Page 55 of Bride of Mist
“Everyone.”
Feiyan felt all the air go out of her lungs.
He couldn’t mean the whole village. Lads in their prime? Lasses in the bloom of youth? Bairns in the cradle?
“Surely that’s not poss—”
“Every. Last. One.” His voice broke on the words.
A frisson of horror struck her heart.
No wonder he’d sought vengeance.
No wonder he’d ridden a hundred miles for retribution, slashing through the melee at Creagor like a man driven wild.
Outside the realm of a full-scale war between countries, at the direction of a cruel king, what kind of monsters would decimate an entire village?
Surely not the mac Girics.
This was an atrocity of the worst kind.
Unnecessary bloodshed and collateral casualties of war were abhorrent to Feiyan and her clan. Rivenloch’s battles might be aggressive, but they were always carefully targeted. Rivenloch warriors were fierce, but merciful.
Whoever was responsible for this slaughter had abandoned all compassion. They deserved Rivenloch’s wrath. It was just the sort of lawless villainy Rivenloch punished, the kind of battle the warrior clan was trained to wage.
And finding the culprit behind the bloodlust was just the sort of mystery Feiyan was born to unravel.
“I don’t know who committed this massacre,” she breathed. “But I tell you this, mac Darragh. I’ll bloody well find out who did.”
The border lass’s fervent vow almost broke Dougal.
He clenched his jaw, fighting back emotion.
He’d wanted to put what had happened behind him. To bury it deep. To avenge their deaths and speak of it no more. He had no desire to relive the devastation, dwell on the details, give voice to the unspeakable horror.
Not to a stranger. Certainly not to a lass from the most powerful border clan in Scotland. A lass who might yet prove to have been an accessory to the massacre.
But now that he’d broken his silence, now that he was being heard, he felt as if the spirits of the people of Kirkoswald were lurking in the darkness around him. Waiting for the truth. Waiting to be freed.
Did she mean what she said? Would she help him seek the truth? Could he rely on her? Should he? And if he did, would he find closure? Justice? Redemption?
In the end, he had no choice. Her clan could decimate his in the blink of an eye. Lives were at stake. He had to trust her.
“Dougal,” he said when he found his voice.
“What?”
“My name is Dougal.” If the enemy of his enemy was to be his friend, he supposed she should know his name.
“Dougal,” she repeated.
The word sounded curious, spoken with her Lowland lilt, and strangely beautiful on her lips. Under less dire circumstances, he could have listened to her murmur his name all day and never tire of hearing it.
“Then know this, Dougal mac Darragh.” To his astonishment, she faced him squarely and clasped her left hand over his, at the place where he gripped her wrist. “We’ll get to the crux of this, I swear.”
He held his breath. Her wrist felt so fragile in his grip. He could break it like a branch. Yet the touch of her hand was powerful, capable, and curiously reassuring.
“Whoever is responsible for the slaughter of the villagers, whether ’tis a mac Giric or the Devil himself,” she vowed, “I’ll be the first to avenge their deaths. And I promise you, I’ll have the force of Rivenloch behind me.”
