Page 29 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

He'd quietly sent Elspeth after her, but then she had come back to the hall, with her mouth pressed thin, and said, "She's nae in her chamber, laird," and the time for waiting had ended.

"Where's she been seen? "

"The east corridor. Then naewhere. Fiona thought she saw her turn toward the old solar wing, but she wasnae certain."

He was moving before she'd finished the sentence.

The old solar wing had been shut up since his mother's time, a warren of storerooms and disused chambers nobody had reason to walk through except the two maids who dusted it twice a year.

He went through it as fast as he could, but the keep was large and searching took time. He started frantically throwing open doors that hadn't been opened in months, calling her name into rooms full of shrouded furniture and dead air, and found nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and felt something cold and unfamiliar starting to climb up the back of his throat with each empty room he cleared.

She's small enough tae have gone through the postern gap at MacRath's. She's clever enough tae have found her way out of a fortress she's been in less than a day. If she's on the cliffs in the dark, if she's tried the sea path in the fading light⁠—

"MacKinnon!"

One of the guards, at the far end of the corridor he’d turned into, was walking towards a door midway between them. "There's someone in there, I think. I heard something when I came past, pounding and maybe a voice."

Marcas reached the door in four strides and hauled it open.

She was on the floor against the far wall, knees drawn up, her forehead resting on them. She came up fast when the light hit her, scrambling to her feet with a speed that told him that she'd been sitting there working herself toward exactly this. He could see the fear and the readiness to be found, alongside the refusal to be seen looking anything less than furious.

"MacKinnon." Her voice cracked on his name, rough from calling out, and she was already moving toward the door before he'd fully cleared it, before he'd said a single word.

"Neilina—"

"I dinnae want tae hear it." She walked past him, at a clipped pace, her head held high, and completely unaware of the uneven paving of the corridor. s

"Neilina, slow down, ye'll⁠—"

"I'm fine." She wasn't. Her foot caught on a stone and her balance went, throwing her sideways. For one long second, he watched her arms pinwheel for a handhold that wasn't there.

Instincrively, he reached through the gap and got both hands around her waist and pulled.

She came off her feet entirely for a moment, weightless in his grip, and he hauled her back towards him, trying to keep her upright. For one full second she was flush against his chest, her hands fisted in his shirt where she'd grabbed for purchase, her breath coming fast and warm against his throat, her whole body still trembling with whatever combination of cold and fright and fury had been building in that room until he found her.

He felt every line of her, every curve and he wanted to pull her even closer than she already was. Her eyes came up to his, wide, startled out of the anger for one unguarded beat, and he watched something pass over her face that had nothing to do with the locked door at all.

Then he set her back on her own feet, careful, deliberate, putting the width of a hand's span between them that hadn't been there a moment ago.

"Are ye hurt?" he asked softly..

"Nae." She stepped back further, wrapping her arms around herself, and the anger came back into her face like a door being pulled shut, though he'd seen what had been behind it for that one unguarded second and wasn't going to forget it easily. "I'm nae hurt. I'm—" Her voice caught. "I've been in that room for what felt like hours, MacKinnon. I called and naebody came."

"I came the moment I knew." He kept his voice even, though the cold thing that had been climbing his throat in the corridor hadn't fully released him yet. "Ye werenae in yer chamber. I had everyone searching the moment Elspeth told me."

"I didnae mean tae—" She stopped, jaw tight, and he watched her decide not to finish that sentence, not to hand him the admission that she'd trapped herself, that the great escape had ended with her sitting on a dusty floor waiting to be found by the very man she'd been running from.

"I know," he said quietly, and let it be enough that he wasn't going to make her say the rest of it.

She looked at him a long moment, something working behind her eyes that he couldn't fully read. Exhaustion, fright, and the stubborn refusal to show either of those things settled into her expression. It made his chest ache in a way he hadn't accounted for two days ago and had stopped being surprised by somewhere around the inn.

"Come," he said. "I'll take ye back tae yer room."

He didn't touch her again on the way there, though every part of him wanted to, wanted to keep a hand at her back just to feel her steady beneath it, and settled instead for walking close enough that she couldn't say he'd abandoned her to the corridor and far enough that she couldn't say he'd taken any liberty she hadn't offered.

Two guards stood outside her door when they reached it. They were posted the moment he'd learned she was missing, and he saw her clock them, saw the flicker of something bitter cross her face at the sight.

"They'll be there tonight," he said, before she could say it herself. "Nae tae keep ye in. Tae make certain that if ye leave, someone knows where ye’ve gone. "