Page 32 of Her Highland Destiny

Fergus turned to Cassandra, his gaze pleading.

Cassandra lifted her head. “Nay.”

The king's face colored. “Convince her.”

“Please,” Fergus hissed. “She has been a victim of this too. It isna right-”

“Nay,” Cassandra repeated again, louder this time and with more defiance.

“Convince her or I will kill yer son,” the king bellowed.

Fergus' pleading gaze melted to desperation, the pain in his eyes visceral enough to plunge into the most tender place in her heart. “Cassandra,” he said in a strained voice.

She turned her face away from him, unable to witness his agony as she gave her final answer. “Nay.”

Fergus stared at Cassandra in disbelief. She had condemned his son to death. Geordie. The lad he had never met, never held in his arms. The boy whose name he had only just learned minutes before.

Cassandra’s face remained fixed toward the king, as if she could not bear to look at him. Indeed, how could she with what she had just done?

“Dinna do this.” Fergus stepped toward her and grabbed her arm. The energy of the stone crackled through her and raced into his body. The thoughts and emotions of others whirled around him with Cassandra's thoughts rising above them all.

Look at her.

He knew who Cassandra meant. He put his attention to his wife, the woman he had once loved for her beauty and the fresh smell of rain about her. The woman he realized he no longer felt anything for.

Not that it meant she ought to die.

Allisandre struggled against her captors. Even in her terror, her face remained youthful and supple, her skin without the slightest wrinkle. She looked exactly as she had the day he’d met her twelve years ago. Beautiful. Perfect.

Truly look at her.

Fergus fixed his gaze harder. Her image flickered, briefly like the wavering heat of a flame. The memory of her smell locked in his brain, the delicate scent flooded with the horrors of his nightmare. It wasn’t an essence of something fresh upon her all those years - it was magic.

Beyond her block.

Aye, Allisandre’s secrets. The ones she insisted all women had, her smile cold with warning when she’d said it. It had worked when he was young and infatuated, his experience untried and without the aid of the stone. He drew deep from the stone and glared at the woman struggling against her captors.

Except she was no longer there. Gone was the woman of unnatural timeless beauty and in her place was an old woman with frizzing gray hair and breasts that sagged against her soft belly.

He staggered back, as did the others, all horrified by her dropped mask.

“Do not touch her,” Allisandre shrieked. Her hand shot up and Fergus flew into the air, torn from Cassandra’s grasp.

“Ye love me, remember?” She grinned at him with yellowed teeth.

Fergus hung aloft only a second more before Allisandre whipped her hand to the right and sent him soaring across the room. His body crashed hard into the stone wall. His chain mail absorbed none of the impact and instead shoved it painfully against his body. The force holding him slipped away and he dropped several feet to the floor below. Agony exploded at his left side and he curled around it, hissing out his discomfort.

“Allisandre,” he ground out.

Cassandra raced toward Allisandre at an unnaturally fast pace, but Allisandre cupped her palms toward Cassandra and she stopped in place, struggling against an unseen force. Magic was thick in the air, cloying where it lodged in the back of Fergus’ throat.

A hearty laugh came from the front of the room. The king clapped his hand upon his thigh, the way he might do for a troubadour’s performance. “Ye were right, Lachina. He dinna ever suspect ye.”

The old woman smirked at the king. “He canna track people who dinna exist.”

Fergus’ mind reeled. The thoughts and emotions of the room were murky to him, a blur throbbing in time with the ache in his skull. What in God’s teeth were they talking about?

The king grinned, his eyes lit with victory. “Guards, collect the girl and bring her to me. She has something I want.”