The idea coiled through him, cold and suffocating. His mind drifted to something darker, more sinister. Someone had betrayed them from within.
The noise of the battle warped, stretched, and then it was gone. He stood in a field of heather, the wind soft against his face. His fingers brushed over the tops of tall grasses and wildflowers, the quiet so complete it rang in his ears. The day his father had died. Was that a sign? To think of his father’s death now? A hollow thought nudged at the edges of his brain.
There was a good chance that Lachlan was dead already. And perhaps that field of heather was his Heaven. But if that were true, why then did the battle keep dragging him back to painful life? Was this eternal judgment?
Mayhap, this was a test.
Lachlan’s brow tightened, even in his haze. Nay. He had done what was required of him. What any warrior sworn to his clan must do. Steel for steel. Life for land. A battle for freedom was not murder, but a necessary brutality.
His ruminations slipped, unraveling as a voice broke through the darkness. Soft. Female. Close. The sound drifted, just out of reach. An apparition or maybe an angel. Perhaps this was Heaven after all.
Concentrating, Lacklan forced his eyes open. A face hovered over him, blurred at first, then sharpening into something far more real than any vision. Delicate, aye, but not fragile. There was strength in the line of her jaw, in the steady set of her mouth. And her eyes… Blue like the loch that surrounded his home. Behind them, a spirit that was just as cutting as the rocks hidden underneath that dark water. They held him there, pinned more surely than any blade.
She was not an angel, but he had the absurd desire to know her, except keeping his eyes open was proving a feat he wasn’t certain he could manage.
“Wake up, ye.” Her command cut through the haze.
Once more, Lachlan forced his eyes open, her beautiful, yet stern face coming into focus as she put two fingers to his eyelids and lifted them open.
“Can ye hear me? I want ye to bite down on this,” she said, holding a strip of leather near his mouth. “Unless ye fancy biting off your tongue.”
Well that settled it, he was not in Heaven. Not quite yet. And whatever came next would be far closer to Hell.
Memory slammed back into him, the fall, the white-hot agony, and his gaze dropped just enough to see the spear still lodged deep in his thigh. A blood-soaked bandage had been wrapped tightly above it, cutting him off from feeling the pain fully. For now. A curse rumbled low in his chest.
“Angel,” he muttered, voice rough as gravel. He dragged his gaze from his wound to her face. “I’m awake. Do what ye must.”
“Open,” she said, and thrust a leather strap between his teeth, the strapping pressing his tongue down. The taste of it was dry and bitter, and he forced himself not to gag. “Bite.”
He obeyed without question, sweat beading on his brow. While he might have admonished a lesser man for telling him what to do, she did not seem the sort to take any argument from anyone.
“Good,” she said, already moving her hands toward his leg. “Now, dinna move.”
As if he could. As if he would. Even now, half-broken and bleeding out his life’s force, Lachlan found himself watching her, mesmerized. No one failed to fear him. And yet… she didn’t. That alone was enough to keep him still.
Pressure clamped down around his thigh. Through the blur, he caught sight of her hands, quick and precise, as she bound more tight strips of cloth above the wound, around the ones his men had applied on the battlefield, pulling hard enough on the knots to make his vision spark. He groaned around the strap of leather in his mouth, glad for the strip to bite down on.
“Hold him.” The words were barely spoken before Ewan and Callum moved in. He knew their weight before it hit him, one bracing his shoulders, where the arrow had been removed, the other pinning his legs by his calves, their grips unyielded. Brothers in battle, and now his jailers.
Lachlan tensed, every instinct in him rising up in warning.
“Dinna—” he started to say, the sound muffled by the leather, and?—
Too late.
The first pull tore through him. White-hot. Blinding.
Lachlan’s back arched off the table, the leather strap forgotten as a raw and savage bellow ripped from his throat. The kind of roar that came from bone and blood and fury.
More hands now, as the woman issued brisk orders. Grips tightened, forcing him down as the spear shifted, wood grinding bone. A sickened crack. A wet, sucking sound as it came free. The world fractured.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing but pain. No thought. No breath. No soul left in him at all. Then it crashed back. Air tore into his lungs, the scent of blood heavy, and rage followed close behind.
If Lachlan hadn’t already killed the man who had done this, he would get up off this table, march back to the battlefield, and murder the bastard all over again. But he would make it a slow, excruciating death. Just as soon as he…
“Ye will no’ die,” Robert the Bruce commanded as Lachlan lay on the table, throat raw, body savaged.
Lachlan’s head rolled to the side, just enough to see the Bruce where he stood, his presence solid as the ground beneath them.
