Page 108 of The Highlander's Auctioned Virgin
He had the same look on his face as he had when Ciaran left. Frustration mixed with a bit of triumph. But there was something else. The smirk that told Ciaran that Logan had more up his sleeve.
“Braither,” Logan greeted. “Ye look well. Commitment must agree with ye.”
Ciaran’s hand remained on the hilt of his sword. He did not draw it. Not yet.
“Does she ken what ye are?” Logan asked, his voice soft as a knife in the dark. “Does she ken whose blade ye were before ye ever thought to call yerself Laird?”
Ciaran ground his teeth. “What are ye doing here? Why could ye nae just stay at yer castle?”
“And miss the wedding of me wee braither? Ye daenae think me that terrible now, do ye?”
“Ye werenae invited,” Ciaran responded, his voice sharp.
“Aye, I figured,” Logan drawled. “It was hard to get the message, but once I saw Jamie’s dead body, I kenned ye meant business.”
Ciaran said nothing.
Logan stepped forward, his hands tucked behind his back. “Dinnae get me wrong, I always kenned Jamie had nay chance. I did train ye to be the best killer of all at the end of the day, but I thought since he was yer best friend, ye might show just a little restraint.”
“He was never me best friend,” Ciaran corrected. “He just always coveted me position. But I reckon ye already kenned that, did ye nae? So ye used it against him the moment ye could. Told him that he could be yer man-at-arms as long as he killed me?”
The full weight of what Logan had done settled on Ciaran’s chest. He realized, for the first time, that no one on earth was more evil than the man standing before him. A reconciliation simply would not work.
Logan’s mouth curved up. “Do ye still go around thinking ye can make anything of yerself without me?”
Ciaran looked down at his feet. He couldn’t look at Logan in the face. His brother still had that look he had always revered. The countenance he had always feared. He had taken on lairds much more powerful and older than his brother.
So why did Logan still manage to get under his skin?
“I am certain ye’re nae blind to everything I have achieved since I left ye,” Ciaran scoffed.
Logan took another step closer, and Ciaran heard the leaves crunch under his boots.
“I taught ye everything ye ken,” he said. “How to hold a blade. How to make men fear ye. How to carve out a place in this world with yer own hands. And now ye stand here, thinking ye’re too good to look me in the eye? Too good to acknowledge me?”
Ciaran lifted his gaze, slow and deliberate. “I’m looking.”
Logan laughed once. The sound cut through the silence, rough and aggravating. “Aye, ye always were the obedient one.”
The low fire in Ciaran’s chest grew into something colder. He watched as Logan’s hands rested on the hilt of the broadsword at his belt.
“All of this,” Logan continued, gesturing to the woods, the ridge, the rock Ciaran had stepped away from, “belongs to me. And ye ken it.”
Ciaran did not blink. “Nae anymore.”
Logan’s eyes darkened. “Is that what ye came here to tell me? That I have nay place here?”
“Nay,” Ciaran responded, shifting his hand to his sword. The weight of it steadied him. “I came to end it.”
