Page 132 of Outlaw Ever After

He searched her desperate eyes and ordered the soldiers to disperse.

It was then, as Caleb Comyn’s kin swarmed around her and Jossy’s hands immediately pressed into the stab wound and Peigi cupped his face with her bloodied hands trying to revive him, that she saw an army. MacLeod tartan. MacDonald tartan.

“Take MacGregor to the undercroft.” Why was her brother ordering MacLeod to detain MacGregor?

She swiped at her tears with the back of her sleeve as his words came back to her. He knew. He knew Caleb was innocent.

A litter was jostled through the crowd, and Caleb was heaved onto it. They hoisted him up and she pushed to her feet to follow when she heard her brother say softly to someone, “Fetch the deacon at Duthil. These Hallowtide winds spin their magic weel tonight.”

The wind was blowing, she realized. She just couldn’t feel it. The past was repeating itself—

“Release him,” came a clear, articulate voice. All eyes turned to a man plodding to a halt. “I saw ye at Court, Seamus. Why do ye have a celebration and fail to invite me?”

…

End of Allhallowtide. The Melee.

A hand jostled Peigi. She shrugged it off and tightened her ringed hand laced with Caleb’s on his chest, wrapped in Comyn plaid.

But his form lay lifeless. Curled against his bare torso, her hands were dry and cracking from washing him and preparing him for his next journey. Joslyn and Aileana had burned shut his knife wound, leaving a charred, crusted welt, stopping the bleeding, but there’d been no change in his constitution. Compline bells had tolled from Duthil a while ago, summoning the world to bed. Soul Mass was nearly over and if the fates could be trusted to this point, then he had little time left in his mortal flesh.

The deacon’s chanting was incessant, and the incense was maddening, filling her nose with remembrances of her mother doing this same thing. It irritated her morning sickness. Eyes so sore, the well had run dry.

The hand jostled her again.

“Leave me be,” she muttered, her voice raw from screaming.

Her ear rested against Caleb’s chest, thumping weakly compared to how hale it had always thumped before.

“Sister,” said Seamus, and her anger finally surged to the surface.

She bolted upright. “How could ye? How could ye betray me so? How could ye keep that missive from me?” She pushed him away. “He’d be alive today if ye’d nay conspired with tha-that snake and sabotaged me!” She nudged him again, though he barely budged beneath her force.

Seamus gripped her. His face contorted sympathetically.

A fresh wave of distress surged through her as her brother’s protective arms came around her when she reached up, grappling him. He scooped her into a warm embrace.

“Kendrew just gave me that missive. I nay kenned he found it until a couple days ago. Lass, ye have to ken that whilst I was angered these years, I never intended to hang him. Ye love him?”

“I love him so,” she whispered. “Seamus. I am to have his babe. Ye are to be an uncle.”

Seamus pulled back, eyes widening. “Ye didna miscarry?”

She shook her head, wiping her sleeve across her eyes as he braced her arms. His face fell. Then he dragged her into his hold again, clenching her.

“I canna marry another. My heart belongs to him. It has since I first set him free.”

“Wheesht,” he crooned, like he’d once done when she and Aileana were wee and he still a gentle boy. “I’m sorry,” he croaked, rocked her gently. “Christ, lass, I’m in a quandary.”

She pulled up. “Why?”

His face looked haggard. “I canna sever this bride contract. I tried, but Bale, he…”

“Bale… ” she gasped. The audacity of anyone mentioning that name—if what she and Caleb had reasoned tonight was true.

“He saw me at Court discussing with Tormund and James who Reaper really was. He followed me here. He demanded I release his brother—”

“And ye did so?”