Stop! Remember, you are weak and ill from the beating and the torture of the coals against your skin. Do not give him the advantage of seeing that you are healed, or all will be for naught. If ye care for the lady, Wolf, pretend that ye can do nothing to help her—that the bastard has nothing to fear from you.
“I’ll not—”
She is with child, Ware. Your child.
“What?” he cried, and Holt laughed.
“Are ye daft, Wolf?” Motioning toward the dingy cells, Holt said, “Has being locked away stolen yer mind? I blame ye not. ’Tis not easy to be a prisoner, is it? The mind sometimes leaves us.”
Gnashing his teeth in frustration, Wolf pretended to try to lunge at the bars, only to fall to the floor as if in great pain. With an agonized whistle, he dragged air through his teeth, then cursed Holt roundly. “Go to hell, you sick bastard.”
A child? Megan was with child? Was it possible?
’Tis true.
“Why did ye tell me not sooner?” he demanded.
“He’s gone mad,” Holt said, clucking his tongue.
’Twas not necessary and should be something a woman tells a man, but I had no choice.
Wolf closed his eyes. A baby. His child and Megan’s, and she was now married to Holt. His fists curled into balls of frustration and he pounded uselessly on the grimy floor. He had to protect her and their unborn child. Nothing else mattered, not even his own life.
“Save your strength, fool.” Holt laughed. “You’ll need it when the hangman comes for you. Now, you, magician, leave this castle tonight and never return. ’Tis banished ye are, and I have guards posted outside the walls of the keep. They have or
ders to kill ye on sight if you come anywhere near Dwyrain.” He glanced to the connecting cells and said, “This goes for the rest of you. If any of my men spies your faces again, ’twill be the last time.”
Wolf, determined to defy Holt and steal Megan from Dwyrain again, watched as his enemy turned and hastened from the dungeon, his bodyguards following after him like trained dogs. “Trust him not,” he warned Cadell, but the sorcerer was smiling to himself, as if he alone knew all truths.
“Worry not about me. ’Tis your own skin that is in danger.”
Wolf cared not about his own life, but he’d fight the very Devil himself for Megan and the baby she carried.
Riding through the gatehouse with the magician tied and bound on the horse behind him, Connor decided Holt was a fool. Not only had the big outlaw—the one he’d heard called Bjorn—escaped with the woman Connor had planned to seduce, but now Holt was letting his prisoners leave the castle unharmed, or so it was to appear. The magician’s well-being was for show because some of the peasants and servants—aye, even the soldiers—had begun to believe that the man had mystical powers, and Lady Megan had demanded his release.
’Twas Connor’s mission to kill the wizard once they were far from the view of any of the sentries who might still be scouring the woods for Lady Cayley and her captor.
Glancing to the dark sky, Connor cursed his luck. He’d given what small amount of trust he had to Holt, and the man had deceived him. While playing dice and drinking too much ale, one of Holt’s bodyguards had admitted to hearing the new baron conversing with the priest about marrying Cayley off to Baron Rolf of Castle Henning. The thought was disgusting, even to Connor, for Rolf was a withered old man, blind in one eye, who took pleasure in the torment of others—not that Connor didn’t understand the old man’s needs, but Rolf was past his prime, with a limp cock and a thirst for killing his wives, or so ’twas rumored. Connor could have accepted this, but the fact that Holt had lied to him by promising him Lady Cayley, then planning to barter her to a rich baron, was too much.
Mayhap it was time to deal with Holt.
A fine mist seeped from the ground, rising upward as Connor turned into the woods and stopped beyond a copse of oak, where a small clearing was surrounded by trees, ferns, and brambles. “Here,” he said, hopping easily to the ground. His quiver pressed between his shoulder blades and he thought that killing a crippled man was not much sport. He would rather have had a shot at Wolf or one of the younger, agile prisoners—Robin or Tom—but Wolf was sentenced to hang and the boys were locked in the dungeon.
Why not kill Holt for betraying you, his own mind said to him—or was it his mind? He felt a shiver like tiny footsteps crawl down his spine.
“Get down,” he ordered, and pulled roughly on the man’s tied hands. The cripple toppled to the ground, lost his footing for a second, but managed to scramble to his feet, such as they were.
Connor slid an arrow from his quiver and hoisted his bow. “Run!”
No.
God’s eyes, he hadn’t said a word, but Connor had heard the answer clear as a bell. Perhaps ’twas his mind playing tricks on him again. His hands weren’t as steady as they usually were as he drew hard on the bowstring with the arrow. “Move, sorcerer, and ye’ve got a chance.”
And your soul will rot forever in the depths of hell.
“Say wha—?” Connor jerked as if someone had struck him. This time he was certain it wasn’t his own mind chiding him. Nay, but the prisoner hadn’t moved his lips nor used his voice. ’Twas as if the sorcerer had talked to him mind to mind.
He looked over his shoulder, half expecting another to have joined them. What kind of devilment was this man conjuring?