Chapter 6 #2
She told herself that the fears spinning in frenzied circles in her brain were unfounded, that it was something else, that it couldn’t be as bad as she was imagining it was.
But alas, telling the same lie again and again didn’t turn it into the truth.
Some small, frightened part of her had known what she’d find the moment she saw that curl of smoke in the sky, but as she crested the shallow rise above the farm, she still wasn’t prepared for the scene that met her eyes.
The once peaceful valley below her had turned into a fiery nightmare.
Clyde Stewart’s stables were on fire.
There were flames everywhere, the brilliant orange spikes shooting into the sky and setting the entire night alight. She squeezed her eyes closed, a prayer on her lips, but when she opened them again the fire was still there, the furious roar of it echoing in her ears.
Sorcha was down there, amidst all that destruction.
She lurched down the hill, her legs shaking, but as she neared the burning stables a wall of unbearable heat rushed toward her, and she staggered backward, shielding her face with her arms as the flames shot higher, and impossibly higher still, painting the dark sky above with streaks of orange light.
How could this be happening? Where was Sorcha? She wasn’t … oh, dear God, she wasn’t inside the burning stables, was she?
No. Please, no—
“Freya!”
The familiar voice reached her over the roar of the fire, bringing with it a wave of relief so powerful her head swam with it, and her wobbly knees threatened to collapse from underneath her.
But there was no time for that. She had to get to Sorcha, now, and get her away from here. She stumbled forward again, but the angry heat from the fire was like a living, breathing thing, snatching at her clothes, her hair, her skin.
Every instinct screamed at her to run in the other direction, away from the scorching heat, but she pushed blindly forward, toward the opposite side of the stables, her hand raised to protect her eyes.
But it did her little good. The heat—dear God, she’d never felt anything like it. It was unbearable, as if it were melting her skin to her bones. One step, two, a dozen … her feet were moving, but somehow she wasn’t gaining any ground.
She was no closer to Sorcha than she’d been when she began. Hadn’t Sorcha been directly across from her? Oh, she couldn’t see! Her eyes were streaming from the smoke, the fire an orange ball of blurred flames.
If she could just get through to the other side … if she ran, perhaps she could make it?
But even as she darted forward a shower of sparks shot into the air and came down again atop a mound of hay piled near one side of the stables.
A warning shout leapt to her lips, but she’d hardly drawn a breath before the sparks caught.
The flames devoured the hay in an instant, and the blistering heat shot through her like a bolt of lightning, as if the flames were inside her, under her skin, burning her from the inside.
There was no way for her to get to Sorcha! The heat was too great, and the smoke was suffocating, as if the fire had leapt down her throat and reduced her lungs to burning cinders.
Sorcha’s mouth opened, and a sound emerged. A shout, a shriek, a panicked wail. It was all those things, and at the same time none of them.
It wasn’t a sound she’d ever heard emerge from her sister’s lips before.
Her body had gone numb with shock, rooting her feet to the ground, but that wail jerked her loose from the fog of panic holding her in place, and she took another dozen halting steps forward.
She could do this. She was closer to Sorcha now, so close, just on the other side of the stables. If she could make it around the outside wall, perhaps she could—
“No, Freya!” It wasn’t just a shriek this time, but a frantic tumble of words.
Through the sparks, smoke, and burning flames, her eyes met her sister’s, and that was when she knew it was hopeless.
Sorcha was brave, the bravest person she knew. She always had been.
But now, the green eyes that met Freya’s were glassy with panic.
“No! Run, Freya!”
Run? Leave her sister here, alone? No, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t—
But Sorcha was still shouting, trying to tell her …
something. She blinked against the smoke billowing around her, coating her tongue with the acrid taste of ash and pulling tears from her stinging eyes, but she could just make out Sorcha standing opposite her, waving her arms toward the woods behind her.
Sorcha was shouting something, but Freya couldn’t hear her. She couldn’t hear anything now but the howl of the flames, and her own ragged breath in her ears. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t think—
“Go! Now, Freya! I’ll find you!”
Sorcha’s voice was faint now, drowned out by the shriek of the fire and the groan of thick wooden beams giving way. The stable roof was going to go. It was only a matter of time before it collapsed inward in a burning heap of charred wood.
Sorcha screamed something else, something about the castle, but Freya couldn’t make out her sister’s words over the roar in her ears. Was it the shriek of the fire deafening her, or was the roar inside her head?
She could no longer tell.
Had Sorcha said to run to the castle? That she’d meet her at the castle?
She tried to shout back—to tell Sorcha they’d find each other in the woods, or at the castle—but fear and panic had her by the throat now, its relentless grip pressing hard against her windpipe, and she couldn’t gather a breath, couldn’t utter a word.
Then in the next instant, it was too late. Without warning, Sorcha turned and ran for the woods, her skirts flying out in an arc behind her.
In the blink of an eye, she was gone.
Freya tried to run, to get to the woods and leave the wailing fire behind her, but her body was strangely frozen, her feet tethered to the ground.
She had to go, now, but her brain had gone sluggish, and she could only stand there, staring dumbly at the fire, the violent glow of it tearing a gaping hole into the dark sky.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t move.
The leaping flames danced crazily before her eyes, and it was as if there was a spell holding her where she stood. How long would she have remained there, helpless, if a shout hadn’t pierced the haze of panic surrounding her?
Until she became a part of the fire itself?
The shout came from behind her. It was dark, so dark, despite the flames lighting up the sky.
Even when she turned away she could see them still, the indistinct streaks of violent orange light dancing in front of her eyes, but something was moving toward her from the direction of the village—a large, dark shape with arms and legs and raised fists.
Men, running. Half a dozen of them, or perhaps more, running toward the burning stables.
Toward her.
Had Sorcha seen them coming? Was that why she’d run?
Her sister wasn’t to blame for the fire. She knew this down to her marrow, in the deepest part of her, in the same way she knew the sun would rise and set again, and the tides of Loch Dunvegan would advance and retreat, the invisible currents churning beneath the surface in an endless rhythm.
She knew her sister, perhaps better than she knew herself.
Sorcha was quick-tempered, and fierce in defense of her family. And she was angry. Angry at Rory for dying and leaving them alone. Angry at the villagers for turning their backs on them when they most needed friendship, and angry at the smugglers for stealing their peace.
But willfully, maliciously destructive? No. Never.
Yet it wouldn’t matter. The truth had long since ceased to make any difference. Glynnis wouldn’t be the only one who’d seen Sorcha pass through the village on her way to Mr. Stewart’s farm. The men who spent every afternoon drinking in Baird’s Pub would have seen her, as well.
By now, everyone in the village would know she and Sorcha had been here—that they’d been on Mr. Stewart’s land while his stables burned to the ground, and if someone should have been hurt, or worse, killed …
The citizens of Dunvegan wouldn’t side with the wicked MacLeod sisters. One way or another, they would be held responsible for this.
It was already happening.
The men were getting closer, their shouts echoing through the night, even over the relentless shriek of the fire.
Run. She had to run, just as Sorcha had told her to do. There was no time to hesitate, no time to lose. In another few minutes they’d be on her, and then … dear God, she didn’t want to think of what they’d do to her, then.
Yet even as the frantic command was echoing in her brain, she hesitated, staring at what had once been Clyde Stewart’s stables, now a hulking black mass of burned wood, only the heaviest beams still in place, looming like a skeleton over the charred, smoking remains.
There was another shout, a man’s voice, dark with fury.
Her name, her father’s name was in his mouth.
MacLeod.
And she was grateful to him, whoever he was, because it was the sound of her own name that made her move at last, that one word that shook her loose from the trance she’d fallen into.
That one word sent her whirling around, her feet flying over the fields to the east of the stables, in the opposite direction Sorcha had gone, even as everything inside her howled with despair at leaving her sister.
But it had to be this way, just in case … just in case …
In case these men came after them. They’d have a better chance at escape, if they separated.
No, not a better chance.
It was their only chance.