Free Dark Immortal by Julia Keaton Page A

were
about--whether they represented a threat or were only travelers seeking shelter
from the weather.
     
    Fortunately,
Fitzhugh was too intent himself on discovering the intentions of the men beyond
the gates to pay her any mind as she made her way up onto the battlements and
peered down at the strangers. 
     
    It
was a rather large troupe of men, Bronwyn discovered, feeling uneasiness begin
to tingle along her nerve endings even before she spied the banner.  Her heart
seemed to stand still in her chest when a sudden gust of wind lifted it,
unfurling it.  She knew that banner.  She did not know how, but she was
suddenly certain she did.
     
    Raventhorne.
     
    The
leader nudged his horse forward as Fitzhugh called out a demand to know their
business.
     
    The
man lifted his head, scanning the walls above him and, despite the helmet that
obscured his face, Bronwyn had the uncanny sense that his gaze had settled upon
her.
     
    “I
am Marcus Raventhorne … And I have come to claim what is mine.”
     
    Stunned
silence greeted the bold announcement for several moments before Sir Fitzhugh
broke it with a bark of a laugh that held no humor at all.  “I hold these lands
in the name of the king, for the Lady of Raventhorne,” he growled finally. 
“You expect to besiege this keep with no more than a handful of men?”
     
    “Nay. 
I expect to take this keep and its lady,” the knight retorted, lifting
his arm into the air and bringing it down again in a sharp chopping motion. 
“Now!”
     
    Still
completely stunned by the man’s audacity, expecting an attack from the men
beyond the walls, it took many moments for the defenders to assimilate the fact
that the sudden burst of action all along the walls was an attack and by that
time the battle was all but lost. 
     
    Too
frozen with fear and shock to flee, Bronwyn merely stared in complete
incomprehension as the castle’s defenders seemed to turn upon each other all
along the wall.  By the time she grasped that the castle had somehow been
infiltrated by the stranger’s army and whirled to flee, the portcullis was
rising and the drawbridge falling to admit their attackers.
     
    Whirling
the moment her mind finally assimilated the threat, Bronwyn darted between the
knots of battling men and rushed down the stairs.  Even as she reached the
courtyard, however, men mounted upon war horses had begun to spill through the
gates.  Uttering a gasp of fright, she gathered her skirts higher and ran
faster, too panicked to realize she had no hope of outrunning mounted men. 
     
    A
mailed arm snagged her around the waist, snatching her off her feet and
crushing the air from her lungs as she was jerked against an armor plated
chest.  Fear not common sense inspired her to fight for her freedom, but she
quickly discovered that she had neither the strength nor the leverage to offer
much in the way of resistance.
     
    “Be
still, little rose,” he growled as he locked his arm tightly around her.  “I
mean you no harm.”
     
    His
words penetrated her fear and Bronwyn glanced up at him sharply, trying to see
the face of the man who held her.  Her heart skipped several beats as her gaze
met his for there was something hauntingly familiar about those eyes.
     
    “Who
are you?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.
     
    Something
flickered in his eyes.  “Am I so different now that you do not know me?”
     
    Bronwyn
felt the color drain from her face, but she could not accept that what she
believed was truth.  It couldn’t be.  It must be no more than her imagination,
spawned by the hope that had never died, but the desire that had never been far
from her thoughts.  She ceased to struggle though, as much from hope as from
the realization that fighting was useless.
     
    The
battle, she saw when she turned to look around them, was all but finished. 
He’d planned well, whoever he was, though she still could not understand how he
had breached the walls of the keep without