Redeemed (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #2)

Other
Heroes of the Highlands
Novellas

by Kerrigan Byrne

Unspoken

Unwilling

Unwanted

Unleashed – The First Highland Historical Trilogy

Released

Reluctant (
Coming Soon)

REDEEMED

Kerrigan Byrne

Redeemed © 2013 Kerrigan Byrne

All rights reserved

Amazon Kindle Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. The ebook contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, or stored in or introduced into an information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This ebook is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Cover Art © 2013 Kelli Ann Morgan / Inspire Creative Services

Formatting by
Bob Houston eBook Formatting

Dedication

To Dawn Winter.

There are too many reasons why: Nerdy online quotes. Rare intellect. Late night self-discovery chats (which sounds dirty, but totally isn’t). Drinking buddies. Giggles. The “F” word. Great documentary recommendations. And for introducing me to romance novels way too young.

Also, to Jon, because he read my stuff and that’s wicked awesome.

Acknowledgements:

My circle seems to keep expanding and to avoid writing a novel here; I’ll be brief and then suffer anxiety about leaving anyone out:

I’d like to thank my husband for his unfailing patience and support.

As always, to the other two Musketeers and D’artagnan. I feel there will never be enough thanks or praise for the three of you. I’m consistently in your debt.

To WID – The reason Thursdays are still my favorite day of the week.

To Kerrigan’s Celts – I couldn’t ask for a better group of people as friends and support and I want to especially tell Dawn Sullivan that I am incredibly happy for and proud of her accomplishments!

To Anna Robbins for being a great online friend (and offline too)!

Chapter One

The question hung in the air like the heavy, inescapable stench of charred flesh or rotted meat. Everyone’s eyes held the same breathless and hopeful expectation as they stared at her.

Kylah worried a part of her cheek with her teeth. What was she supposed to be feeling at this moment? What was the acceptable response they expected her to convey? She supposed she could react one of two ways.

Anger and betrayal.
How could you, my sister, marry the brother of the vile Laird who murdered us all? He carries their poisonous blood in his veins. I’ll never forgive you for this…
et cetera and so on
.

Or she could side with her youngest sister, Kamdyn, and her mother, Elspeth.
I trust your judgment and am ready to give the new MacKay Laird a chance to make you happy and right the wrongs done to our family...
Heaping platitudes of magnanimous forgiveness and such until everyone’s worries were laid to rest.

Kylah studied the pale green glow she cast on the warm rugs and tapestries littering her mother’s new cottage. Since she’d refused to move into the keep with the MacKay Laird, Rory had bequeathed to Elspeth a lovely warm home close to the castle so her eldest, Katriona, or Kathryn as she was now known, would be able to visit her family often. A kindness Kylah supposed she should be grateful for on her mother’s behalf. She no longer had to worry about her comfort and survival. Elspeth now had a living daughter to care for her.

Gratitude. Relief. Yet more emotion she was supposed to experience but didn’t.

She searched her soul for the warmth of sisterly affection and compassion, or the heat of rage brought on by the pain of disloyalty. But found—emptiness.

Less than that. She stood at the edge of a black, gaping abyss and kept squinting and straining to see the bottom like a bloody fool. She couldn’t very well reach into it and pluck out an answer. It contained nothing.

She was nothing.

No one.

Therefore, why did her opinion even matter? Why was it her responsibility to grant them absolution for something they were going to do regardless? Because she was the only one who had been violently raped before she died?

“Kylah, dear, whatever you’re thinking you can just say it outright.” Kamdyn drifted toward her and leaned the specter of her shoulder next to Kylah’s to show support. In fact, their outlines overlapped as the dead could no longer touch the living. Or each other. They just floated above the floor, little more than ghosts. Ineffectual Banshees. “What do you feel about Laird Rory and Katriona being married?” she repeated the question.

Kylah flicked a glance at the Laird in question. Even stone-faced and grim, Rory MacKay didn’t resemble his twin brother Angus in the slightest. With the tall, broad frame of a mythic warrior, his handsome features consisted of different variations of bronze. Light hair, amber-hued eyes, and sun-kissed skin had once contrasted with the ugly pallor of his brother’s ruddy complexion. Rory wore pity and remorse like a cloak, but hid defiance beneath it like a concealed dirk. He didn’t take responsibility for his brother’s actions, though they shamed and angered him.

Katriona stood next to her husband, hand clutched within his large palm, her eyes pleading for understanding. Kylah latched on to them, for Katriona’s eyes were the only thing that remained her own. The rest of her body had once belonged to Kathryn Frasier, Rory’s bride. Where she’d once favored her sisters, tall and slim with long, mahogany hair, she now resembled a Nordic princess. Blond curls tangled down her back, tamed with a circlet and braids. Pale skin touched with a golden hue covered lush curves most women only dreamed of possessing.

Katriona had never been a great beauty, but Kylah missed the honest angles of her sister’s expressive face. The one she’d had before it was melted away in the fire Rory’s brother had ignited.

Elspeth was the hardest to look at. And not because of the shiny, painful burn scars on her face, but the softer way she regarded Rory MacKay. With a little kindness, he’d won over her mother, but Kylah and Kamdyn remained unconvinced.

Elspeth reached out to Kylah, like she’d done so many times in the months since she’d spoken the olde words that’d turned her murdered daughters into Banshees. “Kylah, love, don’t you want your sister—”

“It’s fine.” Kylah drifted back from her mother and attempted to force inflection into her answer, but from the looks on their faces, she’d failed utterly.

“Fine?” Kamdyn echoed. “Are you certain? You don’t sound—”

“I said its fine,” Kylah insisted. “I can feel that he loves her, and that she loves him. Is anything we say going to change that? Or have any effect on how they’ve chosen to live their lives together?”

Katriona and Rory looked at each other. His strong hand tightened around hers, and his solemn eyes softened with unabashed affection.

“Nay,” Katriona murmured. “But we came here to explain. It happened so fast. We wanted to give you all a chance to express your feelings or concerns over what has transpired.”

“I have none.”

Katriona’s brow wrinkled. A familiar expression on a foreign face. “None of which, feelings or concerns?”

Either. Both. She could pick one. “I’ve told you it’s all right.” Kylah hoped those words fared better than
fine
. They were all she had to give them.

“Your feelings have to be more complicated than that, sister.”

“They’re not.”

“But dearheart…” Elspeth stepped forward once more and Kylah again retreated. It was a struggle to look at her mother. Not because of Elspeth’s disfigured face, but because of the hurt and pity etched into her gaze. Her mother always reminded Kylah of that night. Because she’d been forced to watch. And Kylah relived those terrible moments before her death through the unspeakable horror in her mother’s eyes.

Chapter Two

Spring had come early to the Highlands, and though Kylah could feel no heat, the setting sun gave off an illusion of warmth that proved almost as effective. Drifting aimlessly, she sought to lose herself among the emerald moors to the north and west of Durness. But even without the wild pulse of the waves to guide her, every dark loch, craggy knoll, and mossy plane on MacKay lands was achingly familiar. She’d explored them all as a girl, marked them, and learned of their names from sweet Carraig MacKay, the fisherman.

She wondered if she’d made a clean escape from her mother’s home. Thinking back on it, she couldn’t exactly remember what she’d said before plunging through the walls and into the rare Highland sunshine.

In the narrow alley, Hugh MacKay had accidentally walked through her, and the strange contact unsettled them both. Hugh, because he’d felt an icy and invisible chill reach into his bones despite the warm sunlight. And Kylah because it had felt as though he might rip away another part of her soul as they disengaged.

Another man inside her without her permission. More contact than she was willing to allow. Durness was too full of people. Of memories. Of emotions and desires not her own. Contentment and hope swelled within her clan at the dawn of a new spring. Their Laird had money and there were crops to be planted. The plague of witchcraft had passed on the night of Rory’s wedding, as suddenly as it had appeared. Everyone rejoiced.

Kylah couldn’t bear it, so she’d sought the solitude of the wilderness.

Reaching the swift waters of the Kyle, she levitated over and idly wondered why some people considered walking on water so bloody miraculous. All one needed was a bit if Faerie magic. Her constant aura reached the western shore before she did and Kylah grimaced as she watched it spread out on the rocks before her, casting the growing shadows in her sickly green glow. Her sisters’ auras had always been a bright and eerie blue. Why not hers?

Kylah’s head snapped up from where she contemplated the ground. A strong ocean wind ruffled the grasses of the moor and brought with it a faint call of something she’d encountered before and never forgotten. A response rose inside her with a dark and powerful allure, drawing her toward the phenomenon before she made the conscious decision to follow it.

Highland streams and lochs flew past her with more speed than the swiftest horse. The
Cearbhag
River split around the
Cearbhag
Dune and crawled through the golden shore of the tiny bay of the same name. The
Allt Dubh
or River Black spilled across the same sands where both rivers were claimed by the roiling waves of the ocean. Named for the fine dark silt embedded beneath the clear waters, the River Black was notorious across the Highlands for a singular reason that had nothing to do with its rare earth.

And everything to do with the infamous man who lurked along its banks.

Beyond the beach, the land lifted to the large and ancient cliff face. Kylah followed the precipice, her insides rolling and crashing in time with the loud incoming tide that was hurling itself against the stones.