Chapter 19 #2
Alba stood up slowly, her hand naturally falling to rest on Brian’s shoulder as she drew herself up to her full height. She looked into Sebastian’s dark, shadowed eyes, searching for the Beast, searching for the arrogant invader; yet, she found no trace of either.
“Thank ye, Laird MacGregor,” Alba said, her voice smooth, perfect, and entirely hollow. “I will be ready.”
Beside her, Margaret stayed entirely silent, but her hand found Alba’s wrist behind the folds of her cloak, giving her a sharp, fiercely supportive squeeze. The farewell had begun, and the morning was coming entirely too fast.
* * *
Across the Hall, Hamish leaned his shoulder against the timber post beside Sebastian, his gaze fixed on the bright hearth where Alba was currently laughing with her cousin.
The roaring firelight caught the soft, rare curve of her mouth, a sight so sharp and striking it felt like a physical blow against Sebastian’s chest.
“We’re losin’ her,” Hamish said, his voice dropping below the frantic scrape of the fiddles.
Sebastian’s grip tightened slightly around his clay cup. He did not look away from her. He could not.
“She was never ours to begin with,” Sebastian replied.
But the admission did nothing to ease the cold, hollow weight settling in his gut. Ever since Margaret MacKenzie had ridden through the castle gates with her baggage carts and her protective outriders, a different kind of darkness had been brewing in the corners of his mind.
Sebastian shifted his weight, his eyes darkening as he finally shared the thoughts that had been burdening his mind, eating away at his focus ever since Margaret had shown up to take Alba away.
“Kerr wouldnae dare strike MacKenzie land,” Sebastian murmured.
Hamish’s expression darkened slightly, the easy, ale-warmed mirth vanishing from his weathered face in an instant.
He adjusted his heavy leather belt, his eyes darting toward the nearest guards to ensure they were out of earshot.
“I ken what ye think, me Laird. But he lost our trail weeks ago. He wouldnae.”
“Wouldnae he?” Sebastian finally looked his commander fully in the eye, his towering frame cutting off the light from the nearest torch, casting Hamish into shadow. “If he hasnae lost our trail, Hamish, he would strike MacKenzie first comin’ south.”
“Aye,” Hamish conceded, his voice dropping even lower, his brow furrowing into a hard, defensive line.
“Only if Kerr believes ye’d run there for protection.
Only if he thinks the MacGregors are lookin’ to hide behind a larger clan’s skirts.
Otherwise, he wouldnae dare strike Fergus MacKenzie.
Nae with Alasdair MacRae at his side. That’s a hornet’s nest nay man in his right mind would kick. ”
Sebastian’s stomach tightened uncomfortably, a cold, oily coil of dread winding around his ribs. Because suddenly, in the quiet spaces between them, the thought no longer seemed impossible. It now felt entirely probable.
Malcolm Kerr was not a rational man. Sebastian had spent three years tracking the monster across the Northern Wastes, watching him burn entire villages to the ground merely to prove a point about his own reach.
Kerr did not calculate risks like a seasoned warlord; he moved on spite, bloodlust, and a terrifyingly single-minded obsession with erasing the MacGregor name from the face of the earth.
“He’d strike first and ask questions later,” Sebastian said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
“He wouldnae stop to think rationally. If he sees MacKenzie outriders movin’ along the border, if he thinks there is even a breath of a whisper that I am sendin’ what matters to me into Fergus’s keepin;, he willnae hesitate. ”
Hamish’s gaze shifted meaningfully toward Alba again. She had knelt down by the stool, her green mantle pooling in the rushes as she listened to Brian.
“Do ye think they are in danger?” Hamish asked bluntly.
“I think men do dangerous things when obsession gets involved,” Sebastian said.
His eyes traveled back across the crowded Hall, navigating through the sea of drinking men and spinning dancers until they anchored on her once more.
The sight was almost too beautiful to bear.
Alba smiled softly down at Brian, her thumb gently brushing a stray lock of dark hair from the boy’s forehead.
Brian was practically bursting with pride, his small chest puffed out as he showed Margaret a badly carved wooden horse, the one Sebastian had spent three hours hacking out of a block of pine two nights ago, ignoring the state of his own ledgers to hear the boy cheer.
Alba was turning the little wooden toy over in her slender hands.
She was completely unaware of the shadow looming over her northern border.
She was completely unaware that her very association with him, the mere fact that he had forced his way into her life and held her in that dark corridor, might have painted a target on her back that no amount of MacKenzie iron could entirely protect her from.
The heat of the Great Hall suddenly felt suffocating. The smell of the roasted meat, the heavy peat smoke, the roaring laughter of his own men, it all pressed inward on him until his lungs refused to expand. Sebastian could not breathe properly inside the crowded room.
He looked at her small, fragile wrist, remembering the way her pulse had hammered against his thumb when he held her back.
She was fierce, she was unyielding, and she had kept this Castle alive through sheer force of administrative will.
But against Malcolm Kerr’s fire, parchment and pride would burn just the same.
“If she rides out tomorrow,” Sebastian whispered, his eyes locked on the subtle flush of her cheekbones in the firelight, “she might be ridin’ straight into a slaughter.”
“Then change the terms, Sebastian,” Hamish urged quietly beside him, his hand coming to rest on the pommel of his own sword. “Daenae let her go.”
“I gave her me word,” Sebastian said. “Seven days to choose. She chose the road.”
He watched as Brian laughed, leaning his head against Alba’s shoulder. Alba did not flinch away; she simply closed her eyes and rested her chin against the boy’s hair, her fingers tightening around the poorly carved wooden horse.
Sebastian took a long, slow breath through his nose, trying to clear the smoke from his lungs, but the suffocating weight remained. He had to find a way to keep her safe, even if it meant making her hate him more than she already did.