Page 19

"Well," he said, and grinned with most of his teeth. "What's this?"

"Step aside," Neilina said, keeping her voice flat and even, the voice she had used on Cailleach's guard, the voice that had worked more often than not because it gave men nothing to push against.

It did not work now.

"Bit late for a lass tae be out alone." He took a step closer, blocking the width of the street with his body, swaying with the effort of standing still. "Where's a pretty thing like ye off tae, this hour?"

"That isnae yer concern." She shifted right, testing the gap between him and the wall.

He shifted with her, closing it. "Might make it my concern."

"Move," she said, "or I'll make ye regret that ye didnae."

He laughed, loud and wet, and she used the moment to try the left side instead, fast, and nearly made it past him before his hand closed hard around her upper arm and yanked her back.

"Nae so quick⁠—"

"Let go of me." She twisted, driving her heel toward his shin, and connected hard enough to make him grunt, but his grip didn't loosen. It tightened instead, his fingers digging in through her sleeve.

He's too strong. He's too strong tae pull free of head-on.

"Feisty," he said, dragging her a half-step closer, his breath foul and close. "I like that in a⁠—"

"Let go of me!" She shoved both hands against his chest, no leverage in it, her boots skidding in the mud. Panic climbing fast and cold up the back of her throat because she'd fought this once tonight already, in a different courtyard, against a different man's hand around her ankle, and she'd promised herself she would never again be the woman on the ground with someone's grip closed around her. "Someone…help me…HELP⁠—"

He clamped a hand toward her mouth.

She bit him.

He roared and reared back, and in the space that opened she heard boots coming fast and heavy, from the direction of the inn.

Then something hit the man from the side with the force of a falling wall, and his grip was torn from her arm all at once.She staggered free and caught herself against the wall of the kirk, chest heaving.

Marcas had the drunk man by the collar, slammed against the opposite wall with one forearm braced hard across his throat.

"Touch her again," Marcas said, low and terrible in a voice she hadn't heard from him yet, not even in MacRath's courtyard with a sword in his hand, "and I willnae stop at yer collar."

The man, sobering fast under Marcus’s grip, tried to shove him off anyway, swinging a wild fist that caught nothing but air. Marcas's response was a single short blow that dropped him to the mud and left him there, groaning, making no further attempt to rise.

"Get up and get gone," Marcas said, not raising his voice, which was somehow worse than if he had. "Now. Before I decide ye need a second lesson."

The man scrambled up, favoring one side, and fled unevenly into the dark between the houses without looking back.

Silence came down over the street, broken only by her own breathing and the distant stamp of a horse in the inn yard.

Marcas turned.

Neilina still had her back against the kirk wall, her arm throbbing where the man's fingers had dug in, her heart going too hard and too fast for the danger to have actually passed, and she watched Marcas cross the space between them with his jaw set and his hands, she noticed, not quite steady either.

"Are ye hurt?" he asked.

"Nae." Her voice came out thinner than she wanted it to. "I'm…nae."

He stopped in front of her, close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his eyes, close enough that she could see the fury in him hadn't finished burning off yet, banked but not gone, and beneath it something else she recognized because she'd been fighting the same thing all evening across a supper tray.

"Ye left the room," he said.

"Aye."