It was clean. That was the only thing Alasdair could give his foe, and so he ended Malcolm’s life with one quick, clean stroke.
He got up. He stood in the heather and breathed. Alasdair tipped his head back and looked at the stars.
So many years. So many resentments. Too many secrets and lies.
He would make time to feel it later.
For now, Alasdair had to find Isobel.
When Malcolm had said Isobel was in a different direction, Alasdair had heard Hamish’s footsteps falter behind him. He knew then that his friend would track Isobel. He would do what he could to find her and that was why he had not hurried the matter with Malcolm.
But now, there was nothing to stop Alasdair from sprinting through the darkness and barreling toward his lady.
“Isobel!” he called her name as he ran, not loud, just enough to carry into the dark.
No answer.
He ran on.
The tree line was ahead of him, and he went in through the first gap in the trunks. The Scots Pines closed around him, cold and still.
Nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She was still running.
Her lungs were burning, and her feet were past cold now, just pain on every step, and the castle was nowhere in sight. The pines and birches had given way to older trees, and the canopy was thicker. The moonlight came through in thin shifting bars. She could not hear Malcolm anymore.
She did not stop for that. Silence could mean he had gone quiet, not gone. She kept her body low and her arms out for balance, moving through the trees, feeling roots before she stepped on them, ducking under branches, the ground cold and wet and uneven under her bare feet.
She pushed through a dense stand of rowans and came out at the edge of the trees and stopped. The glens opened ahead of her, wide and dark, the heather rolling away under the stars with no light anywhere in it and no sound but the wind moving through the grass.
She stood with her hands on her knees, breathing.
She was further from the castle than she had realized. She looked up, and the moonlight fell full and white through a gap in the canopy and hit her face. Isobel could see properly for the first time since she had left the passage. The ground sloped east. The castle was somewhere south and west.
She straightened. She pushed her hair out of her face.
She turned back toward the trees. The footsteps behind her were not Malcolm’s.
She froze. She pressed herself against the nearest trunk and listened.
“Alasdair?”
She was already moving. She hit his chest before he could speak. She knew it was him and immediately her arms wrapped around his neck. Isobel pressed her face into the open shirt. She threaded her fingers through his black hair and held on for dear life. Isobel did not care about any of it, the cold or the dark or the fact that she was shaking.
His arms came up around her without hesitation. Both of them, pulling her in close. She could feel his heart hammering under her cheek and his breath still coming fast.
“Are ye hurt?” he said.
“No.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “I’m not hurt.”
He breathed out. His arms tightened.
“Malcolm,” she said.
“Done,” he said. “It’s over.” She believed him. “Calm down, little rabbit,” he said, low against her hair. “Ye win.”