Soon, the men slowed down, and her breath caught.
They had reached a cliff.
The night opened wide there, and the ground fell away into a darkness so deep she could not see the bottom. Wind came up hard from below and whipped at her dress as the man finally released her arm, only to grip her bound wrists from behind and force her a few steps forward.
And there, waiting where the ground leveled, stood an old man.
He was wrapped against the cold in dark wool, his silver hair fluttering around a face cut deep with age and somethingharsherthan age. He did not look like a guard or some rough hill thief. He looked like the sort of man who commanded respectand knew that he did. Like a man others made room for, even when they hated him.
She was brought to a stop before him.
He looked her over slowly, from her loose hair to her bound wrists to the dirt on the hem of her gown. His gaze held no surprise. Only satisfaction, and something she could not ultimately describe.
Ava knew at once that he was the reason she had been taken.
When he spoke, every part of her body tensed.“So this is the woman he chose.”
Ava lifted her head almost immediately. “Who are ye?”
The old man released a short breath that might once have been a laugh. “Ye should ken me, lass. Me grief has paid dearly enough for the privilege.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and racked her brain for a clue. Then, suddenly, it hit her. She had heard Isobel recount the story over and over back at MacKenna Castle.
“Once in a while, I try to wonder what Isla’s father must have gone through when he heard the news.”
Ciaran had told her about the event that made people call him theSilent Death. The same event that made him lose most of his voice.
Her blood instantly ran cold, and her back went rigid.
The old man saw that she knew before she said it.
“Aye,” he sneered. “There it is.”
The wind ruffled her hair again. Still, she did not move.
“Ye daenae deserve to live and bear heirs for that vile family,” he said. “Nae while me own child was lost to them.”
The words hit with a different kind of violence than ropes or blows. Her fear sharpened into anger as he took one step nearer.
“They buried me daughter and kept breathing. They kept their lands. Their names. Their line. And ye were meant to strengthen it.”
Ava stared at him through the dark and felt the whole shape of it settle. The fire. The road. The choice to takeher. None of this was chance. None of it had been.
“’Tis ye,” she forced out, her voice thick. “Ye’re Isla’s father. Laird O’Malley.”
For the first time, something changed in his expression. Grief entered it, plain and terrible and old. Ava saw then that the hatred had grown around a real wound. She saw it and hated him still.
“She was me world.”
“Shehad a name,” she fired back.
His eyes fixed on hers. And on the cliff above the dark, with armed men at her back and vengeance in front of her, Ava knew with full certainty that this was never about ransom, never about opportunity, and never about her alone.
She had been taken to stand in for the life Laird O’Malley believed Ciaran’s family had no right to take.
“She had a life too,” he continued, his voice just as low. “One they took from her.”
“Ye speak as if she were livestock stolen from a field.” Ava kept her voice steady, though her wrists throbbed, and the drop at her back kept pulling at the edge of her thoughts. “She wasyerdaughter. She was a woman. She made choices.”
