And Tessa wouldn’t survive it.
“Nay.” Liam had stepped forward, wrenching the whip out of his father’s hand before Hamish could take it. “I’ll do it.”
The wind screamed over the moors and whipped across Bryneloch Bog with a resonance not dissimilar to the sounds Tessa had made that night as lead-tipped straps flew toward unblemished skin. The confused terror in her sobs had carved what was left of Liam’s heart out of his chest until only a raw, cavernous wound was left.
Now, standing over her body, Liam’s hand closed around nothing but moist, humid air, his knuckles as white as they had been the night he’d hesitantly gripped the braided handle of the leather whip.
She didn’t ken that he was doing her a kindness in the only way he knew how. That by being the one that carried out his father’s pitiless orders, he could do his best to mitigate the damage.
How could she have?
Liam wished to God the night had ended there … but the laird’s cruelty knew no bounds, and it had been a hellish hour full of unspeakable things before Liam had been able to roughly bundle her into that cloak and help her escape.
To her credit, she’d never stopped fighting; indeed, she’d threatened retribution through a bottomless well of frightened tears.
Those threats had been her fatal mistake.
She hadn’t been walking right when she’d limped down the stairs, and some of her rosy, pink skin was starting to color with what would become ugly bruises. That had been Hamish’s doing.
Even at his young age, Liam had been strong enough to carry her through the night and across the fields to the village, and he’d offered—God, how he’d tried—to reason with her. Apologize to her. Anything to mitigate the shame staining his insides.
She’d hear none of it, not that he could blame her.
“I’m going to turn the clan against ye, and yer wicked family,” she spat. “See if I doona. I’ll tell everyone, show them what ye barbaric demons have done to me. They’ll come for ye. For all of ye!”
But she hadn’t had the chance. She’d been silenced.
She’d been murdered.
There was no question in Liam’s mind who’d committed the deed.
Evil begat evil, did it not?
There was no escaping it. Even Dougan, his father’s youngest bastard, who’d been raised away from the red stones of Ravencroft Keep, had killed a priest when he was just a teen.
Dougan. His father had paid to have his youngest son beaten to death in prison. Somehow, the lad had escaped, reinvented himself, and secretly reached out to Liam whilst simultaneously waging a war for supremacy of the London Underworld.
The sons of Hamish Mackenzie had been bred to spill blood. The Fates wove violence into their sinew like a gruesome tapestry, and brewed ruthlessness to pour through their veins.
When the king is dead … long live the king.
Dougan had written those words in lieu of a signature in the letter that bade Liam to do the one thing he’d always fantasized about.
Liam wrapped what remained of Tessa back into the dissolving cloak, and let the gurgling bog become her grave. As he watched the earth slowly claim her, he felt what was left of his hope, of his humanity, sink with her. A coal of hatred replaced it, igniting in his empty chest, fanned into an inferno by the rank and sulfurous breath of the devil himself.
Perhaps fantasy hadn’t just become a reality, but a necessity.
As he stood and stared across the emerald landscape interrupted by the jagged Kinross Mountains, Liam thought of his mother and how his father had broken her, both in body and spirit. He thought of his clan, the Mackenzie of Wester Ross, who toiled and cowered beneath their laird’s merciless iron fist. He thought of his brothers, both bastard and legitimate, none of whom was strong enough to withstand his father’s abuse.
So Liam often took it for them.
But who would be here to protect them now that he was off to war?
Liam had grown into a man, not only tall enough to look his father’s evil in the eye. His shoulders were finally wide enough to carry the weight of the numerous lashes that shaped the flesh of his back as though carved from brimstone by Satan’s own mallet and chisel. His fists were heavy enough to strike in kind.
He’d reported for his commission in Her Majesty’s Regimental Army. He’d used the fire in his blood to commit violent acts in service to the crown. Sanctioned by God and country.
It was his only way out.