Chapter 23 #2
Isabella was his Soulmate.
Everything that had happened made sense once he accepted that single fact, from his having arrived twenty years later than he planned to the mark on Isa’s hand. All of it, right down to the way he felt when he held her in his arms.
He’d taken the Guardians’ Pledge to reunite the broken Soul Pairings, and in doing so, he had enabled the Magic to direct him to his other half. That she might never accept the truth of it was beyond his control, beyond even the Magic’s control.
And though they’d be separated soon, he now had no doubt that one day, one lifetime, they’d be together again.
His arm tightened automatically when she pulled to a stop again.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking up at him, wrinkling her nose. “Do you smell that?”
“Aye. Fire.”
They started forward again, their speed increasing until they ran. Robert took the lead, with Isa trailing farther behind as they raced through the trees.
He spared only a moment to wondering whether Isa’s hand tingled as his arm did now, whether she realized yet to pay attention to that feeling.
No time to let himself be distracted. He blocked that thought as he blocked the pain burning through his chest. His mind focused on the cottage where he headed and the small boy he’d left sleeping there, and he pushed himself to run harder.
Smoke drifted through the trees toward them. Sharp and acrid, it stung the back of Isa’s throat as she gulped in air. Her chest and legs ached from running but she couldn’t stop. Robbie’s long legs had left her too far behind already.
Up ahead, where the trees gave way to her little piece of cleared forest, Robbie stopped. One hand clutched to his chest, he bent from the waist, obviously catching his breath.
As she drew close, he held up his arm, apparently signaling something.
Stop? Keep silent? She had no idea. And looking beyond where he waited, she lost any interest in trying to figure it out.
Her cottage, her wonderful, lovely cottage, was burning, flames leaping up into the sky from what had been her thatched roof. The same roof she’d repaired herself just last summer.
“No,” she whispered, her feet moving her forward as if through a haze.
Her home. Her animals.
Oh God!
“Jamie!” she screamed, rushing forward, swerving to avoid Robbie’s outstretched arm. “Jamie!”
She ran, powered by a burst of fear-induced energy coursing through her limbs.
Out into the open, racing over the uneven ground to the stream, she plunged in.
Oblivious to the water pushing at her body, she crossed and scrambled up the other side, not stopping until she neared the inferno that had been her home.
Lifting her arm to shield her face from the heat, she took a step back from the horror, her legs struggling to hold her weight.
Nothing. Nothing could survive that fire.
Vaguely, as if from another place, she heard Robbie calling her name, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the flames.
It was so wrong for this to have happened to poor, wee Jamie. Fire. Why did it have to be fire?
Yelling came from all around her as she sank to her knees, unable to stand any longer.
Men she didn’t recognize, brandishing swords and angry faces, circled around her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about any of it.
Not the men, or the heat from fire—not even the smoke that clogged her lungs. None of it mattered.
Until she thought of Robbie, and by then it was too late. Rough hands held her pinned to the ground with her arms wrenched up behind her.
She could see him, battling his way across the open ground.
He fought magnificently, pulling one man from his mount and leaving his body crumpled in the grass as he ran toward her.
The late-afternoon sunlight flashed brilliantly from his blade as it sliced a path through the next two men.
The glorious tales of her father’s battles that her grandfather had told her when she was small pushed their way into her memory, and for a short while she had hope.
In the end, though, there were simply too many of them. Too many men, both mounted and on foot, all converging on Robbie, burying him under their weight.
Isa squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for whatever might come, wanting nothing more than to have it done with.
These beasts who called themselves men had trapped little Jamie in the blaze, and now they’d taken Robbie to the ground.
What they did to her after those horrors didn’t matter.
They’d already destroyed all that she held dear.
“Drag him over here next to the madwoman.”
After their actions here this day, they dared call her mad?
She fought against an uncontrollable laughter bubbling up from her chest. Tried so hard to hold it in, all to no avail. It burst forth, surprising her when it sounded more like broken sobs.
“No, Isa. Dinna cry, love.” Robbie’s voice, no more than a ragged whisper.
Two men held him to the ground next to her when she opened her eyes, his face streaked with dirt and blood and soot. Beaten, battered, but he lived.
“How do you want it done, Shaw?”
The question came from somewhere behind Isa. She tried not to think about what the words meant. Robbie’s gaze held hers, even when one of their captors placed his boot on the side of Robbie’s head, pushing his cheek to the ground.
“Take their heads. They’ll serve as Lardiner’s proof.”
“Close yer eyes, love,” Robbie whispered, struggling against the men who held him even as the foot ground into the side of his face.
She did as he said, wishing she could but touch him one last time as she heard the sound of steel being drawn behind her. If only the magic she had hated for so long hadn’t deserted her now that she really needed it.
“Stay yer swords!”
The order rang out over the thunder of approaching horses.
“It’s a grand mistake you make here, lads. Yer new laird is no likely to appreciate having his bride delivered without her lovely head, now is he?”
“I dinna ken who you be,” the one called Shaw responded, “but we act on the orders of our new laird.”
“No, I dinna think you do.”
The pressure on Isa’s arms lessened and then she was on her feet. Her eyes flew open when an arm encircled her waist, and her feet left the ground as she was lifted up to sit in front of one of the riders.
“And as to who I am?” The large man settled her against him on his mount. “Patrick MacDowylt, brother to yer new laird. Bring him.” He motioned toward Robbie before tugging on his reins to turn his horse back in the direction of Castle MacGahan.