Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The wall was wet beneath Logan’s hands.
Rain had turned the outer stones slick, filling the grooves between them with cold water and moss, but he climbed anyway, fingers finding holds by instinct, boots pressing into cracks barely wide enough to bear weight.
Below him, the trees shifted in the wind. Behind those trees, Conn waited with the larger force, watching for reinforcements.
Waiting was not enough.
Every moment Rose remained inside those walls was another moment Barnaby Henshaw could touch her, harm her.
Logan’s hand slipped once on the stone.
He caught himself before the fall could begin, his fingers biting hard against the edge of a broken block. Pain tore across his palm and he welcomed it.
Above him, Fergus reached the top first and flattened himself against the parapet, waiting. Bram came behind Logan, silent, the dark shape of his body moving carefully against the wall. Alasdair climbed last, a knife between his teeth and murder in his eyes.
Logan reached the upper edge and paused just beneath it. He listened.
A torch hissed somewhere above. Boots crossed stone, slow, careless. One guard. Perhaps two farther along. The wind carried the smell of wet ash, horse dung, and old smoke from within the walls.
Logan lifted two fingers.
Wait.
The guard’s steps came closer. Closer.
When the man passed the parapet above him, Logan’s hand shot up, caught him by the back of the belt, and yanked hard.
The guard had no time to cry out. Fergus seized his mouth from behind as Logan dragged him down, and the man’s body struck the stone walk with a muffled thud. Logan drove his dagger under the ribs, quick and deep, and held him there until the struggle left him.
He looked at the dead man beneath him and felt nothing. No remorse. He wiped the blade on the man’s tunic and rose.
Fergus glanced toward the inner courtyard below, then back at him.
“Gatehouse has four men at least,” he whispered.
“We dinnae go through the gate.”
“Dungeon will be below the west tower if Henshaw keeps tae English stonework.”
“Aye.” Logan’s gaze moved across the stronghold, measuring shadows, torch paths, doors. “We cross the wall, down the stair, through the service passage. Quiet as long as we can.”
“And if they see us?” Bram asked.
Logan looked at him.
Bram swallowed once and nodded. “Aye. Stupid question.”
They moved.
The parapet was narrow and slick beneath Logan’s boots.
He kept low, one hand near the wall, sword still sheathed because steel drawn too soon could catch torchlight.
Below, the courtyard lay in patches of shadow.
A cart stood near the stables. Two men huddled beneath an awning, talking over a jug.
Another guard passed near the gate, yawning as though the night had been nothing more than boredom.
Logan watched him and felt rage move through his blood, slow and black. Rose was somewhere inside, hurt and frightened. And these men drank.
He forced the thought down before it could make him reckless.
At the west corner, Fergus found the stairs. They descended in single file, boots careful against the wet stone. The passage below was darker, the air stale and close. The inner door was barred from their side only by an iron latch. Logan lifted it slowly, jaw tightening at the faint scrape.
An empty corridor opened beyond.
He slipped through first.
The stronghold smelled worse inside. Damp rushes. Sour wine. Smoke trapped in old walls. Beneath it all, the faint metallic scent of blood. Logan’s hand closed around the hilt of his sword, and the leather creaked softly beneath his grip.
Alasdair touched his arm and pointed.
Voices ahead.
Two men stepped into the corridor from a side room, one still laughing, the other wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. They saw Logan at the same moment he saw them.
One opened his mouth, but Logan crossed the distance before sound could escape.
His sword came free in a clean, brutal arc, cutting the first man down across the throat. Bram took the second, slamming him back against the wall and burying a knife beneath his jaw. The man jerked once, then sagged.
Silence returned.
Logan could hear his own breath now, controlled but harsh. He could hear the pulse in his ears, beating her name over and over again.
He stepped over the body, and they moved faster after that.
A servant’s passage took them deeper into the stronghold.
Once, they passed a door left ajar and Logan saw a room strewn with cards, cups, a half-finished meal.
Another time, a guard rounded the corner too quickly and nearly collided with him.
Surprise widened the man’s eyes. Logan drove him into the wall, one hand clamped over his mouth, dagger beneath the ribs.
The man died staring at him.
Logan held his gaze until the light left it, then he let him fall.
“Dungeon,” Fergus whispered, nodding toward a stairwell at the end of the corridor.
Logan did not answer. He was already moving.
The stairs descended into a colder dark. The air changed as they went down, growing damper and foul, pressing against his lungs with the smell of rot, old straw, and human misery. Water dripped somewhere below.
Logan’s chest tightened.
He had never been a man given to prayer. Not since his father’s body had been returned to them under a flag of truce, not since he learned that men could speak honor with clean mouths and murder with clean hands.
But as he descended into that dark, he found words forming in him anyway.
Let her be alive.
At the bottom of the stairs, torchlight bled along the walls. Voices reached him. Two guards, perhaps more. One spoke with a bored drawl. The other laughed low.
Logan halted at the corner and looked.
Two men stood before a barred cell. One leaned with his shoulder against the wall, spear in hand. The other sat on a stool, eating something from a strip of cloth. Between them, past the bars, Logan saw a shape on the floor.
Golden hair.
The world stopped.
Rose sat beside a man chained to the wall, her hands bound before her, her face pale and bruised, one cheek darkened where someone had struck her. She held the chained man’s hand in both of hers and bent over him.
For a single heartbeat, Logan could not move. The bruise on her face became the only thing in the world.
Someone hit her. Someone put their hands on her.
The seated guard looked up, perhaps feeling the shift in the air.
Logan moved.
The first guard barely had time to straighten. Logan’s sword cut across his middle, and before the man fully fell, Logan drove the hilt into the second guard’s face hard enough to break bone. The man staggered back with a strangled cry, spear clattering from his hand.
Bram caught him from behind and opened his throat.
Rose jerked her head up. For one terrible breath, she looked at him as though she did not believe he was real.
Then her face broke. “Logan.”
His name left her in a sound so raw it tore straight through him.
He reached the cell door and seized the lock. “Keys.”
Fergus was already searching the first guard’s belt. Metal clinked. He threw them over. Logan caught them, hands steady only because he forced them to be.
The first key failed. The second stuck. A vicious sound left him as he twisted harder.
“You’re here,” Rose said, closer now, her fingers gripping the bars from inside.
“I’m here.” His voice came out rough and barely controlled. “I’m here, lass.”
The lock gave. He threw the door open and stepped inside.
Rose came toward him, and for a moment he forgot the dungeon, the bodies, the men behind him, the stronghold above. He caught her against him with one arm and held her so tightly she made a small sound, but she clung to him just as fiercely, her bound hands trapped between their bodies.
God, she was shaking. His hand went to the back of her head, cradling her there, his mouth brushing her hair before he could stop himself.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed into her hair, the words tearing from a place he had no time to guard. “I’m sorry, Rose.”
She shook her head against him. “No. No, you came.”
He drew back just enough to see her face. The bruise along her cheek made his vision darken at the edges. He lifted one hand, but stopped before touching it, fear suddenly making his fingers useless.
“Who did this?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes flickered toward the man in chains.
“My father,” she said, her voice breaking. “Logan, please help him. He is my father.”
The words struck through him.
Logan turned.
Lord Algernon hung half-conscious in the chains, his head bowed, breath shallow. His face was bloodied, older and more fragile than Logan had expected, but there was something of Rose in the line of him. The shape of the mouth, perhaps. The stubbornness still clinging to him even broken.
Rose pulled at Logan’s sleeve with her bound hands. “He will not wake. I tried. Please, we cannot leave him.”
“We willnae.” The answer came at once.
Her eyes shone.
Logan took her bound wrists and cut the rope carefully, his blade steady despite the fury in his blood. The moment she was free, she rubbed one raw wrist with the other, then turned back toward her father as if drawn by pain.
“Alasdair,” Logan said. “Help me wi’ the chains.”
Alasdair stepped forward, already lifting the keys taken from the guards. “Aye.”
The first cuff resisted. Alasdair cursed beneath his breath. Logan took the keys from him and forced the iron open himself, metal scraping loud enough that Fergus glanced toward the stairs.
“Fast,” Fergus warned. “They’ll ken soon.”
“I ken,” Logan said.
The second cuff opened and Lord Algernon sagged forward.
Logan caught him before he struck the ground. The man was lighter than he should have been, all bone and bloodied cloth beneath Logan’s hands. Rose made a small, wounded sound and pressed her fingers to her mouth.
“Papa,” she whispered.
The man’s lashes stirred, but he did not wake.
“Bram,” Logan said, shifting the weight carefully. “Carry him. If he slows ye, ye dinnae set him down unless I tell ye.”