Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The vibrant orange glow of the lanterns chased the darkness back toward the jagged cliffs, turning the grey, restless water of the sound into a dancing tapestry of amber light.
Matilda stood at the periphery of the gathering, her pulse a steady, rhythmic thrum of pride.
Torches lined the stone dock, their flickers mirrored in the black depths below, while overhead, the pennants the lads had spent the morning bickering over snapped lazily in a light breeze.
The town looked ready, draped in the finery of a clan at peace, and for the first time since her arrival, Matilda felt her own spirit settle into the stone.
The air was a thick with the savory scent of roasted venison, the sharp sting of salt spray, and the heavy, fermented sweetness of Highland ale.
It was louder than she had expected. The whole island seemed to have poured into the harbor.
Merchants with their sharp eyes, traders from the mainland, the King's men in their stiff tunics, and families whose names she had spent two weeks memorizing.
Their voices blended into a low, physical hum that vibrated against her skin.
Nearby, Henry was a dark smudge against the torchlight, his quill moving in a sharp, neurotic scratch across his parchment. Always watching, always recording. A reminder that their peace was being measured by a broader, colder world.
Ivar stood thirty feet away, deep in conversation with Bronn.
Matilda found she didn't need to look for him to know exactly where he was. It was a magnetic awareness, the way one feels the proximity of a hearth fire without seeing the flames.
The pull toward him was a constant, grounding thrum in her sternum, a tether that had grown tauter with every passing day.
She smoothed the front of her skirts, her palms damp against the fine wool, and forced her gaze back to the crowd.
The music began at the water's edge. A fiddle took the lead, a high, sweet thread of sound that cut through the roar of the gathering, followed by the deep, resonant heartbeat of a drum.
The crowd shifted instinctively, a space clearing near the dock as the rhythm took hold.
Ivar heard the fiddle and knew.
He wrapped up the conversation with Bronn in two sentences and was already moving.
He knew what the music meant. He knew what the gathering required. He also knew where she was. He had known since the moment he'd stepped into the harbor, the same way he always knew, some internal mechanism that had recalibrated without his permission sometime over the last two weeks.
He crossed the distance without pretending he wasn't going directly to her.
She was standing at the edge of the light in the dark green gown, her chin up and her hands still and her eyes moving across the crowd he'd come to understand meant she was working very hard at looking calm.
The torchlight caught the line of her jaw and the way her throat moved when she swallowed.
He stopped close. He held out his hand, palm up.
She looked at it for a moment. At the calluses, at the scar along his knuckle from a fight in his twenties that had left him less handsome and considerably more careful.
He waited. He had learned, with her, that waiting was not passive. Waiting was the whole thing.
She took it.
Her fingers were cool against his. He closed his grip carefully and led her into the light.
At first, he held her at a formal distance.
Her right hand in his left, his other hand resting light at her waist, barely a ghost of a touch, because she was in front of the entire clan and the King's observers and he was not going to be the thing that made her uncomfortable in front of all of them. He was going to be steady.
He was very good at steady.
"Ye're holdin' yer breath, Matilda," he murmured, his voice low beneath the music.
"I'm countin'," she whispered back.
"Stop countin'. Listen."
His hand at her waist settled more firmly. He felt the shift in her breathing when it did. The small, quiet exhale, and kept his expression neutral as a man who had been schooled by eleven years of not showing his face.
She stepped closer. Her shoulder nearly brushed the wool of his doublet.
He felt it in his palm at her waist, the way the tension in her body changed, the armor she wore that he'd been watching her carry since the night at Kinlochaline dissolving by fractions into the music.
He turned her and brought her back. She came back closer than before and he let her, kept his face toward the crowd, kept his breathing even.
She looked up.
He had intended to be strategic about this.
To do the thing the gathering required. Stand beside her, dance with her, present a unified front for Henry and the King's men, and every merchant in the harbor who had come to assess the stability of Mull's last alliance.
He had intended to be practical about it.
He was finding that difficult.
She was warm against his hand, and the fiddle was moving into its third measure. She was looking up at him with that direct, hazel gaze that had been dismantling his better judgment since the night in the library.
The harbor and the torchlight and the scratch of Henry's quill all fell away until there was nothing in it except the smell of sea salt on his skin and the dark, dilated pupils of her eyes.
He was going to be an absolute disaster by the end of this gathering.
"Convincingly harmonious," a voice drawled from the edge of the circle. "One could almost forget the questions that brought us here."
Henry.
He felt the muscle jump in his jaw. He didn't miss a beat. Across from him, Matilda had gone still. Not the stillness of fear, the stillness of someone choosing their response, and her chin went up by a fraction.
"Let him say it," she said, her voice a steady thread of steel. "We ken what this is, Ivar. Dinnae give him the satisfaction."
He looked at her.
He looked at her and felt something in his chest that he was fairly certain was not annoyance at Henry.
He let his jaw ease. They moved through the next measure in a focused, shared silence, and he thought about the fact that she had just talked him down from something he would have regretted, which no one had ever successfully done before.
The peace was a thin veil. To their left, a man red-faced and loose from ale was speaking too loudly to his companion. He wasn't looking at them, but he intended to be heard.
"Aye, she's bonny enough," the man scoffed, sloshing ale over the rim of his cup.
"I'll grant the Raven that. But bonny daesnae explain why he willnae prove the deed.
Makes ye wonder. Maybe she's nae as willin' as she looks.
Maybe there's nay sheet because the great Raven of Mull cannae manage his own wife. "
The heat came up fast. He moved before he'd decided to.
He was between Matilda and the man before the sound of it had fully finished reaching him.
One step. Controlled. He felt the whole harbor go quiet. The musicians first, then the voices, then even the tide seemed to hold itself, because it was the kind of thing that happened when he looked at a man the way he was looking at this one.
The drunkard's face drained to grey. His cup trembled. His hands were shaking so badly the ale was running over his boots.
"Say that again." Ivar's voice came out quiet, which was always worse than shouting.
"Me laird."
"Ye were speaking about me wife." He kept his voice low, each word placed with care, because he was not going to make a scene at his own gatherin’ for a fool with ale in him, but he was going to be very precise about it. "In me harbor. At me gathering. Finish yer thought."
The man's mouth opened and produced nothing.
"Me wife is Lady Matilda Gunnarsson of Mull.
" He heard himself say it and felt the truth of it in a way he had not particularly prepared for.
"She is nae a subject fer yer speculation.
She is nae a topic fer yer drink-loosened tongue.
If I hear her name in yer mouth again, here or anywhere on this island, ye'll find yerself explaining tae me personally why ye thought that was acceptable. "
He let a moment sit in the silence. "Dae ye understand me?"
"Aye, me laird," the man wheezed.
"Good. Now go home. Ye're finished here."
The man stumbled away.
Ivar stood for a moment with his back to Matilda, his shoulders broad and tight. He got himself together because his hands had been very close to fists, and the gathering was still being observed and he had to turn around without looking like he wanted to tip the man into the harbor.
He turned.
She was looking at him. Not with relief, not with the soft gratitude of a woman who'd been rescued. She was looking at him the way she'd looked at him in the library, straight and clear and letting him see that she saw him—all of him, the temper and the control and the precise line between them.
"Thank ye," she whispered.
He didn't have words for what was in him right then. He held out his hand instead, palm open.
She took it.
They moved back into the dance and Ivar looked out over the harbor and noted, with some distant and practical corner of his mind, that the islanders were watching her differently now.
Not with suspicion, not with the careful reserve of a clan assessing a foreign woman, but with something quieter and more solid.
He noted it and said nothing.
He kept his hand at her waist and twirled her. Her shoulder settled against his doublet as they turned.
The explosion shattered the world without warning.
A violent, tearing roar ripped through the air, so loud it seemed to vibrate in Matilda’s very teeth. One moment, the harbor was music and laughter, the next, the ground shuddered beneath her feet with a concussive crack.
At the far end of the dock, the warehouse where the oil barrels were stored erupted. It wasn't a slow burn; it was a sudden, roaring wall of orange flame that climbed ten feet into the air in seconds.
The heat hit Matilda’s face in a searing wave.
"Ivar!"
A second explosion, sharper and higher, rocked the dock. A barrel going up.
The easy celebration dissolved into a frantic, directionless sea of bodies. People pushed away from the fire in shock and terror. Black, acrid smoke began to roll low across the harbor path, swallowing the lanterns one by one.
Ivar’s grip on her hand tightened until it felt like iron. "Stay with me!" he roared over the sound of the flames and the screams.
"Aye!" She gripped his hand back, her knuckles white.
But the chaos was too much.
A group of men ran between them, shoulder to shoulder, frantic to reach the birlinns. A woman pulling a screaming child shoved past. The pressure of the crowd was a physical tide.
Matilda’s fingers slipped against the leather of Ivar’s glove. She lunged for him, but her hand caught only the hot, oily air.
"Ivar!"
The smoke hit her face. Thick, black, and tasting of ash. She coughed, her lungs burning, and she was forced sideways by the crush of bodies into the narrow supply passage between two of the stone dock buildings.
She stopped, pressing her back against the wet stone wall, gasping for air. The passage was a throat of shadow. The roar of the fire was a muffled thrum here, and the orange light was just a smear at the far end.
"Ivar! I'm here!" she shouted, but the sound was swallowed by the stone.
She took a tentative step toward the light.
The hands came from the dark behind her. Cold, hard fingers clamped around her biceps with brutal force. She was yanked backward, her feet skidding on the damp stone, and slammed against a broad, solid chest.
Panic flared, white and blinding, but Matilda’s training, the years of being a woman alone, kicked in.
She drove her heel down with everything she had, aiming for the instep. She felt the solid thud, heard a sharp grunt, and felt the grip loosen by a fraction of an inch.
She twisted, driving her elbow back into the man’s ribs. She spun, raking her nails across a masked face, catching the edge of an eye. The man hissed in pain, and she was almost free, until a second pair of hands grabbed her from the left.
"Callum will be pleased," the second man rasped, his voice a needle of ice against her ear. "He's been waitin’ a long time fer this."
The name made her blood turn to slush. The panic vanished, replaced by a terrifying, crystalline clarity.
She knew that name. She knew what this was.
She let her muscles go limp. She stopped fighting.
The men registered the surrender, their grips shifting as they adjusted for a body that had stopped pulling. In that split second of adjustment, Matilda drove her knee up with savage, primal intent. It connected with a sickening thud. The man folded, the air leaving him in a sharp grunt.
She opened her mouth and let out a scream that ripped from the very bottom of her soul. It wasn't a cry for help; it was a beacon.
"IVAR!"
She threw every ounce of her strength into the name. She started fighting again. Nails, teeth, heels, anything to anchor herself as they tried to drag her toward the dark end of the alley.
"IVAR!"
The smoke was thick, the dark was closing in, and Callum's name was a ghost in the air. She screamed his name again and waited for the Raven to find her.