Page 52 of The Highlander Steals a Virgin
Amara stood by the hearth, arms tightly wrapped around herself, cheeks flushed and eyes guarded. The firelight made her look like something pulled from a vision—wild, angry, breathtaking.
His mouth opened, but the words came gravel-deep.
“We’ll speak more on this… later.”
She didn’t answer.
Didn’t have to.
He gave her one final look, then shut the door softly behind him.
The corridor outside was dim and cool, but his blood still ran hot. He shoved his fingers through his hair and stalked down the hall, heart caught in a vice.
“Finn?”
“Aye, and by some miracle, he is still clinging to life.”
“Where?”
“Lower dining hall.”
Rhys tore through the keep toward his cousin. William kept pace beside him, and was somehow smart enough to know now wasn’t the time to say anything about Amara or what he might have seen or heard going on in the study.
They cut through the keep’s back halls, then into the lower wing dining hall where a surgery had been hastily set up by Cook and his staff. Guards stood at every entry point. The air smelled of blood, herbs, and sweat.
Inside, the healer was bent over the bed, sleeves rolled and hands red to the wrists. Another, a young woman dressed in travel-stained robes, stood at his side, murmuring instructions. The town physician, likely called up the hill the moment Finn was dragged in.
Finn lay pale on the surgery bed, half-covered in a woolen blanket. His chest rose and fell in slow, shallow breaths.
Rhys’s gut twisted.
He’d seen this man fight through the worst winters, bleed through battles that would have ended lesser men. Seeing him like this all mangled and lifeless knocked something loose in his chest.
“How bad?” he asked, his voice lower now, strained.
The younger healer looked up. “Deep cuts along the ribs, a blade through the arm, bruised spine, shoulder out of place. But nothin’ vital pierced.”
Both healers nodded, and the keep healer spoke next. “He’ll live. Was just luck the blade missed anything important. We’ve stitched him up. Now it’s rest that’ll do the rest.”
Rhys exhaled through his nose, tension barely unwinding.
“He was alone when he arrived, Billy?” Rhys asked.
“Aye,” William said. “Collapsed right at the outer watchtower. One of the newer lads thought he was a Murdoch spy crawlin’ up the hill, and the sword asked the question before the lad did.”
Rhys moved closer to the bedside.
Finn’s color was still too pale for comfort, but there was life under his skin now. And when Rhys leaned down, he saw the barest twitch in the corner of his cousin’s mouth.
“Ye’re one lucky bastard,” Rhys muttered.
Finn’s lips curved further. His eyes fluttered open, bloodshot and rimmed with exhaustion.
“Aye,” he rasped. “Lucky is one word for it.”
Rhys felt his chest loosen as the tension gave way to something else entirely. Deep, bone-cracking relief.
Finn coughed lightly and winced. “Ye look like shite.”
