Page 1 of Outlaw Ever After

Prologue

“The first brush is a blessing made with veils betwixt us thin.”

–A Song of Samhain Nights

Soul Mass. Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, second of November. Anno Domini, 1533.

“Get the bairns to their chambers,” demanded Seamus Grant. Commotion spiraled within Urquhart’s fortified walls. Horses grunted. Weaponry jingled. “The murderer is being brought in.”

Peigi Grant froze at her brother’s words as she disembarked the caravan into the chaos of the yard. Seamus scooped her up and whisked her to the door as he thrust it open. Her mother hurried inside, dragging her wee sister, Aileana, all of them still in their wedding finery.

“Who’s the murderer?” Peigi whispered, clinging to Seamus’s neck. The tang of blood upon his riding leathers was strong. He, so brave a squire for his four and ten years. “The MacDonald?”

The MacDonalds were always reaving their cattle.

“Nay this time. The Comyn heir,” Seamus spat, and Peigi swore she saw her brother coming of age before her eyes. “Go upstairs with Aileana and nay come down.” He deposited her beside their mother, who dabbed a kerchief on her eyes.

Laird Rubus Grant was jostled through the door, lifeless upon a litter.

“Come, sister.” Aileana tugged on her, but Peigi couldn’t move.

One moment they’d been dancing around a bonfire on that bonny isle with Michaelmas daisies woven in crowns, celebrating her aunt’s elopement to Richard MacGregor. The next moment, a mighty laird atop a horse was shouting, Ye were told to leave these lands…

There’d been arguments.

Blades had been drawn.

Her father’s men and MacGregor’s men had met the threat. Fury had erupted. Seamus had ferried the women and bairns into a cottage her aunt had thought to make her home. But her pup Mildred had run away and Peigi had chased her across the river, through the woods…

She shouldn’t have been spying. She couldn’t unsee—

She pinched her wee eyes closed now.

What kind of monster was this “Comyn heir” on the lips of these men? The dark-haired man who’d brandished that signet ring of the rose who’d wounded her father? A new enemy? She gripped Seamus’s surcoat as he turned to leave.

“He must be a-a monster,” she whimpered. Her brother tried to shrug her off, urgency tugging him in other directions. “Surely he’ll come for us, too.”

Seamus softened, squatted, and brushed the hair from her face, scooting her aside to make way for soldiers hastening into the hall and the head woman running for medicinals.

“Fear nay, sweet Pegs,” he lamented—speaking in deeper tones of a man without yet the rich resonance that came with filling into his breadth. “Ye’re safe.”

“Seamus!” boomed their sire’s first-in-command. Seamus snapped upright. “Send for the priest in Drumnadrochit! These Hallowtide winds spin their magic weel tonight.”

Ashen-faced, Seamus bolted to the yard and threw himself onto the saddle of his destrier, still lathered in sweat from their race home. Servants and soldiers alike crossed themselves.

Priests. Peigi shivered. They were only summoned when someone’s soul was departing. Today was Soul Mass…

Her sire wasn’t just injured. Rubus Grant wasn’t going to survive this time.

A sob tore from their mother’s throat. Peigi and her sister’s nursemaid hurried them upstairs and shut them in their chamber. Aileana, two years younger, snatched Peigi’s hand and pulled her behind the tapestry that blanketed the draft through the shutters, where they huddled and wrapped their arms about each other.

“Sing a song,” Aileana whispered. “‘Samhain Nights’? ’Tis my favorite.”

“Sing we now to fae folk, sing we now to Sidh,” Peigi began the song they’d danced to at the celebration, the tune popular at Allhallowtide. “The mantle ’twixt our world and yours is open for to see.”

The breeze rattled the shutters. More commotion filled the yard. Cursing rose upon the din. “It’s him! That Comyn bastard! Let him hang…”

Were they bringing the prisoner in? The murderer who was thrusting Seamus into the lairdship before he’d fully ripened into a man?