He did not answer. He walked toward her instead. The low light drew harsh lines across his cheekbones, and his boots were almost silent on the wet floor. The corridor breathed with the slow drip of water and the faint clink of chains.
Kristen stepped back once. The stone was cool against the heel of her palm. The space between them shrank to a few paces.
Lachlan’s voice dropped. “Ye think ye matter here. Ye think folks love ye for yer soft words and yer quick help. Ye are atool. A way to make the people forgive the years we couldnae account for. A way to keep Neil off balance. And ye will soon be nothing at all.”
Cold prickled over her skin.
“Lachlan,” she warned. “Stop.”
He did not stop.
He drew his dagger in one smooth motion. The iron caught the torchlight, bright for a blink, before darkening. He closed the last inches just as she drew breath to shout. She had one beat to see the shape of his face, the face of a brother she had shared meals with for years. Then the point touched her throat.
She froze. The first press was light, a cruel promise. Then the blade pressed a fraction harder. A sting.
Warmth beaded under the edge and slid down the hollow at the base of her throat, slow as a tear.
“Ye should have stayed in yer place, lassie,” he murmured, his breath brushing her cheek. “Played the quiet, obedient wife. Then ye might have lived long enough to see what I built from the ruins.”
Her mind threw up bright images, fast and useless. Finn’s grin with berries in his fist. Anna’s hands clapping in the morning light. Davina’s laughter in the garden. Neil’s mouth softening when she had said she might have missed him, too. The woman’s last breath in the courtyard. The promise she had made over her cooling brow.
So it was true; one’s life does flash before one’s eyes when one is about to die.
She did not move anyway. The merest flinch would open her throat more. She met Lachlan’s eyes and studied just how cold they were.
They had been cold all along, and she had not seen it.
Behind him, the bandit shifted, the chains scraping. Another laugh escaped him, low and pleased, as if the knife at her neck were a story he had heard many times and always liked.
“That is where ye’re wrong,” Kristen said, each word chosen with care. “Ye willnae build anything but graves.”
Lachlan’s mouth twisted into a thin smile. “We will see.”
Kristen’s pulse fluttered against the blade, and her heart hammered so loudly she could not hear anything else.
Neil walked away from the courtyard with his blood still pounding in his ears. Kristen had vanished for a while. Had she returned to her room?
No, she wouldn’t deliberately leave the people out here to go to bed.
Did she go hiding or something?
At that moment, a guard hurried past with a lantern, and he caught his sleeve.
“Where is the lady?” Neil asked, his voice rough.
The guard swallowed. “I saw her heading for the dungeons, me Laird. She looked pale, like she meant to speak to the prisoner.”
Cold slid under Neil’s ribs. He released the guard and took the stairs two at a time. The air grew damp and cold, the sounds of the castle fading until only the drip of water and the faint grind of iron remained.
Halfway down, he heard voices. Lachlan’s, low and tight. Kristen’s, thin with a strain he had never heard before.
He knew distress when he heard it, and the sound of his wife’s anguish quickened his pace. He rounded the last turn and saw the cell door standing half open, spilling light across the floor.
He pushed through.
Lachlan had Kristen pinned to the wall, his body crowding hers. The dagger point rested against her throat, and a bright red line glistened where the steel had already bitten.
Neil stopped breathing.
