Isabeau stumbled through, the door half-shutting before she caught it with a shaking hand. She looked back, just once. Michael stood in the corridor, his face carved from shadow, tense with restraint. He said nothing, but his eyes met hers, and in that brief glance she saw everything he couldn’t say aloud—regret, protectiveness, and that same dangerous pull that had burned between them in the courtyard.
He waited until the door closed fully, ensuring she was alone, and the last thing Isabeau saw before the door shut was his eyes, watching her with as much care as heat.
Then, Isabeau leaned against the inside of the door, her breath coming in labored puffs, her anxiety threatening to overwhelm her now that she was alone. Her cheek still tingled from where the strike had almost fallen, but her heart thudded for an entirely different reason.
The more time she spent around Michael, the more confused she was. She had no sense of duty to her father, to her clan, but that didn’t change the fact that her father was dead-set on marrying her off to Cody Grant. And as the day of her wedding approached, her desire for Michael only grew.
And with it, her desire to escape.
The rain had begun again, falling against the shuttered windows; a low, steady sound that might have been soothing if Michael’s mind weren’t a storm of its own.
He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling beams lost in shadow. Sleep would not come. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Laird Campbell’s hand raised, Isabeau’s face pale and motionless under it. The memory twisted something deep in him, a kind of anger he had thought long buried, the kind that burned white-hot but carried no outlet.
He told himself it was fury at the cruelty of it, at the injustice; that it was only because he hated Angus Campbell enough to feel rage for anyone trapped under his heel. But when he saw again in his mind’s eye the way she had flinched, when he remembered how small her voice had sounded in that echoing corridor, he knew it wasn’t that simple.
He cared, not out of pity, not even just out of respect for her defiance. It was a deeper feeling, one he had refused to acknowledge and even to feel for a long time, content to simply shove everything deep in the crevasses of his mind.
It was a thought that frightened him as much as it shamed him. She was the daughter of his clan’s greatest enemy, and yet, she had found her way past his guard.
Michael exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. The feel of her still lingered—the warmth of her wrist under his fingers, the taste of that one forbidden kiss that had haunted his every thought since.
Sleep was a lost cause.
Before dawn broke, Michael rose, pulling on his cloak and boots in silence. The torches in the corridors had burned down to embers by then and he moved through the keep’s bowels with the ease of a man who had memorized every turning, every shadow. The guards had thinned after the failed MacDonald attack; fear had left them weary, careless.
He found Alistair near the kitchens, nursing a flask. The man straightened quickly when he saw Michael’s expression.
“Ye’ve coin?” Alistair muttered, his voice low.
Michael pressed a small pouch into his palm. “Enough tae buy yer silence twice over. I need ye tae take over fer the man patrollin’ near the dungeons. Tell him he’s wanted by the stables fer the changin’ watch.”
Alistair weighed the coin, nodded, and slipped away without another word. Michael followed at a distance, waiting in the cold shadows near the stairwell. He didn’t move until the shuffle of boots receded and he saw the previous guard trudge off, mumbling under his breath.
Then, with a glance down the empty corridor, he stepped forward.
The dungeon stank of damp and rot. The torches there were few, the stone walls slick with moisture, and he passed the cells with the MacDonald men who were kept prisoners, giving them a quick reassurance, before finally heading to the one where he knew his sister was being held.
Inside, Alyson was already awake. Her face, though pale and drawn from confinement, still carried that familiar sharpness of their mother—the same eyes as his, dark and alive even in the half-light. She was sitting with her knees drawn up, a threadbare blanket over her shoulders.
“Michael,” she breathed when she saw him, rising to the bars. “I heard the fightin’. Did… did ye come fer me?”
Michael swallowed the sting in his throat. “Aye, I tried… but there were too many. I couldnae reach ye without bringin’ half the keep down on us both.”
Alyson’s mouth tightened, lips pressing into a thin line. “An’ now?”
“Now I mean tae try again,” he said. “Nae taenight, an’ nae until Tórr and Daemon can strike from without again. The last attack was meant tae draw their attention, tae give me a chance. But Laird Campbell has doubled his watch. We’ll need a new plan.”
From the far end of the corridor, Alistair’s voice drifted low and tense. “Five minutes, MacDonald. Patrols’ll change soon. Best ye hide if ye mean tae keep breathin’.”
Michael gave a curt nod and pressed himself into the dark corner near the doorway, his figure swallowed by the shadow of the arch. The torchlight flickered faintly over Alyson’s face, carving her in light and shadow. She looked so different from what he remembered; gaunt and thin, a ghost of the woman she once was not so long ago.
But Michael knew well how captivity could change a person. He had seen his fair share of prisoners, and they all had the same look about them, the same pain and grief.
In a whisper, Alyson said, “Ye shouldnae risk comin’ here. He’ll kill ye if ye’re caught.”
“I’ve risked worse,” Michael said.
A faint, wry smile tugged at Alyson’s mouth. “Ye always did.” Then her voice lowered, earnest.
