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“Ye threatened me wife,” Brodie rasped, his face inches from Thomas’s, his dark eyes pitch-black and hollowed by cold, lethal intent. “Ye brought fear into me hall.”

Thomas’s face turned purple, his feet kicking uselessly against the stone, his hands slapping against Brodie’s tree-trunk forearms. With a desperate, dying burst of strength, Thomas drove his heels into the wet floor and bucked his hips upward, throwing them both sideways toward the drafty opening.

They rolled across the slick grit, grappling, hitting, bleeding, carrying the brutal, merciless struggle across the narrow tower floor. Fists crashed into bone; leather tore against sharp stone. Every foot of ground was fought over in agonizing, visceral silence, save for the whistling wind and their heavy, ragged breathing.

Brodie drove a heavy knee into Thomas’s thigh, breaking his leverage, and hauled the man up by the neck. He shoved him violently backward, driving him across the final three paces of larch flooring.

Thomas’s back struck empty air. His heels hit the splintered, ruined sill, the very same broken edge he had so eagerly used to torment Sheona moments before.

The sudden absence of stone beneath his feet broke Thomas’s focus completely. His eyes went wide with a sudden horror as he looked down over his own shoulder into the black, yawning void of the ravine.

“Nay!” Thomas shrieked, his voice instantly swallowed by the gale.

He slipped. His wet leather soles could not find purchase on the crumbling, moss-covered masonry. Loose bits of mortar showered down into the abyss as his legs gave out. Thomas clawed desperately at the rough stone casing, his fingernails dragging bloody tracks down the granite as he tried to arrest his fall. His left hand caught the sill’s edge for a fraction of a second, his knuckles white, his chest heaving in frantic, silent gasps as he hung suspended over the drop.

He looked up at Brodie, his pale eyes pleading, stripped of all hatred, holding only the raw, pathetic plea of a man facing his grave.

Brodie stood towering over the ledge, his broad chest rising and falling in heavy, ragged gulps. Blood dripped slowly and steadily from his torn palm, splattering onto the stone beside Thomas’s white knuckles. Brodie did not raise a hand to help him. He did not reach out. He watched with cold, unblinking granite eyes.

The ancient masonry crumbled under Thomas’s weight. With a faint, hollow snap, the stone edge gave way entirely. Thomas’s fingers slipped from the wall. He didn’t scream as gravity took him; he tipped backward, his arms flailing uselessly against the freezing night air before vanishing into the blackness below.

A moment later, a dull, distant thud echoed faintly up the sheer cliff face, instantly buried under the roaring whistle of the wind.

Silence fell over the watchtower room.

Brodie stood frozen at the shattered opening, the freezing mountain air whipping his dark hair across his face, stinging his bloody knuckles. Despite the terror still pounding through his chest, Brodie let out a long, slow breath. The hot white haze of battle slowly drained from his limbs, leaving behind a deep, aching exhaustion.

He turned away from the drop.

Sheona was sitting slumped against the far wall, her hand still resting against her bruised throat, her dark braids wildly tangled around her pale shoulders. Her blue eyes were fixed entirely on him, wide, bright, and trembling with the residual shock of the nightmare.

Brodie didn’t say a word. He crossed the few steps between them, his heavy, iron-bound boots dragging slightly on the grit.

He dropped to his knees before her, the stone floor biting into his shins, and pulled her into a fierce, suffocating embrace.

He drew her close, wrapping his broad arms entirely around her small frame, burying his face into the soft crook of her neck. He pressed her body hard against his chest, needing to feel the solid, living warmth of her, needing the rapid, fluttering rhythm of her pulse against his jaw to silence the phantom terror screaming in his mind.

Sheona collapsed into him instantly, her arms wrapping around his neck, her small fingers digging deep into the heavy wool of his tartan. She buried her face in his shoulder, her body shaking with deep, quiet, shuddering sobs as the last lingering shadows of fear washed out of her.

“It is over, lass,” Brodie rasped softly into her skin, his hand cupping the back of her head, holding her tight against the cold night air. “I have ye, Sheona.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The cold stone floor beneath Sheona’s palms was still trembling, or perhaps it was only the relentless shuddering in her own chest.

Her knees felt like water, her breath coming in short, raspy gasps that burned her bruised throat, but the broad, solid heat of Brodie’s chest wrapped around her, anchoring her entire world. His arms held her so fiercely she could feel the violent hammer of his heart right against her cheek, steadying her frantic pulse. The scent of him—rainwater, wool, wood smoke, and the faint metallic tang of fresh blood—swallowed the lingering stench of fear that had hovered over the edge of the watchtower.

The storm outside still howled through the ruined window frame, whipping loose dark strands of her hair across her face, but she wasn’t falling. She was pressed flat against solid stone, buried in her husband’s grip.

The rapid, thunderous clatter of iron-shod boots boomed up the narrow spiral stairwell, cutting through the rush of the wind. Flaring orange torchlight spilled over the damp stone threshold, casting long, frantic shadows across the ceiling.

“Me Laird! Me Lady!”

Douglas burst into the chamber first, his heavy broadsword drawn, his face dark with panic. Half a dozen guardsmen filled the doorway behind him, their drawn steel glinting in the firelight. But before any warrior could step across the threshold, a small figure darted right past Douglas’s boots.

“Lady Sheona!” Angus cried out.

The boy dropped his broken piece of pine wood, the splintered toy clattering uselessly against the floorboards. He didn’t look at the shattered window, the blood slicking the stone, or the empty void beyond. He threw his tiny body across the room, skidding to his knees and flinging his arms around Sheona’s neck, burying his small face in the crook of her shoulder.