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Duncan gave a sharp nod and disappeared into the shadows, returning a moment later dragging a second captive, a notorious outlaw who had been captured days earlier after slaughtering innocent villagers during a border raid. The man looked broken, his clothes caked in dungeon slime, trembling violently under the weight of his chains.

The arrogant spy on the floor stopped sneering. His eyes flicked to the outlaw then slowly drifted up to Caelan’s face.

Caelan reached down to his hip. With a slow, deliberate motion, he drew his broadsword. The steel sang a sharp, lethal note as it cleared the scabbard, catching the torchlight in a blinding flash.

Still not saying a word, still without the slightest hint of anger on his face, Caelan stepped forward. In one swift, fluid, brutally efficient movement, he swung the blade.

Thud.

The execution was clean and utterly emotionless.

Gasps echoed through the hall. Isla covered her mouth with both hands, turning her face sharply away into Morag’s shoulder. Rowan closed his eyes for a brief second, exhaling a slow breath.

Caelan stood over the body for a heartbeat then slowly, deliberately, pulled a clean rag from his belt and began wiping the dark blood from his steel blade. The rhythmic scraping sound of cloth against metal was the only noise in the room.

He sheathed the sword with a sharp, final click.

Then, he stepped over the body, walking back toward the trembling spy on the floor.

The man’s arrogance had vanished. His face was stark white, slick with cold sweat, and his eyes were wide with pure, unadulterated terror as he stared up at the bloodstained hem of Caelan’s tunic.

“Now,” Caelan said, his voice dropping an octave, vibrating with lethal quietness. “Let us try the questions again. Who sent ye?”

The spy didn’t hesitate for a single second longer.

“Comyn!” the man shrieked, pressing his back against the floor as if trying to sink into the stone. “Laird Fergus Comyn! He paid us!”

Caelan’s jaw tightened. “Go on.”

“He… he has spies planted across every clan from here to the coast!” the prisoner sobbed, babbling frantically to save his life. “We were ordered to track Miss Mabel’s movements! To watch Blackthorn Keep day and night and seize her the moment she rode out unprotected!”

“Is he moving his men?” Caelan asked, stepping closer.

“Aye!” the spy cried out, nodding so hard his neck snapped back and forth. “Comyn is gathering an army! He says a marriage proposal was just a polite formality, and if he cannae claim her with words, he will take her by force! He’s planning something big, I swear it, just dinnae kill me!”

Caelan stared down at the weeping man for a long, agonizing moment. Then he looked up, his eyes scanning the hall until they found Mabel standing near the hearth.

Her heart hammered a frantic, deafening rhythm against her ribs.

Fergus Comyn is coming for me.

She looked at Caelan. She saw the blood on the flagstones, the cold, ruthless warlord who had just executed a man without blinking an eye. Yet, she knew that same man had sat in the mud beside her father’s grave just hours earlier.

The duality of him, the terrifying monster to his enemies, and the steadfast, fiercely protective shield to his people, left her completely breathless.

Before anyone noticed her movement, before Caelan could turn away from the prisoner, Mabel quietly slipped away from Isla and Morag. She turned on her heel and hurried down the dim, torch-lit corridor toward her chamber, her mind racing, unsure how to reconcile the gentle guardian with the Black Laird.

14

The tallow candle on the bedside table sputtered, flared briefly, and finally died in a thin wisp of smoke, plunging the guest chamber into complete darkness.

Mabel lay flat on her back, staring up at the wooden beams of the four-poster bed. She was wide awake. The castle was silent, yet the roaring noise in her own mind refused to settle. Every time she closed her eyes, the scene in the Great Hall played over again. She saw the quick, blinding flash of steel. She heard the wet, definitive thud of the broadsword meeting its target.

She saw the unblinking stillness of Caelan’s face as he carried out justice.

He dinnae even flinch, Mabel thought, turning restlessly and pulling the fur blankets tight against her chin. He took a man’s life with the same calm precision he uses to inspect the perimeter walls.

Then, unbidden, another image overlaid the violence. She saw Caelan dropping to his knees in the freezing mud beside her father’s freshly dug grave. She felt the solid, reassuring warmth of his broad shoulder pressing against hers, anchoring her to the earth when she felt ready to shatter.