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“Did we have a good time, then?” she asked, woozy.

Titus nodded confidently. “The best time ye’ve ever had.”

“Was I good?”

“Ye were excellent. And so was I.”

Titus took her right up to the carriage which, upon inspection, wasn’t very fine. It was rather worn, with warped wheels. The driver was there, an old man who took Mary from Titus and practically lifted the old woman into the open carriage. When the driver returned to his seat, Mary crooked a finger at Titus.

He moved closer to the carriage.

“I’m sorry for ye, my beauteous lad,” she said. “There’s something ye must know.”

“What?”

“I’m not from Whitekirk,” she said, yawning. “Yer friends told me tae tell ye that I was. Ye spent the night with an old hag without a penny tae her name. There’ll be no inheritance for ye.”

Titus’ brow furrowed. “What’s this ye say? Aren’t ye Mary MacMerry?”

“Nay,” she said. “Better luck next time, laddie.”

The carriage pulled away, leaving Titus standing there with his mouth open. A split second of shock and outrage was followed by the realization that he’d been duped. Duped and deceived. He loved his friends at the Ludus Caledonia, the only real friends he’d ever had, and they’d spent the past year playing pranks on one another as part of the bond of their brotherhood, but this one… this one was a master stroke.

He had to admit, it had been brilliant.

As more carriages began to pull away beneath the pewter skies of a breaking dawn, he turned to see Galan and Axel waving at him, rejoicing in his humiliation. Cam and Brody had probably already gone to bed, with wives that were waiting for them, but Galan and Axel didn’t have any female baggage.

They had the freedom to stay up all night, reveling in The Eagle’s humiliation.

It had been the biggest one yet.

Even Titus appreciated the very clever prank. To prove how un-humiliated he was, he waved back at them and even bowed, as if to acknowledge that they’d wholly tricked him. It was a gesture of respect, but beneath it, he was already calculating his revenge.

Surely, they had to know he would come for them, and he would.

When they least expected it.

CHAPTER TWO

Edinburgh

“I want something that will make them think their guts are all coming out through the one small hole in their arses, but I dunna want tae truly hurt them. I just want them tae think they’re dying.”

Two days after his bout with the faux Mary MacMerry, Titus was bent on revenge more than ever. He was completely serious as he delivered his request to a wool-swathed apothecary who was the most reputable one in all of Edinburgh. The shop was called The Seed, run by two brothers who were nearly as old as Scotland herself.

At least, that was the rumor. They were quite old, and identical twins, and some said they’d found the very secret to immortality. But Titus didn’t want their secret of life.

He simply wanted something to make his friends ill.

The old apothecary tried not to look too shocked or too confused.

“Ye want tae make them… ill?” he asked.

Titus nodded. “For a day or two,” he said. “As a joke, ye see. They saddled me with a… well, it doesna matter. I need tae punish them but not hurt them. I want everything they’ve eaten tae come out from the top and the bottom. What can ye sell me that will do that but not harm them?”

“Ye want a cleanse?”

“If that will expel everything from their innards, I do.”