Page 56 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

Broad hands were prying her upward.

“Let me go!” Peigi grappled to cling to her rogue’s lifeless body.

Collapsed atop him, she bundled her hand in the Comyn mantle Francine had loaned her, wrapped her hand with his desperately. A handfast.

“Stay here, nay leave me again,” she begged, shielding him from further madness, her strong, cocksure charmer who’d won the spear throw with a scythe and outsmarted her brother for years, and played the flute like Faunus for his nymphs, who’d…only ever kissed her.

The hands pried on her shoulders harder. She shook her head and squeezed their handfast, tears bubbling uncontrollably down her cheeks when she felt the warmth of his blood sticking to her skin, as it soaked into her knees from where it was pooling on the ground.

“No…” She fumbled to stanch it, her fingers sticky. He was so

pale in the torchlight.

Summoning strength, she rolled him, grunting, flipping his bulk onto his belly to reveal a stab in his lower back. She pressed her hands into it, as if she could single-handedly heal such a wound. Her voice was gone. None of this mattered without him to share it with.

“Brother,” she garbled, finally looking up at Seamus, who had ceased trying to pick her up and simply rested with his hand across her back, head shaking helplessly. “How could ye? Ye were wrong about him.”

Seamus wiped her tear, his face haggard. “I ken.”

Her brow furrowed. She glanced around.

Tormund MacLeod, the dark-haired demon whom Caleb had served, skin adorned in scarified patterns and voice raking from what looked like an olden throat slashing, caressed his dagger back and forth upon MacGregor’s doublet like a whetstone, as if a cat toying with its dinner.

“What should I do with him?” he murmured ominously. “Send him through the veil?”

Seamus, his brow resolute, growled, “Drop the blade, Kendrew.” MacGregor’s blade dropped.

“Help him.” She tugged on Seamus’s coat. “Please. Help him. He’s so lifeless. He’s…” Nay dead yet.

He still breathed, though it was shallow. The air was so still. No stirring. No fickle fae folk to toy with fates. Why must they make mischief? Why couldn’t they be useful for once?

He searched her desperate eyes and ordered the soldiers to disperse.

It was then, as Caleb Comyn’s kin swarmed around her and Jossy’s hands immediately pressed into the stab wound and Peigi cupped his face with her bloodied hands trying to revive him, that she saw an army. MacLeod tartan. MacDonald tartan.

“Take MacGregor to the undercroft.” Why was her brother ordering MacLeod to detain MacGregor?

She swiped at her tears with the back of her sleeve as his words came back to her. He knew. He knew Caleb was innocent.

A litter was jostled through the crowd, and Caleb was heaved onto it. They hoisted him up and she pushed to her feet to follow when she heard her brother say softly to someone, “Fetch the deacon at Duthil. These Hallowtide winds spin their magic weel tonight.”

The wind was blowing, she realized. She just couldn’t feel it. The past was repeating itself—

“Release him,” came a clear, articulate voice. All eyes turned to a man plodding to a halt. “I saw ye at Court, Seamus. Why do ye have a celebration and fail to invite me?”

…

End of Allhallowtide. The Melee.

A hand jostled Peigi. She shrugged it off and tightened her ringed hand laced with Caleb’s on his chest, wrapped in Comyn plaid.

But his form lay lifeless. Curled against his bare torso, her hands were dry and cracking from washing him and preparing him for his next journey.

Joslyn and Aileana had burned shut his knife wound, leaving a charred, crusted welt, stopping the bleeding, but there’d been no change in his constitution.

Compline bells had tolled from Duthil a while ago, summoning the world to bed.

Soul Mass was nearly over and if the fates could be trusted to this point, then he had little time left in his mortal flesh.

The deacon’s chanting was incessant, and the incense was maddening, filling her nose with remembrances of her mother doing this same thing. It irritated her morning sickness. Eyes so sore, the well had run dry.

The hand jostled her again.

“Leave me be,” she muttered, her voice raw from screaming.

Her ear rested against Caleb’s chest, thumping weakly compared to how hale it had always thumped before.

“Sister,” said Seamus, and her anger finally surged to the surface.

She bolted upright. “How could ye? How could ye betray me so? How could ye keep that missive from me?” She pushed him away. “He’d be alive today if ye’d nay conspired with tha-that snake

and sabotaged me!” She nudged him again, though he barely budged beneath her force.

Seamus gripped her. His face contorted sympathetically.

A fresh wave of distress surged through her as her brother’s protective arms came around her when she reached up, grappling him. He scooped her into a warm embrace.

“Kendrew just gave me that missive. I nay kenned he found it until a couple days ago. Lass, ye have to ken that whilst I was angered these years, I never intended to hang him. Ye love him?”

“I love him so,” she whispered. “Seamus. I am to have his babe. Ye are to be an uncle.”

Seamus pulled back, eyes widening. “Ye didna miscarry?”

She shook her head, wiping her sleeve across her eyes as he braced her arms. His face fell. Then he dragged her into his hold again, clenching her.

“I canna marry another. My heart belongs to him. It has since I first set him free.”

“Wheesht,” he crooned, like he’d once done when she and Aileana were wee and he still a gentle boy. “I’m sorry,” he croaked, rocked her gently. “Christ, lass, I’m in a quandary.”

She pulled up. “Why?”

His face looked haggard. “I canna sever this bride contract. I tried, but Bale, he…”

“ Bale…

” she gasped. The audacity of anyone mentioning that name—if what she and Caleb had reasoned tonight was true.

“He saw me at Court discussing with Tormund and James who Reaper really was. He followed me here. He demanded I release his brother—”

“And ye did so?”

“I had no choice. He carried with him the clout of the Earl of Arran.”

“Bale is here? Where?”

She shoved away from Seamus and hastened for the door. Down the winding stairs, down to the guest chambers, down the corridor and more stairs to the solar.

“Peigi, stop…” Seamus was chasing.

Nay, she was no longer a meek lass afraid of a confrontation.

A murderer had been on the loose for years, tormenting her dreams, and she was determined to shine a candle on his soul.

She dare not leave Caleb, lest he take his final breath without her there to hold him across the veil, but when she heard voices arguing from behind the solar door, she banged it open.

The chamber silenced.

She’d been here once before, MacGregors arguing about a castle while the true laird lay dying.

She surveyed the chamber until she stopped on one blue eye…one green. Bale MacGregor.

Her gaze bored into him as the past rushed back.

“And ye are?” he said dourly as Seamus stormed in behind her.

“Peigi, slow down.”

But the man’s face curled into a smile. “Lady Peigi.”

Kendrew stood there, too, rubbing sore wrists from what she suspected had been bindings.

“We’ve vied for this,” Kendrew said, moving beside her brother. “Ye have the outlaw in the other chamber. Let us finish this! Ye went for reinforcements and yet once more get cold feet about following through.”

“Because those reinforcements were nay for the outlaw’s capture,” Seamus rumbled, his eyes leveling on Kendrew. “They were for capturing the true traitor.”

Her brother…had believed her? Peigi’s thoughts reeled. Was that why he’d so quietly departed? He’d gone to bring back strength against MacGregor? Not even telling her the reason why, to protect his motives?

Tormund and James had been at Court for the peace talks with the Earl of Arran…

“ Ye

turned traitor, Sir MacGregor,” Peigi said. “When ye lied about my missive. All these years ye filled Seamus’s head with lies.”

Kendrew rounded on her, jabbing his finger, and this time, Seamus, MacLeod, and MacDonald postured forward, hands teasing hilts. “Peigi—”

“ Lady

,” she corrected. She was not informal with this man.

His jaw ticked and he composed himself. “Lady Peigi, I have only ever protected ye.”

“Ye deceived me. To entrap me.” As Caleb had figured out.

Kendrew laughed. “Peigi, I ken ye nay wish to marry me. But ye agreed to this bride tourney. Ye put yerself on this pedestal, nay me. I’m the last man standing. Ye must

handfast me.”

“I refuse,” Peigi croaked.

“I’ll argue it to the top. And cost yer brother heavy coin to dispute me, which I’m aware is hard for him to come by. ’Twould be a shame to make yer people suffer over this.”

“I will nay be forced to consort with murderers.” She lifted her chin.

Bale’s eyes met hers. “Ye have no proof.”

“ I

am the proof, Laird MacGregor,” she argued, glancing to his hand, where just as she feared and suspected sat that damning ring. His war trophy. “I saw ye wearing this ring when you killed my sire.”

Bale’s jaw ticked. She firmed her jaw as the rest of the chamber’s attention turned to her.

“Ye ken nay of what ye speak. Ye were only a bairn.”

“But they’d listen to me,” Seamus said.

Bale scoffed—

“And me,” Tormund MacLeod growled, stabbing his dirk into the board. “That is my

man on his deathbed. My brethren, whom I would trust with my life, nay to mention he’s an esteemed lawyer in the Archbishop’s employ.”

Bale paused.

Tormund’s mouth curled up. “Harder to murder someone so beloved by the Crown.”

“And me. I’d trust Seamus

with my life,” James MacDonald said, even though he’d once been one of Seamus’s enemies.

Irritated, Bale tried to argue—

“How did ye come by yer lairdship of Lyon Tower?” Peigi asked, then walked around the table to confront the man who’d once so intimidated her.

She opened a flyer she’d found upon Caleb’s body and lay it upon the board. Depicting a skull on a pike.