Ciaran blinked away the spots in his vision to see hands on her—one man had her by the hair and another grabbed at her arm, heedless of the way she was clawing and slapping at him. His patience didn’t last forever, though; as she was dragged from the saddle, she landed a kick to his shoulder. He responded by backhanding her so hard that her head snapped to the side.
“No!” Ciaran called, the mere act of speaking making his head thunder with pain. He tried once more to surge to his feet, but there were half a dozen men holding him down. “Get away from her!”
Grian echoed Ciaran’s roar, his scream of fury echoing through the gorge as he was dragged by another handful of men away from her.
“Ciaran!” Eilidh screamed his name as she was dragged away. He opened his mouth to call back to her, but one of the mercenaries, tired of his struggles, punched him in the gut, sending the breath out of his lungs in an agonizing burst.
“Eilidh.” Her name was barely a sigh as he struggled to breathe. Vicious hands pulled her further back, and no matter how he fought, he couldn’t get closer to her.
Ciaran watched the fear in her eyes as the villains pulled at her and knew that he would never see anything so terrible in all his days.
19
Eilidh kicked and screamed and fought as Gordon’s soldiers tried to drag her away, never mind that ithurt. Everything hurt—her hair, where that bastard was holding onto it; her wrists, where another soldier was ruthlessly tying her arms with rough rope; her knee, which had been twisted when she’d been pulled from the saddle.
Her heart. Because… was it true? Had Ciaran really betrayed her?
It was impossible to believe, not when he tried to rise to reach her even though he was being held back by so many opponents that she could scarcely see him through their bulk. His efforts seemed to irritate his enemies more than anything; when he tried one final time, roaring his defiance to the sky, one of the men delivered a decisive blow across Ciaran’s face, splitting his eyebrow and leaving a thick stream of blood dripping down into his eyes.
“Ciaran,” she sobbed.
She couldn’t bear to see him like this, couldn’t bear to see him so hurt and defeated. Her body was thrumming with terror—fear that she would be taken, fear that he would be killed.
The mercenaries kept her back, their hands wandering to places she couldn’t afford to think about right then, or she would lose the battle altogether.
And then, just as Eilidh felt the last dregs of hope drip away from her, just as she began to truly worry that everything was lost, a sound like thunder echoed through the gorge.
The world was, in an instant, awash in Donaghey colors. The colors ofhome.
There were a dozen riders or more streaming into the narrow battlefield, their precision, and elegance a clear contrast to the unpracticed violence of the mercenaries.
Eilidh felt her heart practically stop in relief as she saw the man at their head—broad-shouldered, grim, his eyes as blue and unyielding as ice.
Graham. Her brother had come.
“Brother!” she cried, her voice breaking on the word.
Graham’s gaze shot to hers, and that hardness in his gaze grew even steelier when he saw her. He raised his sword as Dorchadas, his mount, reared beneath him, sensing war on the horizon. A battle cry tore from Graham’s lips. It was an angry, vicious sound—and Eilidh wasn’t certain she’d ever heard anything more beautiful in her life.
Gordon’s men never stood a chance, not that Eilidh spared them even a moment’s sympathy.
The Donaghey soldiers poured into the gorge like God’s own fury, all flashing steel and precise movements. It was, in the end, over so quickly that Eilidh would only ever recall it in flashes—like someone had painted a series of images that she’d seen in an art gallery rather than something she’d experienced with her own eyes.
There was Graham, cutting his way through to her, scarcely faltering as he made a bloody path to his sister’s side.
There was the sudden shift in the air as the mercenaries went from smug to terrified as they stared their deaths in the face.
There were Graham’s arms around her, pulling her tight to him in an embrace that felt like home as she sobbed into his chest as his sword ran through the last man holding her.
And Ciaran, bleeding and battered, took up the fight the moment his captors released him in their efforts to flee.
Eilidh could barely breathe, she was so overcome with relief. She clung to Graham as if holding on to him as the only thing that could make her believe that she wasn’t about to be dragged away and forced to wed the man who had murdered her parents.
“Kill them all,” Graham called to his men, his commanding tone a stark contrast to the comforting way that he stroked a hand over Eilidh’s hair.
Except those words werenotcomforting to her, not at all. She sat upright, jerking her head away from her brother’s strong shoulder.
“No,” she gasped, her gaze shooting to Ciaran. He was back on his feet now, though he swayed slightly as he tried to lift his sword against one of the few remaining mercenaries. “No, Graham. Not him.”
