Page 35 of Outlaw Ever After

Sing we now to fae folk, sing we now to Sidh.

The mantle ’twixt our world and yours is open for to see…”

His ear pricked toward the sound as he neared them. Despite his tumult, he smiled. Some things never changed. These kin still sang the old pagan lovers’ song of star-crossed souls.

“A bonny song ye sing,” he called, slowing.

“Our thanks, sir!” the lassies chimed, watching him curiously.

He eyed the oat stalks. “Are one of ye to marry?”

“Nay us. The lady of the castle, of course.”

Of course , he harrumphed, as if I should have known—

“A Grant though, she is,” they added, and he took in their task more closely. Oat stalks.

His jaw tightened. The Grants could rot. Was the crowd upon the castle grounds not here for Allhallowtide but instead for her wedding? What was with the Grants, using Comyn lands to stage their marital spectacles?

The half-timbered smithy shop was operating in full force, hammering. Was it still manned by Alpin, the wiry smithy with the coarse whiskers? Or had he passed on?

The huts were smaller than he’d remembered, but it had been a lifetime ago that he’d been here.

He left the hamlet behind, cutting into the woods to take a path across Allt A’ Bhacain’s gurgling waters. Alongside the fairy bridge—made of staggered rocks transecting the current. After all these years, the river, fringed with cattails, or wood nymphs hiding from Pan , his mither had always said, still cut a bubbling path through these woods.

But no amount of steeling himself staved off the flood of memories when he exited the trees, crossed the harvested hayfield, and rode past a row of olden standing stones, refusing to look at the patterns of lichen adorning them that he’d once traced with wee fingers.

Memories rattled their cages for release as the hooves pounded beneath him. He’d handle his business with his enemy swiftly. He’d drag Seamus to court with him and see him stripped publicly of these lands. Seamus’s arrears had been overlooked as monarchs died and were born, and as regencies had been won and lost.

Leave it to the orphaned layman, who’d worked his way through King’s College Law by swinging a war scythe, to discover the discrepancy, much to the Archbishop and the Earl of Arran’s gratitude.

The grounds were abuzz. Grant guardsmen nodded to him, taking note of his weapons. Unsuspecting eejits letting the wolf into the chicken coop.

Across the manicured castle lawns, vendors hawked their wares from the backs of their carts. Celebrants ogled the goods, tourney-goers opened their purses, bonfires crackled, around which clans had erected encampments. Folk gathered around it, singing, heads sloshing with drink.

Pennants—Grant pennants, his lip curled—snapped upon the breeze above the daises for the Hallowtide contests that always ushered in Yule. The gallery was still adorned with gargoyles, blackened by the baptism of Scottish rain, where he’d oft watched rivulets roll down the monsters’ teeth. He halted Faunus at the steps leading to the courtyard. Remembered that skull upon the pike right there , on that left newel, immortalized in the etching that had declared a lad of twelve an outlaw. At least no pikes or brackets were affixed there now.

“What be yer business?” a guard asked. “The bride tourney?”

Bride tourney? He thought back to the lasses in the hamlet, preparing wedding games. Withdrawing his summons bearing the seal of the Archbishop of St. Andrew, he stopped.

“I seek audience with Seamus Grant, if the laird is in residence.”

They pointed him toward the stable and he clicked his tongue to Faunus, nudging him into a walk when a dutiful groom in flaxen trousers and tunic raced out of the gate to assist. Dipping into a perfunctory bow, the boy took the reins, gazing wide-eyed at his horse’s shimmery coat and deep black eyes.

“Oh, mi laird, he’s a handsome beast,” he said reverently, stroking Faunus’s cheek.

“Ye’ll spoil him and make him arrogant,” Alexander teased.

The child snapped to attention and bowed. “Thomas Comyn at yer service.”

Comyn…

“Are ye here for the bride prize?” the lad asked. “It’s nearly filled up already.”

Bride prize? This was the third he’d heard of a wedding. Was he about to interrupt some ceremony? He dismounted, his arsenal of weapons and satchel creaking.

Not his problem. The more uncomfortable he made Seamus, the more he’d enjoy this. Yet his curiosity was piqued “What bride prize?”