Page 51 of The Crown of Moonlight
“Not much sense in rebuilding until we know it’s over, and there are deer and rabbits in the hills and fish in the lochs.We’ll make do.”The darker one lifts his chin with that fierce Highland pride that still believes Vheara, her Butcher, and all her Greys will never tame them.
I shouldn’t give them hope, but maybe that’s exactly what they need.A sense that all the pain hasn’t been for nothing.
“Momentum may still turn,” I say.“Help could come.But whatever happens, know this: neither Clan Camhrain nor Locharn himself will be forgotten.”
The men study me as if testing my words for meaning.I meet their eyes, and after a time, the redhead pulls his plaid back up to cloak his head.The rain is coming down again.
“The queen’s bastards are still about.We can see you safely through if you’re heading towards the pass,” he says.
With a smile of thanks, Flora shakes her head.“You have more than enough to tend to on your own.We’ll avoid the Butcher’s men if we can, and if we can’t, then we’ll do our best to kill them.”
Both men give her toothy grins.“Stay close to the loch then and keep to the trees when you can,” the redhead says.“They keep lookouts on the ridges, and they’re using our signal fires against us.”
They bow lower this time, to her and to me.I clasp their forearms and hold their eyes, making sure they see my gratitude.
“Safe journey,” the darker one says.
“Long life to the king,” says the redhead.
Flora barely disguises a grimace hearing those words, and we ride on in grim silence as the scent of smoke hangs thick in the air.
Near sunset, I spy a pair of rabbits on the hillside and whip out a dirk to throw.Flora stills my hand with a gesture.
“We can’t afford a cookfire here,” she says, “and we have hours of riding left before we stop.”
“We need to take food where we find it—Muilean and Beltane are still a long way off.And I can manage to mask a fire after the healing that you gave me.I’m a Rider, not an invalid.”
I throw the dirk, and it flies true.A quick, clean kill.
Flora’s silent as I retrieve the body and tie it to Bramble’s saddle.Having reasserted my independence to that small degree, I consider telling her I will ride the rest of the way on my own to make it easier on the horses.It’s no exaggeration to say that I feel well enough for that.But as strong as Flora has proven herself to be, riding through the evidence of what the Butcher has done will be hard.If nothing else, I can offer her a bit of comfort to take away from the cold ache of seeing the atrocities and knowing that more are coming.
By midnight, we descend towards the eastern end of the loch.The castle and various points around the long, narrow water still smoulder an angry orange and red, wounds bleeding against the darkness.The stench of scorched fields and charred flesh cuts deeper than the wound in my chest, worse—a thousand times worse—for knowing that women and children burned.
These reprisals, every one of these deaths, is another mark upon my conscience.
Flora’s shoulders tremble as we follow the rough trail.Her tears drop to the bare skin of my arm around her waist.She fights to hold herself together, but eventually sobs shudder through her in gulps, and I know it’s not only the ruins of Aknacaery she’s crying for.It’s the loss of her mother and the destruction at Dunhaelic, the loss of her father and brothers, and so many of her clan—and the fear of what’s happening elsewhere.
I draw her closer, and she tips her head back against my chest.I reach up to brush her cheek, and my fingers come away wet with tears.
There doesn’t seem to be a limit to my rage.It’s bottomless, ravenous.It grows with every atrocity Vheara has committed over the past year—over millennia.My sword begs to answer her cruelty with blood.My soulcravesher death.
“Vheara needs to pay,” Flora says, echoing my thoughts almost exactly.“The Butcher needs to burn.”
“They will.I swear it.”
“What if you go through the doorway and don’t come back?”
The oathbands warn me—cold and fire flashing from the runes until I manage to bank the fury that veers too near what Chulainn has forbidden.
“I’ll drag myself out of the Pit if that’s what it takes,” I say.“Killing Vheara is not a task I’ll leave undone.”
Flora thinks a bit—I canfeelher weighing my words, measuring my conviction.“You can have Vheara and the Greys,” she says eventually.“They were Siorai, so that’s a task for the Anvar’thaine.But the Butcher is human.It needs to be one of us who kills him.Slowly.In pieces carved off his body strip by strip, then cooked on the fire as he’s forced to watch.”
“That sort of revenge requires conviction.It isn’t justice.”
“I’ll be plenty convincing given the opportunity.”
I smile in spite of myself.“Oh, I’ve little doubt.”
