Chapter 10
Ciaran kept staring at Jack, wondering what plans he had for his bride.
Jack laughed, almost as if he had heard the thought.
“I should have killed ye back then,” he said, slowly circling them with his blade, as though this were some private sport arranged for his pleasure. “Would have saved meself the trouble.”
Ciaran heard the words. He even felt them strike.
However, the old helplessness they had once stirred within him did not take hold.
The field was already moving too fast, and men were shouting behind him, their steel ringing.
Ava stood too near. Jack’s grin held the same smugness it had held thirteen years ago, and that alone was enough to harden Ciaran’s resolve.
He was going to end him.
Jack’s eyes gleamed with malice. “She jumped, ye ken,” he said. “Felt bad for ye in the end. Poor broken boy left alive while the rest of them rotted.”
The blow landed where it was meant to.
Isla.
Pity.
Guilt.
The old ruin dragged into the present and twisted until it made him him.
For one violent instant, Ciaran saw another wedding broken open, another bride tied forever to slaughter, another version of himself drowning in blood and smoke and not yet strong enough to answer any of it.
Then Jack moved, and Ciaran did not need memory anymore. He met him hard.
Bastard.
Jack lunged fast, his blade aiming for the opening near his ribs, but Ciaran knocked it aside with enough force to smash his bones.
They clashed and turned through trampled flowers and overturned benches, through the wreck of the sacred space now made ugly by shouting men and blood underfoot.
Jack fought like a creature long practiced in treachery, fast and dirty and viciously willing to use the chaos around him. Ciaran fought with only one aim: to end a threat.
And that was the difference.
The ground dipped beneath Jack’s boot, and Ciaran took that opportunity. He drove forward, forcing him back a step. Somewhere at his rear, he heard Ava’s breath catch.
Nay.
She was too close. And the way Jack continued to stare at her only proved one thing—he was not joking when he had made that threat earlier.
An eye for an eye.
Jack twisted sideways and feinted left. Ciaran followed, too intent on the blade to miss the second strike until the last instant. It was not meant for him. It was meant for Ava.
“Ciaran!” Ava screamed behind him.
Before a single thought could form in his head, he moved. He stepped between them and took the blow to the shoulder.
A wave of hot pain tore through him immediately. It wasn’t deep enough to make him fall, but it was real enough to make his vision go white for a beat. He heard Ava gasp, and when he turned his head, he saw dark blood spread across the white of her wedding dress.
His blood.
On her.
Something in him went utterly still, and the memory flashed once again. Another wedding marked by blood and another bride standing in it.
Jack smiled, his eyes gleaming with nothing but utter evil. “Aye. There ye are.”
Ciaran straightened. The pain and the noise remained. Even the wreck around him remained. But then realization dawned. Jack wasn’t going to stop. Not until he was fully satisfied, and the only way that was happening was by killing Ava.
Suddenly, the pain and noise around him fell away. All that was left was the cold inside him. Dark, bottomless cold.
“I’m bored with this game,” he said, his voice dropping as low as his emotions.
Jack’s smile faltered. “What are ye—”
Before he could finish, Ciaran moved.
The end of the fight was swift. All it took was one savage clash of steel, then the final strike, hard and certain and without flourish. Ciaran swung his blade and drove it into Jack’s chest.
Jack’s body jolted, and the breath rushed out of him in an ugly squeal. For a heartbeat, he remained standing, his eyes wide with disbelief, as though a man who had survived too long had finally met the one ending he had not prepared for.
Then he fell.
Ciaran looked down at him once, his chest heaving and his shoulder burning.
It was done.
He turned at once and caught the wider field back into hand. Two of Jack’s men were already down. Another was trying to make a run for the trees. Hector had one pinned in close combat near the lower path.
Ciaran’s voice cut across the grounds like a blade. “Kill or take the rest. I want none of them loose.”
The men around him moved at once.
Good. Let this be finished. Let nay one ever think of doing this again.
Then he turned to Ava and began to walk toward her.
She had not moved far. Shock held her in place more firmly than fear now. Her hands hung midair, as if she had forgotten what they were meant to do. Her eyes fixed on the blood at his shoulder and then on the stain on her dress.
“Ye’re bleeding,” she said.
He stopped walking when he got close enough.
“Ye’re bleeding,” she said again.
There was something almost childlike about the repetition, not because she was weak, but because terror had driven her mind to the one fact it could bear to hold. She was saying it almost as if it were the one thing about all of this she simply couldn’t believe.
“Ye’re bleeding.”
“’Tis nothing,” he responded.
A lie, but a useful one.
She looked as though the world might tilt under her if left standing much longer. He had seen enough shock to know when a body remained upright only out of stubbornness and surprise. So he moved even closer to her.
“Relax, do ye hear me? It’ll be all right.”
Before she could respond, he bent and lifted her.
Ava made a small, startled sound and clutched him at once, one hand bracing against his uninjured shoulder, the other curling uselessly in the folds of his plaid.
He felt a tremor run through her at the contact. He also felt how slight she was in his arms compared to the force with which she had altered the shape of his life in just a few days.
It was hard to believe that such a small woman could cause such big trouble.
“Ye will be fine,” he assured her again, before he started toward the castle.
The path back seemed both too long and blessedly clear. Around them, the last of the chaos was being restored to order. The ceremony, however, still lay blood-stained and broken.
As Ava breathed against him, he realized that for the first time since his youth, a wedding had not ended with him feeling helpless.
To steady her, and perhaps because he needed to lighten the moment, he lowered his head to her, a smile on his face. “I told ye it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding.”
For one second, she only stared at him, as if the words had come from some stranger. Then, an incredulous laugh burst out of her. It was the first true release of breath for either of them since the attack had started.
“Ye are one strange man, Ciaran Nairn,” Ava whispered against his chest.
Ciaran only nodded in response.