"Enough! You are trying my patience, Anna. Your tender feelings for the man have made you forget your duty. Only the knowledge that I might bear some of the responsibility for asking you to watch the man has spared you from a far greater punishment. Arthur Campbell is a spy. He knew the risk he took when he chose to betray us. He's going to get exactly what he deserves."
Arthur no longer felt a thing. He'd passed the point of pain hours ago. He'd been beaten, whipped, and had every finger in his hand broken by the thumbscrew. But he could taste the blood. The sickly, metallic scent filled his mouth and nose as if he were drowning in it.
His head hung forward, his hair--wet and caked with blood and sweat--shielding his gaze from the men around him. There'd been as many as a dozen to subdue him at some points throughout the night. Now, as the sunlight pierced the narrow arrow slits of the guard room, there were only three.
He was chained to a chair, but restraint wasn't necessary. He wasn't a threat to anyone anymore. His right arm had been twisted so hard it had popped out of the socket. His left hand hung useless at his side, every finger crushed one by one in excruciating slowness.
To think he'd laughed when he'd first seen the device. The small steel vise looked so unthreatening--certainly nothing that would compel him to tell them what they wanted.
But he'd quickly learned how something simple could exact terrifying amounts of pain. More pain than he'd ever imagined. He'd been one screw turn from telling them everything they wanted to know. He would have told them anything to make it stop.
"Damn you, Campbell, just tell them what they want to know."
Arthur eyed Alan MacDougall through the clumpy veil of sodden hair. Anna's brother stood near the door as if he couldn't wait to get the hell out of there, his face strained and bloodless. It almost looked as if he were the one being tortured. Lorn's heir did not have the stomach for this.
But his henchman did. Arthur had the feeling the sadistic bastard could go on like this for days.
Arthur could no longer speak, but he made a croaking sound and moved his head in a partial shake. Nay. Not yet. He wouldn't tell them yet. But he no longer said never.
His head snapped back as the bastard hit him again with his chain-wrapped sledgehammer of a fist.
"Their names," he demanded. "Who are the men who fight in the secret guard?"
Arthur no longer bothered to feign ignorance. They didn't believe him. Anna had unknowingly doomed him. Lorn was certain that he knew at least one member of the infamous "phantom" guard because of what had happened in Ayr a year ago when he'd come to her rescue and the recent attack.
He couldn't blame her for that. Nor, it seemed, could he blame her for turning him in. Sometime during the night--in between the beatings and the whip--he'd realized from the questions being pelted at him that he'd probably been wrong. If she had betrayed him, she hadn't told them much.
He sensed the bastard's fist going back again--a black spot on the edge of his consciousness. Instinctively, he braced himself for the blow, though he knew it wouldn't help. From his size and the power of his punch, the henchman could have come from a long line of blacksmiths.
A knock on the door, however, gave him a moment's reprieve when Lorn's henchman was called away.
Arthur slumped in the chair, trying to force gulps of air through his watery lungs. He had at least one broken rib, perhaps more.
"They'll kill you if you don't tell them," Alan said.
Arthur took a moment to respond, trying to pull together enough strength to speak. "They'll kill me anyway," he croaked.
Alan didn't look away, although from the way he winced, Arthur feared his face looked as bad as it felt. "Aye, but it will be far less painful."
And quicker.
But Arthur had failed in so many ways already; he was determined to salvage what he could of this cursed mission. If he could go to his death without revealing the names of his brethren, he would die with some semblance of honor.
Still, it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best when his failures were so catastrophic. He'd lost everything. Anna. The chance to destroy Lorn and get justice for his father. And the chance to alert the king of the threat. Bruce and his men would be walking right into an ambush, and he wouldn't be able to warn them.
He'd fail them, just as he had his father.
Being beaten to a bloody pulp, flayed to within an inch of his life, and having his fingers crushed one by one had kept his mind from wandering beyond the four stone walls of his prison. But in the small breaks, he feared the other consequences of his capture.
Lorn loved his daughter. He wouldn't hurt her. But he had to ask. "Anna?"
Alan gave him a solemn look. "Gone."
His stomach dropped.
Seeing his horrified expression, Alan hastily added, "She's safe. My father thought it better that she be removed from the castle until--"
He stopped.Until I'm dead, Arthur finished for him.
