Free Released by Kerrigan Byrne Page B

before,” Carraig, the fisherman breathed. 
    Hugh elbowed him, though he still hadn’t blinked. 
    Kylah ignored them all.  Her entire being focused on the man Rory had called to rid his clan of them. 
    Could the druid do it?  Could he free them from their curse?
    “Ye’ve wasted yer time.”  The druid’s voice was like the man; harsh, dark, and arresting.  “I willna help ye, MacKay.”
    “If it’s a matter of payment—” Rory began.
    “Nay,” the druid interrupted, his notice swinging to the Laird.  “Banshees are Cliodnah’s creatures, and I doona cross purposes with the Fae.”  After tossing her a look that should have meant something, the man gave his back to the hall and melted into the storm. 
    Kylah felt released from a dangerous captivity, and she relaxed shoulders she hadn’t been aware she’d tensed before her mind snagged on something the terrifying Druid had said. 
    Or rather, hadn’t said.  He’d told the Laird he would not help him. 
    He didn’t say he could not.

Chapter Eight
     
    “It was you.”  Katriona lurked in her usual dark corner closest to the bed, though it seemed less safe than in the past.  She avoided glancing at the soft-looking furs and imagining Rory’s tremendous body stretched beneath them.  Instead she noted the worry lines etched on his forehead had deepened to match the pinched grooves sprouting from his eyes.  They’d lost their amber fire, the irises dulled to a burnished bronze as though aged for centuries in the space of a few nights. 
    A wry smile played with one corner of his mouth as he shut the door, but he didn’t look at her.  “Tell me what I’ve done now.”  He undid the clasp of his Laird’s badge and let his plaid drop from where it draped from his shoulder and fell across a sculpted chest.  “Though I have to warn ye, I’m short on apologies or offers of reparations.”  His voice lacked the bitterness his words implied, carrying instead a deep soul-weary note that tugged at her heart. 
    "Why didn’t you tell me it was you who’d been leaving food and supplies for my mother all this time?”  Katriona knew she was bungling this.  She’d meant to make peace, but for some reason, everything she said still escaped her lips as an accusation.  “She wouldn’t have survived without your help.”
    He found his bitterness in a dry chuckle as he bent to remove his boots.  “I thought ye knew.  Bridget has been paid to leave the supplies on her way home for months.  Did ye think it was out of the kindness of her heart?” 
    Katriona caught the skeptical glance he tossed in her direction.  “My sisters and I are pulled into a different plane during the witching hour,” she explained.  “That happens to coincide with Bridget’s nightly journey home.  Mother doesn’t venture out of the ruins at night.  We never knew.”
    He chuffed again.  “Explains why she’s not mentioned seeing ye until now.”  He discarded his sword from around his hips.  Clad in only his kilt, Rory crossed to the fire, as though knowing its proximity protected him from her nearness. 
    Katriona drifted forward, drawn as always by his compelling presence and the hope of his touch.  She watched him as he stared into the flames, his gentle eyes hardened by acrimony.  His posture wary and features guarded. 
    She hated to see him like this.  These were the moments that created wicked, compassionless men.  Someone at the end of their rope, exhausting all the resources of kindness and equitable integrity and still losing ground, grasping for a foothold, for another elusive option.  Often the answers that presented themselves were chained to the kind of sins that stained one’s soul.  Katriona would have given anything to know what he contemplated in the flames.
    “Why?”  It was a dangerous question, but she had to ask.
    “Ye know why,” he told the fire. 
    She feared the knowledge.  Exalted in it.  Doubted it.  But he was