She turned another page she hadn’t read, then another, pretending absorption in the text while her body screamed warnings her mind couldn’t quite articulate. Behind her, Finn shifted his weight, his hand drifting almost unconsciously toward his sword hilt.
He feels it too.
Then, the bells began to ring, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, driving into her skull like iron spikes.
“M’lady, get tae the castle! Now!” Finn’s hand found his sword, his face gone pale as milk.
Warriors poured from the keep with weapons drawn and gleaming in the fading light. Servants scattered like birdsbefore a hunting cat. Somewhere a woman screamed, high and terrified, the sound cutting through the bells’ cacophony.
Terror held her rigid, her feet rooted to flagstones that might as well have been iron chains.
“M’lady!” Finn grabbed her arm, trying desperately to pull her toward safety, but her body had forgotten how to respond to commands, how to do anything but stare at the chaos erupting around her.
Erik!
The thought came unbidden, sharp and desperate.
Where are ye?
She hated that her first instinct was to look for him, to want him, to need the safety of his presence like she’d never needed anything in her life.
The alarm bells clambered on, relentless and unforgiving, and Claricia stood frozen in the garden with Finn’s hand on her arm and chaos swirling around her like a storm, wishing with everything in her that his grey eyes would find hers through the madness and make her believe—even for a heartbeat—that everything would be all right.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Me jarl!”
Erik’s horse had barely slowed when the alarm bells started ringing. Not the measured tolling that marked the hours or called men to meals, but a harsh, urgent clanging.
Breach… threat… attack…
The sound echoed off Castle MacLean’s stone walls, seeming to come from everywhere at once.
He galloped to the castle and was off his mount before the animal had fully stopped, tossing the reins to a wide-eyed stable lad. Behind him, Aksel dismounted with the same urgency, his hand already on his sword hilt.
“What’s happened?” Erik demanded of the nearest guard—young Tormod, pale-faced and breathing hard like he’d been running.
“The prisoner—he’s escaped!”
The words hit like a fist to the gut. Erik’s mind raced through implications, through possibilities, through the cold mathematics of threat and response.
“When?” The question came out sharp as a blade.
“Found him missin’ maybe ten minutes past. Cell door was still locked from outside, but the bastard was gone. Vanished like smoke.”
Locked from outside.
Which meant either the prisoner had help, or he’d found some other way out. A weakness in the castle Erik didn’t know about. A passage, a loose stone… something.
Either way, the man was loose.
“Secure all exits,” Erik ordered, already moving. “Nay one leaves this castle. I want every corner searched—storage rooms, passages, cellars, everythin’. Double the guards on the walls and gates.”
He took the steps to the keep two at a time, Aksel on his heels. Warriors rushed past in organized chaos, responding to shouted orders, weapons drawn and ready. The castle had erupted into controlled panic—the kind that came from men trained to respond to threats but uncertain where the threat actually lay.
Erik’s boots hammered against stone as he climbed higher, his heart pounding but not with exertion. She’s fine. She has tae be fine. She’s in our chamber with guards posted.
But when he yanked open the door to their chamber, his heart dropped to his feet.
