Chapter Eight

A bigail reached for his wrist, struggling to rise. “Don’t go back in there.”

Kerrick helped her stand, holding her close. It was obvious that she was all Abigail once again. There was a softness about her frame with a strength inside that he admired. His hand went to her cheek. “I need to do this, and I will take every precaution.” He touched his forehead to hers. “Ye are the one she wants to invade. So whatever ye hear or see, do not go back inside the garden wall or the castle, even after the sun goes down.”

She huffed, frowning, but nodded.

Kerrick strode around the hulking mass to the front. He stared up at the castle he’d dreamed would be the center of his estate, proving to his father that he wasn’t a disappointment. That he could take a ruin and build it into a profitable enterprise. That he was no fool or traitor, but a man of intelligence, ingenuity, and perseverance. What would his father think of his plan now?

Dim firelight flickered behind the windows. Where exactly were the sconces lit inside? He’d lit two, no three, lamps in glass in the great hall. There was a bowl of very flammable pine pitch next to the table where he’d been mending the back door with it.

He ran both hands down his face. “Am I really doing this?” he murmured, but he already knew the answer.

Taking a deep breath, Kerrick strode up to the double doors, clutching the iron key. Unlocking it, he entered, his gaze fastening onto the closest sconce. The air inside was chilled as if filled with Rohaise’s icy anger. Kerrick yanked the glass cover off the lamp’s flame. Without further thought, he turned to the tapestry that Abigail had asked him to rehang against the wall and held the flickering flame to it. The ancient fibers caught quickly, food for the fire’s voracious appetite. He lit a taper from it and dropped it into the pitch, and the bowl whooshed to life.

Kerrick used his kilt to hold the burning pot and ran up the stairs. In each room, he used his dagger to push some of the flaming substance out onto the carpets.

Kerrick Hay . Rohaise’s voice shot through the crackle of the fire as it caught, but he paid it no heed and ran to Abigail’s bedchamber, lighting the curtains and the green gown thrown across the bed.

Ye will stop .

Kerrick lit the mattress full of dry hay and ran back into the hall where fire glowed out of the rooms he’d already visited. He dashed into the master bedchamber and paused. Rohaise stood against the wall that she tapped, her arms spread as if protecting it. What are ye doing? Ye will burn me to ash.

“So be it!” he yelled, drawing in the smoke-laced air. Coughing, he dropped the hot, flaming pot on the bed.

Nay! Rohaise screamed, and Kerrick dodged as a rock flew across the space, thudding hard against the wall. He ran from the room, feeling the cold wind of the spirit whirl around him. He moved from side to side along the wide stairs, learning from his many battles to dodge when under fire. Could she slip into him if he were conscious?

At the bottom, he tore through the great hall where the one tapestry burned up the entire wall. He grabbed another of the lamps held in the sconce and ran to the other two tapestries, catching them easily, their brittle threads welcoming the all-consuming flame.

Rohaise appeared before him, her hands out. Ye burn our home? How can ye?

“’Tis my home, not yours. Your time is done at Delgatie, and ye will hurt no one else.” He brandished the uncovered lamp before her, and a fierce look came over Rohaise’s face. Surprise and overwhelming turned into hatred and anger.

Then ye will burn with me .

A tankard from the sideboard flew across the space, and Kerrick dodged it and a heavy candelabrum as they smashed into the wall. He ran down the corridor and into the kitchen. Raising his lamp, he set hanging baskets and dried herbs on fire. It consumed them, spreading up to the wooden rafters as Rohaise shrieked in pure fury.

Knives flew toward him, making him duck, and embedded into the back wall of the kitchen, handles quivering as if enraged they missed him. Flames grew up around him, and Rohaise spread her arms before the door.

Ye will burn too, Kerrick Hay . She began to throw everything that wasn’t wall or floor at him. The table upended, rushing toward him. He dove out of the way, and a rafter fell. He rolled, barely escaping.

Leaping up, he pivoted toward the door to the garden, but Rohaise blocked it. Her hair swirled up and around her, its red hue very much like the fire raging quickly through the entire castle. It reached toward him like the tentacles of some deadly sea beast.

“Move aside,” he yelled. If he ran through her, would she lodge within him? He covered his mouth and nose with an arm, trying to hold his breath as the air was consumed in the room. Heat and smoke swelled around him. He turned to run back into the great hall, but before he could leave the kitchen, another rafter fell, blocking the open doorway.

Rohaise glided to the hearth, and Kerrick ducked as a cauldron flew at him. If she knocked him unconscious, he would surely die. He ran to the door to the courtyard. “Damn!” Rohaise had locked the door without the key, probably pushing the tumblers inside like she pushed pots from counters.

Ye cannot escape!

Kerrick yanked out the iron key from his jacket, brandishing it like a sword. But before he could run to thrust it in the lock, Rohaise threw the hearth grate at his hand, knocking the key loose. A blast of wind hit the small window by the door, shattering the glass outward. The key rose in the air, flying out the small window into the garden.

Kerrick couldn’t draw in a full breath, and he felt his strength failing like he had on the battlefield as his leg bled fiercely.

Rohaise smiled wickedly before the door, floating there as she kept up a volley of smaller utensils. How would he be able to kick open that locked door without air?

“Abigail,” he said.

Your precious Abigail isn’t here . Rohaise’s words roared over the crackling flames, full of victory.

Before she could utter another word, the back door flew inward, straight through Rohaise’s body. “Yes, I am.” Abigail stood in the doorway. The key she’d retrieved stuck in the lock from the outside.

Kerrick wasted no time and hurled himself across the room, grabbing Abigail’s hand on the way, tugging her as he coughed violently. In the garden, he sucked in large draughts of fresh air but didn’t stop running. Together they escaped the open gate beyond the threshold of Delgatie Castle.

He fell to the ground. Abigail knelt beside him, wiping his blackened face with the blanket he’d wrapped around her. “I saw the flames. I heard you yell.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t stay behind.” The scorching in his throat made it impossible to answer.

Crash!

Windows shattered along the second floor. Flames shot out like a dragon scorching the air with its breath. Even the back garden became engulfed.

Kerrick pulled Abigail against him, wrapping his arms around her as they sat on the cold, damp ground, watching the fire destroy his future.

*

Abigail woke alone in the barn and reached out where Kerrick had slept next to her. His body heat still lingered. She pushed up from the hay bed, spotting Boo curled up with her siblings.

Abigail wrapped the warm blanket around herself, stepping out into the frost-coated dawn.

“Oh God,” she whispered. Delgatie Castle sat in jagged ruin, smoke rising into the morning mist that rolled along the moors. She walked to the front where Kerrick stood, his tunic blackened with the smoke that had almost killed him as he set ablaze the only home he had.

He glanced at her as she took his hand in both of hers. “You can rebuild,” she said.

“What coins I have, if they survived the flames, are only enough for seed and a few animals and provisions until the harvest. Not enough to rebuild a castle.” She wove her fingers through his, squeezing.

The stony holes where the glass windowpanes had blown out looked down upon them like the vacant eyes of a skull.

“Is it safe to go in?” Abigail asked, her voice like a whisper.

He shook his head. “The upstairs has fallen down below, but there could be some loose timbers.”

Abigail walked up to the stone doorway, careful not to touch. “Rohaise,” she called into it, her gaze scanning the wreckage of planks, mortar, and burnt tapestries and what must have been the bed from above. “Rohaise. Are you here?”

Silence. She released a breath. Kerrick came up to stand next to her and pointed toward the center of the pile of broken soot-blackened plaster. “Do ye see them?” he asked, and she peered closer, trying to look amongst the pieces.

Abigail gasped softly. “Is that a skull?”

“Aye,” he said. “A femur bone too.” He leaned in, peering upward as if to judge where the pile of debris had come from. “In the wall above, between the rooms.”

Abigail looked at him. “Where she tapped?” He nodded.

The bones lay amongst the pieces of the wall that had confined Rohaise. The wall had been her tomb. “You did it then,” she whispered. “Rohaise is free.”