by Wyatt, Dani
But what about the Clan Johnston men that accosted her in the inn? Would they say anything?
No. No, I told myself it wouldn’t make sense. In their position, I would hold my tongue. They almost raped her, the princess of the realm, and they knew it. They tore her clothes, looked at her bare flesh. Their actions were tantamount to blasphemy and their punishment would be death if the news ever came to the king.
We loved each other, she would be mine in a few days and the last thing we needed was to bring that crashing down with this revelation.
“Please, Bors…tell me we will go on like we were. You did not see the mark. You can brand it or burn it away…”
in agreement but in my heart, I felt a dark dread take hold. “No. Never. Sara. Please don’t cry. Every tear you cry takes a year from my life. I will find our way. Find a way. Once again, you must trust me.”
I sat vigil as she slept. I’d fought so many battles, endured so many injuries, but if the truth ever came out I would be no match for the firestorm that would descend on our happiness.
I wanted nothing but her, but by rights I had no claim to her. A marriage performed by a lowly parish priest in a ceremony with a single witness? It wouldn’t be enough. They’d tear up the paper and tear me limb from limb. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t lose her.
Not a goddamned chance.
I fucking loved her, and I always would. I would find a way to make it work.
As I studied her face, peaceful in sleep, I promised that I would honor her and protect her, cherish her and care for her, come what may. Good or bad, war or peace.
Forever.
* * *
Hours before dawn, a noise broke the silence—furtive, quick footsteps on the path outside.
I listened. There were at least four men, maybe more. They approached the house from the front, and though they were trying to be quiet, they weren’t nearly quiet enough. Whoever they were, they weren’t thieves. But that didn’t mean danger wasn’t coming to the door.
I pulled on my britches and drew my blade from its sheath. I locked the front door from the inside before they could reach it, and then exited the cottage from the back, outflanking them as I had done so many times in battle. There were five, along with a bound and hooded hostage.
The light was too dim for me to see their faces, but I knew damned well who they were. The same five men who’d drunkenly accosted Sara in the town square. The same five who’d tried to rape her in the inn.
No. Six. Their captain had said there was another. Someone wasn’t here. Shit, what did that mean?
I tried to push it out of my mind, tried to focus on the moment at hand. So much for my assumption they’d be too smart to try anything.
A grim smile pulled at my lips, despite everything. Earlier, I’d silently promised myself that I would pay them back for what they’d done, and now they were here to collect on that oath. Sara was a princess, and she was my woman, and I would bring her justice.
Painful, punitive, uncivilized justice.
I crept up behind the one nearest to me, grabbed him from behind and slit his throat with no more care than stomping a cock roach. The familiar gurgle of exsanguination, and the smell of the blood, brought back a thousand memories of battle, threatening to plunge me into mindlessness, but I kept my focus and moved on to the next man.
This one put up a better fight, but I made short work of him and dropped him with a twisting stab to the heart.
The other three froze at the sound of his dying, while the hostage squirmed on the garden path. His feet had been hobbled and I could tell from his noises he was gagged under the hood. I spun my knife in my hand and broadened my stance, stepping out of the shadows and into the dim moonlight.
“Which one of you motherfuckers wants to go to hell next?”
One leapt forward, and I cut him down with a slice across his face that left him bloodied and screaming on the ground.
The next used the moment of distraction to make his attack, but I delivered my foot into his solar plexus, then again into his miserable balls and he doubled over as I brought my knee up to connect with his nose with a crunch and a scream.
The last of them turned and tried to run, but in three strides I was behind him, and ran the knife through the back of his throat. As he lay dying, I returned to the two I’d dispatched, and slit both their throats, silencing them for good before I wiped the knife on my britches and turned each man over, checking their faces.
As I’d thought, they were the Clan Johnston bastards. But their captain wasn’t among them. Fuck.
If he wasn’t here, that meant there was one more man that knew our secret, and it was clear they weren’t about to keep it to themselves. I searched the bodies and found a folded scrap of parchment, on which was scrawled a hasty note.
Bring the princess back alive. Angus Johnston.
I knew Angus. He was the youngest son of the Johnston chief, a cruel bastard but a good strategist.
His forces were stationed ten miles or so to the west. I surmised that his men must have told him what had happened, either in full or leaving out the part where they tried to rape the princess. He saw the opportunity to “rescue” her and return her to the king. After that, Clan Johnston would have every reason to attack us and take our lands, and they’d do so with the king’s full support.
Things were fucking falling apart.
I dragged the hostage out of the shadow of the magnolia into the moonlight, and pulled off his hood. Staring up at me was the bloodied and bruised face of Sara’s father, in way worse shape than he’d been when I leveled him days ago. Someone had kicked the ever-loving shit out of him. I yanked the gag free and he coughed and sputtered in a pathetic heap at my feet.
I crouched beside him, keeping my knife blade in full view. “What did you tell them?”
He spat out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. “Nothing.”
What a useless son of a bitch. I put the point of my knife to his forehead and dug it in, just deep enough to make a trickle of blood slide down his face. “Do I look like a guy who likes to repeat himself?”
“Okay, okay,” he babbled. “I told them everything. They’d seen the mark on her. I told them I’d been paid off to take her when she was a baby. I’ve always known who she was. They planned to take both me and her to the king, after killing you first.”
Still with my knife point on his forehead, I glanced over my shoulder. “Bad plan. Worse execution.”
“Listen. If you keep quiet about this, I’ll cut you in on the stipend I get every month for keeping her. I’ll help you bury the bodies. I’ll say nothing. No one will know. You can even fuck her sometimes…just do not spend inside of her. If she were to bear children…the mark is hereditary. Her real mother had one as well. It could be passed on and if it was in view…”
I hated him. Fucking hated him.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said, and shoved the gag back into his mouth. I stared down at him, trying desperately to resist the very real urge to eliminate this fake father problem from Sara’s life.
But I’d spilled enough blood for one night without going overboard. Telling Sara didn’t fill me with excitement as horrible as he was, she made me promise not to kill him. Once I’d checked his bindings and replaced his hood, I went inside and gently awakened her. She opened her eyes and smiled up at me, and I broke the bad news.
“We need to go. Now.”
“What?” She asked, sleepily and confused. “Why?”
The attack changed everything. Clan Johnston wouldn’t give up that easily. There would be more men and if they didn’t succeed there would be battle.
“Because you’re in danger. You are not safe here.”
She got to her feet, half wrapped in a blanket. “But where will we go? To your friend in Gowerton?”
“No, Sara. War is coming and you’re going to be caught in the middle of it. There’s only one way to avoid that.”
“I don’t understand. How can
we stop a war?”
“By taking you to your father. I have to take you to the king.”
“No. No, Bors, he’ll take me from you. I only want you.”
I put my hand to her cheek, brushing my thumb over the flesh. “Sara, what did I promise you?”
She met my eyes, then drew a deep breath. “That we would be together.”
“And I meant it. Now get dressed. We have to go.”
“But what about Angelica? We can’t just leave her in prison. She needs our help, Bors.”
I gathered up my riding tack and pulled on a shirt. “We can’t risk it right now. We’ll send someone back for her, I promise.”
Together we hustled out of the house. I did my best to protect her from the pile of bodies, but there was no way I could hide the other part of the bad news I hadn’t yet delivered. Her father might be hooded, but he was so scrawny that he was hard to mistake for anybody else. Sara spotted him and gasped, but I hoisted him up by his bindings and slung him over my exhausted stallion’s back like a sack of grain. There was no way I’d let the poor beast carry more weight than that right after such an arduous journey.
“Please don’t tell me that’s who I think it is.”
“Unfortunately it is,” I said. “He told them where to find us.”
I lifted her up onto Angelica’s bay mare, mounted behind her in the saddle, and then grabbed the reins of my stallion as we took off into the night.
Sara
My body ached as we made slow progress under cover of darkness. Though we stuck to the road as far as it went, we soon found ourselves cutting across the moorland, picking our way by lamplight around boulders and dips that threatened to unmount us.
I was unaccustomed to riding for such long hours, and I was sore from lovemaking with Bors. We rode two-in-the-saddle together on Angelica’s mare, and I felt each step the horse took deep into the center of my being.
My heart ached, too. Despite Bors’ words, I knew things had changed.
In a few short days I’d gone from being the unloved daughter of a small highland family, to the beloved fiancée of a clan warrior, to the princess of the kingdom. And now I was on my way to meet my birth father for the first time since I was a tiny baby, and who knew what would come next?
Me? A princess?
Even now I wondered if we’d made a mistake. If we’d get to the castle only to be laughed at and sent on our way. But what was clear was that Bors believed it, and those soldiers of Clan Johnston believed it.
And if my father, the man who raised me, had led them to us, surely he must believe it too?
That thought was almost the worst of it. If he believed it, it meant he knew I wasn’t his. Or suspected at least. He was the linchpin in this whole affair, the thing that connected my birth in the capital and my existence in Weschail.
The morning light was just tipping over the horizon when we entered a quiet village of smoky chimneys and dirt paths. Bors halted the horses outside a traveler’s inn, where the groom emerged rubbing the sleep from his eyes, tucking in his shirt and trying to comb his messy hair with his fingers.
Bors extended a hand to greet him. “Morning, Finan.”
The young man lit up. “Bors! I mean, morning, sir.”
“Get these two watered, will you? And once you’ve done that, I’ve got a favor to ask.”
Like a stupid, naïve girl, my mind went to all sorts of possibilities about the favor—a rented room, a featherbed. But Bors remained focused on the problems at hand, and he paid the groom a small sum to be a runner and take word to Weschail.
“There’s a woman named Angelica, being held by the sheriff. Tell him it’s safe for her to return home now, but that I’ve borrowed her horse for a ride. Tell him I told you to come. Don’t mention that I had anyone with me.”
The boy, Finan, nodded dutifully and pocketed the coin.
“Is it?” I asked as Bors helped me down from the mare. “Is it safe for her to return home?”
“Without us there, yes.” He shook his head. “Sorry. Right now she’s better off on her own.”
Once I was dismounted, I checked on my father. He had been in and out of consciousness as we rode. Now, he was sobering up and clearly suffering the consequences—not only of being badly beaten by the men who aimed to kidnap me and kill Bors, but also paying the price for a terrible hangover. I unfastened the gag from his mouth and helped him to drink some water. And then rejoined Bors on the mare.
Back on the road, we had to slow our pace to wind our way through a narrow forest path. I tucked my chin against Bors’ shoulder, and felt a desperation to talk of the simple things—the dreams for how we would be together, our future. I ached for things to be the way they had been.
“Tell me more. Tell me anything. Tell me about the livery.”
His body stiffened and he shook his head, drawing air through his full lips into a deep sigh so that his massive shoulders lifted my chin up slightly and then lowered it again.
“Aye, my angel...” He began on a deep breath. “Our livery will be surrounded by meadows as green as your eyes…but never as beautiful.”
I gripped him more tightly from behind, caressing his chest and abdominal muscles as he talked. His hard body relaxed ever-so-slightly against my soft tummy and breasts, and I embraced him with all my might. Though it hadn’t been my intention, my forearm pressed against his loins. His cock responded to me, becoming hard and firm in his pants.
His low, brief growl rumbled through him and into me. I smiled knowing that under the surface, the beast was still stirring for me. He still wanted me, and I still yearned for him. And I took much comfort from that.
Late in the day, as the shadows lengthened with the setting sun, I asked Bors to stop because I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open. I was exhausted and I knew he must be, too. I, at least, had slept a little during the night, but he had not.
He agreed, to my surprise, and I knew from that alone that he was feeling fatigue the same as me. He set to work readying a campsite for us, but I insisted on doing my part as well, helping to get the horses fed and making sure we had enough dry kindling to last us through until morning.
Night came on fast, dark and foreboding, but I felt safe and secure beside Bors. Over the fire, he cooked a prepared rabbit that he had caught with a foot snare. Across the fire from us sat my father, who had, unfortunately, gained a lasting consciousness thanks to the mouthwatering smell of the roasting meat.
A ceaseless pummeling by a band of kidnappers and a day’s hard travel had done nothing to make him any kinder. He was, if anything, more awful than ever before.
“Now you know the truth,” he said, gnawing at a rabbit leg. “You should thank me for not fucking you years ago. It’s my right, after all. You’re not my daughter; you were always just a burden. Hardly worth the coin I took for your care. And now look where I’m at! Because of you.”
I glanced at Bors, whose nostrils were flaring like an angry bull’s right before the charge.
“Don’t you fucking speak to her—” he spat back, already pushing to his feet when I reached over and gripped his wrist.
“Bors,” I said. “I think he’s had enough beatings.”
“Not from where I sit,” he grunted, his body hard as he shifted his weight back, taking an angry bite of his meat as he glared at my father.
I took a deep breath and steadied myself. Disgusting as he was, my father was feeling talkative and I aimed to make the most of it.
“So, father. What was your plan? How did you intend to take me for yourself?”
My father cleared his throat, then spat a fatty bit of gristle from his mouth. The noise of it hitting the dry leaves made my stomach roll.
“Well, I may as well tell the truth, since I’m damned either way. If this brute doesn’t kill me, he’ll only be sparing me for the hangman’s noose.” There was a glint of truth in his eye as he watched me across the fire, and I knew he was right. For what he’d done, a ha
nging would be a merciful end, and there was precious little I could do to prevent it, even if I wanted to. “Your mother was standing in my way to take you as I deserved. It would have worked, the nightshade I’d started to sneak into her food would have worked within weeks.”
I had never liked him, but now I was finding my way towards actual hatred. To think that he had caused my mother so much pain in order to have me for himself was awful to consider. She had never been kind to me, but no one deserved to suffer so much at the hands of her spouse.
I pressed on with my questions. “Who arranged for me to come to you? Who’s been paying you off?”
My father sucked at the marrow from the rabbit bone. “The traveling minstrel that comes through the Cock and Bull each month. Bardo. He was the go-between. Knew that we was hard up, what with the mill my own father had left me standing in ruins. Of course, back then I was seen as a landowner and not too badly respected, and it weren’t hard to hide your mother away for a few months so as you could be seen as legitimate. But, you know, injuries and sickness kept me away from the fields and our fortunes weren’t what they’d been.”
He paused, taking a bite of his meat, and I almost laughed. Injuries and sickness be damned, he was just lazy. Lazy and weak, and unable to even sell off his land at a fair price, leaving us more impoverished by the year.
“Bardo still remembered me as I’d been though,” he said, pointing a bony finger at me. “Good man is Bardo. Born and bred in Weschail and now respected throughout the kingdom. Used to sing in the Cock and Bull as a lad. He knew I could be relied upon to keep my mouth shut about where you’d come from, just so long as I kept receiving a few coins for beer when he came through town. As for who arranged for you to be taken in the first place, I don’t know the answer to that. Knowing too much can be dangerous.”