She led her mount toward the smaller path, and for several hours, she had to focus enough on making sure to guide Grian safely that she had little time to think of anything else. In the few spare moments that she could let her focus wander slightly, she sent up prayers to anyone that would listen—God, Fate herself, the Old Folk—that she would catch up with Ciaran in time.
She had to find him. They belonged to one another. They belongedwithone another.
She forced herself to continue past the point of exhaustion. She stopped only when Grian stumbled, and she realized that, in her haste, she had pushed him too far. Foam was thick on his flanks and his sides heaved with every breath. She realized with another jolt that the sun had started to dip back down toward the horizon. They’d been riding all day.
“I’m sorry,lad,” she murmured to her horse, patting his neck and letting him slow to a walk as she looked for a place to stop. It didn’t take her long to find a secluded burn with a burbling stream nearby, and she practically dropped from the saddle as Grian began drinking in great, breathless gulps.
Eilidh, too, needed water; she’d emptied her canteen ages ago, and she’d only eaten a quick handful of dried apple. She had ignored the needs of her body while they’d been riding, but her hunger and thirst roared now, as if understanding that it was finally time to demand satisfaction.
She ate and drank greedily, her legs scarcely holding her up as she leaned against Grian’s warm shoulder. She pulled the shawl from her bag around her shoulders, holding it tight as she felt the heavy hammer of sleep drop mercilessly atop her.
Eilidh wasn’t sure what woke her. A sound? A sense in the air? But unlike that morning, there was no disorientation, no moment of confusion. She jolted into instant awareness, as if she hadn’t been sleeping at all.
It was the only thing that saved her life, as the dark figure standing over her raised a blade poised to strike.
17
Eilidh lurched to the side with a scream, scrabbling for her dirk as the figure lurched toward her, his movements clumsy. She kicked out at his shin and felt only cloth beneath her boot.
This was a bandit, not a soldier, she realized with a flicker of relief. She might actually have a chance of getting out of this alive.
“Stop fightin’, lassie, and I’ll kill ye easy,” the bandit snarled as he grasped at her skirts, dragging her back in his direction with fistfuls of cloth.
Eilidh screamed again and slashed with her blade, but panic made her careless, and the bandit seized her wrist and smashed it down against the ground hard enough that her fingers went numb and her dirk dropped from her grasp.
“No!” she cried, reaching out with her free hand to gouge at his eyes.
Her attacker dodged enough to preserve his vision, but not so much that he avoided her nails leaving a trio of bloody red streaks on his cheekbones.
“Stop it,” he commanded.
Eilidh redoubled her efforts, instead bucking and kicking and fighting with all her might. Even so, the man got a hand around her throat, and she was only able to get out one more scream before his fingers clenched, beginning to cut off her air.
She shoved at his arm and hand as much as she could, but he was bigger than she was, and gravity was on his side; he was pressing her down into the dirt in a way that made it hard for her to get any purchase. Dimly she realized that Grian was screaming, and she regretted tying her horse to a tree; her mount would have been a fierce defender if he had been free.
Just as her body began to cry out for air with true desperation, a shadow exploded out of the night, crashing into the bandit and toppling him off Eilidh—and off his feet, sending both forms crashing into the underbrush. Eilidh sucked in great, greedy gasps of air as she pushed to her feet, prepared to fight until the bitter end.
She had barely gotten her knife back in her hand when she heard the gurgling cry of the bandit that signaled that his throat had been cut. She lifted her blade between herself and the newcomer, wary of anyone who had so easily dispatched the attacker that had very nearly bested her.
But then a sliver of moonlight revealed his face, and she dropped her blade and threw herself into his arms, blood spatter and all.
“Ciaran,” she cried, her voice a little hoarse as her arms went around him. “Ye came.”
For a moment, she forgot her anger in the rapid onslaught of her relief. The only thing that she could think was that she had needed him, and he had come. He’d appeared; blood, fire, and fury. And he’d destroyed the man who had been threatening her as though he’d been born to do nothing else.
“Eilidh,” he murmured, his hand coming briefly to her hair. He held her for a long moment, then he seemed to recall himself.He put his hands on her shoulders and made her step back a pace.
“What are ye doing here?” he demanded even as his gaze searched her for any signs of injury.
She could tell when he spotted what would no doubt be a terrible bruise on her neck, as his eyes went dark with violent promise.
“Ye could have been hurt. Yewerehurt.”
She raised her chin defiantly. “And ye saved me,” she insisted.
Ciaran closed his eyes briefly like the words wounded him. He still had not, however, removed his hands from her shoulders.
“Lass,” he said, and the word sounded like a plea. “I told ye. I’m nae a good man. Why would ye follow me?”
