Prologue

1296

Valley of Blood

Borderland between England and Scotland

“Eve!” A rough hand to her shoulder shook her out of her lovely sleep. All at once, the field full of purple heather, the warmth of the sun, and the bright blue sky disappeared.

Eve Decres opened her eyes, startled by the absolute darkness and cool air that permeated the room. Gooseflesh peppered her arms, and she frowned as she stared into the dead fire. That was odd. The fire in her and her younger sister’s bedchamber had never been allowed to die out. Her father always lit it himself, and Clara tended to it through the night.

“Come, Eve,” a deep voice commanded as someone grabbed at her arms.

Eve instinctually reached to her bedside where she kept the prized sword her father had only just given her on her tenth birthday, but the sword was knocked out of her reach and clattered to the floor.

“Eve, I’m scared!” Mary’s warm hand grasped at Eve’s. But then someone lifted her younger sister from their bed, the contact of their fingers breaking.

“Let go of my sister!” Eve demanded, trying and failing to twist out of the iron grip upon her arms. When that didn’t work, she bent her head and sank her teeth into the intruder’s arm as John, the stablemaster, had instructed her to do should she ever have need.

“Damned squirmy little hellion!” The man grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back, causing tears to spring to her eyes. She shot out her fists in an attempt to pummel her assailant, but her wrists were caught in a viselike grip, and she was tugged violently forward into a hard chest. Whiskers tickled her nose, and the heavy, sweet scent of strong mead filled her lungs when she inhaled.

“If ye fight me again, I’ll kill yer sister,” her captor said.

Immediately, Eve stilled, icy fear shooting through her veins and freezing her ability to move. With a satisfied grunt, the man pulled her off the bed, and her bare feet met with cold, rough wood. Before she could even properly stand, she was being dragged toward the door of her and Mary’s bedchamber. Moonlight streamed in from the window and cast a bright glow that illuminated two large men. Eve and Mary screamed in unison.

The men looked like savages. Long, wild hair grazed their shoulders, and only a loose strip of material covered their muscled chests. Eve felt her eyes widen at the brazen state of shocking half dress. A jagged scar travelled diagonally down her captor’s shoulder and disappeared under braies that hung low on his hips. Each man held a sword, longer than the ones her father and his knights used, and the stranger holding Mary had slung her over his shoulder.

That man turned toward Eve and her captor while jerking a wailing Mary off his shoulder and slapping a hand over her mouth. Eve opened her mouth to shout a protest only to have a hand, calloused and smelling of smoke and horses, placed over her own mouth. She fought the urge to gag as she struggled in vain against her enemy.

“What do ye want me to do with this one?” the man holding Mary asked, his heavy brogue revealing that he was a Scot.

“We’ll take her with us,” Eve’s captor answered, his brogue not nearly as thick as the other man’s. “It’ll be amusing to have the great Decres’s offspring as my servant. Mayhap she’ll grow to be a beauty.”

Something in his voice made Eve’s skin crawl. She kicked back, but when her foot smacked into his thigh instead of his groin, fear lanced through her. She had miscalculated his great height.

He spun her to face him and reared up a hand to smack her, but suddenly he stilled and nodded at his comrade, who inclined his head in a silent understanding that set terror in Eve’s heart. He moved his palm from Mary’s mouth and whirled her around. He backhanded her so hard Mary slumped in the man’s arms, her head lolling forward.

“No!” Eve shrieked, only to have her chin grabbed and squeezed.

“Listen to me, wench. Ye’re the one he wants. Ye’re the one who was named the heir to yer father’s castle, nae yer sister. Ye are the one who will bring me a boon. Yer sister will live or die by my word and my word alone. Do ye ken me?”

Eve sucked in a sharp breath, tears flooding her eyes and making her throat ache. Where was her father? Her mother? They would never allow harm to come to her and Mary. The man’s words echoed in her ears.

Ye’re the one who was named heir.

Papa had only made her the heir to Linlithian Castle two nights ago. How could this man know that?

A man appeared in the doorway, taking up the whole space. “We need to flee. Decres’s soldiers are returning, and if we’re to get ahead of them to meet—”

“Enough,” Eve’s captor snapped. “What of Decres and his wife?”

“Decres awaits ye in the great hall, on his knees as ye requested, and the wife is dead.”

Shock slammed into Eve, and her lungs seemed to close. She tried to suck in a breath, but no air would come.

Mama, she mouthed silently as sobs ripped through her body and merciless, talonlike fingers sunk deep into her chest to tear her heart in two. Her mother. Her good, kind, sweet mother could not be gone.

As she was dragged through the bedchamber door and into the corridor, her foot brushed against something warm, almost fleshy, but that made no sense. Suddenly, a torch appeared at the end of the corridor by the stairs and cast light down the long corridor. Eve could do no more than stare in horror at what she saw.

The bodies of her father’s knights littered the corridor all the way from her bedchamber to the stairs. A wave of sickness cramped her stomach, and she swallowed repeatedly until it passed, but as she was tugged down the stairs past another body, she feared she would pass out. She fought the darkness threatening to consume her, desperate to see her father.

Within moments, she was being shoved into the great hall, and there, before the dais, kneeled her father with a circle of savage warriors around him, swords drawn and pointed to kill. The circle parted to make an opening, and Eve screamed at the sight of her mother lying motionless before her father in a puddle of her own blood. A terrifying certainty that her father was about to die filled Eve, and when the Scot who held her released his hold on her and stepped toward her father, she cried out, grasped the dagger sheathed at the man’s hip, withdrew it, and plunged it into his lower back. He spun toward her and knocked her so hard across the cheek that the dagger flew from her hands as she stumbled backward. A bellow of rage came from her father, and he surged to his feet, but the men surrounding him forced him back down. Eve’s head hit a bench, and the room swayed before her, bright specks of light dancing across her vision and darkness consuming the edges of the room. The Scot drew his sword back and her father yelled, “Avenge me, Eve!” And then the sword hissed through the air and plunged downward.

Eve’s heart stopped as her breath froze. Silence fell in the great hall, then a horrid gurgling from her father, followed by silence once more. Her ears began to ring and heat enveloped her just as she fell sideways into oblivion.

They were dead.

Eve squeezed her eyes shut, tears coursing down her cheeks as she was jostled by the fast pace of the destrier her captor was commanding. She would never see her parents again, never talk to them, never hear them laugh. The pain robbed her of the ability to breathe. It made her bones ache. Sudden shouting around her shot fear once more to her heart. She opened her eyes just as an arrow whistled by her, and the movement of air tickled her cheek.

Behind her, her captor’s hold around her waist suddenly loosened, and he grunted, then fell sideways off the horse they rode. The beast reared up, neighing. Terrified, Eve grasped the reins, while beside her, the same thing happened to Mary’s captor. When the man fell off his horse, Mary began to cry, and Eve moved her destrier as close to her sister’s as she dared and reached for the reins, trying to slow both horses.

“Whoa,” a familiar voice commanded, and both beasts came to a jarring stop.

“John!” Eve cried out as the robust stablemaster stepped into the path with Clara, Eve and Mary’s lady’s maid, by his side. Tears flooded Eve’s eyes at the sight of two people she could trust.

“Mount with Eve, Clara. She rides better than you do. I’ll take Mary,” John instructed, the urgency in his tone making Eve’s heart race. He climbed onto Mary’s horse, and Clara mounted the destrier Eve sat upon. “If we become separated, ride to the cave at the pass. I’ll come for you there as soon as I can.”

“All right,” Clara said as she settled behind Eve and gave her a quick hug. “It will be fine, Eve.”

“My father’s dead,” Eve sobbed, her voice cracking.

Clara’s chest rose and fell with a deep sigh. “I know, child. I’m sorry.”

“Eve Decres!” came a rage-filled roar from behind them.

John called out for the horses to run, and Eve tightened her hold on the reins and urged the beast to flee. They took off at a gallop through the woods, jumping logs and ducking branches as they rode hard toward escape. Eve had no notion where John was leading them, but behind them, the thundering pursuit of what sounded like hundreds of horses filled the air. Her body tensed as she kicked the horse in the sides, forgetting all she knew about riding. Terror took over as she urged their horse past John and Mary.

John reached for her reins and missed. In her mind, she thought to stop, but fear would not allow her to do so. The horse surged forward out of the woods and through the valley, while behind her, John’s shouts to halt resounded through the air and Clara’s frightened cries surrounded her. Eve’s blood roared in her ears, and her heart beat painfully within her as the valley blurred by and the horse began to gallop up the mountain.

Eve glanced behind her, horrified at how close the Scots already were. When one raised a bow, she screamed a warning, but the noise of the horses drowned the sound. The man let loose the arrow, and then another. First her sister and then John fell from their horse.

Something broke inside Eve, and her voice cracked as she cried out, “Mary!” But her sister had disappeared under the onslaught of horse hooves. This couldn’t be happening…

Wake up! This is just a nightmare. Wake up! she ordered her mind. But nothing changed.

“Eve! Halt the horse! Halt it! The mountain ledge is not far!” Clara shouted. “Halt! Halt!”

Eve tried to form words, but her throat closed, and she could no longer see anything but her father being killed, her mother lying dead before him, and Mary being trampled while Eve abandoned her. The horse neighed and came to a violent stop, shooting Eve forward over the mount and into nothing but air, plunging her toward the depths of water below.