CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN ANCHOR
D uncan lunged for Euan’s heart.
For one awful breath Marion saw everything too clearly.
The small silver blade in Duncan’s hand. The madness in his eyes. Euan on his knees, one hand locked in Marion’s, the other braced against the poisoned root as if his body could hold the whole dying Grove in place by stubbornness alone.
He saw Duncan coming.
Of course he did.
Even poisoned, bleeding and half bound to ancient roots through her light, Euan McFarland saw the knife meant for his chest.
He moved.
Not away.
Toward it.
“No!” Marion screamed.
The word tore through the bond and into the Grove.
Euan twisted, trying to take the blade somewhere other than his heart. The movement ripped through his wounded side and sent a shock of pain into Marion so brutal she nearly lost her hold on the poison.
The silver blade came down.
A gray blur slammed into Duncan from the side.
Tavish.
The young warrior struck him shoulder first, all reckless courage and very little balance. The two of them crashed into the snow. Duncan shouted, the blade skidding from his hand and spinning across the poisoned root toward the execution stone.
“Tavish!” Georgie cried.
“I am fine,” he wheezed from under Duncan. “Possibly.”
“You are not fine,” Lorna shouted, dragging Georgie back as two soldiers rushed toward them.
“Later,” Tavish said, and then punched Duncan hard enough to make the sheriff’s head snap sideways.
Marion would have enjoyed that more if the poison beneath her hands had not chosen that moment to surge.
The crowned skull mark screamed again.
Not with sound.
With memory.
The old shoreline, the silver bowl, the woman with moon white hair, the boy choking in mud. All of it rushed up through Marion’s arms and into her throat. The poison had been opened now. Cut. Angered. It no longer slithered through roots with careful hunger.
It thrashed.
The Grove convulsed under her.
Wolves cried out all around them. Callum, who had begun to breathe again, arched off the ground.
Rhona shouted his name. Aodh staggered as the execution stone flared black silver from base to crown.
Morna went to one knee, teeth bared, her bloody hand pressed into the snow as if she could hold the whole earth down.
Marion’s light flickered.
Aldrich saw.
“Again,” he called sharply.
His calm had begun to crack.
Not much. Just enough to make his voice harder.
The remaining soldiers lifted their weapons.
Crossbows aimed toward Euan.
Another toward Georgie.
Another toward Marion.
Euan’s fingers tightened around Marion’s hand.
“Do not break focus,” he said.
She stared at him. “There are arrows pointed at you.”
“Bolts.”
“This is not the moment to correct me.”
His mouth tried to curve. It failed. Blood touched his lip. “You would correct me.”
“Yes, but I am charming.”
“You are many things.”
The words were barely breath, but they reached her anyway. Through the bond. Through poison. Through everything.
Marion’s throat tightened.
Then the first crossbow fired.
Aodh moved with the execution axe again, but he was too far.
Fergus took the bolt in his shoulder.
He grunted and stayed standing.
“Missed the important bits,” he growled, then threw his knife into the soldier’s thigh.
The man dropped.
Morna shouted, “That was not a treatment plan!”
“It worked,” Fergus snapped.
The second crossbow turned toward Georgie.
Marion’s body surged to move.
Euan’s hand clamped around hers.
“Anchor,” he said.
“My daughter.”
“Look.”
She looked.
Georgie stood behind Lorna with both hands raised, gold light trembling around her fingers.
Not enough to fight grown men. Not yet. But beside her, Lorna stood with a stolen spear, and Tavish had rolled off Duncan and somehow gotten to one knee again.
Blood ran down his face. His grin was wild and foolish.
“Not today,” Tavish said to the soldier.
The crossbowman hesitated.
That was enough.
Lorna drove the spear into his boot.
He screamed and fired high into the branches.
Georgie stared at Lorna. “That was very good.”
“Thank you,” Lorna said, looking faintly shocked with herself.
Marion would have laughed if her hands were not buried in a poison older than mercy.
Euan’s voice came again, softer. “They are not helpless.”
“I know.”
“You taught them that.”
Marion looked at him.
The bond between them burned, wounded but alive.
His strength was there, offered fully now.
No wall. No shameful corner where he tried to hide the worst parts of himself.
She felt his fear for Georgie, his fury at Duncan, his pain, his love, his old guilt trying to rise and his will holding it down.
He was not asking to die.
He was asking to stay.
That was somehow harder to bear.
The poison struck again.
Marion doubled forward. Her forehead nearly hit the root.
Euan caught her with their joined hands, his body leaning across the poisoned ground, the mark on his neck blazing.
“Take it,” he said.
“No.”
“Take it.”
“I already am.”
“My strength, Marion. Not the poison.”
She shook her head, teeth clenched. “You are barely upright.”
“I have been barely upright since the auction.”
“That is not funny.”
“It was a little funny.”
She wanted to sob. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to throw something at his head.
Instead she opened the bond wider.
Euan came through like storm heat.
His wolf. His blood. His grief. His loyalty. His brutal, beautiful will to stand when every kinder thing would have let him fall. It entered her not as command, not as possession, but as a hand braced against her back.
The poison rose to meet it.
For a moment Marion felt it hesitate.
It knew betrayed blood. It knew fear. It knew guilt and old law and hidden hate. It knew how to use Euan’s shame against him and her terror against her.
It did not know this.
A man who had chosen not to drag her from danger.
A woman who had chosen not to save him by leaving herself behind.
A child glowing gold behind them.
A clan bleeding around a healer they had feared and now called their own.
The poison recoiled.
Marion gasped. “Euan.”
“I feel it.”
“It does not know what to do with us.”
His eyes met hers, fierce even through pain. “Good.”
This time Marion did not push the poison out.
She pulled it in.
Not into her heart. Not into the bond. Into the light gathered between them, the place where her healing met his wolf and neither swallowed the other.
The black threads screamed.
Silver gold fire wrapped them.
The crowned skull mark flared under the stone, ancient and hateful.
Marion saw the shoreline again, but now Euan stood beside her in it, not as memory, not as vision, but as anchor.
A great silver gray wolf at her side, teeth bared at the old priests and the old bowl and the old cruelty that thought history could keep repeating if no one remembered how to stop it.
Marion reached for the silver haired woman in the mud.
Not to save her.
It was too late for that.
To witness her.
The woman lifted her head, and for one instant her eyes met Marion’s.
Gold.
Furious.
Tired.
Grateful.
Then her light joined Marion’s.
The Grove erupted.
Not outward.
Inward.
Every poisoned root lit from within. Black silver turned white, then gold, then clean moon silver.
The execution stone cracked with a sound like thunder under snow.
The great canister beside Aldrich shrieked as its contents reversed, sucking poison back from the roots and burning it in silver gold flame.
Wolves began to breathe.
One after another.
Callum coughed hard and rolled onto his side. The young wolf girl Marion had healed earlier sat up with a sob. A man near Rhona shifted fully back from a trapped half form and collapsed into her arms. Even Aodh’s burned palm began to steam clean.
Morna stared around her, eyes wet and furious as if tears had insulted her by appearing.
“It is leaving them,” she whispered.
Marion could barely hear her.
The light moved through Euan next.
His hand convulsed in hers.
The black veins beneath his skin rose sharply, as if trying one last time to reach his heart. Marion cried out and tightened both hands around his.
“No,” she said.
Euan bowed over their joined hands, shaking.
The poison in his side fought.
The mark on his neck burned brighter.
His old silver scars flared one by one. Wrists. Ribs. Shoulder. Throat. Lines Marion had seen and lines he had hidden. They lit white, then silver, then faded into clean skin beneath blood and battle grime.
Euan made a sound that was not quite pain.
Not quite relief.
The bond flooded warm.
Marion felt the old poison leave him.
Not all pain. Not all memory. Those belonged to him and would heal in human time.
But the silver curse Aldrich had left in his blood burned out.
Euan lifted his head.
His eyes were gold and clear.
Alive.
So alive that Marion forgot how to breathe.
His thumb brushed her knuckles. “Marion.”
She laughed once, a wet, foolish sound. “Do not look at me like that. I am trying to be impressive.”
“You are failing.”
Her mouth fell open.
“At trying,” he said softly. “You are impressive without effort.”
“Oh.” Heat climbed into her face, which was absurd considering the Grove had just exploded with ancient antidote magic. “Well. Fine.”
Aldrich shouted.
Actually shouted.
The sound snapped Marion back to the battlefield.
The great canister had collapsed inward, black metal twisted and smoking white. Several Crown soldiers were backing away from the roots now as if the ground itself had taken sides. Which, to be fair, it may have.
Aldrich stood at the edge of the ruined device, his velvet coat smeared with ash, one glove burned open at the fingers. His face had lost its polished calm.
For the first time, Master Lucien Aldrich looked afraid.
Not enough.
But it was a beginning.
“You could have preserved it,” he said, staring at Marion as if she had broken a holy relic instead of a murder weapon. “Do you have any idea what you destroyed?”
“Yes,” Marion said, though her voice shook. “Your best excuse.”
His eyes went flat.
Duncan struggled under Tavish’s knee nearby. “Aldrich! Do something!”
Aldrich did not even look at him.
That was when Duncan seemed to understand, truly understand, that no one he had allied himself with considered him worth rescuing.
Marion might have cared if she were less tired.
Euan tried to rise.
This time he managed.
Slowly. Badly. With blood down one side and one hand still wrapped around hers, but he stood.
The wolves saw.
A sound moved through the Grove.
Not a cheer. Not yet.
Something older.
Recognition.
Aldrich saw it too.
His gaze moved from Euan’s healed scars to Marion’s glowing hands. Then, worst of all, to Georgie’s small golden spark behind Lorna.
His fear sharpened into decision.
Marion felt it before he moved.
“Euan.”
Aldrich drew a blade from inside his cane.
Not the long silver tip everyone had watched. A hidden blade, narrow and black at the center, silver along both edges, with one drop of dark poison trembling at its point.
He moved with shocking speed for a man who had spent the battle observing others bleed.
Straight toward Euan’s heart.
Marion stepped forward.
Euan did too.
For one breath they both reached for the same danger.
Aldrich smiled then, thin and savage.
Because this time the blade was not aimed at Marion.
It was aimed at the bond between them.