Page 94 of A Highland Healer Captured
“We gave our word,” he said, voice steady enough that Skylar’s breath hitched with the effort it must cost him. “She came when I took her. She stayed when I asked. She saved ye. We’ll nae keep her when she asks to go.”
“I’m nae askin’ ye!” Grayson cried, stamping a foot—small, infuriated, tragic. “I’m tellin’ ye!”
Zander’s mouth twisted. He pulled the boy into his chest and held him hard enough that Skylar felt the hug in her own ribs. Then he stood, keeping one hand at the back of the child’s head, and looked at her.
“Say goodbye,” he said softly.
It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t cruel. It was a blade he put in her hand so she could cut herself free cleanly, not by inches.
She bent and kissed Grayson’s damp cheek, then his forehead, then the tip of his nose as if ritual could save any of them from the next part. “Be wicked at dice,” she whispered, and he hiccuped a laugh that made everything worse. “Mind Katie. Argue with yer faither, but only when ye’re right. Feed the ravens when Mason isnae lookin’. Learn the names of the wee birds at the hedge and tell me in a letter. I’ll write back and scold ye if ye get them wrong.”
“I’ll get them right,” he said, fierce and wrecked. “I’ll getallof them right.”
“I ken ye will,” she said, and forced herself to stand. “I love ye, Grayson,” she added before caution could steal it back. “Very much.”
He folded into Zander without a word. She kept her eyes on the boy until she could risk lifting them to the man.
Zander stepped close. Hamish’s voice snapped from the saddle, “I would think twice about where yer hands go, Strathcairn.”
Zander didn’t look away from Skylar. He lifted a hand—so slowly a skittish horse would not have shied from it—and set his knuckles against her cheek, a touch light as breath. “Goodbye,Skylar,” he said, and the rawness in it stripped her to something true.
She leaned into the touch for one stolen second, then stepped back before she could anchor herself so deep she’d never tear free.
Hamish swung down and offered a hand to help her into the small carriage that had rolled forward under the banner. She climbed up without looking back and then immediately looked back, because she was not strong enough to make a clean cut without one last wound.
Zander stood where she’d left him, one hand on his son’s shoulder, blood seeping through the edge of clean linen at his shoulder bandage, face pale and set in that expression she’d learned meantI will not break while ye can see me.Grayson’s mouth trembled; he lifted a hand. She lifted hers. Neither of them waved.
Hamish slapped the side of the carriage and the mare leaned into the traces. The gate began to swallow the view of the yard she’d learned by heart. She shut her eyes for a breath, opened them again, because she would not let the last image be darkness.
“We’ll talk when ye’ve had somethin’ to eat,” he said, his horse walking alongside the carriage slowly. “And sleep. And I’ll nae say a word ill of the man till ye’ve the breath to argue me down.”
She huffed something like a laugh and wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm. “Ye’ll need plenty of breath,” she said.
Her father simply huffed a response.
“I wasnae a prisoner. They fed me, faither.”
“Aye, so ye say.”
“Faither—Ariella. Have ye word?”
Hamish’s beard shifted on a grim smile. “Aye. She’s well now.”
Her head whipped toward him. “Well?”
“Aye. The fever broke. Woke near the end of last week, hungry as a colt. Yer aunt says the lass healed herself.”
For a moment Skylar could only stare. Relief crashed through her, fierce and dizzying, so strong it near stole her balance on the seat.
Ariella was safe.
Alive.
Whole.
The weight she had carried these many weeks loosened from her shoulders like a shroud cut away.
Her eyes blurred, not from sorrow this time, but from joy too sharp to hold. And when she turned, when she looked back—Zander was still there at the gate. Grayson had been led inside, but the laird had not moved.
