Heart of the Fae (The Otherworld #1)(52)

“A walk is good for your health.”

“I already climbed a mountain today.”

“Yes, but the sights one sees on the other side of the castle are rather rare. You won’t be seeing it on top of that munro. Eat your food on your walk, I promise you’ll feel better if you go the long way.”

The strange smile on Pixie’s face made Sorcha nervous. The faerie had been kind thus far, but there was still plenty of time for trickery. Narrowing her eyes, she nodded. “All right. There are no games afoot?”

“The Wild Hunt doesn’t start for another month yet, dearie. You’re safe.”

Sorcha tucked into the bread and meat as she rounded the castle. The rose garden didn’t stretch very far. Her fingers itched to pull at the weeds, to take on the challenge of taming such a wild beast. Yet, she also knew that tiredness and roses did not play well together. She was more likely to bleed than succeed.

Once free from the tangled mess of blooms and thorns, the emerald hills stretched in front of her once more. The castle had grown into the landscape. Moss covered the bottom most stones, meshing with the green grass until it was nearly impossible to tell them apart.

She waltzed past a sheep which lifted its head and baa’d.

“Hello,” Sorcha nodded. “It’s always a pleasure, mistress wool!”

It gave her a rather unimpressed look and chewed. She had always liked sheep. Their odd, sideways pupils and all. They enjoyed having their cheeks scratched, and Sorcha could appreciate that as well as the next woman.

The bread disappeared by the time she made it halfway around the castle. Pixie had been right. The fresh air was doing wonders for the exhaustion that surged through her body. Each step beat back her drooping eyelids and trembling fingers.

A cracking sound echoed. Too far to cause her to jump — close enough to pique her curiosity.

“What?” she muttered as she picked up her pace.

The sound was strangely familiar. Not something she had heard often, but the ping of metal striking metal wasn’t easy to forget.

Once, two men had gotten into a duel outside the brothel. Briana had been in the middle of it, rolling her eyes and ignoring the two men fighting over a prostitute. She called them both foolish, slammed the door, and told the girls to pay them no mind.

Sorcha had never been good at that. She had raced up the stairwell, stuck her head out the window, and watched the two men fight. They had been sloppily drunk and incapable of standing straight. Two strikes of sword against sword, and they both gave up.

This didn’t sound like that kind of fight.

The closer she got, the more often she heard the strikes of metal. Each clank rang in the air with the resounding quality of a gong. She counted fifteen by the time she reached the top of a hill and stared with open mouth.

This was a new part of the castle. Sturdy wooden fences marked off a section of field, packed down by stamping feet. Straw dummies hung from posts, their guts hanging out from too many hits. Targets lined one end of the fences, red painted in circles to guide arrows home.

It was the men which caught her attention. A strange dark man stood in the center of the field. Half his head was shaved, dark hair falling nearly to his waist on the other side. There was a smudge of black across the shaved half of his face. He wore little more than breeches. Long and lean, his tanned skin was slicked with glistening sweat. A long, wicked spear glimmered in the sunlight, held with ease in his strong hand.

The other was eerily familiar. Sorcha gasped and dropped into the high waving grass so he wouldn’t see her.

So, this was the master of the isle.

Stone, as she now called him, was even more impressive without his cloak. He was massive, easily reaching seven feet tall, although she would’ve bet her life he was taller than that. Strangely, it didn’t make him blocky. His body was as lean as the other man’s. Broad shoulders tapered to a trim waist and long muscled legs. He wasn’t wearing his cloak. He wasn’t wearing anything other than a matching set of brown breeches.

She could count his rippling abdomen muscles even from her great distance. Bulging pectorals and flexing biceps caught her attention as her mouth went dry. He, too, was slicked with sweat. They’d obviously been fighting for some time.

Her gaze caught on the sword in his hand.

“Now that’s a sword,” she whispered.

The gold handle sparkled with red stones. The blade itself was clearly well-made, a line down the center hollowed to allow blood to flow freely. It was massive, a broadsword rather than a rapier.

He lifted it as though it weighed less than a feather.

Sorcha’s breath caught and her mind went blank. So that’s what Pixie meant when she said he was handsome man. In his own way, he was indeed.

The damage to his body was far more extensive than his face or hands. A starburst wound bisected his right shoulder and spread in webs. It looked as if someone had cracked through stone. There were hundreds of small fissures that crawled over his shoulders, across his chest, and down to his stomach. Small scars revealed more parted flesh and burgeoning stone.

Their lips moved though she couldn’t hear them from where she hid. Stone lifted his blade and dropped into a fighting stance.

The dark man raced towards him, ears flat against his skull. He leapt into the air with sword held above his head. Stone shifted at the last second, whirling to keep pace.

They didn’t fight in any way she’d ever seen before. Her lips parted as she watched.