Outlaw (Medieval Trilogy 3)

“Nay, sorcerer, I’ll not believe—”

“Only true love will restore Dwyrain and your honor,” he continued, his eyes squeezed shut, his head moving slowly, as if he were listening to some higher order.

“Love?” So there was hope. If she allowed herself to believe in this foolishness.

“Aye, but the faces of love are many. Some treacherous. Some deceitful. Some as shadowy as candlelight. True love must be tested, Megan, and yours will come from an unlikely source.”

Her insides turned to ice. “How will I know—?”

“The man will be dark-haired, fierce of countenance, unforgiving by nature.”

“

He sounds like a fiend.”

“Beneath his mantle of hatred, he has a true heart.”

Megan yanked back her hand. “I believe you not,” she said, though a part of her trusted the horrid words. “You are the voice of the Devil.”

“I speak only the truth, child,” he said solemnly, and a blade of dread sliced through her heart. She wanted to laugh at him, to tell him he was addled, call him a fool, but she held her tongue. Did he not know who she was, who her father was? Did he not heal her lame horse?

Before she said another word, he slipped away, as if in his own mist, through the curtain of rain. Overhead, the wings of a great owl flapped wildly.

“Wait,” she cried, but before the word was uttered, she knew he was gone.

Swallowing hard, she clucked softly to the horse, pulling on the reins as she led the beast back to the great gates of Dwyrain. The man was mad, she told herself, not to be trusted—an imposter who performed some sort of trickery. But no matter how desperately she argued with herself, she couldn’t cast off the premonition of doom that trailed after her, as unshakable as her own shadow, as dark as the deep waters of Hag’s End Lake.

One

Tower Dwyrain

Winter 1297

ome now, smile, Megan. ’Tis your wedding day,” Ewan cajoled, lying on the bed in his chamber. He patted the white fur coverlet and smiled up at his daughter.

Even in the flickering light from the candles, Megan saw the spots of age on his thin skin and noticed that his once-fleshy face had hollowed. In his youth, his eyes had been as clear and blue as a mountain lake, but now they had clouded, leaving him half blind.

“You’ll not have to look after me much longer, child,” he told her. “My time here is short.”

“Nay, Father—” she said, closing the door behind her and hurrying to his bedside. She sat on the edge of the feather mattress and took his cold fingers in her own.

“Aye, and I’ll be expecting to see a grandson before I go, a strong, strapping lad as Bevan was,” he said. Tears welled in Megan’s eyes when she thought of her brother, a year older than she but now in his grave, the victim of the sickness that had taken so many in the castle, including her mother and tiny sister. Megan swallowed against a thick lump that had formed in her throat. She’d heard the gossip, knew that most of the servants and a few of the knights blamed her for the death and destruction that had befallen Dwyrain ever since she’d seen the lame prophet in the forest, and he’d cursed her as well as the castle.

Her father sighed sadly. “But ye’d best not wait too long with that grandson.”

“Don’t talk such madness,” she chided, refusing to believe that her beloved father would soon die.

But ’twas as if he were deaf. “Holt, he will be a good husband to you,” he said, patting her hands and smiling without reason, as if he had no mind left. There was hushed talk between his men that he was addled, that the loss of his wife and two children, coupled with his age, had finally caught up to him, that he’d taken one too many blows to the head in the heat of battle in his younger years. “A lucky lass ye be to marry a knight as brave as Sir Holt.”

Despair raked sharp claws down her heart. “Nay, Father,” she said boldly, knowing this was her last chance to change his mind.

“Do not argue with me.”

Grasping his hand more urgently, she whispered, “But Father, I need not a husband—”

“Shh,” he said, then coughed loudly, his chest rattling, his body clenching against the pain. “God in heaven,” he growled, once the attack had passed. He reached for a mazer of wine on a bedside table. His hounds, two gray hunters, lifted their heads and glared at Megan menacingly, as if she were the reason their master no longer rode wildly through the forests and underbrush, drinking mead, whooping loudly, and flushing out deer, boars, and pheasant for them to chase.

Beneath the dogs’ yellow-eyed glare, Megan inched up her chin. Even the snarling beasts appeared to blame her for the ills that had plagued Dwyrain. Cayley, whom Megan had trusted with her secret, had told the story of the crippled prophet and his curse.