Please.
She turned her gaze on her sister’s face once more. The last person of her blood she would see. Rhian’s face twisted with distress and her eyes burned with agony.
Nay. Saerla could not bear to look at Rhian as she died. She instead sent her gaze off far. Beneath the gray clouds, over the loch and the green turf to the distant rise.
She would will herself there as she died. She would dwell as a spirit among the stones. She would spend eternity in this place she loved.
Welcome me.
On the far-distant rise above the glen, the clouds parted.
The light broke through. In a spear of brilliance, it found Saerla’s eyes, traveled to her carrying a Vision.
She had no defense against the power of its coming and little warning. The images possessed her, and she collapsed in Rory’s arms.
Rhian screamed. The scream traveled with Saerla into the Vision, where she found herself hovering above a battlefield.
I must be dead,she thought even as she soared above the noise, the blood, the figures struggling together.Rory must have employed his knife to slit my throat.But she had felt no pain.
She felt none now while soaring. She did not bleed. She had no flesh and existed only in the Vision.
What the light wanted her to see.
A battle it was, aye, one fought here in the glen. It took Saerla only an instant to get her bearings and see the truth in the faces, in the tartans below her. The MacBeiths and the MacLeods fighting here on the MacLeod side of the loch.
Moira must have attacked, something she did but rarely.
Saerla Saw her then, at the head of a surging tide of MacBeith warriors. Her face ran with sweat and blood, the scar on her cheek standing out like a brand. Her blue eyes looked fierce. Determined.
At her shoulder, Farlan fought, long brown hair flying, muscles bunching as he swung his great sword. Blood splashed one arm. His or that of an opponent?
Alasdair—she knew very well Alasdair should not be fighting at all, given the last wound he had taken. Yet she Saw him now,there in the forefront of the fray, roaring as he battled through a sea of MacLeod men.
Alasdair turned to face a warrior whose hair shone like the wing of a blackbird.
She wanted to holler then. She wanted to scream. She wanted to place herself between the two of them, because at that moment she knew with a great tearing of her heart that she could not bear for harm to befall either of them.
She could not intervene. She was no more than a spirit, a receptor of a Vision she did not want to see.
Amid the horror, the blood, and the clamor of the battle—one that had not happened yet but surely would if her sister swore vengeance for her death—she spiraled higher, desperate to escape. Unable to flee. The two men fought, great, sweeping, vicious blows from swords that screeched together as if wailing their own anger and grief.
Alasdair had already lost his shield. While Saerla watched, he knocked Rory’s from his hand with a great, crashing, double-handed blow and came for the MacLeod chief’s head.
Rory too gripped the hilt of his sword with both hands and set himself, green eyes glowing and feral as those of a wolf. He met Alasdair’s mighty blow, lost his footing on the bloodied grass, and almost went down. Alasdair struck again, aimed high, and very nearly took off his head.
Alasdair bellowed something—Saerla could not tell what for the surrounding noise. He hollered, rushed in, all might and power—
And took a blow from Rory’s blade right above the heart.
It was a sure blow. Leather armor sliced open, along with the flesh beneath. Alasdair went down like a felled stirk even as a cry no one could hear tore from Saerla.
That cry came echoed an instant later, and Moira, seeing Alasdair fall, rushed forward to face Rory in turn. Saerla could see the agony in Farlan’s face as he failed to catch her in time.
Farlan knew how well Rory could fight.
Moira still had her shield. She rushed Rory from behind it, battering him and making a blur of her sword, striving to get in against him with the blade. The contest was sharp, short, and brief. For it was Rory who darted his blade in behind the pressing shield.
And ran Moira through.
