Page 47

As the riders tightened formation and the woods darkened ahead, Sorcha found her pulse racing, not only from the danger closing around them, but from the way his voice had softened when he said her name a moment later.

Sorcha’s head snapped towards the sound, her heart kicking hard against her ribs. Horses shifted. Steel whispered free of scabbards.

He did not look at her at first. His attention swept the trees, measuring distance, shadows, and threats.

The woods thickened, branches clawing at cloaks and hair as the trail bent sharply along a narrow ridge. Somewhere ahead a raven burst from the trees, its cry harsh and sudden. Every nerve in her body tensed with warning.

A rustle came from the trees.

The riders slowed. One of the guards lifted a hand, signalling caution. Time stretched thin as wire.

A crack of a branch shattered the silence.

“Riders!” someone shouted from ahead.

The first arrow struck the tree only feet from Gavan’s shoulder with a vicious thud. Sorcha’s breath vanished.

“Down!” someone shouted.

The world erupted into motion. Horses reared. Steel flashed. The quiet woods shattered into noise and chaos as riders burst from the line of the trees like shadows given form.

Gavan wheeled his mount towards her instantly. “Stay with me.” He handed her a dagger.

She accepted the weapon. Memories of another forest, another ambush, another terrible choice, pressed hard against her thoughts, but she forced them aside. This time she would not be a victim.

A rider lunged towards her flank. Gavan intercepted him with a sharp clash of blades, the force of the strike sending a tremor through his injured shoulder. She saw it, along with the tightening of his jaw and the flicker of pain he tried to hide.

“Gavan—”

“I am fine,” he snapped, though his voice softened a fraction when he met her eyes. “Watch your left.”

She turned just in time to deflect a grasping hand with the hilt of her dagger. The man fell back, looking startled by her ferocity. Around them, the Munro warriors drove forward, forcing the attackers towards the trees. For one terrible heartbeat, Gavan did not look away from her. The battle still raged around them—horses screaming, steel ringing through the clearing, men shouting warnings into the winter air—yet his attention remained fixed wholly upon her as though he had forgotten everything else existed.

“I almost lost you.” The words left him rough and unguarded.

Sorcha felt them like a blow beneath her ribs.

Something shifted instantly in his expression, as though he realised too late what he had revealed. His jaw hardened. The openness vanished behind the colder mask she knew far better.

A cry echoed from the edge of the clearing.

“More riders!”

The moment shattered.

Gavan wheeled his horse sharply towards the trees, sword lifting once more as command and violence reclaimed him. The laird returned in the span of a breath, cold-eyed and dangerous.

But Sorcha had heard him. Truly heard him.

Not anger. Not duty. Not obligation.

Fear.

The realisation moved through her almost more violently than the attack itself.

As the next wave of riders burst from the forest shadows, Sorcha understood with sudden, terrifying clarity that something had changed between them in the space between heartbeats. Neither of them had spoken the truth aloud.

But they had come close enough to feel its shape before battle tore the moment away.