Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The walk was a rare, golden reprieve. For the first time in his life, Harald didn’t feel the weight of the stone walls waiting for him. He felt light.
Every time his shoulder brushed Enya’s, the contact sent a thrum of pure, unadulterated joy through his core. He slowed his pace, dragging out every second, wanting to live in that bubble of heat and shared breath forever.
He glanced at her, and his chest actually ached.
She is beautiful.
Her hair was a wild tangle of curls, and her lips were bitten and swollen from his own after their lovemaking in the study. She looked thoroughly kissed, thoroughly his. Yet she still walked with that sharp, defiant tilt of her chin.
He felt a surge of love so profound it made his throat tighten until it hurt. It was a dangerous, wide-open feeling; he was handing her the only soft spot in his armor, knowing she could destroy him with a word, and finding that he didn't care.
"Ye’re staring again, Harald," Enya remarked. Her voice was back to its dry, melodic lilt, but it carried a new, raspy edge—a velvet roughness that made his skin prickle. She kept her eyes on the path, but the deep flush creeping up her neck told him she was just as affected as he was.
Harald let out a low, huffing laugh, the sound bubbling up from a place of genuine contentment he hadn't accessed since childhood. He reached out, his fingers catching her hand and squeezing hard.
His fingers slotted between hers, the contrast of his scarred, calloused skin against her softness a constant marvel. She squeezed his hand, a brief, silent acknowledgement of the depth beneath his teasing.
As they rounded a jagged outcrop of lichen-covered stone, Harald’s internal alarm—a cold, prickling sensation at the base of his neck—snapped into place. He stopped, his hand tightening on Enya’s, pulling her to a halt.
"What is it?" she whispered, her humor vanishing instantly.
Harald didn't answer. He released her hand and stepped forward, his eyes narrowed, scanning a small, flat hollow sheltered by a stand of ancient, twisted rowan trees.
"There," he said, nodding toward a circle of flattened grass and a ring of stones.
They approached cautiously. It was the remnants of a camp, hidden so well that a patrol would have missed it unless they were looking for the specific way the shadows fell. Harald knelt by the fire pit. He pressed his palm to the center of the ash.
"Cold," he murmured. "Two days, perhaps three."
He stood and began to pace the perimeter with the methodical precision of a hunter.
The ground had been flattened by many boots, but there was no refuse.
No dropped scraps of food, no torn rags, no forgotten whetstones.
Even the spare firewood had been stacked neatly and left under a tarp of pine boughs.
"They moved with care," Harald noted, his voice dropping into the analytical, reserved tone. "This wasnae a panicked retreat. They took everything. They even brushed the tracks near the entrance."
Enya stepped into the center of the hollow, her eyes wide as she turned in a slow circle. Her face had gone pale, the afterglow of their intimacy replaced by a haunting, hollow look.
"I recognize this," she said softly.
Harald turned to her, his heart sinking. The old fear of betrayal tried to flare up, but he quelled it. He looked at her and saw only a deep, weary sadness.
She hugged her cloak tightly around her.
"I never kent exactly where they stayed. Finley... he never trusted me with the locations. But the layout... he way the lookout is positioned near that split rock..." She pointed to a natural cleft in the stone overlooking the valley. "It’s his way. He’s obsessed wi’ order. He hates a messy camp."
Harald walked over to the split rock. She was right. It offered a perfect, unobstructed view of the path they had just walked, and further up, the southern gate of the keep.
He felt a cold chill settle in his spine. Finley had been watching. He had likely watched the smoke from the granary fire.
"Dae ye think he’s gone, Enya?" Harald asked, his voice low and urgent. He moved back to her, searching her face. "Has he finally seen that the island willnae break and fled back tae Cameron lands?"
Enya looked at him, her eyes dark with a terrifying certainty. "Nay. Me braither daesnae flee, Harald. "
She stepped closer to him, her hand trembling as she reached out to touch his shoulder. "He’s crossed too many lines. The fire, the boy... he kens there is nae mercy fer him now. He willnae abandon his plan because he has nowhere else tae go. He has tae win, or he will die."
Harald felt the weight of her words. He looked around the abandoned camp, and for the first time, the woods didn't feel like a sanctuary. They felt like a trap. But then he looked at Enya, and the love he felt for her acted like a whetstone.
I willnae let him harm ye.
"If he wants a war, I will give it tae him," Harald growled, his jaw set.
Enya leaned her head against his shoulder for a brief second, a small gesture that meant more than any oath. "He’s patient, aye. But he’s also arrogant. He thinks he kens ye, Harald. He thinks he kens me."
"He daesnae ken us taegether," Harald replied, his voice thick with emotion. He kissed the top of her head, the scent of pine and her own sweet musk grounding him. "Come. We’ve stayed in the open too long. We need tae—"
Thwack.
The sound was unmistakable—the sharp, sickening bite of an arrow into wood.
Harald didn't think. He acted on decades of instinct. He lunged for Enya, his large frame slamming into her and driving her toward the ground just as a second arrow hissed through the space where her head had been a heartbeat before.
"Down!" he roared, his voice shattering the silence of the woods.
They hit the moss with a bone-jarring thud.
Harald rolled instantly, his massive frame acting as a human shield between Enya and the dark shadows of the rowan trees.
He could hear her sharp, panicked intake of breath, felt the frantic brush of her hands against his back, but his focus was already elsewhere—honed into a lethal, singular point.
Five men emerged from the brush like ghosts. They were dressed in drab, mud-stained rags, their faces smeared with charcoal.
They moved with a terrifying, coordinated silence that told Harald everything he needed to know. Finley’s hounds.
"Stay behind me," Harald commanded. His voice a flat, vibrating growl.
He rose to a crouch, his sword singing as it cleared the scabbard. Every time he heard the rustle of Enya’s skirts behind him, his heart gave a traitorous, frantic thud.
"Well, Hawk," the lead man sneered, stepping into a patch of dying light. He held a heavy claymore with the ease of a man who killed for sport. "Let’s see if ye fly as well when yer wings are clipped."
Harald lunged.
The first clash of steel was a deafening crack that echoed through the trees. He parried a blow that would have split a lesser man in two, then stepped inside the man’s guard, the pommel of his sword smashing into the brigand’s jaw with a sickening crunch.
But as the first man went down, two more lunged from the periphery. Harald spun, his cloak snapping like a whip. He felt a sharp, burning sting along his ribs—a blade catching him through his side—but he ignored it. He couldn't afford the luxury of pain.
He caught a glimpse of Enya out of the corner of his eye. She had scrambled to her feet, her face a mask of pale terror, her hands clutching a heavy branch she’d snatched from the forest floor.
"Run, Enya!" he bellowed, parrying a thrust from a spear.
"Nay!" she screamed back, her voice raw and defiant.
More men were pouring from the trees now. Six, seven, eight. The odds were shifting from dangerous to impossible.
Harald felt the familiar, cold loneliness of the battlefield settling over him, but it was sharpened now by a searing, protective rage.
He struck out with a backhand blow, his blade catching a man across the chest, but another slammed into his back, the sheer weight of the impact forcing him to one knee.
He felt the world tilt. A heavy boot connected with his side, cracking a rib.
He gasped, his vision blurring as he struggled to stand.
A thick coil of rope was already being looped around his shoulders.
He fought like a madman, snapping his head back to break a nose, kicking out to shatter a shin, but there were too many hands. Too much weight.
"Harald!"
The sound of her voice—high, splintered with raw, jagged agony—did what a decade of war never could. It shattered his composure.
In the flickering, chaotic shadows, he saw two men, their faces masks of soot and cruelty, seizing Enya. Their filthy hands bit into her pale arms, the force of their grip already blooming into dark bruises against her skin.
Nay.
A cold, paralyzing terror seized his chest, tighter than any iron band.
"Let her go!" Harald roared. It was the primal, gut-wrenching scream of a man watching his world catch fire.
His voice broke, thick with a desperate, guttural power that clawed its way up from his marrow.
In that heartbeat, the pain of his own wounds vanished. With a surge of strength fueled by a love so fierce it felt like a physical weight, he threw off the three men pinning him, his muscles screaming as he tossed them aside like straw.
He didn't care if they broke his bones. He only saw the fear in Enya’s eyes.
Harald lunged.
He reached her in two explosive strides, his sword hand driving deep into the chest of the man on her left. Before the body could even hit the ground, his free hand snatched her waist, pulling her flush against him.
He could feel the frantic, rabbit-thrum of her heart through her clothes. The sensation nearly leveled him. His body shielded hers from the circling steel, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps.
I have ye.
"Go," he hissed into her ear, his voice urgent and bleeding with emotion. He shoved her toward the thickest part of the underbrush, the direction of the hidden path he had shown her. "Run tae the keep, Enya. Bring Leo and the men. Dinnae look back. Go!"
He turned back to face the onslaught, intentionally leaving his back open to buy her those precious seconds. He waited for the sound of her crashing through the brush, for the relief of knowing she was away.
But the sound never came.
Through the haze of blood and sweat, he saw her. Enya hadn't run. She stood at the edge of the clearing, her chest heaving, her eyes locked on him. She could have been a mile away before they even realized she was gone.
Instead, she dropped her branch and took a step toward him, her hands raised in a gesture of surrender that felt more like an act of war.
"I’m nae leaving ye," she stated, her voice trembling but clear. “I go wi' ye."
The distraction cost him everything.
A heavy blow caught Harald across the temple. The world exploded into white light, then faded to a dull, throbbing gray. He felt his sword slip from his fingers, heard the clatter of it against the stones—the sound of his own defeat.