raised both hands slowly, palms open, letting his dirk hang loosely in his grip, projecting complete, unarmored vulnerability. “Look at me. Look at the man ye are tryin’ to break. Ye came here for vengeance against a ghost. Ye came here to make someone pay for the ruin of yer life. Look me in the eye and tell me ye want to die for a dead man’s daughter, or if ye want to strike at the man who actually stands in yer way.”

Thomas hesitated, his breath coming in ragged, shallow bursts. The trap was set. The air between them hummed, waiting for the slightest movement to snap.

Another loose piece of ancient masonry gave way beneath Sheona’s heel, tumbling backward into the darkness, its muffled strike against the rocks below lost entirely to the howling gale.

“Daenae step any closer, MacKinley!” Thomas shrieked, his voice raw and hysterical as he felt the stone give way beneath them. “I swear to God, one step, one careless move, and I drag her over with me!”

Brodie froze instantly, his leather boots rooted to the grit-covered floorboards. The air in his lungs burned. One step. A single, fraction-of-a-second miscalculation, and the woman he had bound to his soul only hours before would plunge into the void.

Every raw, bloody instinct forged through years of war screamed at him to tear his broadsword from its scabbard, to rush forward and sever Thomas’s head from his shoulders. The steel at his hip thrummed with a deadly promise, demanding action, demanding blood. Yet Brodie forced his fingers to uncurl from the leather hilt. He dragged his hand away from his side, forcing his arm down, stiff and useless.

He had buried far too many people in his life. He had shouldered the suffocating weight of graves for years—his kin, his warriors, the shadows of those he could not save. He would not bury her. He would not lay Sheona in the cold highland earth. He owned his fate, and right now, it stood on the edge of an abyss, breathing through a stranger’s blade.

Keeping his deep voice smooth and flat despite the sheer, sickening terror clawing at his chest, Brodie kept his dark eyes locked strictly onto Thomas’s pale face. He spoke only to draw the man’s attention, to hold that unhinged gaze fixed entirely on himself, searching desperately for any opening, any shadow, any split-second slip in the coward’s footing that would let him save her.

“Look at me, Thomas,” Brodie commanded softly, the low rumble of his voice anchoring the chaotic draft of the room. “Look away from the ledge and look at the man who stands before ye. If it is blood ye want, ye daenae need to settle for a ghost. Ye have the Laird of MacKinley right here.”

Morrison took the bait, his pale eyes snapping back to Brodie, a twisted, gloating satisfaction flickering across his features. But he was not foolish enough to loosen his grip. Instead, his heavy arm clamped tighter around Sheona’s neck, shutting off her air until her chest heaved in silent, agonized spasms. With a malicious, grating laugh, Thomas dragged her another inch toward the sheer drop.

The stone sill shuddered again. Dust and dried lime showered down into the dark. Sheona’s fingers clawed at Thomas’s woolen sleeve, her blue eyes wide, locked on Brodie through a haze of suffocating pain.

Brodie’s jaw locked into rigid, unyielding granite. He wasn’t going to play this quiet, agonizing game any longer. Talking was not going to save her; it was only giving the madman time to slip over the edge.

He had to reach her.

The distance between them was ten paces of cold, exposed timber and crumbling stone. He shifted his weight forward, muscles coiling, his dark eyes measuring every inch of space between his boots and the ledge. His heart hammered against his ribs in a deafening, violent cadence, flooding his limbs with icy adrenaline.

He calculated the distance, the speed, the angle of his leap—if he could cover the floorboards fast enough, if he could catch Thomas’s wrist before the man pulled back, if he could throw his own frame into the gap to block her fall.

He lunged.

His heavy leather boots slammed against the larch floorboards with explosive force, throwing his entire weight across the narrow chamber. The dark room blurred around him as he stretched his hand toward her, every tendon in his broad shoulder straining to close the gap.