Page 7 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

CHAPTER THREE

"Let me go," she spat, twisting against him, but he only tightened his hold and leaned closer, his breath hot with effort and triumph.

"I said stop⁠—"

The words broke off as a heavy blow hit him on the side of his head.

The impact jolted through the man above her and he jerked his head up in shock and pain.

For a heartbeat, his grip loosened. It was enough.

A blur of movement cut through the chaos, steel flashing as a body drove between them, and the man was ripped away from her with brutal force. She caught only a glimpse of him being thrown aside before a different figure filled her vision.

She turned her head.

The new man was not a MacRath guard.

He was close enough now to see clearly, hard-jawed and watchful with dark auburn hair and eyes that were, even in the inadequate light of a Highland night, a very distinctive blue.

Lean and dangerous. Dark auburn hair. Piercing blue eyes.

She stared at him.

"MacKinnon," she said.

He looked at her with an expression she couldn't read.

"Aye," said Marcas MacKinnon. "And ye must be the bride they forgot tae deliver."

He moved like he belonged in the center of violence, not threatened, but shaped by it. His sword was already drawn, his expression carved into something cold and controlled as he turned to finish the man with a single, efficient strike that left no room for doubt or mercy.

For a moment she could only stare at him, at the breadth of him, the blood on his blade.

And she hated, with sudden clarity, that her breath had caught.

“Are ye hurt?” he asked, though his eyes had already swept over her, checking for injury.

She shook her head, unable to find her voice.

He came armed, she noted. He came alone, which means either he has men outside the walls, or he is considerably more reckless than his reputation suggests.

"I can stand," she said, and demonstrated this by standing, which cost her more than she would have liked and produced a sharp protest from her hip that she absorbed without sound.

She looked at the postern gate. Then at him.

"The gate's unlatched," she said. "I was nearly through it."

"Aye," he said. "I know. I came through there."

She stared at him. "Ye came through the postern gate."

"It was the approach least guarded," he said, as though this were a perfectly ordinary thing to observe about someone else's stronghold at the second bell of night. "Two men at the main gate, one at the stable, one on the eastern wall, but there are sure to be more there. The postern was unwatched." He glanced at the courtyard. "Until yer escape attempt woke everyone up."

She turned.

The courtyard had erupted into activity. Torches were being lit along the wall, boots pounded on stone from multiple directions, and voices cut through the dark with the clipped urgency of men who had been roused from sleep into chaos.

Four guards now visible. Possibly more coming.