The Last Highlander's Bride (The Ashes of the Lennox Clan #1)

Prologue

Arran Lennox slipped through the rear of the MacBrae stables, his feet confident even in the dimness of the night.

He’d been here plenty of times before, after all, and he knew the village and Keep here both nearly as well as he knew his own clan, only a handful of miles away across the territory border.

There was usually nothing surprising about finding the son of the Lennox Laird in MacBrae holdings—they were allies and neighbors, after all—but tonight, Arran would prefer not to be noted.

The clans were all hosting their solstice festivals tonight, and he was meant to be in his own Keep, celebrating amongst his own people.

But the MacBrae festival privileged their clan’s symbol: fire. And that meant that there were bonfires blazing merrily throughout the festival, and colorful firecrackers popped frequently, always followed by shrieks from delighted children and naive maidens.

What young warrior worth his name could resist that?

Besides, Arran thought as he moved through the servants’ passage of the Keep, where the staff was far too busy to pay the interloper any mind, he had more than one reason to prefer his neighbor’s celebration to his own…

“Surely ye arenae starting to have fun without me,” he murmured as he came up behind Fiona, his hands landing on her waist, pulling her close to him.

She’d already been smiling. At his touch, she let out a yelp of startled laughter, then turned to throw her arms around his neck.

“I didnae think ye would be able to make your escape so quickly,” she said, clearly delighted to have been proven wrong.

Fiona was one of the many maids at MacBrae Keep, and she and Arran had been spending time together for the past few months, ever since he’d caught her making eyes at him during one of the many dinners between the lairds of the two clans and their families.

Arran wouldn’t call it a true courtship; he was the heir to a clan, and she was a maid from a different family.

They would never be permitted to wed. But neither of them expected such a thing, nor wanted it.

They were merely seventeen. Young and full of life. What was a wedding ring compared to stolen kisses in the dark?

The celebration tonight would make everyone loose and happy, however, and Arran was not so foolish as to let the opportunity to have a quick tumble with his lass slip through his fingers.

If the rest of the clan got properly soused, they might even be able to steal more than a single hour before someone started looking for one or the other.

“I can see that there’s no chance of getting ye back now,” said the other maid with whom Fiona had been talking, rolling her eyes indulgently. “Go off with your braw lad, Fee. Ye can tell us of your adventures tomorrow.”

Fiona winked at her friend, an exaggerated gesture that suggested that she and Arran were destined for grand adventures that evening, indeed. Lord, he hoped so.

She grabbed his hand with a gay little laugh, and the two of them slipped back through the same passage that had brought Arran inside, pausing whenever they found a clear stretch of corridor to kiss until the steady trod of feet upon stone told them they were about to be interrupted.

Once or twice, they didn’t pull away quickly enough, but they were only met with an indulgent huff from whichever servant happened to be passing them by.

There were so many fires blazing in the village that it looked nearly as light as daytime when they got there, though the flickering shadows gave everything a mystical sort of look.

When the smoke from all the fires parted, Arran could see Lennox Keep over the far hill, looking down upon him as if in disapproval for his abandonment.

He shoved aside any guilt as Fiona tugged him into one of the dances that had sprung up around a nearby bonfire. Lennox Keep would be there in the morning. But tonight was fleeting.

They spun around in a series of reels until the musicians begged off, seeking a dram of ale and a bite of something good to eat before they returned to their posts. One of the military demonstrations took the players’ place.

Arran watched with the assessing eye of someone who had been training with his own clan’s soldiers since he was old enough to hold a sword in his hand.

He had to admit that the MacBrae soldiers were exacting, impressively so.

Their demonstration was a touch flashy—if he were looking for something to criticize—but since it was designed to impress an audience, rather than prove victorious in a real battle, he supposed he could forgive the oversight.

“Is that the Laird over there?” he asked, subtly tucking Fiona into a corner when he caught a glimpse of a man who faintly resembled the MacBrae Laird.

He wasn’t hiding, per se, but he would rather prefer to keep his relationship with the young maid—not to mention his presence at the neighboring clan’s celebration instead of his own—from his father. Fiona, he knew, felt the same. She did not want to be the subject of clan gossip.

Fiona shook her head at once, with a palpable lack of concern that he didn’t think just came from the ale she had downed.

“Nay, nay, he and his family arenae here tonight,” she said absently, her gaze traveling toward the dancers. “I dinnae ken why. Mayhap one of the wee lassies isnae well. Or mayhap he is simply too stern to enjoy the party.”

With a wicked grin, she turned to Arran and pulled a face that was clearly meant to mock the serious Laird MacBrae. It was daring, openly poking fun at her Laird like that, but Fiona always was the type to take a risk in favor of fun. She would not be stepping out with him otherwise.

The night crept onward, the crowd growing a bit more raucous as they indulged in more and more drink. Children went to bed, though Arran saw more than one wee face pressed longingly to a window as the celebration continued outside their snug little houses.

He was just about to ask Fiona if she felt ready to slip away, to find themselves a more private form of entertainment, when the world ripped in two.

In one instant, Arran was standing, half of a meat pie still in his hand. In the next, he was flat on his back, pressed against hard stone. His ears rang, and while there was still plenty of noise unspooling around him, it felt muffled. Distant.

Something… exploded, he realized. There was an explosion.

For a few long moments, all Arran could do was blink away the stars in his eyes.

Eventually, he realized that he was still lying down, on the cobblestones against the side of a building.

He carefully propped himself up until he was sitting, the slight motion already making his head scream.

When he put a hand to his temple, it came back sticky with blood.

The noise around him was growing more insistent.

Screaming.

People were screaming, the agonized screams of those who faced certain death.

“Fiona!” He tried to yell it, but his voice came out as little more than a croak. “Fiona, lass! Where are ye?”

No answer, or at least none that he could hear. He wiped an arm across his eyes, clearing his vision a little, and then looked around.

Dread choked him as soon as he saw her skirts, her body lying so that she was turned away from him… but wrong. Something about her was so wrong.

“Fee,” he rasped, dragging himself across the ground to get to her. He knew what he would find, but he made himself look anyway, then wished he hadn’t.

Her eyes were still open but unseeing. Her head was a mess of blood, and her neck was twisted, hanging limp and crooked and horrible.

A choked sob rose from his throat. Theirs might not have been a great love story, but Fiona had been kind, and funny, and beautiful, and so goddamned full of life. And now she was dead.

It took Arran a lot of work, but he managed to get to his feet.

He swiped again at his face as the blood from his temple kept gushing.

The world around him had turned from a dream to a nightmare.

Bodies were littered around the square; houses had collapsed like they were made of matchsticks, not stone.

His gorge threatened to rise when he saw a horrid shape that turned out to be an arm, just an arm, its owner nowhere to be seen.

They needed help. The whole village, the whole clan. They needed help.

Arran ached everywhere as he began limping toward the far end of the village, back toward Lennox Keep. His father needed to know what had happened, he reminded himself when every step he took sent a new flare of pain through him. His father would send aid, he would help.

That hope sustained Arran through the climb to the top of the hill. Funny to think how he typically found this climb so easy. Now, it felt as though he was dragging himself out of the pit of hell itself.

Except when he got to the top of the rise, a fresh hell awaited him.

Because instead of seeing his castle, the silent and sure sentinel that stood over Lennox lands each night, he saw nothing but flame.

The Lennox lands were burning. And the Keep itself…

There was naught left but ruins.

Arran’s legs gave out on him. He sank to the ground, unable to process the horror of what he was seeing. His whole world, destroyed.

It was a mercy when everything went dark and he fell unconscious, for at least none of this terror could touch him as he collapsed into a dreamless sleep.