Chapter Twenty-Five

 

 

 

The scout gave Bruin a curt nod, then headed back toward the castle on swift legs.

Niall didn’t move to follow him, instead focusing his attention on Bruin. The man began sauntering toward the other end of the village, his scarred mouth pulling in a strange, grimacing smile.

They had to stop him before he could light a fire. Niall took a step after him. Abruptly, he realized Mairin wasn’t at his side.

He turned to find her staring after Bruin, her eyes as round as two moons and her mouth trembling. She stood with her back pressed against the stable, one hand clutching her throat and the other balled into a white knot in her skirts.

“Mairin, what—”

Her legs gave out and she slid down the stable’s side, crumpling on the ground.

Niall was beside her in a heartbeat. Fear spiked hard in his gut. He had never seen Mairin so incapacitated before, not even when she’d woken from her nightmare in the darkness of the inn on their way to Pontefract. She was pale as snow and shaking like a leaf, her lips moving soundlessly and her terror-filled gaze fixed on Bruin’s back as he made his way deeper into the village.

“Mairin,” he repeated, tentatively cupping her face. She flinched back, yet her eyes didn’t see him. They remained locked on Bruin.

Niall glanced over his shoulder. Bruin had ducked behind one of the buildings that was not only roofed in thatch, but wooden-sided as well. It would go up like dry kindling if he were to put a torch to it.

Damn it all. Bruin was getting away. He was no doubt moments from starting a fire. But Niall couldn’t abandon Mairin in this state.

He fixed the confused stable lad with a hard look. “Go,” he ordered. “Run away from the village. And tell everyone you can to flee as well. Now.”

The boy stared wide-eyed at Niall for a heartbeat before darting away. The lad ducked his head into the bawdy house and shouted something before scrambling toward the next building down.

Judging from the ruckus rising from within the bawdy house, the lad had done as Niall commanded and told them to make a hasty escape, but there was no way he would be able to warn everyone in the village by himself.

Niall turned back to Mairin. She still shook beneath his touch, but now that Bruin was out of her line of vision, she had begun to breathe again, albeit in great shuddering gulps.

“Mairin,” he said, forcing his voice to be soft and low. “What is it, love? What is wrong?”

“That man,” she rasped.

“Bruin?”

“I never kenned his name before.”

Foreboding swept through him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “You didn’t know his name, but you did know him?”

“He…” She squeezed her eyes shut, dragging in a ragged breath. “He was one of them. One of the men who kept me in that root cellar.”

The world went deathly quiet around him. The air froze in his lungs, and something lurched deep in the pit of his stomach.

Shock. Loathing. Rage.

“He…he was one of the men who imprisoned you? Tormented you?”

Mairin’s eyes fluttered open, and suddenly Niall was drowning in their stormy depths. “A-aye.”

He saw the truth in her eyes, saw into the very heart of her fear and suffering then.

But how? How could that be? His mind reeled as he tried to comprehend how Bruin, apparently Lancaster’s favorite man when it came to carrying out despicable deeds, could have been one of Mairin’s captors all those years ago.

“The Order of the Shadow,” he murmured, realization dawning. “Roland Gervais hired all manner of brute to work for the Order, including the men who kept you locked in that cellar. And Lancaster hired bounty hunters through Gervais when he sought to have Isolda and John killed.”

Mairin shook her head weakly as if to clear the fog of terror clogging her mind. “When Gervais was killed, the Order died with him. The men who held me captive scattered when the coin stopped coming.”

“Aye, but all of his thugs and mercenaries didn’t simply disappear,” Niall replied. “They likely dispersed when the Order fell apart, but Lancaster, having already worked with the Order once before, must have hired on a few of them. Including Bruin.”

It made sense. Bruin clearly wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, whether it be imprisoning girls to be used as leverage, or firing villages and killing innocents. Now that the Order of the Shadow no longer existed, he was the perfect weapon of destruction and cruelty for Lancaster to wield.

Just then, a scream rose from somewhere deeper in the village. Niall’s gaze darted over his shoulder. His stomach plummeted at what he saw.

Orange flames licked across one building’s thatch roof, leaping over a narrow gap to ignite on a second roof.

The stable lad’s warning hadn’t been for naught. The village’s main road had turned into a maelstrom of fleeing villagers, carts, and livestock. But the fire was spreading quickly. More screams rose. A woman fell in the path and was nearly trampled. Children ran in every direction, wailing for their parents.

Mairin’s fingers sank into Niall’s arm, jerking his attention back to her. Her grim gaze took in the chaos.

“We have to stop this.” Her eyes turned to steel. “And I have to stop him.”

Niall’s heart slammed against his ribs. She meant to take on Bruin?

He opened his mouth, but a din far louder than the turmoil in the village suddenly filled the air. It was the thunder of dozens of horses’ hooves and hundreds upon hundreds of feet in motion.

And it came from the direction of the castle.

“Lancaster,” Niall breathed. “He is mobilizing his army.” His gaze locked with Mairin’s. “Our mission. We cannot let him leave without us.”

“To hell with the mission!” she snapped. She pushed herself to her feet, gripping Niall’s arm for support. Her legs still shook, but she steadied herself against the side of the Bee and Flower’s stables. She lifted her head, fixing him with eyes that flashed like a blade. “I am going after Bruin. And I’m going to kill him.”

Something deep in Niall’s chest cracked like the trunk of a tree splintered by a bolt of lightning. A cacophony of emotions rang through him, discordant and deafening.

Never had he stood more in awe of Mairin’s strength. Where did such bravery come from? After years of torment, she would stand up to her captor. She was not fearless, but rather courageous enough even in the face of her terror to confront him.

Yet if she went after Bruin, Lancaster would leave without them. She was choosing her own revenge over their mission.

Mairin bent, snatching up her skirts to tie them in the makeshift breeches she favored when they trained.

“Follow Lancaster if ye want,” she said, seeming to read his thoughts. “Protect him. At least one of us can see this mission through. But I am no’ going. No’ as long as Bruin is alive to harm more innocents.”

It felt as though Niall’s arms were bound to two stallions, each galloping in the opposite direction, and he in the middle, about to be torn asunder.

He’d staked his name, his honor, his very soul on the Bruce’s cause. When he’d joined the Bodyguard Corps, he’d taken an oath of loyalty, pledged his life to the Bruce. He’d vowed to never stand against him, to fight for him and all of Scotland, and to follow his lead. That meant following orders, including those he’d received for this mission.

When he’d pledged himself to Scotland’s cause six years ago, he’d faced the suspicion and questions of the other men in the Corps without wavering. He’d remained steadfast all these years, never giving them a reason to doubt him.

But more than that, he’d asked them to place their trust in him, to give him the chance to prove his loyalty on this mission. They’d known it would be his ultimate test, pitting his faithfulness to the Bruce and Scotland against his land of birth and his fellow countrymen.

He was already on tenuous ground as the only Englishman in the Corps. The fact that Mairin had questioned his loyalty mere moments before outside of Pontefract’s great hall, even after everything they’d been through together, was yet another reminder that he still hadn’t proven himself.

To abandon Lancaster now would be to implicate himself as a traitor, unable or unwilling to see this mission through. He’d fail this test of his fidelity. Break his vow to the Bruce.

But Niall had made another vow before setting out on this mission. He’d promised Logan that no harm would ever come to Mairin. He’d promised to protect her no matter what.

How could he claim to be keeping that vow if he sent her out into a burning village to face off against a man who had held her captive and tormented her for years?

Yet in truth, this ran far deeper than his pledge to Logan, or his sense of honor, or his duty to his mission.

He loved Mairin. Aye, he had from the first. How could he let the woman he loved face her greatest fear without standing with her and battling by her side?

All this crashed through Niall’s mind in a single hard pound of his heart.

Mairin yanked on the last knot in her skirts then straightened. “Go,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the castle. She began striding deeper into the village, her hand closing around the hilt of the short sword belted to her hip.

But Niall caught her wrist, staying her.

“Nay. I am going with you.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off.

“I will face this with you. I will fight by your side,” he said fiercely. “Always.”

For the briefest moment, some depthless, raw emotion filled her flinty eyes, making them brim with moisture. A heartbeat later, though, she blinked away her tears, replacing them with steely determination.

“Good,” she said, yanking her sword from its sheath. “I cannae save all these people on my own.”

Niall gave her a curt nod. “I’ll try to stop the spread of the fire and get as many villagers as I can out of here.”

“Aye.” Mairin squared her shoulders. “And Bruin is mine.”

“Mairin.” He couldn’t let her go without telling her the truth in his heart. He loved her. But nor did he want to distract her from what lay ahead.

Impulsively, he looped his arm around her waist and drew her to him. He kissed her, hard and swift.

He wanted to tell her to be safe. Wanted to tell her to stay alive at any cost, even if it meant letting Bruin get away. Some part of him even wanted to throw her over his shoulder and run away from all this, refusing to ever let her go for fear of losing her.

But this wasn’t about his fear, nor the fierce need to protect her burning inside him.

He had to trust her. Had to trust in her strength, her skill, the blazing force of her will.

So when he drew back and let her go, there was only one thing left to say.

“Fight well.”

She swallowed hard. “I will.”

And then she was gone, running after Bruin.