Reclaimed (A Highland Historical Trilogy) (The MacKay Banshees 1-3) by Kerrigan Byrne Page B

bound more than anything, even as a child. This was worse, for no mortal bounds held him, but some kind of treacherous magic. “Why do this to me?”
    He gritted his teeth as the blade-happy bastard sliced into his chest. Luckily, Rory had a high tolerance for pain. But that tolerance didn’t extend to traitorous Lowlanders, and if he ever managed to free himself, he was taking Albert’s head and displaying it on a pike in the great hall.
    And maybe his sweet wife’s too. Perhaps there was more of his father and brother in him than he’d first thought because the idea of choking the breath from her delicate throat was making him hard.
    “That’s enough, love,” Kathryn chided, clinking the spoon against the side of the goblet and setting it on the tray. Turning toward him, she eyed his naked chest with interest. “You are breathtaking. It is a shame I didn’t have the time to lie with you as wife just once before I do this.” She reached out and ran her hand over the grooves of his stomach.
    His gut roiled with disgust. He’d rather get another slice from Albert than a caress from her.
    “Kathryn!” Albert growled.
    “Do shut up, Albert,” Kathryn ordered softly. The large man complied with a sullen frown.
    “As for your question,” she continued. “As you’re now aware, I’m a dark and powerful witch, and becoming a powerful witch often creates powerful enemies.” She stroked the flat of Albert’s dagger with her finger, and then sliced the pad at the tip. “Among my enemies are quite a few different castes of Faerie and you, my love, possess something that can eternally protect me from them.” She drew her bleeding finger down his torso, creating a runic symbol.
    Everywhere she touched burned like acid.
    When she pulled back, she stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked at the wound. The flesh came away healed, as though she’d never cut herself to begin with.
    “Ye were behind all of it,” Rory hissed. “Weren’t ye? The curdled milk, the diseased herds, the dead fish, and the sudden plague, that was all yer doing!”
    “Perhaps you should reform your pagan ways.” Kathryn turned back with an ironic smile and picked up both goblets, handing the one closest to her to Albert. “If you had a priest to read you your bible, you’d have recognized the omens of dark witchcraft.”
    The terrible accusations he’d flung at Katriona came back to haunt him. Of course she wouldn’t punish the innocent for the crimes of his family. His clan was her clan. She’d lived among and loved them all. He’d watched her do tiny extra kindnesses for all those she and her mother served.
    Gods he wished he would see her again. That he could tell her he was sorry. That he knew better now. That he should have known all along.
    “This potion will separate your soul from your body, husband.” Kathryn nodded to Albert. “And then it will pass to this amulet,” she took a necklace from the bodice of her dress, and the rune shone silver despite the golden glow of the fire. “I’ll speak the words róin m'anam and then I’ll become An Dioladh .”
    Rory strained with all his might against the strength of whatever spell she used to incapacitate him. “Think of what ye do!” he warned. “Ye leave my clan without a Laird. How will they survive?”
    “As your widow, I’ll have de facto rights over the clan. It will pass to my father, I imagine.”
    “I’ll die before I let a Lowlander have them,” he vowed.
    “Aye.” Kathryn’s lovely eyes flared with an azure fire as she took a long sip of her own goblet. “I rather expect you will.”
    Albert shoved his neck back and plugged his nose, dumping the wine into his open mouth. Rory did his best to close his throat. But it burned in his lungs and clogged in his sinuses and, in the end, his body betrayed him. The muscles of his throat contracted in a swallow and despair threatened to overtake him.
    He even inhaled some and was racked with chest-rattling coughs