Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Elaina had never known darkness to feel so alive.
Even with the fire burning low at the center of the camp and torches thrust into the damp earth at uneven intervals, the forest seemed to press in from every side, black and watchful, as though it waited with the same dreadful patience as the men who guarded her.
The air was cold enough to bite, carrying the scent of pine, wet ground, and smoke, yet her skin remained feverishly warm beneath the rough grip of fear.
Her wrists had been bound, though not cruelly enough to numb them.
She was seated near the mouth of a tent beneath the unceasing eye of two armed men who had spoken scarcely a word since dragging her there.
She had ceased asking where they meant to take her. She knew now, not in full, perhaps, not in all its terrible particulars. But she knew enough.
Lachlan MacKenzie had not risked so much merely to recover her. He meant to make an end of her.
The certainty of it had settled slowly, like frost creeping over glass.
First, it was a suspicion, then an understanding too cold to bear.
Yet even so, she sat straighter than they would have liked.
Her fear was hidden, as best it could, be behind the remnants of pride.
Her heart had not known peace since they had torn her from the castle, and at times it beat so wildly she thought she might choke upon it, but she would not give them the comfort of seeing her broken… not if she could help it.
A movement at the far side of the clearing drew every eye at once.
The men nearest the fire straightened. One stepped aside. And then Laird MacKenzie appeared before her.
He walked with a faint drag in one leg that could have looked like weakness in another man.
In him, it seemed only to make the rest worse.
He carried himself with that same hard arrogance she had seen in her father, only his seemed to be sharpened by cruelty until there was scarcely any humanity left in it.
Firelight struck the scar along his cheek and left one side of his face in shadow, but neither light nor darkness softened him.
His eyes were pale and dead as winter ice.
He stopped before her and looked down as though she were already laid out for burial.
“So,” he said with a smug grin, “the little runaway has had enough adventure.”
Elaina did not answer. If she had spoken then, she feared her voice might have betrayed her.
A smile touched his mouth at her reaction. It was the expression of a man who took satisfaction in power.
“I confess,” he went on, “ye were more troublesome tae retrieve than I had expected. Yer faither’s men failed. Me own men failed. And yet here ye are at last.” His gaze moved over her with a proprietary coldness that made her stomach turn. “Where ye should have been from the beginning.”
At that, Elaina lifted her chin.
“I would rather die,” she snarled, and though the words came quietly, they rang clear enough in the stillness that one of the guards shifted uneasily.
MacKenzie’s smile deepened. “That, me dear, is the first sensible thing I have heard ye say.”
A chill went through her so sudden and so absolute that for an instant she could not draw breath.
He crouched before her then, bringing himself level with her eyes, and the nearness of him was worse than any distance. She could smell leather, old wool, steel, and beneath it all a faint copper scent she did not wish to name.
“Ye imagine, perhaps,” he continued, “that this ends with yer refusal. That if ye deny me long enough, if ye make enough noise, if ye remain foolishly defiant, some miracle may yet spare ye.” His voice lowered. “It willnae.”
Elaina’s fingers curled against her bound hands. He watched the movement and seemed to enjoy it.
“The truth is, ye will nae leave this camp alive,” he divulged.
There was no temper in him as he spoke. He seemed utterly certain of that claim and that made it infinitely worse.
Elaina stared at him, with horror rising so violently in her chest that she thought it might consume every other feeling. Yet beneath it, there remained one thought, stubborn and bright as a single flame in a storm: Duncan will come fer me.
She saw him in her mind with a vividness that nearly pained her. He had to know by now. He would have found her chamber empty. He would not stop, not for the length of a night, nor in front any threat MacKenzie might place before him, not while breath remained in him.
The hope of it was all that kept her upright.
MacKenzie rose again, and when he spoke next his voice carried farther, as if he wished the men nearby to hear him.
“Once ye are dead,” he announced, “I shall turn me full attention tae the clan Grant.”
Elaina went still.
“I have unfinished business there. They have long mistaken survival fer victory.” His mouth hardened.
“They slaughtered me men years ago, and fer that they have imagined themselves beyond me reach. I mean tae correct that error. I couldn’t get their lands with war, and ye were me way tae form an alliance that would have allow me tae strengthen me army and take what should have been mine. ”
He began to pace before her with the ugly leisure of a man discussing the weather rather than murder.
“I shall destroy them properly this time. Their walls, their land, their people, every trace of them wiped away. Clan Grant should have fallen when I first set me will against it. It will fall now.”
He looked back at her, and for the first time, real hatred entered his face, hot and naked and hideous.
“And he shall watch it happen, if I can contrive it.”
Duncan.
The thought of MacKenzie’s malice fixed upon him made fear sharpen into something even more terrible.
Elaina could endure the thought of her own death more readily than she could endure the image of Duncan harmed because of her.
Yet she would not let Lachlan see that he had found the place to wound her deepest.
“He will kill ye first,” she snarled back.
It only made him laugh. It was a dreadful sound, harsh and wholly empty of mirth.
“Will he?” he asked. “Then let him come.”
He stepped closer again, until she could see each hard line in his face, each pale fleck in those merciless eyes.
“He will be too late,” he said almost softly.
The words settled over her like a sentence.
For one awful moment, the camp around her seemed to blur and fear moved through her body in cold, brutal waves.
She was afraid. She was more afraid than she had ever been in her life, afraid of the dark beyond the fire, afraid of the knife at Lachlan’s side, afraid of dying in that wretched place with no hand to hold and no prayer answered in time.
But even in the midst of that terror, hope did not entirely leave her.
It lived in the memory of Duncan’s voice.
It lived in the ribbon still hidden within the folds of her gown, though they had stripped her of nearly everything else.
It lived in the certainty that whatever danger stood between them, he would come if he breathed, and fight if he stood, and search until there was no more night left to search through.
Elaina held MacKenzie’s gaze with all the courage she could gather in her fear.
“If I am tae die,” she said, and though her voice trembled, it did not fail, “I shall nae die fearing ye.”
For the first time, he seemed displeased enough for her to see that he did not like defiance when it came without pleading. He straightened abruptly.
“Keep watch on her,” he ordered the guards. “If she attempts tae run, cut her down.”
Then, with one last look of cold contempt, he turned away.
Elaina drew breath only when he was gone. It came shakily, and the next after it shakier still. She bent her head for a moment, fighting the dizziness of relief and dread, forcing herself not to weep, not to surrender to the panic clawing at her throat.
And still she waited, because however near death now seemed, however black the forest and merciless the men surrounding her, she could not yet believe that was the end. Duncan would come… he had to.
In fear, moments lost all proper shape. They stretched and collapsed without reason.
At some point one of the guards dragged her farther inside the tent and bound her wrists again to a rough wooden support driven into the earth, as though MacKenzie feared despair might make her dangerous.
Through a narrow gap in the tent flap, she could still see the edge of the camp.
She tried to pray. She tried to think. In the end, she could do neither well.
Every nerve in her body seemed fixed upon listening. More than once she thought she heard Duncan’s name in the wind, only to realize it was no more than her own desperate heart putting sound to hope.
Then all at once, the night changed. It began so subtly she almost thought she had imagined it.
There was a strange pause in the camp’s rhythm, as if something unseen had passed along its edge and disturbed the air itself.
One of the horses whickered sharply. A man outside muttered something she could not catch. Another answered with irritation.
Then came a cry, and Elaina jerked upright.
The next instant the camp erupted. Shouting burst from every side at once.
The horses screamed and reared against their tethers.
She heard the unmistakable ring of steel striking steel, followed by a crash so violent it seemed one of the outer fire pits had been kicked apart.
Men were yelling now. The whole clearing had gone from uneasy stillness to chaos in the space of a single breath.
Her own heart leapt so fiercely she thought it might stop.
Duncan… he came fer me.
The thought flashed through her with such blinding force that for a moment it chased out every other feeling. She twisted toward the opening in the tent, straining against the rope at her wrists until it burned her skin.
Through the slit in the canvas, she saw movement everywhere. Dark figures were storming the camp from the trees, with the gleam of drawn blades in the firelight. Duncan’s men had fallen upon them with terrible precision. What had seemed a secure hiding place only moments before was now a trap.
The guards nearest her tent rushed forward in alarm, one nearly stumbling as he dragged his sword free. Another shouted that they were surrounded. A third, still struggling with the fastening of his belt, was struck from behind before he had properly turned.
Elaina could not see Duncan, but she knew it was his work.
She recognized his colors and there was too much order in the attack for it to be anyone else.
Mackenzie’s men had been caught utterly unready, assailed from several sides at once.
It was no wild charge born of rage, but a strike planned with cold purpose and executed without waste.
She pressed closer to the opening, heedless of the pain in her bound wrists.
Whatever happened next, however near death had seemed only moments before, Duncan had come for her and Lachlan MacKenzie, who had spoken so confidently of killing her and destroying all she loved, now stood in the middle of his own camp with fury on his face and battle all around him.