Chapter 26
The man-at-arms toppled forward, landing on the cobbles of the courtyard with a dull thud. He lay there, crooked and motionless, and Ailis knew he wouldn’t rise again.
A scream tried to escape her throat, but it wouldn’t come. It stayed lodged in there, a jagged lump that made it hard to breathe, hard to swallow, hard to muster a single word.
Why did ye insist on comin’ with me? Why did ye nae leave when ye had the chance?
A loyal man lay dead. A man who had deemed her worthy of protection, who had stayed at her side because she belonged to his clan, acting on the instructions of the husband she had begun to fall in love with.
There was something metaphorical about it ending in blood and death.
“Why?” she rasped, her cold eyes narrowing on her father.
“He was a MacNairn,” he replied simply.
“He wasnae a threat,” she hissed. “He didnae raise his sword or bow. What did ye kill him for?”
She knew all too well that her father would take her protest as a sign of misplaced loyalty, but at that moment, she didn’t care.
Peter wasn’t someone she had known well, but he had been important to Killian, a friend to him.
And he had made her feel less afraid on the road to a place that no longer felt like home. Had never felt like home.
“He was at our gates this very day, tryin’ to sneak in and kill me,” her father shot back. “I daenae forget a face, Ailis. Those arrows had his name on the shafts the moment he crept up to harm me and me kin.”
He made another strange gesture, and Ailis braced herself for the bite of more arrows. Her eyes squeezed shut, her breath caught, the only thought in her mind of Killian.
I’ll leave him a widower on our weddin’ night.
How she longed to be back in her bedchamber, with him, experiencing the pleasure between a husband and wife. Desperately, she wished that Peter had burst in an hour later, or not until dawn, and that the wretched box could have waited until the marriage was consummated, before it ruined everything.
I should have marched here with an army. Ended it for good. At the very least, I should have sent Peter back.
But it was too late now.
Instead of arrows piercing through her, rough hands grabbed her. Her father’s soldiers wrestled her down from the saddle, though she wasn’t putting up a fight. They grasped her and touched her in places they shouldn’t, smirks on their lips as they shoved her toward her waiting father.
One man kicked her in the back of the legs, sending her crashing to her knees. A dull pain splintered down to her ankles, but she didn’t wince or flinch.
What right did she have to cry out in pain when Peter was lying a short distance away, no longer able to feel anything at all? Snuffed out, just like that.
Because of me.
How many more would die if she didn’t proceed with caution?
“Where is—” she tried to say, but her father cut her off.
“Did ye let the enemy touch ye? Are ye sullied? Me spies saw ye go in and out of the chapel, so I ken ye said yer traitorous vows. But tell me, did that beast have his vile way with ye?”
Coming from any father, it would have been a mortifying question. Coming from her father, it was a sickening accusation.
There was nothing beastly about Killian. No, the true beast stood before her, sneering and spitting, his eyes so devoid of emotion that she wondered if there was even a soul in there or if he had sold it to the Devil long ago.
“Nay,” she replied as calmly as she could. “The marriage isnae… binding.”
Her father nodded as if the news pleased him. “That is fortunate. I might yet have use for ye. Aye, there’ll be a rich old laird somewhere that’ll have ye in exchange for coin and soldiers.”
The threat turned Ailis’s stomach, her thoughts drifting to her sister’s fate. Laird Drummond wasn’t old, but the stories about him weren’t at all comforting.
After Killian, Ailis knew she wouldn’t survive being sent off to wed whomever her father pleased. Nor would Killian tolerate it. There would be another war before this one had even come to an end.
“Keep yer head up. Ye’re nae the lass ye were when ye left here. Show him that ye’re nae afraid.”
Peter’s words came back to strengthen her, just as much as the memory of Killian’s kiss and touch bolstered her resolve to never be a pawn in her father’s schemes.
“I’d like to see the prisoner, and I’d like to see me braither, if ye please,” she said with cold politeness.
Her father scoffed. “Ye’ve nay chance of seein’ the prisoner. As for yer braither, he’s still out there.” He gestured broadly at the gates. “Seems it took the messenger longer to return than it took the recipient.”
So, he delivered the box.
Paisley hadn’t mentioned who had left the box, but Ailis should have known it was her brother, doing her father’s bidding as always. There wasn’t anything Murdock wouldn’t do if their father commanded it.
Her hand slipped into her pocket, closing around the lock of Skye’s hair.
“What did he do to me niece?” she bit out.
Her father tilted his head, his long gray hair fluttering in the autumn wind, his brown eyes glinting with something she couldn’t decipher.
“I daenae ken anythin’ about yer niece. The less I have to do with that useless lassie, the better.
Aye, the sooner yer braither remarries and sires some sons, the better. ”
That useless lassie?
Anger simmered in Ailis’s veins like a pot of rendered fat about to explode and scorch everyone who had the misfortune of being too close.
Was that also what Murdock thought? That his daughter was useless? Is that why he had cut her hair and used her as a threat? To gain some benefit from having a daughter?
After all, their father had wanted Ailis out of MacNairn hands, and Murdock knew better than anyone that Skye was her weakness.
“What sort of faither would threaten his own child?” she asked with an eerie calm that surprised even her. A weighted question with more than one target.
She forced herself onto her feet, elbowing the first soldier who tried to reach for her. Her father’s little hand gestures held them back as she produced the lock of hair from her pocket.
“I suppose ye’re goin’ to tell me that ye didnae ken that this was part of me weddin’ gift?” she snarled. “Where is she, Faither? What has Murdock done to her? What other bits was he plannin’ to hack off if I didnae come runnin’, eh?”
The soldiers all around the courtyard and up on the battlements shifted uncomfortably. Some returned to their duties, others pretended to be busy, and more merely looked away. Anything to avoid listening in on the family quarrel.
“How dare ye accuse yer braither of harmin’ his flesh and blood?” her father hissed. “Aye, she might be worthless, but she’s still an Ainsley, a Lyall, which is more than can be said for ye.”
Ailis met his fierce gaze head-on. “I dare accuse him because he had done it before. He tried to kill me, so why nae try to kill his own daughter? Och, if he could’ve gained somethin’ by cuttin’ off a piece of me, he’d have had his knife out and sharpened before ye could finish givin’ the order!”
Her father’s face contorted, shifting through a carousel of emotions, each graver than the last: confusion, outrage, scorn, among others.
“If ye mean because he often locked ye in yer room at me command after ye’d done somethin’ wretched, then—”
“Nay, Faither, that isnae what I mean,” she interrupted, breathing hard.
Frankly, she was terrified. She was finally standing up to her father, and she knew she had to get all of her words out before her courage abandoned her.
“I can nay longer pretend that me nightmares are a memory,” she continued at a clip.
“Someone threw me into the sea and held me under until I couldnae breathe. Someone didnae expect me to survive, or they were interrupted while they were drownin’ me, and Murdock is the only one I remember bein’ there.
I heard his voice before he conveniently ‘found’ me.
He told me I should never have been born. ”
Her father had fallen silent, as had the rest of the courtyard. Maybe some of them recalled that awful day. Maybe they had scraped it from their memories, just as she had tried to do.
Only, for her, it had crept back in like the tide itself, transformed into a pervasive and perpetual nightmare. Her mind desperately trying to tell her in the only way it could that something terrible had happened to her.
“I daenae remember that,” her father said at last, his voice almost soft.
“Well, I do.” Ailis took a shaky breath. “Maybe he blamed me for Maither’s death—I daenae ken. But I can nay longer pretend that he didnae do it, and I can nay longer pretend that Skye is safe anywhere near him. Let me see me niece.”
Her father studied her for a moment, a deep furrow in his wrinkled brow.
He didn’t tolerate anyone giving him orders, least of all his youngest daughter, and especially not in front of his men.
Yet, there was an unusual hesitation in his expression that she hadn’t seen before.
Ordinarily, he punished her without delay for nothing at all.
“Very well,” he muttered as he turned around and walked back to the main doors of the castle.
“Wait!” Ailis called out, certain she was on the brink of overstepping, but she didn’t care.
Her father paused, his back to her.
“Send this man back to MacNairn territory,” she said. “Leave him at the river crossin’ and let him be buried in his own land. Please. All he did was escort me back to ye. He doesnae deserve to be left to rot here for obeyin’ yer command.”
Her father visibly bristled. A moment later, he flicked his wrist, and a small group of soldiers ran forward.
It didn’t ease Ailis’s heartbreak in the slightest to watch them tie a rope around Peter’s wrists and fasten the other end to his horse, her lungs seizing as one soldier leaped into the vacant saddle and rode off.
She should’ve known that her father would rather die than show an ounce of respect to a MacNairn, even in death.
With that, he marched onward, leaving her with no choice but to follow.
All the safety and security of being part of Clan MacNairn, of being Killian’s wife, was gone now. The best she could do was make sure that Skye was protected from a father who seemed determined to follow in his own father’s footsteps.