Draco A Medieval Scottish Roma - Jayne Castel Page 0,47

battle, and blood streaked his face. However, the injury was no longer bleeding. “Is it done?”

Draco clenched his jaw once more. He understood Cassian’s urgency, for the same desire boiled within him. But after seeing the vulnerability in Gavina’s eyes when he’d left her, he wished Cassian didn’t have to state things so baldly.

Gavina was his wife after all.

Wife. How strange it felt to be wedded, almost as if this had all happened to someone else.

Draco nodded. “If we are right about the last pieces of the riddle, then the curse should be broken.”

Cassian glanced at him once more, his hazel eyes narrowing. “Let me put it to the test then.”

Next to him, Maximus had just fired his crossbow. However, instead of reloading it, he swiveled to Cassian and Draco, his peat-brown gaze intense.

Draco’s throat tightened. The three of them had waited so long for this. He couldn’t believe the moment was finally upon them.

Without another word, Cassian drew his pugio, held out his hand, and cut himself deeply across the pad of his thumb.

Blood welled, and all three men waited.

Since they’d been cursed, none of them bled long. When they made the blood sacrifice at the Bull-slayer’s altar, the wound would staunch within moments. If it didn’t do that now, then they could finally leave the curse behind them.

They stood in the midst of chaos, but in that moment, a calm settled over the trio. The siege could wait. This couldn’t.

Draco watched blood drip down Cassian’s thumb and splatter onto the stone ledge. And then, the bleeding abruptly stopped.

Draco glanced up at Cassian’s face, to see his friend was scowling. “What?”

“The wound is itching,” Cassian ground out the words. “I can feel it knitting … healing.”

Next to him, Maximus cursed.

Draco sucked in a disbelieving breath. “Already?” the word gusted out of him, disappointment crushing his ribs in a vise.

Cassian nodded. “Damn that bandruì to the pits of Hades … the curse hasn’t broken.”

The curse hasn’t broken.

Draco left the keep as night cast its dark veil over the world, making his way down the narrow steps outside the curtain walls to the dungeons. Few folk within Dunnottar knew about the rope ladder, and the rowboat that waited far below.

When things worsened—and they surely would, for the Scottorum malleus, the Hammer of the Scots, was only warming up—two people at most would be able to flee this fortress.

Who would it be?

Not me, Draco thought grimly. I intend to die here.

However, circumstance now appeared to be working against him.

He entered the dungeons, which were empty at present. Since David De Keith’s death, what few prisoners remained had been given their freedom in return for joining the ranks defending this fortress.

As such, no guards greeted Draco as he passed through the archway and entered a wide, dark tunnel. His boots whispered on damp stone, and he heard the pattering of rodents scurrying away at his approach.

He ignored the rats, heading straight for the mithraeum Cassian had created at the back of the dungeons.

The torches inside guttered, on the verge of going out. Cassian hadn’t been down here all day, as he’d been busy on the walls until the English ceased their attack at dusk. Draco fetched two fresh torches from their brackets and lit them. Warm light flooded the shrine once more, illuminating the wooden effigy of Mithras himself that stood next to the stone altar.

Draco’s gaze lingered on the statue a moment. He’d carved that for Cassian, many years earlier.

Approaching the altar, Draco knelt and lit a wand of incense. The pungent scent tickled his nose and caught in his throat, as it always did, yet the perfume comforted him.

Along with Cassian and Maximus, the Bull-slayer had been one constant in his life over the centuries. Heaving in a weary sigh, for his body ached from an afternoon of defending the walls, Draco drew his dagger and cut his thumb.

Blood welled, and he smeared it over the stone altar before him.

He held his breath as he did so, hoping that Cassian had been mistaken. Maybe, the curse just needed a little time to break. However, after a few moments, he felt that tell-tale itch and the bleeding stopped.

No, the curse held him in its grip as steadily as ever.

Draco’s vision blurred, despair overtaking him. He was pulled back then to those years trapped under the floor of Saint Margaret’s chapel. Despair had ripped him to shreds over and over again during his imprisonment, splintering his mind—but it didn’t matter how greatly he