Chapter 1
As Laird Cameron Wallace coughed pitiably, wracked with spasms in his bed, his daughter Pelna did all she could not to look too long or too closely at the amount of blood that stained his handkerchief.
Her peripheral vision told her that it was more than before, and this worried her, making her insides twist and turn into cold knots.
During these past few weeks, she had discreetly peered at the steadily-growing red spots on his discarded bedclothes and noted with mounting horror how they grew larger and darker by the day.
How much longer can this go on? she wondered.
The healers had long since done all they could for her father until, at last, Verna, the chief among them, admitted with tears in her eyes that there were no more measures left to stave off the hideous infection that had overtaken the man’s lungs.
He was going to die, and all they could do was make him as comfortable as possible until then.
When faced with such a prospect, most men might have given up the will to live and succumbed to their fate rather than put themselves through any more anguish with the knowledge that there would be no hope of overcoming it in the end.
However, Laird Cameron stubbornly hung on, refusing to give in until the Angel of Death forcibly tore the final breath from his body.
Every time her father’s eyes closed, Pelna thought they might never open again. Whenever there was a pause in his labored breathing, she was sure that this would be the end…that his chest, having fallen, would never rise again.
Still, he endured. For now.
Cameron saw the concern in her eyes and forced his blood-speckled lips into an approximation of a wan smile.
“Ye needn’t avert yer eyes so studiously, my dear.” He did his best to keep his voice strong, but it was nevertheless wheezing and tremulous. “We both know that I haven’t much time left. This blood is like the face of a clock, tickin’ my final moments away until they have all been used up.”
Pelna took a deep breath, preparing to say the most difficult words she’d ever had to utter.
“If the pain is too great, Father… If ye feel that ye cannot endure it any longer, then ye may…let go, if ye must. We adore ye, and we shall all miss ye with all of our hearts. But we would never want ye tae put yerself through more agony when ye might rest at last instead.”
Some people, when told such a thing on their deathbed, might have been shocked and appalled.
They might have assumed that the person telling them such a thing wanted them to be gone rather than lingering and being a continued burden to their loved ones.
Indeed, Pelna had fretted a long time over the phrasing of it, not wanting to make her father leap to such a conclusion.
Even so, though, she had long since come around to the idea that perhaps he felt he must hang on and keep fighting the pain past his time as a favor to his children, and she could not bear the thought of that.
Better for him to close his eyes and go gently than to subject himself to further torment.
But he took no offense. Instead, he smiled and nodded weakly with gratitude.
“Thank ye, Daughter. I ken that my family adores me, and so does my clan. When my hour comes, at last, such knowledge will provide me with the greatest comfort and joy. It will be the warmest and dearest blanket fer me tae wrap myself in as Death carries me away tae my final reward. However, although my body is racked with sufferin’ and my time here on Earth grows short; although the very room around me becomes more murky by the moment, and I feel the Lord’s hand tappin’ my shoulder…
even still, I have done all I can tae settle my final business here.
I cannot pass along until it is completed. ”
Pelna took her father’s hand and squeezed it, ignoring how the fingers were sticky from his blood.
“What duties remain, Father? Say the word, and I shall see them done at once so that ye may finally rest.”
He chuckled, which turned into a horrid cough that lasted for quite some time. When he recovered, his voice was even softer and frailer as though he were deflating by the moment.
“Aye, that is the heart of it, really, come tae that. Another man in my position would summon his sons tae his bedside and charge them with whatever matters needed tae be resolved. And in doin’ so, he would be confident that his final orders would be discharged.
However, this is not the case here, now is it? ”
Pelna didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. Her brothers were not bad men, exactly, but for quite some time, it had been plain to see—to her, at least—that neither of them was especially fit to assume control of the clan upon the laird’s passing.
Stefan, who was the firstborn and had been raised amid constant battles with their neighboring clans, had grown so accustomed to killing and maiming that such pursuits had become a singular fixation for him.
He paid little heed to the day-to-day running of the clan or the more mundane needs of its people, preferring instead to hone his skills as a warrior—and, at times, an assassin.
The latter was considered gravely dishonorable among true Scottish soldiers and fighters, naturally.
To rely on stealth and strike in the dark of night rather than riding into combat openly was considered to be a shameful and cowardly act by most. Nevertheless, he had not only learned these skills well, but he had also relished them thoroughly in the doing of them.
He’d developed a macabre taste for it, and he was often nowhere to be found when he was called upon, for he was too busy practicing these deadly skills in the nearby forests, stalking dangerous animals for days at a time and occasionally returning to the keep bearing trophies of his kills.
Their father and Pelna found such endeavors to be morbid and unseemly in the extreme, but they had long since ceased to chide Stefan for them, preferring to let him go about the violent business of his hobbies unfettered.
Stefan would do as he would, and no one would dissuade him.
Besides, though they loathed to admit it, his unique talents in that regard had come in handy many times over in their fights against the McDaughs and Sinclairs these recent years.
Then, of course, there was Daric.
The youngest of the siblings, Daric, had never felt any particular pressure since he’d been certain all his life that he’d never have any real responsibilities or be called upon for anything important.
His father had often tried to dissuade him from these notions by explaining that even though he was the second son, he might one day be called upon to lead if anything tragic were to happen to his older brother.
But Daric had laughed off such concerns.
He, too, had been raised in an environment where war was a daily fact of life.
His favorite phrase to bandy about was, “Death is certain, life is not.” Since the state of living was such a tenuous one in his estimation, he had long since decided that his time would best be spent pursuing base pleasures, which, in his case, meant drinking and carousing at the taverns in the local villages until all hours of the night, bedding whomever he pleased and blearily waking up someplace different each morning.
Whenever he was needed at the keep, he was generally nowhere to be found.
In fact, there were times aplenty when it almost seemed as though he was actively hiding from his own family, like some silly overgrown child playing hide-and-seek.
The idea that he might be entrusted with any of the family’s serious business was ludicrous.
Which, of course, left Pelna.
“They cannot be relied upon,” Laird Cameron went on, “yet in these comin’ days, they will be called upon tae lead when I am gone.
This is a rather dreadful state of affairs, Daughter, and it keeps me from embracin’ the peace of my final slumber.
It causes me tae cling tae life as long as I may fer the good of the clan. ”
“Then tell me what actions I can undertake tae ease yer mind and lighten yer burden, Father, and I shall not hesitate tae carry them out,” Pelna promised.
“Ahh, my dear child.” He coughed again, and more blood came. “Would that I might entrust the runnin’ of the clan tae ye rather than them. You are far more worthy of such a position, yet yer gender prohibits it.”
There was a light knock upon the door, and Pelna turned, seeing a servant girl named Magda standing there.
“Lady Pelna?” she asked timidly. “I am dreadfully sorry tae interrupt, but there is an urgent matter which requires yer attention.”
Pelna patted her father on the shoulder gently.
“I shall return as soon as I can,” she assured him, rising to follow Magda out into the corridor.
As she did, she could not help but wonder whether she would have a chance to see her father alive again, to tell him she loved him one final time…
or whether he might expire before she had the chance to enter this room once more.
There was nothing for it, though. His final fate could arrive at any time, and although she would have given anything to make the world stop spinning until that happened so she might give him the benefit of her full attention, he was correct: There was still a clan to run, and she was the only one capable of doing such a thing at the present moment.
“Aye, Magda, what is it?” she asked as soon as they were outside the room with the door shut. Whatever it was, she did not want the hearing of it to unnecessarily trouble her father.
“My lady,” Magda said tremulously, “a dead body has been discovered near the borders of our lands.”
“Which borders?” Pelna asked, her heart sinking.
“Those which are shared with the McDaughs.”