Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Och, get a hold of yerself, Claricia!”
The chamber door closed with a thud that seemed to echo in Claricia’s very bones, and suddenly the space felt both too large and suffocatingly small all at once.
She stood staring at the oak panels while dust motes danced lazy patterns through the shaft of afternoon light spilling across the floor, her lips still tingling from Erik’s kiss.
I shouldnae be focusin’ on… that. I should be thinkin’ of the dead men!
She pressed her palms flat against the cool wood of the door, trying desperately to steady the breathing that seemed determined to betray her rising panic.
Someone wanted her dead. Or captured. The distinction felt rather academic when she was trapped behind those stone walls waiting to discover which fate would find her first.
Her gaze fell on the table by the window, and her breath caught for an entirely different reason.
Books?
At least a dozen of them, their leather spines gleaming rich and inviting in the light, stacked with a care that made something tighten painfully in her chest. She crossed the chamber slowly, fingers trembling as she reached for the nearest volume—poetry, Greek history, a collection of Norse sagas with gilt edges that caught the light like treasure.
Everything she’d demanded when she’d been testing him, pushing to see exactly how far his patience would stretch before it snapped.
He remembered…
Beside the books sat a wooden box she hadn’t noticed, and her hands moved without conscious permission, lifting the lid to reveal treasures she’d only dreamed of possessing.
Fine brushes with bristles soft as silk.
Pigments in colors that stole her breath—lapis lazuli blue deep as twilight over the loch, vermillion, red bright as fresh-spilled blood, gold leaf that caught the light like captured sunshine.
Vellum so smooth beneath her fingertips it might have been woven from clouds themselves.
A folded parchment lay nestled among the paints like a secret.
I dinnae break promises. —E
“Well… this certainly isnae helpin’,” she whispered. It would be so much easier if he were simply cruel, a monster she could hate without complication or guilt.
Stop lettin’ him under yer skin like he belongs there, Claricia!
But her hands were already pulling out vellum, already reaching for brushes and pigments, and the painting started without thought or permission—as though her body had decided something her stubborn mind refused to acknowledge.
Grey eyes took shape first, storm-dark and capable of conveying command or tenderness with the smallest shift of expression.
Sharp planes and harder angles, scars cutting through his left eyebrow and across his jaw that somehow made him more compelling rather than less.
That mouth, hard as winter stone one moment and devastatingly soft the next.
The brush moved across the vellum with a will of its own, each stroke revealing truths she wasn’t ready to speak aloud.
She mixed grey and blue for his eyes, adding just a touch of silver for the way they caught firelight, then darkened the edges where shadows gathered when he was worrying too much about keeping everyone safe.
Her hands knew the lines of his face better than she’d realized—the exact angle of his jaw when he was trying not to smile, the way his brow furrowed when she said something that surprised him.
Logan would hate this.
The guilt twisted sharp and familiar in her chest, but her hands didn’t stop.
Couldn’t stop. Because somewhere between the wedding night and the way he’d kissed her like she was both salvation and damnation, Erik Thorsen had stopped being simply the Wolf of Skye—the monster in her nightmares—and become something far more dangerous.
He’d become real.
Behind him she painted the wolf. Massive and powerful, eyes matching the man’s own—not threatening but protective, part of him in ways that went deeper than skin and bone.
The Wolf of Skye.
A knock shattered her focus, nearly sending her water pot tumbling.
“M’lady? I’ve brought food.”
Tovi bustled in carrying a tray laden with bread and cheese and cold meat, her round face creased with the kind of worry that suggested she’d been fretting over Claricia’s welfare all day. “Ye havenae eaten since breakfast. The jarl would have me head if ye fainted from hunger.”
Claricia’s lips twitched despite everything, because the image of Erik beheading his staff over her missed meals was both absurd and oddly endearing. “Well, that would be the wolf calling the bear savage, wouldnae it?”
Tovi’s eyes went wide for half a heartbeat before a smile tugged at her mouth. “Och, m’lady, ye’ve got his measure already, I see.” She set the tray down with practiced efficiency. “But he takes care of his own, that one. Always has.”
“Even his inconveniences, ye mean.” Claricia murmured, testing the word like wine on her tongue—sweet and sharp all at once.
Tovi’s eyes sparkled with unexpected mischief. “Forgive me boldness, m’lady, but the way Jarl Thorsen looks at ye? That’s nae a man toleratin’ an inconvenience.”
Heat crept up Claricia’s neck—irritating and unwelcome. “The way he looks at me is likely calculatin’ how much trouble I’ll cause him before supper.”
“Aye, that’s one way of seein’ it.” Tovi headed for the door, pausing just before she left. “Or maybe he’s wonderin’ how he got so lucky the king gave him a lass with fire in her belly instead of ice in her veins.”
After Tovi departed—leaving that mortifying observation hanging in the air like smoke—Claricia stared at the food arranged so carefully on the tray, her stomach rumbling in protest even as her throat seemed to close against the thought of eating.
The chamber was beautiful, spacious, filled with luxuries most women would envy—books and paints and soft furs and a bed large enough to sleep four.
It was also a cage, however gilded, and the walls were pressing closer with every breath she dragged into lungs that felt too small for the task.
I need tae move, or I’ll go as mad as a spring hare.
She grabbed one of the books and her shawl, and the guards straightened when she opened the door, surprise flickering across their faces. “M’lady?”
“I need air,” she informed them, already moving past before they could mount arguments or objections. “The gardens. I’ll stay where ye can see me, if that eases yer minds and keeps ye from reportin’ tae yer jarl that his troublesome wife tried tae scale the walls.”
The gardens stretched beautiful and wild in the afternoon light, autumn having stripped the trees to bronze and gold skeletons that reached toward a sky gone hazy with the approaching evening.
She found a bench tucked into the far corner where castle walls met at right angles, half-hidden by overgrown rose bushes nobody had bothered to trim back properly.
Quiet. Peaceful. The kind of place where a woman could pretend she was alone, at least for stolen moments.
Behind her, keeping respectful distance, Finn stood watch—close enough to help if needed, far enough to maintain the illusion of privacy.
Claricia opened the book, determined to lose herself in ancient Greece and wars fought centuries ago by men who’d long since turned to dust. But the words wouldn’t come into focus no matter how hard she stared at the page, her mind circling back relentlessly to the furious look on Erik’s face earlier.
Dead guards... probably someone watchin’ the castle, waitin’ fer the perfect moment tae strike…
She should be terrified. Should be thinking only of survival, of escape, of the faceless men who wanted her dead or captured or whatever dark fate they’d planned.
Instead, her traitorous mind kept replaying the kiss—the taste of him, the way his hand had tangled in her hair, the barely restrained hunger in every line of his body.
What kind of woman am I, that I can kiss me braither’s killer and feel… that?
The guilt was there, sharp as ever, but it had company now—desire and confusion and something that felt dangerously close to tenderness.
Logan would never forgive her. She wasn’t entirely certain she could forgive herself.
But the heart, it seemed, had no loyalty to logic or grief, and hers was doing mutinous things every time Erik Thorsen looked at her like she was both his salvation and his damnation.
She shifted on the cold stone bench, pulling the shawl tighter despite the fact that warmth seemed impossible when ice had settled deep in her bones.
The late afternoon light was beautiful—golden and soft,—and the air smelled of salt and dying roses and the earthy richness of fallen leaves beginning to decay. It should have been peaceful.
Somethin’s nae right...
The feeling crept over her like frost spreading across glass—slow, inevitable, impossible to ignore.
She couldn’t name it, couldn’t point to any specific thing that had changed, but her shoulders were creeping higher and something cold slithered down her spine like oil on water.
The garden seemed to hold its breath, waiting.
Even the birds had gone silent, their cheerful afternoon songs cut off mid-verse as if something had frightened them into stillness.
A leaf skittered across the flagstones, pushed by wind that hadn’t been there a moment before. The roses rustled. Somewhere beyond the walls, she heard the distant cry of a raven—harsh and grating, like a warning she couldn’t quite decipher.
She turned another page she hadn’t read, then another, pretending absorption in the text while her body screamed warnings her mind couldn’t quite articulate. Behind her, Finn shifted his weight, his hand drifting almost unconsciously toward his sword hilt.
He feels it too.
Then, the bells began to ring, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, driving into her skull like iron spikes.
“M’lady, get tae the castle! Now!” Finn’s hand found his sword, his face gone pale as milk.
Warriors poured from the keep with weapons drawn and gleaming in the fading light. Servants scattered like birds before a hunting cat. Somewhere a woman screamed, high and terrified, the sound cutting through the bells’ cacophony.
Terror held her rigid, her feet rooted to flagstones that might as well have been iron chains.
“M’lady!” Finn grabbed her arm, trying desperately to pull her toward safety, but her body had forgotten how to respond to commands, how to do anything but stare at the chaos erupting around her.
Erik!
The thought came unbidden, sharp and desperate.
Where are ye?
She hated that her first instinct was to look for him, to want him, to need the safety of his presence like she’d never needed anything in her life.
The alarm bells clambered on, relentless and unforgiving, and Claricia stood frozen in the garden with Finn’s hand on her arm and chaos swirling around her like a storm, wishing with everything in her that his grey eyes would find hers through the madness and make her believe—even for a heartbeat—that everything would be all right.