“All right, then,” the master healer said, sounding rather too enthused for Ciaran’s comfort. “Let’s see if we can’t save your life after all.”
He pressed bitter herbs into Ciaran’s hand, which he choked down, only barely managing to avoid retching at their taste. When the healer put a cup of poppy milk to Ciaran’s lips, he considered refusing—he could not afford to have his mind addled with Gordon’s threats looming ever closer—but the pain that would come when the healer cleaned the wound on his arm made the temptation of oblivion too great. Ciaran drank and then gritted his teeth as the healer began cutting away the sleeve of his shirt, managing to hold in any cries of agony until pain—and the drug—dragged him under.
His sleep was not restful—it almost never was these days.
Even though unconsciousness and the haze of the poppy, flames flickered over his skin in his dreams, the agony of the body joined by torment of the mind. Screams echoed, one moment, he was in the stone corridors of Gunn Keep, only to turn the corner and find himself at Culloden, then back in Buchanan territory. He was consumed with panic that he had to find…
To help….
To save….
But his fear was overwhelming, and answers were not forthcoming. Every time he thought he had the solution, he would instead find a corpse. No sooner did he think that he must protect his father than he saw the same man dead before him. His brothers were next, then old comrades.
His terror mounted, and eventually it was Kirsty he saw dead, Gordon standing, laughing over her body.
“The Gunn name is finally ash,” he gloated, his mouth dripping with dark fangs. “And it’s all because of ye.”
Ciaran had a sword in his dream-hand. He lunged forward, intending to run Gordon through, but when his blade met flesh, it wasn’t Gordon on the other end, gasping his last. It was Eilidh, looking up at him with betrayal in her eyes as they went dark for the last time…
“Hush, hush.” A voice broke through the endless violence of his dreams, and cool fingers brushed against his brow. “Ciaran, rest. Ye will injure yourself anew this way. Ye must stop this thrashing.”
He couldn’t quite open his eyes, but it didn’t matter. He knew that voice. He knew that touch.
Eilidh. Oh, thank Christ and all the saints, she was still there, still with him, he hadn’t been the hand that dealt her destruction—at least not yet.
“Ye are safe,” she reassured him, her voice the most melodic sound he’d ever heard. “I willnae leave ye. Sleep, Ciaran. Sleep.”
The fog of terror lifted. He felt her fingers intertwine with his, and he squeezed back lightly, even though the small action took all his strength.
The darkness rose up to claim him again, but this time it was a comforting friend, not an enemy that bit and snarled. In the last moments before he succumbed to it, Ciaran clenched her hand in his ever tighter.
He needed that touch, needed it as though it was the only thing left that anchored him to the world.
13
As Ciaran returned to awareness, he noticed the absence of pain before its presence.
Oh, he still hurt. His shoulder, mostly, but the rest of him, too; he’d overworked muscles that had grown weak from his previous convalescence when he had fought off those mercenaries. But the sharp edge of the pain was gone. What remained was dull, present but manageable.
There was a heaviness to his limbs that he recognized as the aftereffects of the poppy, something he knew would not easily be shaken. His eyelids were as weighty as a blacksmith’s hammer as he drew them open…
And he was immediately rewarded for his efforts.
Hell, this was a reward beyond anything he could ever merit, he thought as he looked at where Eilidh was curled up beside him, her face lax with sleep, her golden hair spilling loose all around her. The sun played lovingly over the planes of her face, throwing her pert features into sharp relief, revealing a little trio of freckles on the underside of her jaw that he immediately longed to kiss.
God above, she was so beautiful. He drank her in like a man dying of thirst at an oasis.
And then, the shame hit him.
How had he ever evenconsideredletting Gordon’s men take her?
Because yes, he had hesitated. For one terrible, terrible moment, when those men had surrounded them, he’d hesitated. He’d wondered if it wasn’tsmarterto let them take her.
He sent up a quick prayer of thanks that he hadn’t acted on the wretched impulse, that he’d done what needed to be done before it was too late. No doubt the arrow to the shoulder was no less than he deserved for that moment of indecision.
He sucked in a raggedy breath at the thought of how badly it all could have gone. This motion caused him to brush right up against Eilidh, who had carefully arranged herself so that she wasn’t touching any part of him that hurt—which was more or less all of him—and she stirred. She scrunched up her face like she was trying to cling to sleep even as the light in the room made her body unable to ignore that morning had come and gone.
Ciaran Gunn had never once in his life called somethingadorable, but he had to admit that Eilidh, in this moment, fit the definition perfectly.
