Chapter 2
She was a feather in his arms, more frail than even the younger version of her that existed in his head. Kira’s cheek was pressed to his chest as her body was limp and her breathing was shallow.
Hunter’s lip sneered in annoyance as he carried her out of the cell and through the dungeon corridors.
Kira Fairbairn deserved no gentleness from him.
And while he knew what it looked like, carrying his prisoner from the dungeon like that, he didn’t care.
He had big plans for Kira, and if she died of stress in that cell, she would be rendered useless.
All of his planning would be for naught, and his revenge would never come to fruition.
He felt the eyes on them as he walked through the castle, but he didn’t falter. Kira might have been his weakness all his life, but things changed six years ago and he would never forgive her for her part in the downfall of his family.
Reaching one of the spare rooms on the second floor, he laid her on the narrow bed and stared down at her as he loomed overhead. It was so strange to see her there with him, instead of living in the recesses of his imagination and memories alone.
They were no longer kids on the cusp of adulthood, laying before him was a woman. Her full cheeks were defined now, her white-blonde hair cascaded to her waist, the rough ride of his men freeing the wild strands from her braids. She was beautiful, but in the same way as a venomous snake.
She’d trick you with her beauty and vibrant colors before striking with lethal intent.
Perhaps now that she was there, his mind would cease its cruel games of picturing her lingering around every corner, passing by in the corridors with that playful smile of hers that felt as though it belonged to him and him alone.
And sometimes, when he was particularly exhausted and had a bit too much whisky with his supper, he would envision her waiting on his bed for him in a white shift, bathed in moonlight with kind eyes burning in his direction with a look that said, “Ye’re finally here”.
Eyes, lighter than the sky but warmer than the blue of a flame, opened. The hate crashed back into his body at the sight of those blue eyes. They were the eyes of her father, his enemy.
She was his enemy and there he was, gawking at her.
Dammit, how long had he been standing there like that?
Before he could chastise himself more, he watched the fear flash across her sky eyes, looking as out of place as lightning on a clear day. Kira was never supposed to fear him—but he guessed she should.
Kira sat up and looked around in a haste, seeming to realize that she was in one of the smaller guest rooms in the castle.
“Why… Why am I here?” she asked.
“Ye’re even more foolish than I thought if ye think I answer to ye,” he spat cruelly. His mental defenses were coming up, strengthening his resolve again before she weakened him with her lame attempts at manipulation.
“It was a simple question,” she huffed as she sat up on the bed.
He narrowed his eyes at her, trying to see through her deceptive nature that he used to let in without question or hesitation.
He leaned down slightly to lift her chin with the tip of one of his fingers, looking at her with a stony glare while most of his focus went to trying not to really look in her eyes.
“Dinnae think that ye can speak to me like the Hunter Galbraith ye once kenned. Ye did yer part to make sure that man is dead.” His words were firm and final, not wanting to leave any room for doubt in her pretty little mind.
“And trying to talk to me in such a manner will nae part any favors on ye. Ye’ve learned to deceive and manipulate men, like that sad sort, Laird Barclay.
And unlike that sod, I will nae be made a fool of by a deceptive lass. ”
With that, he dropped his touch from her face and swiveled on a heel. Before he left the room, he said final, parting words, “My only mercy for ye will be this: preservation of my plans should nae be viewed as kindness. Heed that as a warning.”
Her eyes went wide and her brows drew together. “My faither will come for me.” The words were confident, certain, and threatening.
Hunter grinned and drank in the moment. His dear little Kira, hoping Da would come and save her from Hunter’s terrible clutches.
“I’m counting on it,” he replied with a dark chuckle.
He slammed the door behind him, annoyed with himself.
Hunter was a man of few words and while he had matured past his days of tongue-tied flirtations, he knew that her presence agitated all of those words out of him.
It felt important for her to know that she was only there for other means and that gentleness wouldn’t be paid to her.
With a short, barked order, two guards were posted at her door and wouldn’t move from their positions unless relieved from their duty.
Anger and darkness swarmed him as he moved toward his study, overwhelmed with feelings he didn’t let in other than anger.
Anger was warm, safe, and useful. It had a place in his heart, unlike the softness that it once held for Kira.
Hunter had only just sat at his worn, wooden desk when a rap came on the door.
His response was nothing more than a grunt and the door opened.
The Captain of his Guard, Calum, waltzed in and stood in front of the desk with his hands behind his back.
Hunter didn’t say anything, though he knew what was coming.
“M’Laird, the servants are all already talking,” he began. “Why on Earth did ye give the Fairbairn lass a bedchamber?” Calum’s ginger brows were knitted together with concern, the faint lines of his approaching middle age deepening too.
He wasn’t in the mood and he thought about spewing the same words he had at Kira, but he bit them back. Hunter wasn’t a cruel Laird, even if it was far too tempting at times. Letting out a sigh, he let out his honest, simple explanation.
“I had forgotten that she struggles in tight spaces, and she’s nay good to me dead.”
It was a distant memory, but seeing Kira unravel so quickly in that cell had brought it to the surface.
She couldn’t have been more than eight at the time, when they had been playing hide-and-seek with a couple of the servants’ children.
They were still deciding their places when the other boy started to grow near, and the servant girl close to Kira pushed her into a cabinet of a wardrobe to hide.
He could still hear the thumping and crying from within the wooden door all those years later.
But that sweet little girl, who had once been like a sister to him before growing into something more, existed only in the deepest recesses of his memories then. For it was the fifteen-year-old Kira who had dug that deep grave of all the past versions of her that had existed in his heart.
The memories flooded back like unwanted flies to the sickly sweet honey that was Kira.
He had wished the boots storming the castle didn’t have such familiar faces for owners. The men who had been sworn to protect him in all those humid summers that he spent at the seaside Keep of Fairbairn were attacking his home. His people, his family.
In the frenzy of bloodshed and screaming, a Hunter that was just on the other side of adulthood ran as hard as he could through the servant corridors to reach his father’s study. He burst through the door, his breath rattling in his chest and his eyes wild.
He could hardly make sense of the scene before him. His mother fell and was kicked to the side by a figure that stood in front of a fire on his father’s balcony, his back to Hunter. The flames weren’t explosive, they weren’t the castle itself burning.
The young man hardly had to strain his eyes to see his father’s brooch in the midst of the flames. The smell of smoke and the whisky that no doubt doused his father’s dead body to start the fire consumed him before the pain and anger could take hold.
He stepped forward, his hands trembling but his heart regaining its rhythm. Just as he braced himself to tackle the wicked usurper, he noticed another figure right next to the tall one.
The face turned and there, illuminated by the fire that was his father’s corpse, was his beloved Kira. Her blue eyes never looked so cold to him as she stared blankly back at him, silent.
Hunter’s jaw tightened until his teeth hurt from how hard he was clenching them.
Pouring himself a whisky, he gulped it down in one go before putting ink to parchment.
It was a letter for that bastard, Laird Fairbairn, letting him know that his compliance was mandatory if he wanted his precious daughter returned to him.
He would promise her alive, but perhaps not unharmed. A satisfied smirk spread across his face as his quill quickened.
“Make sure our fastest horse carries this message directly to him,” Hunter stated as he stamped his official wax seal onto the folded paper.
At last. Revenge was in motion.