Page 131 of Enchantment of a Highlander

Instead the brush of lush grass gave way to the crunch of something dead.

An acrid scent pricked her nose.

Not something dead.

Something burned.

Her gaze shot to her feet where her heels bounced uselessly against charred earth.

Everything tilted and spun around her, flying in a dizzying whirl of a thought too overwhelming to truly comprehend.

Neat piles of dry wood had been placed upon the circles of burnt earth in front of her. From each mound rose a massive, jutting wooden pole.

Fear squeezed her throat, filling it until she could no longer breathe.

They were going to burn her.

Like they’d burned Fiona.

Her body would sizzle like roasting meat and blacken to char before disintegrating.

Pieces of her would float away in wispy fragments of ash, which would sift into the grass and melt into the ocean, and all of her would no longer be.

She would be dead.

Burned.

Her chest rose and fell, frantic and fast with panicked breath.

She did not want to die.

Not like this.

Not without having been held by Alec one last time, kissing him one last time, embracing his beautiful life at Duart one last time.

He’d given her all the happiness in the world and she’d shoved it away for fear of seeing him hurt. She should have relished all of it and now it was too late.

Everything in her screamed to fight and insisted if only she struggled a little harder, all would not be lost.

She screamed and writhed and wriggled until the warmth of dripping blood ran down her wrists and she had no more breath in her body.

“This one struggles too damn much,” one of the two men muttered with cold resentment.

“She isna weak like the others were,” came the other’s reply.

And then they stopped.

Strong arms gripped her shoulders and smacked her up against something hard. Her skull cracked back against it and white spots bloomed and faded in her vision.

It was all the time they needed. Her hands were wrenched painfully behind her back, around the rough surface of a tree not shorn of its scraping bark, and bound once more with the jagged rope.

Their efforts had been overzealous and left her binding so tight her fingers tingled with the prick of a thousand needles.

She closed her eyes and breathed deep the last few fragile breaths of air before the true pain could begin.

Never before had she noticed the wet, fresh scent of dew in the air, nor had she noticed the way even cold air felt sweet and invigorating against the heat of her cheeks.

Grass rustled and waves crashed along a shore so close she could taste the brininess of it on the wind.