Neil’s plan, Lachlan’s patience, the bandit’s timing. Threads crossed where she could not see them. She felt them all the same, like cords under her skin.
Something about all of this felt planned, and the only person who could give her the answers she needed was the man in the dungeons.
She reached the stairs that led to the underbelly of the castle, and the cold stone breathed up from below. The smell of damp air and iron came with it, causing her pulse to stutter.
She was not sure what she meant to do when she reached the bottom. She only knew that she could not stay one more minute amid a crowd that waited for her to decide what to do next.
“Answers,” she said, an oath set between her teeth. “I will have answers.”
Her feet carried her, steady and certain, toward the dungeons.
The air grew colder as she descended the stairs, and the shouts from the courtyard faded to a dull hum, then to nothing. Only the drip of water and the low groan of old hinges punctuated the silence. Her skirt brushed damp stone, and her breath fogged in front of her.
She didn’t care about any of that. All that mattered was getting to the bottom of this.
At the last turn, she heard voices.
She halted with one palm flat against the wall, feeling the cold bleed into her skin.
“… ye shouldnae have killed her. That wasnae the plan.”
Kristen’s breath caught.
Lachlan.
She crept along the wall and pressed herself into the shadow where the passage bent. Lamplight spilled from a cracked cell door and left a pale blade across the floor. She leaned forward until she could catch a glimpse of the room beyond.
Chains.
A table with a lamp.
Two figures inside.
Lachlan stood with his back half turned. The bandit was slumped against the wall, his wrists manacled, blood crusted at his temple. Lachlan must have sent the guards away when they finished chaining up the bandit because Kristen couldn’t see anyone else but the two of them.
“Ye have ruined everything, ye bastard,” he hissed, making her heart lurch.
The bandit laughed, the sound broken and bitter. “Who else was I supposed to take? Ye said the wife. The lady. I saw a woman and?—”
Kristen froze.
The wife. The lady.
Her?
Her heart thudded so hard that the sound filled her ears. She did not move. She did not breathe. Every part of her listened.
Lachlan’s voice dropped further, but the stone threw his words back all the same. “Kristen was meant to be the target, ye fool,” he grunted. “Ye nearly ruined everything, killing yer sister instead.”
The world tilted under her feet, and she dug her nails into the wall, holding on.
The bandit spat on the floor. The wet sound carried. “Yer precious lady means nothing to me,” he sneered. “Ye are the one who used us. Ye are the one who told us that Neil helped Alex escape. That if we took one Drummond, we could gut the other.”
Kristen’s vision blurred.
What?
What?
