The Scot’s Blood Warrior (Shadows of the Dark Hollow #1)

Chapter One

Edan

The bolt of lightning split the sky with a powerful force, tossing him from the bed where he’d just sat up. The crack of thunder, instantaneous and deafening, pained his ears, his throat echoing a primal howl in response and shaking him to his very core.

Sprawled on the floor, Edan MacRuari gasped for breath, his blood rushing wild as though he’d run from glen to shore with the weight of two boulders on his back.

Only hours ago, his sweet Heilyn had fallen asleep in his arms, her small hand fisted in his tunic as though she feared he might vanish if she let go.

He struggled to force himself to his feet but fell with a grunt, his eye caught by something that turned his heart to stone.

Heilyn’s cradle.

Empty.

His hand shot out to steady himself on the cradle’s edge, fingers closing on the wood he had carved for her, his mind jumping from one possible tragedy to another.

His gaze skimmed the hollow little bed, the rumpled blanket, the whittled horse he’d made her, the place where her small chest should have been rising and falling.

The wrongness of it twisted within him like a blade to the gut.

“Heilyn?” The whisper escaped his lips as dread pooled in his belly. He dragged himself onto his knees from the empty bed near the dying embers, nearly retching from fear. He ran his hand through the entire cradle as if the child were capable of disappearing under a blanket.

“Heilyn?” Voices raged through him, but he focused on the calm one that said she could have easily climbed out on her own and gone into the other chamber, though the quiet that settled over his home told him it was unlikely.

Heilyn was never quiet.

Not ready to give up yet, he hauled himself to a standing position, clutching the mantle, forcing steady breaths into his lungs. His entire world narrowed to an empty cradle. The image of his dead wife flickered through his mind and was gone.

Not now. This was his wee lass. His everything.

Think. Search. Find her.

Edan grabbed the blankets in the cradle and tossed them in the corner, looking again, upset to still find it empty. Where was she?

Heilyn had learned to toddle about on her own. The front chamber, where morning light spilled through the small window, always drew her to her treasured toys. He willed strength back into his trembling limbs, fighting both pain and panic as he pushed himself toward the other room.

“Heilyn?” His voice broke as he scanned the chamber. The cold hearth, the bare table, the basket of toys pushed against the wall sat empty.

She wasn’t there.

He had the urge to beg his wife, Florie, to help him find their dear daughter.

Whispering her name as if to call her down from the heavens, he chanted, “Nay, Florie. Say it isnae so. Help me find her, please.” He closed his eyes and said a quick prayer to God above, then said, “Lead me to her. Help me find her.”

He stood a moment in the silence, willing an answer from the dark.

None came. It never did. Only the hollow ache of knowing Florie should be here to see their daughter smile, to watch her toddle across the floor on those unsteady wee legs, sat deep in his belly.

Florie had wanted this bairn so fiercely, had pressed her hands to her belly and whispered to her before she’d even drawn breath.

His dear Florie had died birthing Heilyn fifteen moons ago, but their daughter had survived.

Living on Islay without a sound midwife had been more than detrimental; it had been deadly.

Florie had warned him, had asked to go to Mull to have their bairn where a new healer lived, but he’d trusted the wizened old healer at Kilmeny.

Heilyn was the sunshine in his dark days, her smile and giggle lighting him up unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. He couldn’t lose her.

But where was she?

Oddly enough, there had been no burst of rain after the lightning or from the thunder he’d heard. Despite the darkness from the heavy cloud cover, he strained to hear droplets striking the thatched roof he and his brother had so meticulously crafted, yet heard nothing but eerie silence.

Heilyn was rarely silent. She chattered and giggled and pattered along, always smiling.

Dawn would be upon him soon.

His gaze locked on the small wooden latch he’d fashioned once she’d started to walk, a latch she could not reach. The only explanation was that she had to have found a way to open the door herself.

Or had he forgotten to latch it? Had the wind blown it open?

He put his boots on, lifted the heavy door and stepped outside, his gaze traveling up the empty path through the five cottages in his clachan, but there was no movement. No wandering toddler. No giggles.

This could not be happening.

He stumbled behind the hut to the animal shelter, desperate for any sign of his daughter. The goats lay undisturbed beneath the stable’s roof, and the four horses shared by the clachan stood quietly in their stalls.

Not a single beast stirred with unease. Strange. These creatures would be skittish from both the thunder and a wandering child, yet they rested as if the night had passed without incident.

No toddler had crossed their path.

A chill traveled up his spine. One that brought words to him from his sire’s deathbed.

“The faeries will get you.”

“Never return to Islay.”

“The fae are evil.”

He shook his head to rid his mind of his father’s rantings. This had nothing to do with the fae.

“Heilyn?”

Naught.

There were four more cottages to search. His sister Catrina lived in one with her husband Arne and their young son Milo. His brother Roger and wife Gormela lived in the next hut with their two young sons. The other two cottages held Edan’s two friends and their families.

Who to awaken first?

As he strode toward his brother’s place, his gaze searched the area, the sunrise bringing a bit of light to the area, but he saw nothing unusual.

They’d built this clachan five years ago after coming to Islay.

He, his brother, and his sister had lived in a small hut with their father on Jura until he died, and they’d agreed to move to Islay and build their own homes near Finlaggan.

His father had warned him about Islay with his dying breath.

Clutching Edan’s hand, he’d whispered secrets about the isle, the kind of dark, unsettling tales that no lad could stomach.

At nine and ten, Edan had dismissed them as the fevered ramblings of a fading mind.

Faery stories, he’d thought. Nothing but old legends meant to frighten children.

So he’d buried those warnings deep and fled Jura as soon as he could, determined to leave his father’s superstitions behind.

Was there such a thing as a spell to send the faeries away?

He stopped walking.

The beasts. The silence. The lightning with no rain to follow it.

All wrong, in ways his warrior’s instincts recognized even as his reasoning fought them.

The kind of wrongness that didn’t come from weather or wandering bairns.

His father’s voice rose up from wherever he’d buried it: They take what they are owed, son.

And sometimes what they are not. He’d called the old man mad.

Yet every tale his father had told had begun with the same warning, that the fae did not take kindly to those who forgot them.

He was no longer so certain.

Nay. He’d find her. All he had to do was be thorough. His daughter had shown how clever she was, climbed up to unlatch the door, and made her way outside. The lass could be sleeping in Auntie Catrina’s arms right now. His daughter adored both of her aunts.

That was it. She’d found a way in and was sleeping with either Aunt Catrina or Aunt Gormela. She had to be. He shook his head at all the foolishness filling his mind, chastising himself for his silly thoughts.

Faeries. Tales. Islay having a thin shield that was easy for the faeries to cross.

Heilyn was a curious child. That was it. He stood in front of Roger’s cottage, his hand readying to knock on the door when he heard a sound from behind him. The door to his sister’s cottage was flung open.

A scream rent the air.

He whirled around, looked at the expression on his sister’s face after her gaze searched the area, and knew that their world was about to turn upside-down.

She held something tight in her fist. She waved it in the air, and shouted, “Milo! He’s gone!”

“Curse it.”

Heilyn and Milo had disappeared.