Page 25 of Bride of Mist
For one terrible moment, she thought he meant to pay her back in kind, cleave her head from her shoulders. She fumbled at the front of her tabard, seeking her secondary weapons. Herduandaoor heryan zi fei dao.
Mistaking her scrabbling for panic, he cast aside theshoudaoand hunkered down beside her, “Slow. Breathe slow and deep. Ye’ve just had the wind knocked out o’ ye.”
Once she followed his advice, her muscles eased, her vision cleared, and she could breathe again. But why he should help her, she didn’t know. She’d tried to kill him. He had every reason to let her suffocate.
“Better?”
She frowned, perplexed. Aye, she was better. But this wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. Her target wasn’t supposed to come to her rescue.
Mac Darragh had saved her life. Or at least he hadn’t taken it. He’d had the opportunity to slay her, yet had not. He’d spared her. Which wasalmostlike saving her.
And now he was gazing down at her with something resembling pity. Pity she neither needed nor deserved.
She’d meant to kill him. Indeed, she might still be able to reach inside her boot and slip out herbishou. Drive its point into his heart while he crouched before her.
But she couldn’t bring herself to hurt him while he was looking at her like that. Not while his penetrating blue eyes seemed to stare into her naked soul.
Later, she promised herself. Another opportunity would arise, a more prodigious moment, one that would allow her to crow in triumph rather than wallow in guilt. She simply needed to feign defeat and wait till the time was right.
Dougal was sure it had been an accident. The lass couldn’t mean to kill him.
She wasn’t helpless, as she’d first pretended. But neither was she a murderer.
He’d met a dozen lasses in similar situations. Desperate. Starving. Unable to envision a life that didn’t rely on stealing to survive.
This was the first lass he’d met, however, who had such skill with a blade.
He corrected himself. The second.
The first lass he’d left dead on the tournament field.
Indeed, it was that horrific memory that had struck him when he first slipped off the outlaw’s mask. A memory that had distracted him and almost cost him his head.
He couldn’t let it happen again. He had to keep that guilt buried deep. Locked away.
If he surrendered to it, if he dared to think too long on the truth—that his blindness, his recklessness, had led to the death of an innocent…that he’d menaced a melee field full of defenseless knights…that an entire village had been massacred on his watch…
Nay. Revisiting such thoughts would unman him.
He would lose his grip on what was right, what was fair, what was just.
He would lose his purpose for being.
He would lose the will to live.
And next time, he might well let the lass’s stray blade do its work.
A woman’s blood was on his hands. The blood of Kirkoswald stained his soul. Their deaths were on his conscience. It was too late to undo what he’d done. And useless to dwell on it.
So for now, he would survive. He would stuff down those self-destructive thoughts and survive. It was what he knew how to do.
The lass too was a survivor. A miserable waif reduced to a life of crime just to stay alive. A woman so full of fear and cynicism that she would kill rather than become a victim. She was a tragic reminder of what the cruel greed of people like his brother did to ordinary folk. Folk who deserved, not punishment, but mercy.
“What’s your name, lass?”
He half expected her to spit in his face.
Instead, she was silent.
