At last, they reached the ground overlooking the camp.
Duncan raised a hand, and at once the men halted. Below them, partly concealed by trees and the fold of the land, lay MacKenzie’s refuge. Faint light flickered between the trunks. Shadows moved now and then along the edge of the clearing. It was enough to confirm what Duncan had already known.
He turned his head slightly, meeting Iain’s eye across the dark. Everything was in place. The perimeter closed quietly around the camp, with each party reaching its station unseen. Steel glinted dully where moonlight found it, then vanished again. Men crouched among brush and shadow, poised and waiting.
Duncan looked toward the center of the camp and felt every beat of his heart sharpen into purpose. They were close, closer than they had ever been.
And somewhere within that ring of darkness, Elaina waited.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Elaina had never known darkness to feel so alive.
Even with the fire burning low at the center of the camp and torches thrust into the damp earth at uneven intervals, the forest seemed to press in from every side, black and watchful, as though it waited with the same dreadful patience as the men who guarded her.
The air was cold enough to bite, carrying the scent of pine, wet ground, and smoke, yet her skin remained feverishly warm beneath the rough grip of fear. Her wrists had been bound, though not cruelly enough to numb them. She was seated near the mouth of a tent beneath the unceasing eye of two armed men who had spoken scarcely a word since dragging her there.
She had ceased asking where they meant to take her. She knew now, not in full, perhaps, not in all its terrible particulars. But she knew enough.
Lachlan MacKenzie had not risked so much merely to recover her. He meant to make an end of her.
The certainty of it had settled slowly, like frost creeping over glass. First, it was a suspicion, then an understanding too cold to bear. Yet even so, she sat straighter than they would have liked. Her fear was hidden, as best it could, be behind the remnants of pride. Her heart had not known peace since they had torn her from the castle, and at times it beat so wildly she thought she might choke upon it, but she would not give them the comfort of seeing her broken… not if she could help it.
A movement at the far side of the clearing drew every eye at once.
The men nearest the fire straightened. One stepped aside. And then Laird MacKenzie appeared before her.
He walked with a faint drag in one leg that could have looked like weakness in another man. In him, it seemed only to make the rest worse. He carried himself with that same hard arrogance she had seen in her father, only his seemed to be sharpened by cruelty until there was scarcely any humanity left in it. Firelight struck the scar along his cheek and left one side of his face in shadow, but neither light nor darkness softened him. His eyes were pale and dead as winter ice.
He stopped before her and looked down as though she were already laid out for burial.
“So,” he said with a smug grin, “the little runaway has had enough adventure.”
Elaina did not answer. If she had spoken then, she feared her voice might have betrayed her.
A smile touched his mouth at her reaction. It was the expression of a man who took satisfaction in power.
“I confess,” he went on, “ye were more troublesome tae retrieve than I had expected. Yer faither’s men failed. Me own men failed. And yet here ye are at last.” His gaze moved over her with a proprietary coldness that made her stomach turn. “Where ye should have been from the beginning.”
At that, Elaina lifted her chin.
“I would rather die,” she snarled, and though the words came quietly, they rang clear enough in the stillness that one of the guards shifted uneasily.
MacKenzie’s smile deepened. “That, me dear, is the first sensible thing I have heard ye say.”
A chill went through her so sudden and so absolute that for an instant she could not draw breath.
He crouched before her then, bringing himself level with her eyes, and the nearness of him was worse than any distance. Shecould smell leather, old wool, steel, and beneath it all a faint copper scent she did not wish to name.
“Ye imagine, perhaps,” he continued, “that this ends with yer refusal. That if ye deny me long enough, if ye make enough noise, if ye remain foolishly defiant, some miracle may yet spare ye.” His voice lowered. “It willnae.”
Elaina’s fingers curled against her bound hands. He watched the movement and seemed to enjoy it.
“The truth is, ye will nae leave this camp alive,” he divulged.
There was no temper in him as he spoke. He seemed utterly certain of that claim and that made it infinitely worse.
Elaina stared at him, with horror rising so violently in her chest that she thought it might consume every other feeling. Yet beneath it, there remained one thought, stubborn and bright as a single flame in a storm:Duncan will come fer me.
