Saerla did notweep once Rory left the chamber. Not after those first few tears, the ones she barely knew she shed. For many long minutes she huddled there on the floor and listened to her body, what it told her clearly.
She was no longer a maid. She had given that to him. She had done so not out of an attempt to render him vulnerable, out of obligation, or by force. If she were honest with herself, she must admit that.
She had wanted him. There, for those moments lying beneath him, receiving his touch, kissing him, tasting him, feeling his heartbeat, she’d wanted exactly what they had shared.
Now he’d been inside her—inside her where no one else had been—and it had not hurt, no. All the hurt had come after.
Despite that, despite the unexpected gentleness of his touch and the way he’d made her feel, she was wounded to the heart. As if the blade of the knife she turned on him had sunk deep into her own breast.
What would he do? He’d been angry.Angry. He was a dangerous man at the best of times, and such anger could push him to any number of terrible deeds. He might move to attack MacBeith straight away. He might haul her out of this chamber and slaughter her in retaliation.
After a long time, when her legs grew cramped and the cold air from the window crept into her bones, she got up and crawled back into her gown. She felt better dressed but still vulnerable. Going to the basin, she tried to take stock of herself.
Hair in a tangle. His fingers had been there. Stroking. Burrowing. Lips swollen. He had crushed them beneath his. He had sucked on them one after the other. Body tingling in places previously untouched. She could still feel him inside her. The thrill and the splendor of it, his strength becoming hers as he became hers. Light and darkness coming together in something so powerful it defied description.
He would never touch her so again. Not even if she wanted him to. But she’d known that. Known it the instant she put the blade to his skin.
She crossed to the window and gazed out, unseeing. Ever since she’d been small, six or so, she’d lived in the company of Visions. Dreams. Visitations. She’d learned to accept their manifestation, glean the wisdom they brought. Follow where they led.
Now that wisdom had betrayed her, she’d acted in belief. Perhaps even against her instincts.
Because at that moment—at the moment when Rory MacLeod lay in her arms, closer to her than anyone had ever been—she had not wanted to kill him.
What if she’d had it all wrong? What if Rory wasn’t meant to die at her hand?
What if the light, her constant companion, had deserted her?
Chapter Thirty-Three
No one camenear Saerla’s prison that morning. She had hoped—prayed—Rhian might arrive. She’d debated what she might say to her sister, who was so wise.
Would she confess all? Throw herself upon Rhian and confide that her body no longer felt completely her own? That, having shared it with Rory, she could still feel his touch? That—worst of all—she longed for him to touch her again?
But Rhian did not come. No one did for the longest time. Saerla paced the chamber from the door to the window and back again, and struggled to think.
He had taken the knife. She still had the wee sgian dubh, not that—not that she could ever attempt anything like what she had done, ever again.
Around noon, so she figured, a rattle at the door heralded the arrival of a guard carrying a meal on a wooden tray. He departed before Saerla could finish saying, “I wish to see my sister. The healer—”
Her only answer came in the form of the barred door.
She did not want to eat. She felt far too ill. She returned to her pacing and her questioning until the light began to fade, and, exhausted, she took to the bed.
Not a good idea. When she curled up tight with her arms wrapped around her body and her cheek against the bolster, she could smell him.
His black head with the hair like silk had touched just here. His forearm here beside her when he’d looked down at her, green eyes gleaming, just before he breached her. Entered her. Asking. Asking a question.
Please.
Which of them had uttered that word? Her need had been just as bright as his.
It had not been her heart that tripped her up so much as her desire. She had not counted on that, had not expected it. She’d thought herself far more a Seer than a woman.
Rory MacLeod had proven her a woman after all.
Perhaps, she thought lying with her cheek on the bolster and breathing in the scent of him, he brought out the woman in her precisely because he was so much a man.
A beautiful man. Because he was—he was. The sharp angles of his face. The sculpted expanse of muscled chest. The broad, lithe shoulders. Those rough, calloused hands that were so gentle with her. The strong column of his throat—
