Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“It’s a trap, Sebastian!” Hamish roared over the din of the yard, his red beard bristling with a frantic, desperate anger. “If ye step into that clearin’ alone, ye will be a dead man before yer boots touch the grass! He’s got the whole Ridge covered!”
“I ken,” Sebastian said.
His voice sounded terrifyingly calm, a low, flat register that cut through the shouting men’s noise.
Fergus stepped directly in front of him, his broad chest blocking the horse’s flank, his face twisted into a dark, rigid scowl.
“He’ll slaughter ye the second ye arrive, MacGregor!
Malcolm Kerr doesnae do deals. He doesnae trade hostages.
You know this better than anyone! He wants yer head on a pike to show the Northern Lords! ”
“Probably,” Sebastian replied, his fingers wrapping around the cold iron pommel of his saddle. He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto the MacKenzie Laird with a chilling, absolute certainty. “So we prepare properly.”
“Prepare?” Fergus barked, throwing his hands up toward the rain-slicked battlements. “Ye have nay time to prepare! The sun hits the pine tops in less than six hours! Ye’re walkin’ into a pocket with nothin’ but a broadsword and a prayer!”
“Then we make the prayer short,” Sebastian rumbled. He stepped closer to Fergus, his towering frame casting a long shadow over the smaller man.
He studied the MacKenzie Laird for one long moment.
He had known this man less than a single day, a handful of words in a rain-soaked courtyard, a fortress reinforced on nothing more than a stranger's letter of warning.
It should not have been enough to build the kind of trust he was about to ask for.
But a man did not turn his own Hall into a garrison on a single warning unless he already counted the sender as something closer than a stranger, and Fergus MacKenzie had done exactly that the moment Sebastian's message arrived.
Kin by marriage, if not yet by name. It would have to be enough.
His jaw flexed sharply, a thick muscle ticking beneath the stubble of his cheek. “Listen to me, Fergus. If there’s even a chance I die up on that Ridge…”
He stopped, the air freezing in his lungs as the image of a small, dark-haired boy sitting alone at the high table flashed behind his eyes.
“Ye keep Brian safe,” Sebastian commanded, the words tearing out of his throat like rusted iron. “Ye protect the Clan. Ye merge the names if ye must to keep the MacGregors from bein’ hunted into the dirt, but the boy lives to see his inheritance. Do ye swear it?”
Fergus stared at him, the anger instantly draining from his face, replaced by the heavy, solemn weight of a warlord who understood the finality of a man’s last terms. He reached out, his hand gripping Sebastian’s forearm hard enough to leave a mark through the leather.
“Aye,” Fergus said, his voice dropping into a deep, gravelly vow. “On me father’s grave. The boy will be guarded like me own blood. No Kerr will touch him while a single MacKenzie draws breath.”
“Good,” Sebastian said.
He ripped his arm free and vaulted into the saddle with a single, efficient motion. The fresh stallion shifted restlessly beneath him, its hooves cutting into the black mud as Sebastian pulled the reins taut, turning the beast to face the shivering messenger still kneeling in the dirt.
“Ye,” Sebastian barked, pointing the tip of his scabbard at the man’s chest. “Stand up.”
The messenger wobbled to his feet, his hands trembling violently against his tunic as he looked up at the Blackthorn warlord. “Me Laird, I only brought the words he gave me.”
“Ye’re goin’ to take some words back,” Sebastian interrupted, his voice dropping low enough that only the men in the immediate circle could hear. “Ye tell Kerr I am comin’. Alone. Just as he demanded. But the Lady does nae walk back through the snow by herself.”
The messenger blinked, his pale face slick with rain. “He said nay other warriors.”
“Me commander rides behind me at a distance,” Sebastian snapped, gesturing toward Hamish with a sharp jerk of his chin.
“Hamish will come to the edge of the clearin’ to escort the Lady back.
He will stand at the tree line to make sure Kerr honors his word the moment I step into the open.
Other than that, everyone stays back. Nay spears, nay archers, nay MacKenzie banners. ”
Hamish’s head snapped up, his brow furrowing into a hard line. “Sebastian, let me go into the center with ye. If we double-team the bastard…”
“Nay,” Sebastian growled, not looking down at him. “Ye bring her back, Hamish. That is yer only duty. If ye see a single archer out of place before the exchange, if ye see a single hair on her head harmed, ye take her, and ye run back to these gates. Do ye understand me?”
Hamish gritted his teeth, his fist slamming against his own thigh in frustration, but he nodded. “Aye. I will see her through the gates.”
Sebastian looked back down at the messenger. “Will he accept the terms, or do I bring the whole bloody valley up that mountain to hunt him down?”
The messenger swallowed hard, looking at the sharp lines of the archers on the walls, then back to the terrifying intensity in Sebastian’s eyes. “He will accept. He only wants ye, MacGregor. He does nae care about the commander.”
“Then we move,” Sebastian said.
He did not wait for a response. He dug his spurs into the stallion’s flanks, the horse leaping forward with a violent burst of speed that sent a spray of black mud across the courtyard.
The messenger scrambled to find his own mounts, his guards quickly forcing him into the saddle as they rushed to follow the warlord through the heavy oak gates.
The iron portcullis rattled behind them, a loud, metallic crash that sounded like the closing of a tomb.
Fergus was already shouting orders before the dust settled.
"Send a rider to Dunalasdair," he barked at his captain. "Tell Alasdair MacRae his western ridge is about to have Kerr's whole rearguard runnin' through it, and I'll owe him a debt he can collect on for the rest of his life if he moves his men to the Old Kiln crossin' before nightfall."
He turned to Hamish. "Alasdair's lands sit closer to the Weepin' Stone than mine do. If this goes to open battle, that's where it'll happen, and that's where we muster."
Hamish nodded grimly, already swinging up onto a fresh horse. "And the women?"
"Margaret comes with me as far as Dunalasdair and no farther," Fergus said, already moving toward his own mount.
"She'll flay me alive if I try to leave her behind entirely, and Isobel's healers are better stocked than mine.
She'll be safe inside Alasdair's walls with the bairn while we finish this. "
The wind caught Sebastian’s hair the moment they cleared the outer walls, the freezing mist hitting his face like a handful of gravel.
The trail up toward the North Ridge was narrow, a jagged line of stone and moss that disappeared into the thick, black canopy of the pine forest above.
The slate-gray light of the afternoon was already beginning to fade, drawing the shadows out between the trees like long, dark fingers.
Sebastian rode hard, his eyes fixed on the path ahead, his mind completely clear of the political calculations that had paralyzed him for the last two days.
The ledgers did not matter anymore. The contracts were gone.
The pride that had kept his mouth shut in the Solar was nothing but ash in his mouth.
She had ridden into the teeth of a winter storm, through a ridge crawling with scouts, because she thought he was walking into an ambush.
She had broken his rules, ignored his warnings, and ruined his perfect, clinical strategy because her own fierce, administrative heart could not let him fight alone.
Impossible woman.
He closed his eyes for a single heartbeat, the taste of her mouth from the previous night rushing back to torment him.
The sharp, sweet rain on her lips, the frantic way her fingers had dug into his hair, and the quiet, agonizing sorrow in her eyes when he had failed to give her the only answer that mattered.
He had handled her like an enemy to be conquered, and now she was paying the price for his restraint.
“Faster!” Sebastian roared over his shoulder, his voice swallowed by the howling wind as he drove his horse harder up the steep incline.
Behind him, the messenger and the remaining outriders struggled to keep pace, their horses slipping on the wet shale of the trail. The forest closed in around them, the towering pines blocking out the remaining light until the world became nothing but a tunnel of cold green and dark stone.
Sebastian’s hand dropped to the hilt of his broadsword, his fingers tracing the cold, familiar iron of the serpent engraving.
The panic that had gripped him in the courtyard was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating rage that made his pulse slow to a steady, rhythmic thrum. Malcolm Kerr thought he had found a weakness. He thought he had found a line to drag the Beast of Blackthorn into a slaughterhouse.
But as the first snow began to drift down through the branches, dusting his shoulders in white, Sebastian felt a dangerous, dark smile touch his lips.
Kerr did not understand the nature of the trap he had sprung.
He did not understand that by taking Alba, he had not found a way to make Sebastian break.
He had simply given him a reason to destroy everything in his path.
If I lose ye, Sebastian thought, his gaze piercing through the dark tree line toward the high, jagged peak of the Weeping Stone, there willnae be a corner of the Highlands I willnae burn to ash.