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Prologue
Stirlingshire,Scotland, in the scattered lands between the Highlands and the Lowlands
March 1816
“Torrie, we have to leave—the fire, smoke—the roof is coming down.” Her voice screeching over the cracking of the inferno above their heads, Sloane lunged forward, grabbing her cousin’s wrist as her eyes went frantic to the flames quickly eating the cottage roof.
Torrie didn’t turn back to her, ripping her arm from Sloane’s grasp. “I’m not leaving them.” Desperate, but calm. Calm like she always was. Hell had just exploded around them and Torrie didn’t so much as blink.
The smoke sank, surrounding Sloane, making every breath harder, thicker into her lungs than the last. She clawed her fingers around Torrie’s arm again and wrenched her a step toward the door of the cottage. “The bloody roof is on fire, we have to get out of here now, Tor.”
Torrie reversed course, yanking Sloane forward as she reached out and grabbed her mother’s upper arm, her calmness quickly eroding. “Please, Mama. Please, come. Don’t stay in here. Don’t. Come with me—come with us.”
Through the thickening smoke, flaming embers streaked down in front of Torrie’s mother’s face. Her mother looked to waver, glancing back at her husband and son.
“Torrie—”
“There isn’t time, Mama. We have to get out now.”
Sparks and flaming straw from the thatched roof rained down upon them, singeing Sloane’s cheeks, the stench of her burning hair scorching her nostrils. She yanked Torrie back a step, screaming above the crackling filling her ears. “There isn’t time, Torrie.”
Wood splintered—angry—cracking above.
Blackness. Smoke becoming Sloane’s world. Deafening her. Suffocating her.
But she was on her feet, not knocked to the ground. And her lock on Torrie was still solid.
An arm wrapped about her waist. Lifted her.
Jacob—her fool brother was keeping the blackguards outside at bay, but now he was inside this hell with them. Inside and picking her up.
Her left hand on Torrie’s arm slipped off. She couldn’t see through the wall of smoke, couldn’t hear for the crash echoing in her ears. But at the last second before Jacob dragged her out of there, she swung out her right hand and—miracle—found Torrie’s arm again.
She wasn’t going to let go. She couldn’t. Not of the one person who’d been her constant companion since she was three. Not of the only other person that she loved just as much as her brothers. For that was what Torrie was—her sister, even if they didn’t share parents.
With Sloane tucked into his iron clamp about her waist, Jacob moved, turning to where she guessed the door was. She could feel Torrie’s weight shift, her body dropping, dragging behind them.
She wasn’t going to let go.
She wasn’t.
Five steps of her brother’s long stride, and he carried her out of the inferno of the fiery wreckage, while she dragged Torrie behind them.
Air. Air that wasn’t smoke. Hazy daylight.
But flames still in front of her.
She twisted in Jacob’s arms and he dropped her with a thud.
Torrie’s face. Screaming. Flames devouring her.
Her skirts.
Sloane couldn’t hear the screams, but every agonized contortion of Torrie’s face sliced through her as her own pain. She had to put the flames out.
Crawling through the dirt, she reached Torrie writhing on the ground and started beating at the flames raging on her cousin’s legs.
Her own flesh scorching, pain sliced into her left arm as the blazes sizzled through her skin. Pain that sent her nerves into spasms, but still she swung at the blazes.
