Page 99 of Blood & Claw

“NIALL ALWAYS FEARED me. I was younger, but growing up, I was the better fighter, more popular with the warriors.” Dale—no, Darach—grimaced then. “The favorite. Our father was the overking’s cousin. The overking died in the North fighting the Shee.” A flicker of something Ailsa couldn’t quite place crossed his face at these words. “He had no heirs … and so, at only eighteen winters, Niall took the throne.”

“But he feared you’d try and steal it from him?” She was still reeling after discovering who he really was, but listening to this tale of treachery distracted her.

“He did.” Darach’s voice hardened, his eyes a deep amber in the light of the flickering flames between them. “He sent his personal guard to kill me. It was supposed to look like an accident. A drunken brawl in an ale-hall. I barely escaped with my life … and Niall has hunted me ever since.”

He went unnaturally still then, the skin pulling tight across the bones of his face in a way she’d never seen anyone’s do before.

Ailsa’s spine stiffened, and her fingertips tingled as she quashed the urge to reach for the blade that lay on the ground beside her.

There was no doubt that he hated his brother—and had good reason to—yet there was an undercurrent of something else that put her on edge.

She marked the coiled energy in him; the tension in his shoulders, and the twitch in his cheek. The way his eyes changed in the firelight.

Be careful, a voice warned softly. There’s something wrong with him.

Aye … but there was with her too.

The memory of how much she’d loved fighting that assassin was still too raw for her to deny it.

“I’ve been waiting,” he ground out. “The day I left Braewall bloodied and bruised, I swore I’d be back. That I’d bring him down. And I will.”

The hoarse edge to his voice had Ailsa believing him.

Silence fell then. It was eerily quiet here on the lonely knoll, surrounded by creeping mist. The night felt watchful. It just added to her uneasiness.

Darach pulled the grouse from the embers and placed the bird on a flat rock to cool. He muttered an oath under his breath then and stared into the fire with a haunted expression. The tendons on his neck stood out, as if he were fighting an invisible enemy.

“Is this about revenge or ambition?” she asked cautiously.

Darach’s chin kicked up, and a bitter smile twisted his mouth. “Both.”

Ailsa stared hard at him. “That’s not all of it though,” she said, marking the way his hands clenched then. His fingers dug into his knees so hard the knuckles blanched. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

A long pause followed while Darach cut his gaze to the glowing fire. The anger leached from his face then, his expression growing bleak.

Ailsa’s pulse quickened. Surely, whatever he was hiding couldn’t be that bad?

“I have no army, no allies,” he began finally. “The only way I could take Niall on was if I made myself stronger. Invincible.” His voice tightened then. “I’d heard of the tattooist of Braewall … the woman who’d once been a sacrificer … and whispers of the special tattoos she inked by night. I wanted to hire her, but I couldn’t risk returning to the fort then … so, I found another, a tattooist in Troon.” His face twisted. “I paid him well to give me an ‘enhanced’ tattoo, one that would make me formidable in battle. And he promised he would.”

Ailsa shifted uneasily. She hadn’t expected his story to take this turn.

Darach wasn’t enjoying telling it either. He now looked as if he were about to have a rotten tooth extracted and just wanted to get it over with. “The bonehead bungled it … I realized something was amiss just days afterward. Aye, I’m stronger and faster than before, but something is different. Wrong. The beast he inked upon my skin lives within me now.” A faint gleam of sweat coated his forehead as he concluded. “And it’s always trying to get free.”

A hush fell between them then. The grouse sat congealing. Untouched.

It’s always trying to get free.

She shouldn’t have understood how that felt—yet she did.

Aye, they both had beasts inside them.

Shoving the chilling thought aside, Ailsa cleared her throat. “Show me the tattoo.” Her command was low yet firm.

His jaw clenched. “I don’t think—”