Hall shook his head, an almost imperceptible movement, his eyes sharp and emotionless, like those of a hawk homed in on his prey. “It was never my life I feared for, soldier. Release the woman. I give no more warnings.”
“You think I fear yer sword? With this one as my collateral?” Hamish laughed, the cold sound sending shivers down Brie’s back. “Perhaps you canna see from up upon yer great horse what fate can so easily, so quickly befall the woman.”
With a hand wrapped in her hair, Hamish jerked Brie’s head back, stretching her neck and forcing her eyes up to the gray, overcast sky. The blade at her throat moved in a delicate arc of motion, leaving in its wake a necklace of burning pain. Not deep enough to do real damage, but inflicting a sting sharp enough to elicit an unconscious gasp.
Across the campsite, Hall lifted his sword toward the heavens and threw back his head, roaring his fury in a deafening cry that reverberated in Brie’s ears.
Thunder rumbled overhead, and the ground shifted and buckled as if it trembled before the fury of some angry god’s wrath. Lightning crackled across the sky in a pattern such as Brie had never seen.
Once, twice, the lightning flashed from one side of the sky across to the other before one large, jagged bolt arced down like a massive, fiery spear toward the very spot where she and the man who held her stood.
The air around her crackled and the hair on her body stood on end. Next to her, Hamish screamed and released his hold on her. Freed from his hands, Brie flung herself away from him to land flat on her face, her arms covering her head. Instinctively, she curled her body to present the smallest target.
Lightning always goes for the trees,her father had warned her as a child. And here she was, right in the blighted middle of a forest.
She had no time to think or plan, only to cower. As quickly as it had begun, it was over. The stench of burning flesh was sharp and acrid, stinging its way into her nostrils, but she kept her head down and covered, refusing to look up. Silence hung in the little glen until Hall shattered it.
“Bridget!”
His hands fastened on her arms and he lifted her to her feet, crushing her against his chest.
“What happened?” She could hardly force the words past her lips. The storm had come out of nowhere, more potent than any she’d ever experienced.
“Are you unharmed?” he whispered, his breath warm against her forehead. “Have they injured you?”
“They injured nothing except my pride,” she answered honestly. She had been careless, and being captured had been her punishment for that carelessness.
She suspected hers hadn’t been the only punishment meted out in this glen. It was as if the gods themselves had seen to Hamish’s punishment. Though Hall’s body blocked her view, she heard no sounds coming from where Torquil’s guardsman had stood only moments before.
She could see his headless companion, though.
“Do you always take their heads in battle?” It had been much the same scene before.
“If I can,” he acknowledged, his heart pounding like a battle drum beneath her ear. “Ensures I only have to battle them once.”
Hall drew back from her, his big hands rising to caress either side of her face, his thumbs gently stroking her cheeks as he stared into her eyes.
“What have they done to you?”
When he spoke, his warm breath tickled the loose hair around her face, distracting her from any thoughts other than of being so close to him.
His finger trailed over her forehead and down her cheek. His arms held her so protectively, his gaze focused so intensely, capturing her own, she could do nothing but breathe in the essence of the man. He filled her senses to the exclusion of everything else.
The tingle of expectation rippled through her body and she leaned in toward him without conscious thought of movement, anticipating his lips once more closing over hers.
He didn’t disappoint.
His kiss was exactly as she remembered, exactly as she’d re-created it in her dreams a thousand times. Warm, strong, demanding.
If the gods chose to freeze time at this moment, she could happily spend eternity as she was right now, ensconced in Hall’s embrace, his lips fixed upon her own.
She closed her eyes, melting into the sensual haze of the moment, and almost missed his whisper when he placed his hands on her upper arms and pulled back from her.
“Armored with her people’s symbols of protection and destiny.”
Her eyes flew open when he shook her, shattering into a million pieces the wonderful, fluffy haze that had cocooned her only seconds before.
“I should have realized what the Faerie was telling me. It wasn’t these men at all. You did this to yourself. You marked up your face in this manner, didn’t you?”
