Page 93 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"She is Neilina."

"She belongs with me."

Anger tore through Marcas, he wanted nothing more than to wring Cailleach’s throat but he took a steady breath through his nose.

"Ye've mistaken her for something ye can possess," he said. "That was always yer error. Yers, and the King's, and every man who sat in a room and signed a page with her name on it."

The sword shifted against Neilina's throat, and Marcas's eyes dropped to the blade. Then they came back up to Cailleach's face and stayed there.

"Ye never had the right tae decide whom she married."

"Ye think she belongs tae ye because she wears yer name?"

"She belongs tae no man."

"Then why are ye standing there with a sword in yer hand, afraid tae move?"

Marcas's jaw tightened.

"Because ye’ve a blade at her throat."

"Aye." Cailleach's smile widened. "And suddenly the great Marcas MacKinnon is helpless."

Cailleach's face immediately hardened. "Ye think ye can steal what my family was owed by getting yerself a Chishlom bride?"

"I stole nothing." Marcas took one slow breath. " She chose me."

Cailleach's eyes flashed. Neilina felt the arm around her waist tighten until her ribs ached.

"She chose nothing. She was a pawn in a hall full of men, and she'll be a pawn in mine."

"She chose," Marcas said, and his voice hardened to iron. "And when ye’re dead, she’ll still have chosen me, and the land will never be yers."

Cailleach moved.

It was tiny, only the flinch of a man provoked past what he could bear, and the sword slid a finger's width away from beneath Neilina's chin. Marcas saw the opening. He had been waiting for it with every word he'd spoken laid down like stones across a river for exactly this one step.

He kicked his sword away.

It skittered across the floor and rang against the far wall, and Cailleach's eyes flicked after it. Only for a heartbeat. That was enough.

Marcas lunged with his dirk.

Cailleach shoved Neilina aside, and she stumbled and struck the wall with her shoulder as he brought his blade up. Steel met steel with a crack that rang in his teeth.

"Get away from him, Neilina!" Marcas shouted and drove forward.

Cailleach met him, and for a few furious moments the little room was nothing but steel and breath and the scrape of boots. Marcas gave ground, taking two steps back and taking the blows on his blade because he had no strength to spare for anything else.

The wound in his shoulder was a living thing now. Every parry sent fire down his arm. Cailleach struck again, high, and Marcas caught it, but the force of it drove him sideways into the heavy table in the center of the room's. Wood splintered beneath his hip and the whole thing groaned and shifted.

Cailleach swung. Marcas ducked, and the blade hissed through the air where his head had been. He came up inside the stroke and drove his elbow hard into Cailleach's ribs. The breath left the other man with a grunt. Marcas followed with a strike to the wrist, and Cailleach's sword nearly slipped from his fingers.

"Ye should have renounced the marriage, left her." Cailleach snarled, backing a step, his teeth bared.

Marcas struck again, all his weight behind it. "I'd cross the whole bloody Highlands for her."

Cailleach blocked, and the blades locked between them, their faces inches apart.