Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The alarm began as a single shout. Isobel had been standing near the hearth, still flushed from the bath and from Ruaridh’s mouth and from the impossible foolishness of stolen towels, when the first cry cut through the chamber door. Then came another. Then the bell.
It rang through Duart with a violence that seemed to seize the stone itself. One hard clang after another, sharp enough to turn her blood cold before she understood why.
Ruaridh was already moving. Whatever softness had remained in him vanished at once. He crossed the chamber, snatched his sword belt from the chair, and fastened it with swift, practiced hands.
Isobel clutched the edge of her towel tighter. “What is it?”
He did not answer quickly enough. That frightened her more than the bell.
“Ruaridh.”
He looked at her then, and the look was enough. It was troubled in a way he tried to bury beneath command.
“Stay here,” he urged.
Her stomach tightened. “What has happened?”
“I said stay here.”
Boots thundered somewhere below. More voices rose, urgent and overlapping. A door slammed hard enough to echo. Ruaridh crossed back to her in two strides. For a moment, she thought he might take her by the shoulders. He did not. His hands flexed once at his sides, then stilled.
“That bell means the prisoner is gone.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Isobel’s fingers tightened around the robe. “Gone?”
“Aye.”
“But… how?”
“I intend tae find out.”
The answer was worse than anything else he might have said. If he had escaped, then no one knew where he was. No one knew whether he had help. No one knew whether he was already outside the walls or still moving through the castle like poison through water.
Ruaridh’s gaze held hers, sharp enough to command and dark enough to betray fear. “Ye will remain in this chamber. Bolt the door after me. Dinnae open it unless ye hear me voice, Torin’s, Brodie’s, or Sorcha’s. Nay one else. Dae ye understand me?”
She did. She hated that she did.
“Isobel.”
“I understand,” she nodded.
His jaw eased only slightly. “Yer bow.”
Her eyes moved to where it rested near the wall.
“Keep it close,” he told her. “But dinnae leave this room.”
The command should have angered her. Another man telling her where to stand, where to wait, what danger she was permitted to know and what danger she was expected to survive by obedience alone. Yet this was not indifference. This was fear made into order.
For once, she did not argue.
“I will stay,” she obliged.
Something in his face changed at the promise. He stepped close enough to touch his fingers briefly to her cheek. Then he was gone and the door closed behind him.
Isobel stood very still… for three heartbeats, perhaps four. Then she crossed the room and slid the bolt into place. The sound of it seemed absurdly small against the alarm still ringing through the castle.
She dressed with shaking hands, though she refused to name the shaking fear.
Fear had teeth. If she acknowledged it too plainly, it might bite deeper.
She pulled on her shift, gown, and boots with none of her usual care.
Her hair remained unbound, damp at the ends and tangled over her shoulders.
She took the bow from the wall and set the quiver strap across her body.
Then she waited. That was the worst of it.
Waiting.
The bell rang and rang. Men shouted below. Someone ran past the chamber door. Another voice barked an order from the corridor. Metal struck stone somewhere distant, then nothing.
Isobel stood with one hand around the bow and the other near the bolt.
Stay here.
She could almost hear Ruaridh’s voice in the chamber still.
Dinnae leave this room.
She had promised. But then, a scream tore through the castle. It wasn’t a man’s shout, nor a servant startled by the alarm. It belonged to a child. The sound entered Isobel like a blade.
She froze. For one terrible moment, there was only the echo of it in her ears. A high, raw cry, cut short and followed by a second sound, smaller, frightened, muffled by stone and distance.
The corridor outside remained empty. No boots rushed toward it. No one had heard, or everyone was too far away.
The scream came again. Isobel’s grip tightened around the bow.
“Nay,” she whispered.
It might have been to herself. It might have been to Ruaridh’s command. It might have been to the fear trying to hold her still.
She slid the bolt back and the door opened into chaos. The passage beyond was dim, with torchlight shaking against the walls as if the castle itself had begun to breathe too fast. Isobel stepped out, her bow in hand, and listened.
Another cry came from below and to the left. She ran. Her boots struck the stone hard. Her wet hair whipped against her cheeks. She passed one empty stair, then another, following the broken sound of sobbing and a man’s voice that didn’t belong in that part of the castle.
Isobel slowed only when she reached the narrow service passage behind the old storage rooms. She had walked this way once with Sorcha, carrying lavender and gossip and the fragile beginnings of friendship.
Now the passage smelled of damp, old grain, and cold air from somewhere it ought not to have entered.
She heard the man clearly then.
“Tell me,” he hissed. “The shortest way. Now.”
A child whimpered.
“I dinnae ken,” a girl whimpered. Her voice trembled, but she tried to sound older than she was. “I swear it.”
“Dinnae lie tae me.”
Isobel moved closer, pressing her back to the wall near the corner.
“There is a stair,” the man said. “A hidden stair. Servants use it. Where?”
“I dinnae ken,” the girl repeated with tears in her eyes.
A dull thud followed, as if a body had been shoved against wood. The smaller child cried out. Isobel rounded the corner.
The prisoner was standing near a narrow side door half-hidden behind stacked barrels. The door behind him was open just enough to show blackness beyond it and a strip of evening air. So that was how he had entered or perhaps, that was how he meant to leave.
He was holding a boy by the back of his tunic.
The child could not have been more than seven.
His face was wet with tears, his small hands clutching uselessly at the man’s wrist. Beside him stood an older girl, perhaps twelve, white-faced but rigid with terror and fury.
She had placed herself between the man and the passage deeper into the castle, though she was shaking so badly Isobel could see it from where she stood.
The prisoner’s head snapped toward her. For one heartbeat, no one moved. Then recognition spread across his face.
Isobel felt cold slide through her. He had not been asking for a way out. He had been asking for a way in… to her.
“Lady MacLean,” he snarled.
The name struck oddly, wrong and right all at once.
The girl looked toward Isobel, her eyes widening.
Isobel lifted the bow.
“Let them go.”
The prisoner smiled. There was dried blood at the corner of his mouth, and his hair hung loose around a face made sharper by desperation.
“Well,” he spoke softly. “That saves me the trouble of searching.”
The boy began to sob harder. Isobel drew an arrow from the quiver. Her fingers did not shake as she set it to the string. Later, perhaps, they would, but not now.
“Release the child.”
The man tightened his grip. The boy cried out. Isobel drew the string back.
The prisoner’s gaze flicked to the arrow, then to her face. “Ye wouldnae risk hitting him.”
“I have excellent aim.”
“Aye?” His smile widened. “Then take the shot.”
The boy was too close. The girl too near behind him. The passage too narrow, the angle poor. If the prisoner moved even a fraction, the arrow could strike the child.
He knew it. Isobel knew he knew.
Her heart thundered, but her voice remained steady.
“Run,” she said.
The girl stared at her.
“Now,” Isobel snapped.
The girl seized her brother’s arm the instant the prisoner’s attention shifted toward Isobel’s bow. The boy stumbled, nearly falling. The prisoner cursed and grabbed for him, but Isobel stepped forward and loosed without thinking.
The arrow did not strike him. She had not aimed to. It hit the barrel beside his head with a hard crack, close enough that he flinched and lost his grip.
“Run!” Isobel shouted.
The girl dragged the boy past her. Isobel moved to shield them, reaching for another arrow as their small footsteps scrambled down the passage. That single choice cost her.
The prisoner lunged. She had only half-drawn when his body slammed into hers.
The force drove the air from her lungs and sent the bow clattering against stone.
Pain burst across her shoulder as she struck the wall.
His hands closed around her before she could recover, one at her arm, and the other driving hard against her side.
Isobel twisted toward his thumb. The lesson came back in fragments.
Turn toward the weak place. Step closer, nae away. Use the elbow.
She wrenched her wrist, felt his grip slip, and drove her elbow upward into his ribs. He grunted. For one fierce second, she was free. She reached for the knife at his belt. He caught her by the hair.
Pain flashed white behind her eyes as he yanked her back. Isobel cried out despite herself, with rage following the pain almost immediately. She drove her heel down toward his foot, but he shifted. His arm came hard around her waist, pinning one of her arms against her body.
“Pretty lessons,” he snarled near her ear. “But nae enough.”
Isobel slammed her head back. It struck his jaw. The impact stunned them both. He swore, loosening his hold just enough for her to twist. She got one hand free and clawed at his face, catching skin beneath her nails.
He struck her, but not hard enough to make her senseless. She understood that even through the burst of pain across her cheek. He did not want her dead. The realization was worse than the blow.
He grabbed her again, this time more brutally, and dragged her toward the half-open door. Cold air moved through the gap.
Outside.
He was taking her outside.
“Nay,” Isobel gasped.
She dug her heels into the stone. Her boots scraped uselessly. She caught the edge of a barrel, but he ripped her hand away. She seized the doorframe with both hands when they reached it, holding on with everything she had.
The prisoner cursed and hauled at her waist. Pain tore through her shoulders.
“Let go,” he snarled.
She clenched her teeth. “Go tae hell.”
He slammed his forearm across her hands.
Her fingers slipped. She held tighter. A distant shout came from somewhere deeper in the castle.
The prisoner heard it, too. Panic sharpened his strength.
He grabbed her wrist and twisted. Agony shot up her arm.
Isobel gasped, and her grip broke. The door burst wider as he dragged her through.
Cold evening air struck her face. The ground beyond was uneven, slick with moss and shadow. This was not one of the main entrances. It opened onto a narrow service path half-hidden by stone and thorn, the sort of place no guard would watch closely unless he knew it existed. But he had known.
Isobel kicked back, catching his shin. He stumbled, and she dropped her weight suddenly, making herself as difficult to move as possible. For a breath, it worked. He nearly fell over her. Then his hand clamped around her upper arm so hard she thought the bone might crack.
“Ewen wants ye alive,” he spat. “He didnae say whole.”
Ewen.
The name froze something deep inside her. He was not trying to kill her. He was delivering her.
The thought sent such terror through her that for one heartbeat she could not breathe. Death, at least, was an ending. This was something else, a road back to a man who believed she had been taken from him.
Bride… Prize… Punishment… Nae.
Isobel twisted with a sound that was half scream, half fury.
She drove her free fist into the prisoner’s throat.
He choked and staggered back, but he did not release her.
His fingers only tightened, dragging her farther down the narrow path toward the dark break in the outer wall where he must have slipped through before.
She fought as Ruaridh had taught her. She stepped into him instead of away. She drove her elbow, her heel, her shoulder, anything that could strike.
Some of it worked, but he was bigger, stronger, desperate, and he had only one task.
Take her.
Isobel’s breath came ragged. Her hair had fallen across her face. Her cheek throbbed. Her bow was somewhere behind her in the passage, useless on the stone.
Still, she fought. She would not make herself easy to carry. She would not become some silent burden dragged from one man’s hands into another’s. She clawed at the stones, at the wall, at him. Her nails broke. Her boots slipped. Her shoulder burned where his grip dug deep.
The castle loomed behind her, full of bells and shouts and men who did not yet know where she was. The prisoner hauled her another step toward the breach. Isobel drew in what breath she could.
Then she screamed Ruaridh’s name with everything left in her.