MacFaris was awfully close to her now.
Aaron’s stomach dropped. He lunged forward to grab MacFaris from behind, but it was too late. The old bastard had already slammed into the chair, sending it toppling sideways.
Edith crashed onto the stone floor, her hands still bound. The impact tore a muffled cry from her throat. Aaron reached for her, taking off her blindfold.
MacFaris was standing over them. His eyes flashed with menace as he struck downward, but Aaron moved fast, catching his hand just as the tip of his blade sliced through Edith’s upper arm. Blood bloomed across the green fabric of her sleeve.
For a moment, all Aaron could see was red. His chest burned with a fury so absolute it eclipsed every instinct he had spent his entire life cultivating.
A sickening crack echoed through the study, and MacFaris screamed, the knife dropping from his broken fingers.
Aaron struck him once across the face. Then, he did it again until the older man staggered backward, barely able to keep his footing.
The fight, if it could even be called that, lasted mere seconds.
Aaron caught MacFaris by the neck, slamming him into the stone wall with enough force to shake the room. Still, it was not enough. He drew his dirk and drove it into the man’s heart.
MacFaris’s body slumped to the floor, and Aaron stood motionless for a heartbeat, his chest heaving as his fury slowly gave way to something else.
Edith.
He returned to her, dropping onto his knees beside her.
“Edith.” His voice broke as he cradled her face, his heart thumping hard with an emotion he could hardly bother to hold back.
He picked up MacFaris’s knife and used it to cut her gag, then loosened the ropes around her wrists, his hands trembling despite every effort to steady them.
“Aaron…” Edith whispered, reaching up with her bleeding arm to touch his face. “Ye came.”
“Aye,” he said, the word leaving him with the fierce, desperate honesty he had spent weeks trying to suppress. “I will never leave ye again.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Edith’s breath caught.
Tears spilled freely down her face as the shock of everything finally crashed over her. Her entire body trembled against Aaron, each breath coming in small, broken gasps that could not seem to steady.
“Edith,” Aaron whispered as he gathered her closer. “I have ye.”
His hand slipped gently through her tangled auburn hair, smoothing it back from her face as though the simple gesture might quell the tremors in her limbs.
“I am here,” he murmured against her temple. “Ye are safe now.”
For a long while, neither of them spoke. Aaron simply held her, feeling each uneven breath she drew until she settled.
MacFaris was dead. She was alive. And that was all that mattered.
“Aaron.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Aye?”
“Forgive me.”
Aaron’s hand stilled in her hair. He drew back just enough to look at her, confusion creasing his brow. “Forgive ye?”
“Me carelessness has caused ye much trouble.”
“Nay, Edith?—”
