Chapter 21
The torches crackled and hissed as the music died down. The crowd drew back in a wide ring, boots scraping, breath held.
The leader of the bandits stepped forward, his lip curled, his eyes full of hatred.
“Ye killed our braithers,” he spat, jabbing a filthy finger at Neil. “Their blood shouldnae have been spilled without payback.”
Neil did not move. He felt Kristen step closer, close enough that the hem of her sleeve brushed his hand.
“Who are they?” Her voice was soft, but not too soft to betray the fear he knew she felt.
Neil cleared his throat. “Me captors.”
“Time for a reckoning, Wolf,” the leader of the bandits barked.
Neil kept his eyes on the man. “Ye kidnapped me braither,” he said, his voice level and cold. “If anyone should be seeking vengeance here, it is me.”
Murmurs rippled through the villagers.
The bandit let out a mirthless laugh. “Then ye willnae like what comes next.”
Neil’s fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword. The square smelled of smoke and fried sugar and the tang of fear. He widened his stance, his weight balanced, ready to pounce.
He knew what was coming. He has dreaded it since he escaped from the cabin.
A second bandit spat on the dirt. “Yer braither was dead long before ye escaped,” he sneered, loud enough for the crowd to hear.
Neil’s heart sank. If he was being honest with himself, a part of him had always known that. Yet hearing it out loud made his blood boil.
“Cried like a bairn, too, the coward,” the second man continued. “Aye, he did. Begged to go back to ye. Said he’d never touch our sister again if we let him live.”
The words struck like a hammer.
For a moment, Neil could not breathe. He saw Alex as a boy at the lake, laughing, water in his hair. He could not reconcile that image with the bandit’s account.
“When?” he asked, stepping forward.
The bandit’s mouth stretched into a grin. He liked the pain he inflicted. “We found him when our sister was about to give birth to her second child.”
Neil turned his head to see Kristen’s lips part. Her eyes widened with a shock that looked like truth meeting memory. “Anna…”
“Aye,” the bandit said, pleased with himself. “We watched him too closely and lost her. Now, we still need a lass in the family.”
The promise in his voice was foul, and the threat sat in it like rot.
Neil could hear his heartbeat in his ears. The square narrowed to edges and intent. The ring of steel at his side felt like breath.
A third bandit shouldered close, his eyes roaming over Kristen. He moved faster than most men would have dared with Neil standing there, and his hand closed round her wrist.
“Perhaps,” he said, his breath rank, “we can have ye instead. A sweet, bonny lass like ye could give us the children we—”
The world narrowed to a point, and what happened next was too fast for anyone to register until the aftermath.
The flash of drawn steel.
One clean draw.
One step.
One hard stroke.
Thwap!
The scream tore the music from the night as the third bandit’s arm hit the dirt with a wet thud. Blood spurted out and caught the firelight, and the man dropped to his knees, howling. “Ye sick bastard!”
Neil did not raise his voice. He did not need to.
He breathed steadily, trying to ignore the look of utter shock on Kristen’s face. “Ye touched what is mine.” He took one step forward in the frenzied silence, his hand gripping his sword hard. “Nay one touches what is mine.”
The next second was filled with nothing but pure, dreadful silence.
And then chaos erupted.
Kristen stumbled backward, clutching her freed wrist with wide eyes. Mothers herded children away. Men grabbed their wives and pushed them back. The torches hissed and spat.
The remaining bandits lunged, but Neil was already moving. Five years had pared his fighting down to bone. No wasted steps. No mercy.
The first came in high. Neil ducked and drove the pommel of his sword into the man’s throat. The man folded with a choked gasp. Neil finished him with a cut that sucked the life out of him.
The second tried for Neil’s ribs. Neil swung his blade and blocked the blow. He shoved the man’s steel aside, stepped forward, and drove his sword under the man’s arm where the leather gapped. The man sagged down the metal, soft as a sack.
Two bodies hit the ground. The square went very quiet except for the bandit with one arm and the crackle of the torches.
The last of them turned on his heel and ran, shoulders slamming villagers aside, arms flailing. Neil did not let him go two strides. He caught the back of the man’s collar and slammed him into the nearest wall so hard that a torch rattled in its sconce.
The man’s teeth clicked shut on his tongue. Blood slicked his chin.
“’Tis quite funny, is it nae? When ye get tortured for five years, ye remember the face of every single man who made life hell for ye.”
The man couldn’t respond; the blood in his mouth would not let him.
“There were ten of ye in that cabin,” Neil continued, close enough that the torch warmed his cheek. “I killed six before I escaped. Where is the last one?”
The man wheezed.
“I would be very careful as to what I say next, lad. Yer life depends on it. Where is the last one?”
The man spat blood on Neil’s face. “Go… to hell.”
Neil’s expression did not shift. He set the point of his sword and pushed. The blade went in clean under the ribs, straight to the heart.
The man’s eyes glazed over, and his body slid down the wall to the ground, his head against the stone, his mouth open to nothing.
The silence pressed down on the crowd like the evening wind. The only sounds were the spit of the torches and the whimpers of the one-armed man. The villagers stared with round eyes, some in awe, some in plain fear. A boy cried once, then buried his face in his mother’s skirts.
Neil pulled his sword free, let the blood run off the steel, and turned around. He did not look at the bodies. He did not look at the men he had cut down or the arm on the ground.
He looked for her.
He found her a pace behind where he had stood, her wrist cradled against her chest, her skin pale in the firelight, her breathing quick and shallow.
He stepped toward her.
Kristen did not move. The square had narrowed to a blur of firelight and shadow. Blood speckled her sleeves and skirt, and dotted the back of her hand like red rain.
Her ears rang, and her eyes flicked over the severed arm that lay too near. She told herself not to look, but her gaze drifted toward it anyway.
“Kristen.”
His voice cut through the fog in her head.
Neil stepped into her line of sight and blocked the bodies from view. His cloak filled her world instead of the ground, while his chest rose and fell too fast. Heat radiated from him in steady waves as she stared at the laces at his collar and tried to breathe.
He unhooked the clasp of his cloak with quick fingers and draped the heavy wool over her shoulders. His hands smoothed the cloak down her arms, then drew the edges together so the outside world disappeared. The smell of smoke and horse and clean leather wrapped around her.
“Ye’re safe now.” His voice was low, softer than she had ever heard it. “I swear it.”
The words cracked something that fear had locked shut. Air came in a thin rush. She swallowed.
“Thank ye,” she whispered.
The words did not seem quite like hers. They sounded hollow and far away. Like they had come from someone else.
His hand found her elbow, warm and steady, and turned her away from the blood on the ground.
The crowd parted at once, heads bowed. Someone made the sign of the cross, and another said a prayer in a torn murmur.
A girl peered around her mother’s skirt with wide eyes, but the woman turned her head away.
Kristen moved because his hand asked her to. The hem of his cloak brushed her ankles, and the square felt vast and distant. The smell of honey sugar had gone sour, and the music had faded as if it had never been.
“Mind yer feet,” Neil said quietly.
His body stayed between her and the worst of the mess. At the edge of the square, he lifted her into his arms before she could protest. She made a small sound and then clamped her mouth shut.
He lowered her onto the saddle as if she weighed nothing, and the big horse shifted and snorted, its ears flicking at the noise behind them.
She reached for the pommel and held tight. Her fingers were sticky. She did not want to look to see whether it was blood or the honey.
Please let it be the honey.
Neil mounted behind her in one swift motion, and his arms came around her waist, firm and gentle. She leaned back until her spine met the wall of his chest, grounding herself.
He kicked his heels into the horse’s flanks, and they moved into the lane at a slow walk, hooves soft on the dirt, the village falling behind them one house at a time.
The night had deepened at this point, and the sky was nothing but a dark bowl with a few stars. A breeze drifted across the hills, carrying the smell of wet grass.
Kristen’s breathing would not slow. She could not stop feeling the grip on her wrist. She could not stop hearing the scream that split the air. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the inside of her lids was a wash of red.
The horse stumbled over a stone and righted itself. Her whole body flinched.
Neil’s arms tightened around her at once. “Easy,” he murmured into her ear.
Her throat worked, and she nodded, though he could not see it.
Her face found his shoulder without her thinking about it. The linen was warm where it touched her cheek. He smelled like lake water and steel and the smoke of torches. She took a deep breath and tried to hold it in the bottom of her lungs.
He did not speak again. His hand slid to her waist, firm and steady. The horse kept a slow pace up the darkened road. The only sounds were the clip-clop of hooves, the creak of leather, and the beat of his heart. It was even and heavy, and it gave her something to focus on.
She tried not to think of the way the men had spoken about Alex, but tears pricked her eyes. She clenched her teeth, refusing to let them fall. She couldn’t even imagine what Neil was feeling if this was how distraught she was.
After a while, the path sloped upward, and the castle came into view. Torches flared along the battlements as guards moved to open the gates. Light poured across the road and touched them, warm as a soft hand.
Kristen let out the breath she had been holding since they left the village. The sight of the high walls, the arch, the banner on the tower loosened something inside her.
Home.
Neil guided the horse under the arch and into the courtyard. He stayed close to her until the beast stopped. His hand did not leave her waist. He did not rush her. He waited while she gathered the pieces of herself that were still in disbelief as to what had happened in the village.
The night hung thick between them as the gates clanged shut. The courtyard lay quiet except for the soft steps of guards on the wall and the small sounds of the stables.
Her ears would not stop ringing as the relief of seeing her home washed over her once again.
Home would not feel peaceful for a long time.