Chapter 29
The first thing Ava felt was the pain in her wrists.
The rope bit hard each time the horse jolted or the man beside her yanked her forward.
She had stopped trying to count turns; the ground changed too often beneath her feet.
Grass gave way to stone, stone to rough earth, then rough earth to a narrow path that forced her half sideways while the men moved around her.
From the way they did, she could tell they knew exactly where they were going. She, on the other hand, did not.
The cold wind whipped at her face, and her hair had come loose long ago and kept blowing across her mouth. She spat it away and twisted again against the grip on her arm.
“Let go of me.”
The man holding her only tightened his grip.
Ava planted her heels and tried to wrench free. For one brief second, she dragged him half a step off the path. But then a slap landed across the back of her shoulder, not enough to throw her down, but enough to tell her they would hurt her as much as needed and think nothing of it.
She stumbled and caught herself.
Her heart had been pounding so hard for so long that it had become its own kind of sickness.
She had screamed when they first took her.
She had shouted for help until one man shoved a cloth into her mouth and threatened to kill her if she did not keep quiet.
She had bitten him anyway, and he had cursed and struck her hard enough to make her ears ring, then tied the gag so tight her jaw still ached from it.
The gag was gone now, but the danger remained.
No one had come to save her. Not yet.
For some reason, that thought sat inside her more heavily than the ropes.
The castle had vanished behind them long ago, and the guards who had ridden with her were nowhere in sight. She had listened for pursuit until the sounds of the men around her swallowed every other hope.
She stumbled again on a loose stone. The man at her left cursed under his breath and hauled her upright without a care for how the motion jarred her shoulders.
Ava rounded on him with all the force she had left and drove her foot down hard on his instep. He barked in pain. She twisted, swung her bound hands at his face, and nearly got him before another man caught the back of her dress and yanked her back against his chest.
“Hold still, ye little devil.”
She kicked backward and caught his shin, which earned her another bruising grip on her arm.
There was no point in saving her strength. She fought because the fight was all that kept her from feeling like a bundle being carried to market.
The men muttered to each other in low voices she could not fully catch. One rode close enough that she smelled horse sweat and leather every time his mount shifted. Another kept falling back, then returning, as if checking behind them for pursuers.
Someone had planned this. That fact was clearer than anything. This had been orchestrated so well that it could not have been random.
One of the men closest to her leaned in. “Be good, lassie. We’re almost there.”
Ava looked at him through the dark. “There?”
He did not answer. However, the single word had done its job.
There was a place. A destination. A waiting point. They were taking her to someone, and for some reason, that knowledge heightened her fear and cleared her head at the same time.
She began watching more closely. The path climbed now, and the wind had grown a bit stronger. A gust of air hit the side of her body and sent the most minute relief. She could feel a drop somewhere near even before she saw it.
Soon, the men slowed down, and her breath caught.
They had reached a cliff.
The night opened wide there, and the ground fell away into a darkness so deep she could not see the bottom. Wind came up hard from below and whipped at her dress as the man finally released her arm, only to grip her bound wrists from behind and force her a few steps forward.
And there, waiting where the ground leveled, stood an old man.
He was wrapped against the cold in dark wool, his silver hair fluttering around a face cut deep with age and something harsher than age.
He did not look like a guard or some rough hill thief.
He looked like the sort of man who commanded respect and knew that he did.
Like a man others made room for, even when they hated him.
She was brought to a stop before him.
He looked her over slowly, from her loose hair to her bound wrists to the dirt on the hem of her gown. His gaze held no surprise. Only satisfaction, and something she could not ultimately describe.
Ava knew at once that he was the reason she had been taken.
When he spoke, every part of her body tensed. “So this is the woman he chose.”
Ava lifted her head almost immediately. “Who are ye?”
The old man released a short breath that might once have been a laugh. “Ye should ken me, lass. Me grief has paid dearly enough for the privilege.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and racked her brain for a clue. Then, suddenly, it hit her. She had heard Isobel recount the story over and over back at MacKenna Castle.
“Once in a while, I try to wonder what Isla’s father must have gone through when he heard the news.”
Ciaran had told her about the event that made people call him the Silent Death. The same event that made him lose most of his voice.
Her blood instantly ran cold, and her back went rigid.
The old man saw that she knew before she said it.
“Aye,” he sneered. “There it is.”
The wind ruffled her hair again. Still, she did not move.
“Ye daenae deserve to live and bear heirs for that vile family,” he said. “Nae while me own child was lost to them.”
The words hit with a different kind of violence than ropes or blows. Her fear sharpened into anger as he took one step nearer.
“They buried me daughter and kept breathing. They kept their lands. Their names. Their line. And ye were meant to strengthen it.”
Ava stared at him through the dark and felt the whole shape of it settle. The fire. The road. The choice to take her. None of this was chance. None of it had been.
“’Tis ye,” she forced out, her voice thick. “Ye’re Isla’s father. Laird O’Malley.”
For the first time, something changed in his expression. Grief entered it, plain and terrible and old. Ava saw then that the hatred had grown around a real wound. She saw it and hated him still.
“She was me world.”
“She had a name,” she fired back.
His eyes fixed on hers. And on the cliff above the dark, with armed men at her back and vengeance in front of her, Ava knew with full certainty that this was never about ransom, never about opportunity, and never about her alone.
She had been taken to stand in for the life Laird O’Malley believed Ciaran’s family had no right to take.
“She had a life too,” he continued, his voice just as low. “One they took from her.”
“Ye speak as if she were livestock stolen from a field.” Ava kept her voice steady, though her wrists throbbed, and the drop at her back kept pulling at the edge of her thoughts. “She was yer daughter. She was a woman. She made choices.”
His eyes sharpened. “Mind yer tongue.”
“Nay.” The word came out before fear could thin it. “Ye daenae get to put all of it at Ciaran’s feet and call it justice. Isla couldnae bear what happened. That bloodbath began because of men and rage and pride long before she died.”
A hand clamped harder on her upper arm. One of the men behind her forced her half a step nearer the cliff, and a low groan of pain escaped her lips. Loose stones shifted under her shoes and fell away into the dark.
Laird O’Malley watched her flinch and seemed to take some satisfaction in it. “Ye speak too boldly for a woman standing where ye are right now.”
“And ye, old man, speak too casually of yer daughter for someone who helped make her life unbearable.”
His mouth twisted, and he took two slow steps closer to her until she could smell damp wool and stale age on him. “Ye ken nothing.”
“I ken enough.” Ava lifted her chin. “I ken she didnae ride into that wedding believing everyone would die. I ken she cried out when she saw it, and I ken yer hatred has had a decade to fester and still hasnae taught ye the truth.”
He reached out and seized the front of her dress. His grip was shockingly strong for his age. He dragged her closer still, enough that the wind from the drop struck harder at her side.
“I wasnae there that day.” Each word came with careful force. “I didnae stand in that hall and watch the slaughter. But I watched what happened after. I watched me daughter waste away, and I watched her choose the cliff over her own life after that family was done with her.”
Ava’s breath caught.
The men behind her shifted. One of them looked away. Laird O’Malley did not.
“And because I watched,” he gritted out, “I learned patience. I learned what years can do that one blade cannae.” His fingers twisted tighter in her dress. “I had yer father’s castle set on fire because I kent ye were fond of visiting there. I hoped ye would be inside when it burned down.”
The words hit so hard that a breath whooshed out of her.
What?
“Ye vile—”
He spoke over her. “And the only reason I had to do that was because ye lived through the wedding. That was nae supposed to happen.”
Her mouth had gone dry. She knew what he meant before he said it.
“Yer wedding day,” he sneered. “Ye think that beast Jack came of his own accord? I sent him.”
Ava stared at him.
For one beat, the wind, the cliff, the ropes—all of it dropped away before the sheer horror of his admission.
Jack had already been nightmare enough in Ciaran’s life. Enough blood had hung on his name. To hear Laird O’Malley speak of sending him, using him, directing him, made the past widen into something even fouler.
“Ye used him! Ye have been using him all along!”
Laird O’Malley gave a small shrug. “Poor lad lost his mind when Isla took her life. Would never question anything. Did whatever he was told.”
The casual cruelty of it made Ava sick.
“And ye didnae lose yer mind?” she hissed.
That struck home; she could see it when his eyes flashed.
“Nay,” he said. “I kept mine well enough. That is why I am standing here and she isnae.”
He meant Isla. He meant Jack. He meant every dead person his hatred had already claimed.
Ava’s voice sharpened. “Ye speak of vengeance as if it is holy, but it is nothing but filth. Ye used yer daughter’s pain to justify every rotten thing after it, and ye still daenae see that this has nothing to do with her.”
“I hold yer life in me hands, lass. I’d be careful if me words if I were ye.”
But Ava didn’t care. Not anymore. “Ye set fire to me father’s home and sent a broken man to slaughter innocents at a wedding. Since that isnae enough for ye, ye have dragged me here because ye cannae bear that life kept moving after hers ended.”
His face darkened. “I willnae settle, nae until me daughter is avenged.”
Ava felt the full weight of the danger settle into her bones.
He had not taken her only because she was Ciaran’s wife.
He had taken her because she was what came next.
A future. A womb. A continuation of the family he hated.
He meant to wound Ciaran through her body, through the children she might bear, through the life she had barely begun building.
The thought turned her fear into full-blown panic.
“This willnae bring Isla back,” she tried. “Ye will only leave more bodies behind ye.”
His hand released her dress, before he gave a small signal.
The man behind her shoved her forward again.
Ava caught herself with a gasp, feeling the edge too near.
The wind rushed up cold and hard from below, and her heart kicked so violently against her ribs she thought she might pass out.
She forced herself to stay upright anyway.
If she went down now, they would drag her the rest of the way like meat.
Nay.
She had already given up hope. She wasn’t escaping this. Not after what she’s said to him. However, a part of her couldn’t help but wonder if she could go back in time and have another conversation with Ciaran.
If only she could do it all over again.
“Wait.” Laird O’Malley’s voice sounded like thunder. “I would rather throw her myself. T’is the least ye deserve, lassie.”
Ava swallowed as the old man stepped closer and grabbed her dress.
However, at that moment, something else moved in the dark. It was so faint at first that she almost didn’t hear it. Then it grew clearer. A scrape of boots on stone, then another. Then a quiet hiss.
Laird O’Malley heard it too, and his head turned.
The men at her back tightened their hold.
Her breath caught in her throat as the dark above the path shifted and figures emerged from it. More than two.
More than three.
One of the men behind her swore under his breath. Another drew his blade with a hard scrape that seemed to crack the daybreak wide open.
Ava did not move. She could not. She listened with every part of her being as Laird O’Malley went very still and the men around him widened their stances.
Then she heard his voice.
It was low and cold. It was also close enough that it went through her like the first breath after drowning.
“Let her go,” Ciaran gritted out, “and I might just make yer death quick.”