Grant didn’t care.He had his beloved in his arms, and she had not only admitted she loved him but sworn she would not leave.Filled with joyous defiance, he caught her closer and locked his glare with hers.“So, ye’ll be marrying me then, aye?”When she didn’t answer, he jostled her.“Aye?”
Blinking through the blinding rain, she gave him a curt nod.“Yes.”
He threw back his head and unleashed a victorious roar.
Lightning splintered the world again and struck the courtyard with a powerful explosion that burnt the air and sent the cobblestones flying.All went deadly quiet.Even the rain disappeared like morning mist burned away by a blazing sun.
“Is it over?”Emily whispered through the eerily heavy silence.
“No,” Mairwen answered.“It has only just begun.The dark one is merely taking a deep breath before she shows us her displeasure that Jessa and Grant have discovered their bond.”
An unholy roar rumbled from deep below their feet as if the earth was about to open its great maw and swallow them whole.The ground trembled and rolled, making them stagger.An eerie groan came from the keep, dust shaking free of its stones and rolling down its sides.The watchtowers jutting up from the corners of the skirting wall swayed like trees in the wind.
“Tenete!”Mairwen shouted, dropping to her knees and digging her fingers into the ground.
Emily ran toward the open kitchen windows, screaming, “Don’t come out!It’s an earthquake.Take cover under something sturdy.”
“The puppies!”Jessa tore out of Grant’s arms and dashed for the laundress’s lean-to.
“No,” he bellowed, charging after her.“Jessa!”As he dove into the shack to drag her back out, the earth shuddered harder, making the ramshackle structure shake with a deathly rattle.“Damn ye, woman!Listen to me!”
“I am not leaving those puppies to die.”
In the choking dustiness of the darkness lit only by the hot coals beneath the wash cauldrons, Grant barely made out Jessa crawling toward the dog’s nest of rags and hay, searching for the wee mongrels.
“I can’t find them.”Panic filled her voice, and he knew without even seeing her that tears streamed down her face.
Her sorrow killed him, forcing him to drop to his knees beside her and run his hands along the ground.“The wee ones are afraid and hiding.”
The timbers above them popped and crackled, warning of what was to come.They had to find the pups before everything collapsed and caught fire in the cauldrons’ coals.
“They’re here!All three.”She gathered the tiny things into a fold in her skirt and went to stand, but the roof gave way, knocking her into his arms.
Just as he had feared, the coals got a taste of the wood, burst into flames, and crackled and popped with a greedy hunger, eating up the wreckage and trapping them with a blazing wall that would not yield.
Dust and smoke choked them.The heat threatened to sear their lungs.Coughing, Jessa sidled along the wall, moving as far from the flames as possible.“This way,” she called out, shouting above the roar of the fire.
“Jessa!”He caught her arm and shook his head while pointing.“We canna escape that way because of the skirting wall.”Lor a’mighty, if they didn’t escape soon, the thick air would take them before the fire could.
In the smoky darkness of the fiery hell, her panic reached out to him.Her desperation screamed for him to save them, her and those damn pups she loved like they were her bairns.That thought strengthened him.They would live through this and fill the keep with so many sons and daughters that their laughter would shake the foundation stones to dust.
“Hold tight to the wee dogs,” he shouted into her face, “up close to yer chest.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.There’s nay time to explain.”
She gathered the folds of her skirts around the puppies and curled herself around them.
He had to save them.No matter what.Jessa had to be safe.He shook out the extra length of his great kilt over her head to shield her, then swept her up into his arms.Ducking, he charged into the wall of fire, aiming for a patch of lightness that he prayed was the sun fighting against the clouds.The acrid stench of burning hair filled his nostrils along with its hissing crackle filling his ears.His flesh sizzled, but he didn’t care.He would save his Jessa.As he lowered his shoulder to break through a blazing timber, another one snapped and caught him across the back, then raked its fiery shards across his ribs, nearly causing him to drop his precious bundle.
“Grant!”
“I have ye, lass, I have ye.”Excruciating pain thrummed through him, but he refused to yield.All he had to do was make it into the clear.He only had to hold fast that long.As he stumbled free of the last of the raging fire, Emily and Mairwen rushed to him.
Erratic flashes of light and dark blurred his vision, then blinded him completely.He dropped to his knees and ever so gently lowered Jessa to the ground.Wheezing in agonizing breaths, he collapsed forward but caught himself on his forearms to keep from going face first into the mud.
“Take care of her,” he said, the raw growl burning his throat.“Keep her safe.”He couldn’t see, nor could he tell if the roaring in his ears was the continued raging of the storm or his own blood bellowing for relief.“Take care of her,” he repeated.
