What honor was there in killing a man too sick to fight? His father had his justice. Lorn was finished. His defeat at Brander had crushed whatever hope he'd had of stopping Bruce.
Anna was right. Killing him now would be nothing more than revenge, and he wanted her more than he wanted whatever fleeting moment of satisfaction killing Lorn would give him.
Well, maybe more than fleeting, but he wanted her more all the same.
From beneath the steel visor of his helm, Lorn's gaze burned into his. "What are you waiting for? Just do it!"
Mercy. His father's last lesson; though he'd forgotten it until now.
"Submit to the king, and I will let you live."
Lorn's face contorted in rage. "I'd rather die."
"And what of your family? What of your clan? Would you have them die, too?"
His eyes blazed with raw hatred. "Better than to submit to a murderer."
"You'd see your daughters die for your damned pride?" Arthur could feel his temper rising. He knew Anna. She would never go against her father. Family was everything to her. "Give Anna your blessing. I'll keep her safe. You know as well as I do that you are done. But your clan can live on in our children--in your grandchildren."
Lorn's rage had turned frenzied. Veins bulged at his temples, his eyes were glazed with madness, and his face was beet red. He let go a string of vile oaths, spittle foaming at the edge of his mouth. "You will never have her. I'd rather see her dead!"
"Father!"
Arthur heard the anguished cry behind him. Anna. He turned instinctively.
Giving Lorn his back. Just as his father had done before him.
Twenty-six
Anna reached the courtyard just as Arthur brought her father to his knees.
Oh God, she was too late!
She ran faster.
Ewen and the other men were attempting to defend the castle with carefully aimed arrows through the slits in the curtain wall, ready to lower the gate just as soon as her father and his men retreated inside.
The guardsmen at the gate were so focused on watching what was in front of them, they didn't see her slip past them.
"My lady!" one of the men called after her. "You can't--"
She wasn't listening. She darted a few feet beyond the gate, but didn't make it far. The enemy soldiers had formed a line, separating Arthur and her father from the rest of the fight. When she attempted to run past them, one of the men caught her.
"God's blood!" he said, lifting her feet off the ground. "Where do you think you're going, lass?"
She opened her mouth to scream at the terrifying-looking ruffian to let her go, but then she heard Arthur speak and stilled in the soldier's arms.
She couldn't believe what she heard.
Arthur held a sword at her father's neck, at the very point of achieving the vengeance and atonement that had driven him, and offered him mercy. Offered her father a chance to save them all. A chance that after what he'd probably done to him, her father didn't deserve. A chance for a future.
He loves me, she realized.He loves me enough to put aside his quest for vengeance.
But if Arthur's words had filled her heart, her father's eviscerated her.
I'd rather see her dead.
She recoiled, wrenching out of her captor's hold. Shock and horror made her cry out.
