Chapter 19
Eilidh kicked and screamed and fought as Gordon’s soldiers tried to drag her away, never mind that it hurt.
Everything hurt—her hair, where that bastard was holding onto it; her wrists, where another soldier was ruthlessly tying her arms with rough rope; her knee, which had been twisted when she’d been pulled from the saddle.
Her heart. Because… was it true? Had Ciaran really betrayed her?
It was impossible to believe, not when he tried to rise to reach her even though he was being held back by so many opponents that she could scarcely see him through their bulk.
His efforts seemed to irritate his enemies more than anything; when he tried one final time, roaring his defiance to the sky, one of the men delivered a decisive blow across Ciaran’s face, splitting his eyebrow and leaving a thick stream of blood dripping down into his eyes.
“Ciaran,” she sobbed.
She couldn’t bear to see him like this, couldn’t bear to see him so hurt and defeated. Her body was thrumming with terror—fear that she would be taken, fear that he would be killed.
The mercenaries kept her back, their hands wandering to places she couldn’t afford to think about right then, or she would lose the battle altogether.
And then, just as Eilidh felt the last dregs of hope drip away from her, just as she began to truly worry that everything was lost, a sound like thunder echoed through the gorge.
The world was, in an instant, awash in Donaghey colors. The colors of home.
There were a dozen riders or more streaming into the narrow battlefield, their precision, and elegance a clear contrast to the unpracticed violence of the mercenaries.
Eilidh felt her heart practically stop in relief as she saw the man at their head—broad-shouldered, grim, his eyes as blue and unyielding as ice.
Graham. Her brother had come.
“Brother!” she cried, her voice breaking on the word.
Graham’s gaze shot to hers, and that hardness in his gaze grew even steelier when he saw her.
He raised his sword as Dorchadas, his mount, reared beneath him, sensing war on the horizon.
A battle cry tore from Graham’s lips. It was an angry, vicious sound—and Eilidh wasn’t certain she’d ever heard anything more beautiful in her life.
Gordon’s men never stood a chance, not that Eilidh spared them even a moment’s sympathy.
The Donaghey soldiers poured into the gorge like God’s own fury, all flashing steel and precise movements.
It was, in the end, over so quickly that Eilidh would only ever recall it in flashes—like someone had painted a series of images that she’d seen in an art gallery rather than something she’d experienced with her own eyes.
There was Graham, cutting his way through to her, scarcely faltering as he made a bloody path to his sister’s side.
There was the sudden shift in the air as the mercenaries went from smug to terrified as they stared their deaths in the face.
There were Graham’s arms around her, pulling her tight to him in an embrace that felt like home as she sobbed into his chest as his sword ran through the last man holding her.
And Ciaran, bleeding and battered, took up the fight the moment his captors released him in their efforts to flee.
Eilidh could barely breathe, she was so overcome with relief. She clung to Graham as if holding on to him as the only thing that could make her believe that she wasn’t about to be dragged away and forced to wed the man who had murdered her parents.
“Kill them all,” Graham called to his men, his commanding tone a stark contrast to the comforting way that he stroked a hand over Eilidh’s hair.
Except those words were not comforting to her, not at all. She sat upright, jerking her head away from her brother’s strong shoulder.
“No,” she gasped, her gaze shooting to Ciaran. He was back on his feet now, though he swayed slightly as he tried to lift his sword against one of the few remaining mercenaries. “No, Graham. Not him.”
Her brother’s look was stern and unconvinced as he looked between Eilidh and Ciaran.
“He betrayed you, Eilidh,” he said, voice level.
“That’s how we knew to come for ye. Arran saw him leave—then saw ye leave—and he sent word.
And look at ye.” He raised a hand but stopped a hairsbreadth from touching her cheek, which she knew was blooming with an ugly bruise.
“We barely stopped Gordon’s dog from giving ye over to the bastard. ”
“No, no,” she insisted, feeling panic rising up in her. Graham’s men had paused, clearly awaiting their Laird’s order, but Ciaran looked half-dead already. There was no way he could fight off the Donaghey men if Graham did not relent.
“Look at him. They nearly killed him. He was trying to save me.”
“From a problem he created—” Graham began to argue, but Eilidh cut him off.
“I love him!” Her words were overloud, echoing through the gorge.
As the sound faded away, Eilidh turned to look at Ciaran and found him staring back at her.
She could not read the expression in his eyes.
But it didn’t matter, she told herself stubbornly. She would make him answer her—she would make him see that, despite his doubts, he was the right man for her.
They just had to live through this first.
She felt Graham’s sigh of surrender more than she heard it.
“Very well,” he muttered for her ears alone, sounding weary. Then, louder for his men, he snarled, “Leave Gunn standing. Kill the rest—save one to carry my message to Gordon.” He looked every inch the laird as he surveyed the scene before him.
The Donaghey soldiers enacted their orders with ruthless efficiency. The man they left living didn’t look as though he was certain that surviving to report to Gordon was a better fate than swift death on the battlefield. Graham looked him in the eye as his men held him up.
“Tell that scunner Gordon that I am coming for him… and hell rides with me.”
With that, the man was dropped on the ground.
Graham held tight to Eilidh until the last enemy was dispatched; when only allies remained standing in the gorge, he released her and allowed her to wriggle free and drop to the ground.
She shouldered roughly past the man who was guarding Ciaran, shooting him a poisonous look as she passed.
The soldier likely didn’t deserve her ire—he was, after all, just acting on orders—but Eilidh found that she didn’t care.
She would cut through any obstacle between her and Ciaran.
Including, it turned out, his own injuries. As she approached him, Ciaran tried to reach her, too, but he made it only one step before his legs gave out beneath him and he collapsed. Eilidh half caught him as they went down, protecting his head from striking the hard ground.
She cradled his head in her lap as his eyes, hazy and distant, fluttered closed.
“Ye are going to be all right,” she murmured to him as she put her fingertips to the pulse in his neck, relieved when she found the thrumming there to be steady and strong. “I am with ye. It is my turn to protect ye.”
Ciaran didn’t open his eyes, but his hand came up briefly to touch hers before falling back to his side.
She shoved down her desperation as she looked up at her brother. She would fulfill her promise to Ciaran. No matter what.
“Take us home,” she told her brother, blinking away the tears that wanted to spill down her cheeks. “Both of us.”