24
THE COURAGE OF LOVE
Blinking, Taryn focused her eyes on her mother. She was crouched on the ground, clutching her husband’s bleeding shoulder, Lachlan’s arrow still lodged deeply beneath his flesh. Taryn considered that she and her mother had once looked nearly identical. They both sported the same strikingly blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Taryn had often seen men stare as her mother walked by.
But her mother’s features had been twisted by the bitterness that welled inside her. Her eyes were no longer beautiful and kind but harsh and abrasive. Her lips, pursed and wrinkled, were forever turned into a scowl. She looked every bit her age and then some.
However, more than that, Taryn realized that she no longer saw her mother and father as she studied the two people in front of her. She only saw a couple willing to see to her death.
“How could ye be so heartless? I did nae raise ye to be so woefully ungrateful that ye would run off with this lot, nae while yer father is injured.” Rowena huffed, pointed an immaculate and bony finger at Taryn. “Dinnae make matters worse. Do as ye are told and stay where ye are. It is the least ye can do after all the problems ye have caused. Think of yer father.”
“Nay.”
The word slipped out of Taryn’s mouth before she could think it through, but it felt fitting all the same.
“I am done obeying. I am done listening to ye. To either of ye.”
“We are yer parents,” Rowena hissed.
“Nay, ye are nae. Ye are simply the woman who birthed me. A true mother and father would nae have stood idly by at the prospect of their only child’s death. Ye both are nothing but selfish cowards, too blinded by yer own greed to see the danger the rest of this clan is in.”
Scoffing, Rowena stood to argue back, but Taryn didn’t give her the chance.
“Ye have proven here today that ye dinnae care about me or this clan. And since none of ye will do what is needed to protect these people, I will. And I will ask my real family to help me.”
Leaping down from the scaffold, James reached behind him, lifting Taryn up and then lowering her to the ground. Lachlan and Aila followed suit, staying one step behind them. The team marched through the crowd, weapons in hand, eyes ahead. None of them bothered to turn and see that nearly everyone from the McGregor Clan had joined them. They already knew the tides of change were upon them, and this change would finally be for the better.
“I must be dreaming.”
Taryn’s murmurs of disbelief were lost in the wave of voices that trailed behind her. No one could hear her speak. She could hardly hear herself. It was that inability to decipher the voices and faces around her that convinced her everything that was happening wasn’t real.
She was going to wake up at any moment, jolted awake by the guards clamoring for her death. Or worse, she was going to discover at some point that she had already died, and theseimaginings were the beginning of her afterlife. She would be doomed to wander the McGregor Clan as penance for being such an instrumental part of its downfall.
The only thing that secured her grip on reality was James’ warm, calloused hand wrapped around hers. He tugged her through the crowd, guiding her. He never let her get more than a step behind him, keeping their clasped hands close. His stare was enough to scare off anyone brave enough to get close. And if anyone had been foolish enough to try to get close, Lachlan’s impressive aim kept them from making themselves known.
“Where are we going?” she asked in a daze.
There was so much to figure out, so much to plan; the first, and perhaps the most important, being where they were going to go now that James had made them all enemies of the clan. Though perhaps she had long since been an enemy of the clan, hidden in ignorance of the fact.
“Away from here,” James told her briskly.
She had never seen him so determined, so focused on a task. She supposed he didn’t want to give any of the members of the clan time to change their mind. And of course, with Laird McGregor still standing on the platform in the courtyard, there was still a danger that he would call an order and send the clan plunging back into chaos.
Daring a glance behind her, she caught sight of her mother staring at her, the penetrating gaze conveying all the hatred Taryn was now certain would be coursing through her mother. Any and all signs of worry over Jonah had vanished. Taryn had stripped her parents of their loving facade in front of everyone. There would be no more pretending that they were devoted parents or devoted to each other. All they had ever cared about was power and greed. That much had been made clear to everyone within earshot.
Taryn guessed there would come a day when she would regret her words to her mother, and her father and uncle for that matter too. But today was not that day.
The crowd thinned the further away from the keep they got. Taryn turned back around, forcing herself to keep her eyes on where she was going, not where she had been. It would take a lifetime to forget the feeling of standing in front of a dangling noose, knowing that her family had prepared it for her. But she knew that James would never let anything like that happen to her again.
It felt as though their trek through the courtyard had taken a lifetime, though Taryn knew it had taken no time at all. The weight of her life had been lifted from her shoulders and cast into the wind. She was caught between floating after James and being dragged by him. Everything inside of her was a screaming contradiction.
She was thrilled to be alive, but worried about what that meant for her people. She couldn’t believe that James had returned to her, but where had he gone in the first place, and why had he left her for so long? Taryn had never been happier to see Aila and even Lachlan, but where was Sorcha? And how had they been brought into this entire mess?
The freedom from her family felt as if she could take a deep breath for the first time in a long time, but the irrevocable loss of her parents was a stumbling blow. She felt everything and nothing all at once.
“Climb up, love.”
James’ softly spoken order had Taryn shaking herself out of the fog, only to realize that they were several paces away from the courtyard and from any of her clan members. Lachlan was still standing guard, but Aila was already on Knight’s back, reins in hand. Directly in front of her, was James’ horse and saddle, waiting for Taryn to climb into. She hadn’t realized that Jameshad let go of her hand and was now nudging her towards the stirrup.
