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“Don’t lie to me—not now.” She twisted her arms in his grasp, fury sending so much blood through her limbs she was sure she could break free. She couldn’t. “It was the condition for your blasted purchase of the land—clear it of the tenants or you wouldn’t buy it. You wanted the blood but you didn’t want it on your hands, just another of the thousands of clearings haunting the land. Did you think no one would know? Clear it was the order—well, they bloody well cleared it, Reiner. Scorched it to the ground.”
His forehead yanked away from hers and his chin dipped forward, his gaze on the space between them for several long breaths. Several long, heaving breaths.
Without warning, his fingers snapped away from her wrists, releasing her, and he took a step backward. His head tilted to the side, his eyes narrowing. “What exactly happened there on the Swallowford lands, Sloane?” The rage palpitating in his voice had almost disappeared.
She wouldn’t have it.
“If you don’t ken already, then you don’t care. You never cared.” Her lip sneered. “And you’ll not get the story. Not from me.”
For long seconds his gaze skewered her and she braced herself for another attack.
Her look dropped to the floor. The blade was a foot away. By the time she bent to it, he’d have her in another iron hold.
With an exhale that fumed into the room, Reiner turned his head, looking about the chamber. Spying a silver platter on the table with a decanter of brandy, he walked over to it, his boots clomping on the floor.
“I’m not leaving this room until you tell me what happened, Sloane.” He poured himself a dram of the amber liquid, quickly lifting it to his lips and tossing it into his throat. He poured another and took a sip as he turned to her. “Don’t test me on this.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her gaze skewering him with as much ferocity as his did to her. With a snarl of her lip, she opened her mouth. “Fine. The men you hired to clear the lands—”
“I hired no men, Sloane. You—”
She stormed across the room to him. “You’re the one that bloody well wanted this story, Reiner, and I’m only going to tell it once. If you interrupt, I’m done. You’ll get no more from me.”
His jaw went slack for a long second, then he closed it and offered a single nod.
She grabbed the glass from his hand and swallowed what was left. The brandy burned a ball down her chest, but it was just what she needed to temper the fury that had swelled into a rock and wedged in her throat. Clunking the glass onto the table next to his hand, she looked up at him.
“I told you of my cousin, Torrie, how she is like a sister to me?”
Reiner nodded.
“She has lived with us at Vinehill since she was three. But her family lived on a small farm on Swallowford lands. They had been making the rent payments, but it wasn’t enough. The clearing men were coming for them—coming to kick them off their land. The land that had been in their family for three generations. But the clearing men wanted Torrie’s family gone—youwanted Torrie’s family gone—so the land could be converted into grazing space for some bloody sheep.”
She paused, staring at him, daring him to interrupt her. To claim innocence. He didn’t.
She turned from him, walking over to the window on the side of the building and looking down onto the empty lane that ran beside the coaching inn. “So of course her family resisted. They had nowhere to go. They only knew how to farm. Torrie knew they would fight it and she was determined to go and stop her father—to save him and her mother and her brother.” Sloane paused, swallowing hard. “And I was determined to go to save Torrie. And my brother, Jacob…he was determined to go to save me.”
Her fingers lifted to the glass pane in front of her, tapping on it for several seconds. “When we got to the farm, the men were already there. Torrie’s father had locked him and his wife and his son into their cottage and was refusing to come out. The brutes had torches. Torches burning and crackling and ready to light everything up.”
Her right fingers dropped from the glass, moving to the top hem of the glove above her left elbow. Slowly, she peeled it down, bringing the scars to the daylight. “Torrie begged the men to wait—that she could go into the cottage and convince them to come out. So she went in, but she couldn’t make them move. Not quickly enough, at least. So the brutes ran around, setting every single one of the five buildings aflame. Though one of them stopped to let the animals out of the barn.” A caustic chuckle left her lips. “Imagine that—they let the animals out—they were more important than the people.”
She paused, her voice hiccupping, and she had to let a deep breath sink into her lungs. “And when they went for the cottage, Jacob tried to stop them—he killed two of them, but he was too late. One of the torches was tossed onto the roof of the cottage with Torrie and her family still inside. It burst into flames—hot—almost instantly. Like magic. Like the breath of a dragon.”
She dropped the glove on the floor.
She shook her head and it fell forward, her gaze landing on the twisted flesh of her arm. “I managed to kick the door open while Jacob was fighting them. And I went in after Torrie. Jacob came in after me.” She drew a quivering breath. “Part of the roof fell in right away and it set Torrie’s skirts aflame. She was going to stay in there with them, with her family. But I caught her and started dragging her out and then Jacob lifted me, pulling the both of us out of the cottage.”
Her right fingers lifted to her left arm and she traced the knotted flesh. “My arm was burnt when I was putting out the flames engulfing Torrie’s skirts. Jacob ran back into the cottage to save Torrie’s brother and parents. But the roof collapsed. Collapsed with all four of them inside.”
She glanced over her shoulder at her blade lying on the floor by the door. “Then I tried to kill one of the brutes—the rage, the pain—it took me over and turned me into a demon. I attacked one of them with my blade, but I was nothing against him. If it hadn’t been for Lachlan arriving and stopping him—killing him, the blackguard would have killed me as well.”
Long seconds passed before she lifted her head, her gaze finding Reiner’s face. “You sit in your fancy fortress, life-times away, Reiner. Oblivious. But the things you do have consequences. Whether you see them or not.”
Silence.
He stared at her, his face set in stone. “You are done?”
She turned fully around to him and nodded. “That is all of it.”
