by Brenda Joyce
“I understand ye broke yer word.”
She inhaled, trying to pull away from him. In the end, he was as medieval as Royce—as ruthless, as uncompromising. He let her go. Allie hesitated, because Royce remained in a furious fit, destroying the tower. “Don’t leave him,” Allie whispered, afraid he might hurt himself. She trembled, tears finally falling. “He will never forgive me, will he?”
“Ye crossed him,” Aidan said. “He’ll never forgive ye.”
ALLIE WENT DOWN to the hall for breakfast, exhausted from a sleepless night. She hadn’t lain down even for a few hours—she had been on her knees, praying for Royce, asking the gods to heal him now. All the while she had been acutely aware of his pain and rage. She had tried to communicate with him telepathically, but he hadn’t tried to speak to her in return, not even once. His power had finally quieted, to seethe softly in the tower above the hall.
She stumbled into the hall. Soon, he would come out of the prison he had chosen for himself, and they would be face-to-face. And then what? He was dead set against her.
She would never forget the way he’d looked at and spoken to her last night. Surely, sooner or later, he would begin to understand why she’d done what she had. Surely his love for her would allow him to reason—even though he was the least reasonable man she knew.
It couldn’t be over. He was the love of her life.
We’re finished.
Allie trembled with dread as Aidan stepped inside. He didn’t smile at her, and he looked tired. But then, he’d undoubtedly sat up for the rest of the night with Royce to make sure he didn’t hurt himself. Eyeing her expression, he said, unsmiling, “I willna ask how ye slept.”
She bowed her head, sitting stiffly on one of the benches at the table, her knees bruised from the hours spent kneeling on stone. Aidan was against her now, too, when he had fast become a treasured friend. “How could I sleep when Royce was so upset? I know you macho guys think if a woman does her own thing, if she acts independently, it means we don’t love you. But you are so wrong.”
Aidan gave her a long look. “I ken ye love him an’ ye always will.” He sat and poured mead into a cup and drained it before glancing at her. “Blackwood has gone to the town of Moffat. A spy has sent him word he wishes to meet. Mayhap there’s news o’ Elasaid.”
Allie started. “Any news would be great.”
A housemaid stepped into the hall. “My lord, my lady?”
Aidan glanced up, noted that she was young and blond, and sent her an automatic smile. “Aye?”
“Kenneth from the village has come to the kitchens. His wife is very ill an’ he has heard Lady Allie is a Healer. I told him I heard no such thing, but he insisted I come to you an’ ask if she can attend his wife.” The blonde shifted nervously.
Allie stood, not having to think about it. “Of course I’ll help.”
Aidan stared thoughtfully. “An’ how would the villager ken that Blackwood’s guest heals?”
“I don’t know, my lord.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Allie said. “If someone is ill, I have to heal them. I took my own vows, Aidan.”
Aidan stood, but glanced upward in the direction of the tower room where Royce had spent the night. “He broke down an entire wall. Blackwood is furious.”
Allie hated the idea of leaving Royce alone, even though he was far calmer. “You should stay with him. I can take an escort of knights to the village. I won’t be long.” She didn’t think she needed much of an escort, as the village was about five minutes on foot from the moat. On the other hand, it couldn’t hurt to play it safe.
Aidan appeared relieved. “I dinna think it wise to leave him. He’s quiet now, but I have never seen him so enraged. I wish to stay with him.”
Allie took a long glance at his handsome profile. He was a medieval playboy, with all the charm a man could possibly have, but he was as loyal as a man could be toward Royce. Last night had shown her that. “Thank you.”
He finally smiled as he walked with her to the front door. “I’m yer Knight of Swords, lass. I haven’t forgotten.”
He had forgiven her! Allie was relieved. She did not want to lose his friendship, not now, not ever. Impulsively she faced him so they halted. “I wish I could undo what happened last night. I wish I had understood better that the standards I live by are not valid here, in this world, for men like you and Royce. I wish I hadn’t gone behind Royce’s back!”
Aidan’s gaze was searching. “We live by our word, Lady Allie.”
There was no possible response to make to that.
He guided her outside. Allie found herself in the midst of six English knights. They were clad from head to toe in armor, and even with their visors up, they looked like mean fighting machines. She hadn’t expected a fully armored escort.
She had just mounted a small gray palfrey when she felt Royce’s power. She tensed and glanced up at the tower.
Instantly she saw Royce standing at the embrasure, staring toward her. Her heart turned over with so much love and fear, and real, clawing despair. Don’t do this, she thought silently, begging him now. Don’t turn away from me. I love you!
He vanished from the window.
She inhaled, because no answer could be more eloquent. She hadn’t felt any emotion at all—not anger, not pain, not even the flicker of male desire. He was closing himself off from her completely.
“Godspeed, until the afternoon, then,” Aidan said. He nodded at the foremost knight, and the small retinue moved out.
Shaken, Allie let her mare follow the chargers, glancing worriedly back at the tower. Royce remained gone from her sight.
A moment later, they were trotting over the drawbridge, the first wattle huts ahead. Children appeared, dancing about the edge of the road, calling out to the knights.
Allie couldn’t smile. If Royce remained set against her, she might never smile again.
They halted before one of the huts, a gray-haired man pacing before the doorway. Allie slid down from her mare, trying to focus on the task at hand. Instead all she could think of was Royce and how he was determined to blame her for a betrayal she had not committed.
“Lady, thank ye fer coming,” Kenneth cried, his face ashen with fear and worry.
Allie shoved all thoughts of Royce aside. “It’s my pleasure.” She touched him and this time smiled with warmth that she meant. “Don’t fear. Your wife will be fine.”
His color became even paler.
Allie glanced into the dark interior of the hut, but saw nothing but shadows. She became aware of a woman’s suffering. It was slight, and blended with a small pain. The woman was hardly ill at all.
“I’ll only be a moment,” she told her escort. She smiled and faced the husband. “Please wait outside.”
He nodded, ghostly white now, shaking.
“She will be fine,” Allie said, and she strode across the dirt yard and entered the hut.
It was dank and dark inside. Smoke made it difficult to breathe. It took her a moment to adjust her eyesight to the darkness. Then she saw the woman, lying on the floor, her hands and legs bound.
Evil began swiftly filling the hut.
Allie realized it was a trap. The woman wasn’t sick—she’d been hurt and tied, so Allie would feel her suffering. The woman was bait.
Kenneth wasn’t afraid for his wife—he was afraid of the lord of darkness.
Allie turned to flee.
Moffat materialized before her, smiling.
She tried to duck, too late.
He seized her—and as they were hurled through mud and wattle, past stars, she screamed for Royce.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HE DID NOT KNOW WHERE Ailios was going with Blackwood’s knights. It was not his affair, and he reminded himself that he did not care—that he would never care again. Aidan had remained behind, and of course, he knew why. Still, Aidan should not have let her go.
The urge came to leave his prison and find her and protect her. Then it van
ished.
Aidan could protect her now.
Aidan could have her now.
He felt sick at the thought. He had spent the entire night raging at Ailios for her treachery, at himself for his folly and at the gods for their capricious ways. He had torn a dozen stone blocks from the walls, smashing them into shards in sheer frustration, haunted by her smile, her laughter, the light of joy that was so often on her face and in her eyes.
How could she have betrayed him?
He had admitted that he cared!
The chamber was destroyed. The round room was littered with broken blocks of stone and gravel, filled with dust. Two of the walls were in ruins. He was ill in his heart, in his soul.
He saw Ailios healing the boy as they pulled him from the rockslide; he saw her healing old Coinneach; he saw her as she lay beneath him, gasping with pleasure and weeping with rapture.
And he saw Aidan with her in his bed, the two of them in the throes of the same damned rapture.
He roared and wrenched another stone block from the wall in more frustration, more fury, not caring that his hands were raw. He would kill Aidan if he took her to bed.
He leaned against the broken wall, heard himself choke on a single sob. He hadn’t shed a tear since he was a boy of four or five. But his chest pained him terribly, and it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his life. He had never felt this kind of anguish before. What was happening to him?
She had reduced him to this pathetic moment, where he wept over the personal loss of a woman. Royce trembled. He was a Master, committed to his vows and the Code until he died. She was unimportant! He had a duty to her, as every Master did. He must forget their brief, forbidden love affair.
But how would he forget her laughter and her joy, her kindness and her grace?
He sank to the pitted stone floor amidst boulders and rocks. There, he rubbed his face, his eyes. He must think like a soldier, not a fool. This was for the best. He had known all along that she threatened his vows. The wrenching conflict in his mind and heart continued to prove how dangerous she was. His heart shrieked at him in protest. If he heeded it, he might listen to what she had to say.
She had betrayed him.
He could never forgive such disloyalty and he would never trust her again.
The pain in his heart, his entire being, increased. He felt crushed by its weight. Worse, the sun that had begun to shine in his life was gone. It would never shine again. He was going to spend the next six hundred years in thick fog and black clouds, lost and alone.
She was all that was good in this world.
She would forgive him if their roles were reversed.
Shaken, he strode to the broken window opening and stared out, but she was gone and out of sight now. He was relieved; he was disappointed. He should go downstairs and ask Aidan where she had gone and why. That much he could do.
He fought the urge. He would pretend he didn’t know she had left Blackwood; it was not his affair, not ever again.
Royce!
Her scream of terror pierced through the tower room as if she stood beside him. He jerked, alert and alarmed.
She screamed again.
And he shoved all emotion aside. He focused his every sense upon her—and knew Moffat had captured her at last.
THIS TIME, as she lay on cold stone, the pain of the leap finally subsiding, she was nauseous. She clawed the floor as the torment dulled to an intense soreness in her entire body. Leaping again, so soon, had hurt more than ever and she felt certain she would not be able to do so in the near future. But she’d worry about that later. Where was Moffat?
He no longer held her. Afraid to move, she lay impossibly still, straining to sense him. As she focused, she became aware of how dank it was around her, the stale odor of refuse assailing her now. Thick smoke hung in the room, making it almost impossible to breathe. Where was she?
Moffat was not present. Evil was everywhere, encircling the place where she had landed, and Allie guessed she was within a perimeter guarded by Moffat’s human soldiers. And she was not alone.
A woman was present, just a short distance away. Allie reeled, not from the pain in her battered body, but from her fear and despair.
Cautiously, alarmed, Allie opened her eyes.
The room was dark and filled with shadows. The floor she lay on wasn’t stone—it was rough, splintered wood. A small fire burned in a very rustic stone hearth. Allie sat up, her gaze moving to the form wrapped in the blanket there.
The woman stared back at her, unmoving. Her eyes were huge in her pale face.
Allie took in her long tangled hair, and the dark bruise on her cheek. Gaunt hollows were beneath her eyes. But nothing compared to the woman’s emotional torment. Her heart swelled with compassion for her.
But she didn’t go to her yet. Allie glanced quickly around the rectangular room, noting a table, a bench and that the floor was covered with straw, most of it dirty. Her gaze moved to the closed wooden plank door, and then to the shuttered windows on each side of it.
“Where am I?” she said roughly, hoping that the woman spoke English.
She did. “Eoradh.”
“Where is that?”
“The far north.”
Allie tested her body and stood. Her limbs trembled, weak from the leap through time. She hoped her healing powers were unaffected by the strain of time travel. “Have you seen Moffat?”
“I dinna ken Moffat.”
The woman was clearly Scot, although her accent was different from Royce’s and everyone else she’d met so far in the Highlands. While her impulse was to rush to her and heal her, Allie walked quickly to the door. As she reached for it, the woman said, “T’is bolted from without. And there are guards everywhere.”
Allie tested it anyway. The woman was right; it was securely locked. She tried both shutters, but they were locked, as well. Where the hell was Moffat? And why had he taken her to this primitive hut in the far north?
She turned and walked closer to the fire. “Are you a prisoner, too?”
The woman laughed bitterly and pushed the blanket aside. She was naked beneath, her hands and legs bound, and she had been beaten.
Allie tensed in sheer dismay at the sight of the cruelty she’d suffered. But the firelight now played over the woman, and Allie was close enough to note that her hair was a mass of dirty titian curls. And the name formed swiftly in her mind—Brigdhe.
Brigdhe had been captured and tortured.
No, it was impossible, she thought with some panic. Moffat couldn’t be so clever and so cruel to do this to Royce again.
“I can heal your pain,” Allie said softly. “May I?”
The woman’s eyes were wary. “Why would you do so?”
“Because I am a Healer.”
The woman stared, considering her words, and finally she nodded.
Allie knelt beside her, showering her with a strong, healing white light. The woman did not have major injuries, but she’d been beaten and raped. As Allie felt her physical pain recede, she focused on the terrible anguish in her heart. She dared and sent a white light there, as well.
The woman pulled the blanket up, her eyes wide, brighter now. “You have a great magic,” she gasped. “My body no longer hurts.”
“Are you Brigdhe?” she whispered, meeting her blue gaze.
She started. “Aye. How do ye ken?”
Allie hesitated. “I am a friend of your husband’s.”
Brigdhe’s face tightened. Her expression was hard to decipher—Allie decided it was partly anguish and partly anger.
“He will rescue you,” Allie cried, touching her reassuringly. “I am certain.”
Brigdhe hugged herself. “I have been here for days and days. At first, I knew he would come. But he didn’t come for me. And day after day, Kael did as he pleased, cruelly, openly telling me how he wished to hurt Ruari. Now I know how powerful Kael is. Ruari may never find me, and if he does, he will die. I will grow old in this dungeon.
I will grow old being raped and beaten. And why? Why? Because Kale hates my husband. He uses me to torment Ruari. I am naught but a pawn in the affairs of men!”
“No, Ruari will find you! He will take you from this place, and Kael will die,” Allie said fiercely. “You will be freed!”
Brigdhe looked away, crying. The torment in her heart hadn’t eased. Allie knew she didn’t just cry with hopelessness, but she wept for the loss of her love for the man she had married.
She had been told too many times to count that the past couldn’t be changed. But she had to try. For if Brigdhe could forgive Royce when he rescued her, he would not have to suffer the burden of guilt for so many centuries. “This isn’t Royce’s—Ruari’s—fault,” Allie said, taking her hands. “He loves you. He would die for you. Your disappearance is killing him. Please, don’t blame him.”
Brigdhe tore her hands away. “Are you in love with him?” she cried.
Allie hesitated.
Brigdhe’s eyes widened. “Are you lovers?” She was both shocked and accusing.
“No!” For they were certainly not lovers now, in this time.
Brigdhe was angry again, and that was a good sign. “Leave me alone,” Brigdhe said bitterly. “If Ruari does come, you are welcome to him. If I ever escape this hell, I will never return to him as his wife.”
“He loves you so,” Allie tried again. “Don’t lose hope—don’t let go of your love for him. Please, try to hear what I am saying. If anyone is to blame, it is Kael.”
Brigdhe shook her head and as she did so, they both heard the bolt outside the door being lifted. Brigdhe jerked up the blanket, consumed with so much fear that Allie felt it wash over her. Anger arose. She stood, wishing she had a weapon. Somehow she had to defend Royce’s wife from his demonic enemy.
The door opened and Moffat stepped inside, smiling. “Hallo a Ailios.”
It was hard to think. Clearly this was the sixth century. A very young Royce would soon appear to vanquish Kael and free his wife. Moffat had captured her and brought her to this terrible time and place. Why?
