Chapter 30
Ciaran saw three things the instant he crested the rise: Ava, the cliff, and Laird O’Malley’s hand twisted in the front of her dress with enough force to keep her off balance and close to the edge.
He stopped at once.
The ground between them was open and narrow, and loose stone lay everywhere. One wrong move would send the old bastard into motion before any man could reach him.
Ava’s wrists were bound, and her hair was loose and blown hard across her face.
Ciaran saw her trying to keep her footing on the uneven ground and knew with one cold sweep of certainty that there would be no clean strike here.
There was no opportunity for a heroic lunge or fast rescue.
Only seconds to speak and one chance to choose the right words.
Men spread behind him in a rough line, their blades ready, their feet planted. Hector stood to his left. No one moved farther.
Ciaran kept his voice low. “Hold.”
Laird O’Malley heard it and smiled. “There ye are.”
Ciaran did not answer. His eyes stayed on Ava. She was pale under the dark sky, and the wind had reddened her eyes, though he could not tell how much was caused by the cold and how much was caused by fear. She was alive. That was all that mattered for the next few breaths.
Laird O’Malley tightened his grip and dragged her one step closer to the drop.
Ava stumbled, caught herself, and bit back whatever cry he imagined must have risen in her throat. Her gaze found Ciaran’s. He felt that look like a hand under his ribs.
“Ye move,” Laird O’Malley threatened, “and she dies before ye take a second step.”
Ciaran stayed still.
The cliff fell away at Ava’s back into black emptiness. The wind came up from below in hard bursts. It tugged at her dress and the hem of the older man’s cloak.
Anyone watching from farther off might have thought they stood safely enough. Ciaran saw the truth in the angle of Ava’s feet and the strain in her shoulders. One shove would be enough.
“What do ye want?” he asked.
Laird O’Malley gave a short laugh. “I have wanted the same thing for years—a grave full of Nairns.” His hand tugged again at Ava’s dress. “I shall start with yer wife, then ye.”
Ava went rigid.
The words hit Ciaran with terrible clarity. There would be no reasoning the man into mercy or appealing to his grief.
Laird O’Malley wanted punishment in blood, and Ava was the exact shape of what he hated. If Ciaran spoke to her as he wanted, if he let one true word show on his face, the old man would only grip her harder.
He had one move left.
He hated it before he spoke it.
“If it is me ye want, then let the lass go.”
Laird O’Malley’s eyes narrowed.
“She means nothing to me,” Ciaran added.
Ava’s expression shifted. He felt it without looking at her. He felt the shock ripple through her even before the old man answered. The words tasted foul in his mouth, but he forced himself to keep breathing as if they cost nothing.
“We were going to have our marriage annulled anyway,” he said. “Take me. Leave her out of it.”
Laird O’Malley studied him. Ciaran held still and forced his gaze to stay on the bastard rather than on the woman hearing him cast her aside to save her life.
Every inch of his being wanted to look at her, to tell her with one glance that this was a lie out of necessity, that he did not mean it.
But he did not dare. The old man was watching for exactly that.
Ava made a small sound. It wasn’t enough to break anything, but it was enough to cut him open.
Laird O’Malley’s mouth curved. “Is that so?”
“Aye.” Ciaran heard the flatness in his own voice and kept it there.
Laird O’Malley gave Ava a rough shake. “Ye hear that, lass? Yer husband has grown tired of ye already.”
Ciaran said nothing.
Ava’s eyes were on him now. He could feel that too—the question in them, the hurt, the disbelief. He could not answer any of it. Because one wrong move, and she would die.
Laird O’Malley leaned forward slightly. “Say it again.”
Ciaran’s heart slammed once against his ribs. This was the part that would stay with her. One lie might someday be argued with. A second would sound like a deliberate choice he made to hurt her.
He spoke anyway.
“Ye heard me.” He kept his voice hard enough to scrape. “I daenae want her.”
The words went out into the dark morning sky and seemed to strike the air itself. Ava flinched as if he had hit her.
Ciaran held himself still. He could not let the old man see what her reaction did to him. He had chosen this. He would carry the cost later, if there was a later to carry anything in.
Laird O’Malley’s gaze darted between them. He was thinking. Testing. Enjoying it.
“So easy,” he said softly. “All these years, I thought I should kill wives and children to wound yer line. Mayhap I needed only wait for ye to do the work yerselves.”
Rage surged up hot enough to blur the edges of Ciaran’s vision, but he managed to crush it down. Rage would get Ava killed. What he needed now was time. One distracted shift of the old man’s feet or one half-second for Hector or any of the men at his back to gain ground.
“Take me,” Ciaran offered. “If vengeance is what ye want, then take it where it belongs.”
“Oh, I shall.” Laird O’Malley smiled again, and his grip shifted.
Ciaran noticed the movement at once. The hand on Ava’s dress moved lower, searching for better leverage. Her bound hands twisted uselessly at her waist as she fought for balance. Pebbles gave way under one foot and fell into the abyss.
Every man behind him tensed. He heard leather creak and steel adjust in a gauntlet. Still, no one moved.
No one could.
Ava still stared at him.
He had gotten what he wanted. Laird O’Malley’s attention had shifted. The line of attack had changed. She was alive.
Please, he found himself pleading silently over and over again. Please, let her go.
Almost like he could read his thoughts, Laird O’Malley’s hand shifted on Ava’s dress. Then he shoved her.
“Nay!” Ciaran bellowed, moving almost in the same breath as her feet went out from under her.
The stones slid, and her body pitched backward over the edge. He reached her in two strides that felt like one and pushed Laird O’Malley back with all the force he could muster. The older man's men with him moved forward to attack, but Hector was one step closer. He had them all cornered.
“Brother, do ye—”
“Stay back!” Ciaran called as loudly as his vocal cords would let him. Then he grabbed a fistful of fabric at Ava’s shoulder and the bound rope at her wrists, then dropped to one knee so hard the impact reverberated through his whole leg.
Her weight dragged at him at once, while loose stones spilled past them into the dark. Someone shouted behind him, but he did not know who. All he could think of was how to keep her holding on. How to keep her alive.
“Ciaran!” she screamed, the panic in her voice evident with each breath.
“I’ve got ye, Ava,” he groaned, gritting his teeth.
Ava made a short, strangled sound as she slammed against the cliff. Her body hung half over the drop, her shoes scraping uselessly against bare rock. Ciaran hauled her with everything in him and got her up one hand’s breadth before Laird O’Malley came for him.
The bastard had a knife.
Ciaran saw the flash too late. He let go of Ava’s ropes just long enough to turn, took the old man’s wrist in his free hand, and drove his own blade upward under the ribs with all the force the panic gave him.
Laird O’Malley gasped.
“The Lord kens ye deserve more than this. But I daenae have the time,” Ciaran grunted, and stabbed him again.
A pool of warm blood ran down his knuckles as the knife fell from Laird O’Malley’s hand and skittered across the ground. Laird O’Malley sagged against him with a wet, stunned breath, still trying to look past him toward Ava, as if hatred alone might finish the work.
Ciaran held him there for a moment, face to face, with Ava still hanging from his other hand and the wind whipping at all three of them.
“I could have let ye live,” he hissed. Then he shoved him away.
Laird O’Malley collapsed onto the ground and did not move again.
Ciaran turned back before the dust had fully settled. “Ava.”
She was still slipping.
The fabric at her shoulder tightened, and her bound hands were twisted awkwardly above her head, where he still gripped the rope. He dropped flat on his stomach, braced one boot against a piece of solid rock, and hauled her upward inch by inch.
“Just hold on, all right?” he groaned, pulling with more power.
One shoe found purchase, but lost it as the other scraped across rock. He caught more of her sleeve, then the back of her arm, and pulled until half her body came over the cliff, then all of it in one hard pull that rolled her against him on the ground.
For a moment, he could do nothing but hold her.
She was alive.
Breathing.
Solid under his hands.
Her hair was full of grit, and her left cheek had a fresh scrape on it. Her dress hung torn at the shoulder where he had caught her, and he quickly ran his hand down her side, her arm, her waist, searching for broken bones he might feel before she had time to tell him.
“Ava.”
She nodded once without meeting his eyes.
He brought the bloody knife to the rope and cut it loose. It fell away, and he watched the red marks around her wrists. He took her hands in his own and rubbed them hard, as if to force warmth back into her cold fingers.
Laird O’Malley lay crumpled a few feet away, one arm bent under him at an odd angle, the blood dark at his side. The sight of him should have brought relief. But it only brought the knowledge that one threat had ended and another had begun.
“Look at me.”
Hector and two of his men reached them then, their boots striking the ground. One of them bent over Laird O’Malley’s body and the other scanned his men, who were now dead on the floor as well.
Hector crouched beside Ciaran and Ava, sword still in hand, breathing hard. “Are ye hurt?”
“She was pushed,” Ciaran said.
“I asked her.”
Ava drew a shaky breath and said. “I am fine.”
That answer should have soothed him. It did not.
Fine did not answer anything. He needed to know whether she could stand, whether anything in her was broken, whether she would faint, and whether the look she had just given him would remain after the tremors stopped.
There was only one way to find out.
He put one arm around her back and helped her sit upright, and she let him do it.
“Ava,” Ciaran murmured, quieter now.
She flinched, then steadied herself. He reached out to wipe the blood from the scrape on her cheek, and again, she let him.
“We must get ye back home,” he said.
Ava looked at him then with a strange clarity that told him she had heard every word he had said earlier. “Because I mean so little to ye?” she asked.
Hector rose and turned away, barking orders at the men to check the ground below and watch the treeline. He gave them privacy without pretending not to hear. The wind still came hard from the drop, and somewhere below, more stones shifted and fell.
“That was for him,” Ciaran sighed.
Her mouth trembled. “Aye.”
He rose and then offered her his hand. She took it after the smallest hesitation. He pulled her carefully to her feet and kept hold of her elbow while she found her balance.
The men closed in around them, and Hector returned, a look that seemed to suggest satisfaction resting on his face.
“It is done,” he declared.
Ciaran kept one hand on Ava’s back as they turned away from the cliff’s edge. She did not pull away, but then, she did not move closer either. She walked beside him in shaken silence while the men formed around them and the morning cold swallowed the cliff behind.
“Let us go home,” he whispered, almost involuntarily.