Megan remembered that dark day as well. She’d been scared to death and trembled inside. Late that night, she’d slipped from beneath her coverlet to kneel and whisper at Cayley’s bedside. With the light of one lone candle chasing away the shadows of the night, she’d confided in her sister, telling an awestruck Cayley everything the sorcerer had said and done, including healing Shalimar’s leg and predicting the dark fates that would befall the keep.
“He was the Devil!” Cayley had said, clutching her fur blanket to her chest.
“Nay, I think not.”
“He’s cursed us.” Cayley sat bolt upright in bed and narrowed her eyes. “I wish I would have met him in the forest,” she’d said, as she’d tossed her dark honey–colored curls over her shoulder, “for I would have laid a curse on his own black soul.”
“Nay, Cayley, the man was true of heart.”
Cayley had snorted her disbelief, and now, years later, as the sand drifted through the hourglass and ’twas nearing the time for her marriage to Holt, Megan feared her sister had been right after all. Dwyrain was cursed and she was the reason.
“Come now, child,” Rue said with a sigh. “Father Timothy and Holt wait for ye in the chapel.”
“I’m tellin’ ye, ’tis a fool’s mission we’re on,” Odell complained, rubbing his back and squinting through the underbrush to the castle rising in the distance. Astride a sorrel jennet he’d won in a dice game, he scowled against the surrounding gloom.
Wolf ignored the older man and stripped off his tunic. Odell was never happy lest he was grumbling. “ ’Tis something I have to do.” Untying the bag he’d brought with him, he reached inside and his fingers encountered the soft fabric of the clothes he’d stolen only a few hours earlier from a nobleman.
“For the love of Saint Peter, man, think. What needs we with a woman? Do ye not remember the law of our band?”
“I made the law,” Wolf said through lips that barely moved. He patted his destrier’s thick neck and stared at the throng of people moving along the road toward Dwyrain, the fortress he planned to plunder. Limestone walls knifed upward to thick battlements and towers; a wide moat was crossed by a single bridge spanning a river that surrounded the hill on which the castle was built. A town, hidden by walls cut from the same stone, lay to the east, with only the river separating it from the castle. Outside the walls were a few houses and fields that farmers tended, but the tilled land finally gave way to the woods Wolf now called home.
“Aye, ye made the law that there would be no women in our band, that women only cause trouble, that women—”
“I know what I said,” Wolf growled, sliding his arms and head through a silky black tunic.
“And yet ye’re willing to break yer own rules. For this one? Why? What d’ye want with this cursed woman?” Odell asked, blowing on fingers that showed through the ends of his gloves.
“She’s not important.” His new mantle was black as well, trimmed in the fur of a silver fox. Metal studs decorated his new belt and gloves.
“Not important? Fer the love of Saint Jude, then why take her?”
“Because she belongs to Holt of Prydd,” he said, and felt a cruel smile twist his lips as he tightened his belt and thought of his quest. “In that respect, you’re right, Odell. She is cursed.”
“I hate to be the one givin’ ye the news, but in case ye havna noticed, this isna Prydd we’re plannin’ to enter—”
“Not us. Only me,” Wolf reminded him. “You’re to wait for my signal then take Sir Kelvin’s fine horse”—he motioned to the tawny destrier they’d recently stolen—“and ride back to camp.”
“Aye, aye. Wait fer the signal. I know. But I’m tellin’ ye, Wolf. This woman—this daughter of the baron—will only bring us trouble.”
Wolf didn’t bother answering, just stared across the great distance that separated them from the castle. His eyes were trained on the crenels of the north watch turret. Baron Ewan of Dwyrain’s standard snapped in the wind, the colors red and gold bright against an ominous slate-colored sky. If ever there was a day for an omen, this was one. But Wolf trusted not in too much sorcery. Aye, he’d watched Morgana of Wenlock talk to the wind and see through a window into the future, and he’d witnessed great healing when Sorcha of Prydd had brought the near-dead back to life again, but he trusted not the dark arts. Nor did he trust God.
Mist was beginning to gather in the woods and would soon shroud his view. Then he’d have to rely on instincts rather than the help of spies within the castle. Somewhere in the surrounding trees, an owl hooted softly.
“There it is,” Wolf said squinting hard. One of Dwyrain’s sentries, a watchman in the north tower, paused, closed the shutters of the crenel, then opened them again. “ ’Tis time.”
Odell scratched his head. “Time fer what—to open the gates of hell?”
Wolf chuckled and checked the knife he’d slid into his boot. “The marriage ceremony is about to begin.” A hard smile crept over his lips as the sound of church bells peeled throughout the valley. “I wouldn’t want to be late.”
“For the wedding?” Odell asked, rolling his eyes a
s if he was certain his leader was daft. “ ’Twill be hours before ye get there.”
“I care not for the wedding.” Wolf’s smile faded and determination clenched his jaw. “But the kidnapping can’t start without me.”
Wolf entered the gates of Dwyrain easily. No one questioned a well-dressed nobleman on a swift mud-spattered destrier. He appeared tired, as if from a long journey, and rode across the drawbridge and beneath the great portcullis that was raised in the gatehouse. Through the outer bailey without so much as a question from the sentries, he followed others and trailed behind a lumbering team of horses pulling a hay cart. A boy he recognized as Jack, a young hunter for the castle, glanced his way, then went back to sharpening the blade of his knife. Though neither acknowledged the other, Wolf and Jack had met before when poachers had tried to steal from Dwyrain’s forests and had nearly killed Jack to silence him. It had been Wolf’s sword that had convinced them to take their dead stag and leave the boy alone.
Now, three years later, Jack sheathed his knife, met Wolf’s gaze again briefly, then grabbed the reins of Wolf’s mount before leading the stallion away.