“I’m nothing to you,” she reminded him, kneelingnear his head.
“No, no, that’s not true at all,” he rushed. “It was our plan all along, remember?”
She leaned down. “I’m going towatch you die.”
“No,” he said on a quavering breath. “We can escape if you help me.”
Searrach shook her head. “I doona want to escape. I’ve naughtto escape to.”
Hargrave gave an animal cry of rage and frustration. “Help me!” Then he quivered with fear, the stench of it rolling off him, and Searrach leaned even closer to smell it fully, wondering if this moment was what he craved from his victims. Searrach would not have thought it pleasing before, but now…
“Help,” he repeated in a whisper.
“I am helping,” Searrach replied, equally as quietly, as above their heads the unmistakable sound of a beam cracking exploded through the roar of the flames. “I’m just nae helpingyou.”
Hargrave’s hands shot out then, and his fingers tightened around Searrach’s throat, pulling her down to him with all his remaining strength. She remembered then how strong he had always been, unusually so for his age. And so although his legs may have been rendered useless, his iron fingers tightened around her throat.
Searrach stared into his eyes as she grasped at his wrists, but she knew she had not the strength to free herself, and so she satisfied herself with the knowledge that she was succeeding where so many beforeher had failed.
Lachlan Blair.
Lucan Montague.
Thomas Annesley.
Padraig Boyd.
Countless men had sought to put an end to Vaughn Hargrave’s terrible reign. But it was she—a poor, beaten Highland lass who had naïvely allowed herself to be used in such heinous ways by this monster—Searrach, who was here now. Alone. She was the representative of all those other girls, all the forgotten people Hargrave had used and tortured and then discarded as rubbish. No matter the things she had done in the past, no matter her own mistakes, Vaughn Hargrave would never hurt another soul, and she could be proud ofthat at least.
Her vision was dimming now, and she worried that she would be dead before she saw the proper end of him.
But then another crack sounded above their heads—a loud creaking and moaning of timbers. A shower of sparks rained down like fae fire with a triumphant roar, and then a shuddering crash filled the hall as the entire ceiling collapsed.
Chapter 20
The sun came up slowly over Northumberland, as if it was loath to see the carnage its rays would reveal.
Iris sat against the same tree under which Padraig had deposited her hours before, the effects of the poison lingering after the energy her fear had given her was spent. Padraig still limped through the crowd on a makeshift crutch, speaking to soldiers, to servants, to the king’s men, to Lucan. She watched him with a bittersweet pain in her heart, a combination of pride in his caring for the people of Darlyrede and sorrow for what was left ofhis birthright.
Darlyrede House was a blackened, smoldering shell in the gray light of dawn. The center of the tall keep seemed to have been cleaved down the center, as if with a mighty blow from some mythical ax. The crown had been broken; the building within still seethed. Somewhere beneath the fuming rubble, Vaughn and Caris Hargrave lay dead.
Lucan limped over to collapse to a seat at her side once more. She hadn’t seen him since after she and Padraig had escaped the fire, when they’d all exchanged information about what had happened during thathorrific night.
“How are you feelingnow?” he asked.
“Heartbroken,” she answered at once, without thinking that he was likely referring to her physical health. She turned her head to look at her brother. “I loved her, Lucan. I defended her. Nearly forsook Padraig for her. And all that time, she intended to kill me.” Her throat constricted again and the tears wanted to come, but her body had nothing more to give.
“Caris Hargrave was mad,” Lucan said in his matter-of-fact manner. “Being married to Vaughn Hargrave for so many years perhaps contributed to her insanity, but nothing you did or didn’t do could have changed what she truly was. You had no idea what she was capable of.”
“I don’t know that her choices were because of Lord Hargrave,” she mused. “We’ll never know, now. But I do think they found the perfect matchin each other.”
“Well-paired, certainly,” Lucan mused darkly. “But far from perfect. Now, you andPadraig Boyd…”
She turned her head to look at him. “Lucan, Ilove that man.”
Lucan grinned. “Pleased at last that you’re no longer bothering trying to deny it. I feel rather indebted to him myself. I only wonder what will happen with”—he waved his hand in his decidedly Lucan fashion about the lawn—“all this once the kingreceives word.”
“He’ll have to give it over to Padraig, won’t he?” she asked with a frown. “Hargrave is dead. There is no one else entitled to it.”
