Page 44 of Bride of Mist
He’d headed for the stand of pines a hundred yards ahead, where they could shelter beneath the thick-needled branches. But the meadow turned to marsh along the way, and by the time they reached safety, she was muddy up to the knees, wet to the bone, and shivering with cold.
Feiyan half-collapsed onto her hindquarters in a pile of pine needles as the storm bristled around them. She couldn’t even summon the energy to resist when he sat down beside her, wrapping his cloak around both of them to keep them dry.
The storm continued. Rattling tree limbs. Spraying off rocks. Flattening the grass. Turning the trail to a pitted mire. Shrouding the glen with a watery veil of destruction.
As the maelstrom made the world a bleary mess, Feiyan thought about heryan zi fei dao—one stuck in the tree, one left in the bushes—getting drenched. They would be worthless now. The rain would turn them to rust.
Bitter discouragement filled her. How had things gone so wrong?
She’d been trained for just this kind of mission. To be quick and sly. To act on instinct, not emotion. To steal in, strike, and disappear.
She was Feiyan the invisible. Untraceable. Untrackable.
But this target knew her. To him, she had a face. She had a name. He knew she meant to kill him. He also knew she was hesitant to do so.
Worse, he was being kind to her. Even knowing her intentions, he’d rushed her to safety, enfolded her in his cloak. These weren’t the actions of a merciless savage.
He sat close enough to her that she smelled the wet wool of his gambeson and felt the subtle warmth of his body. Lifting her eyes, she could see every detail of the man she was supposed to kill. A stray drop of rain trickling off of his wet hair and rolling down his temple. Each black bristle on his stubbled jaw. The red mark from the scrape of herbishouacross his throat. The wisp of his warm breath on the cold air. The keen focus in his azure eyes as he watched the storm.
If this was the Devil, he’d taken on a pleasing form. And how she would ever work up enough cold courage to slay him now, she didn’t know. She was having trouble even thinking straight.
“What ye said before the storm…” he murmured, staring out at the falling rain. “About your cousin.”
“Hallie?” Her voice came out on a croak. God’s eyes, what was wrong with her?
“Ye said I almost killed her?”
“Aye.”
“Almost?” He waited with tense and bated breath, as if his fate depended on her answer.
She hesitated. Of course. He didn’t know. He assumed hehadkilled Hallie. He hadn’t stayed around long enough to learn the truth.
Part of her wanted to be cruel. To punish him for his savagery by telling him Hallie had died from her injuries. After all, it was only by a miracle that she hadn’t.
But something about the way he’d asked her—the vulnerability in his eyes, the tenuousness in his voice, and the memory of how he’d staggered away after the near fatal blow—made her feel sorry for him.
“Aye,” she said.
“She’s not dead?”
She sighed. “Nay.”
Dougal couldn’t speak. His throat was a knot of relief. Relief he dared not express for fear of dissolving into grateful tears. So he clenched his jaw to check his emotions and nodded.
It didn’t exonerate him, of course. Far from it. He had stormed through the ranks of the mac Girics like a Viking berserker, heedless of whom he injured or killed. His reckless violence could not be absolved.
But now he could taste the sweet hope of redemption. A possibility for forgiveness.
He was not a monster.
He was not a savage.
He was not a killer of women.
His chest tightened as he stared at the unrelenting rain.
At least not yet.
