Chapter 76: Cracks in the Web

Chapter 76: Cracks in the Web
Mairi hadn’t meant to linger by Lachlan’s study. She had followed the sound of raised voices, drawn as though by instinct. The brothers rarely argued aloud, but when they did, the air itself trembled with it.
She stayed just beyond the open door, her body pressed to the wall.

“You’re a fool,” Alistair was shouting, voice rough and breaking. “You’re destroying the only person who’s ever truly loved you!”

Mairi’s breath caught.

There was a dull thud — a fist meeting flesh. Then silence.

Through the narrow slit of the doorway, she saw Lachlan wipe blood from his lip, the look in his eyes unreadable.

“I didn’t bed her,” Alistair went on, quieter now but shaking. “She’s loyal to you, Lachlan. You’re too blind to see it. You’re being tricked. She’s different — smarter than you think. You haven’t lost her yet, but you will.”

He turned for the door. Mairi backed away fast, pressing herself into the shadowed alcove as Alistair stormed past.

Inside the study, Lachlan stood motionless. His hand came up to his chest — and Mairi’s breath froze when she saw it.

The mark.

The faint glow beneath his tunic, where the bond scar pulsed red.

Her mind raced.

So it was true. The mark had appeared — but it had changed. Broken. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She had studied the binding lore Ruadhán gave her. The scar was eternal unless death severed it. Yet here it was, raw and burning — as though something greater had torn it apart.

Her pulse thundered in her ears. She had wanted to imitate Isla, to claim what was never hers, but she hadn’t known what breaking a fated bond would do. Not truly.

And if the bond was broken...
Then perhaps the magic was, too.

Mairi slipped away before Lachlan could come to the door, her heart hammering.

She didn’t remember crossing the corridor or the stairs. Only when the cold of her own chamber wrapped around her did she stop moving.

The fire had gone out hours ago. Shadows clung to the walls like cobwebs.

She sank onto the edge of the bed, her hands trembling. “It shouldn’t have broken,” she whispered. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

Her reflection stared back at her from the mirror — pale, wild-eyed, beautiful still, but haunted.

When she’d taken the potion Ruadhán had given her, she’d thought it a simple glamour. A trick of the flesh to make Isla’s face her own for one night. Enough to fool Alistair, to wound Lachlan, to unravel the woman who’d stolen their hearts.

But she hadn’t considered the consequences.
Ruadhán had warned her the magic was dangerous — that too much blood and emotion could change the spell’s nature. But she hadn’t cared. She wanted to win.

Now she wasn’t so sure who had been playing who.
The days that followed blurred together.

Mairi became the ghost in her own castle — unseen, unheard, moving through corridors like a shadow. She watched Isla from afar, searching for cracks in her armor, something to expose.

But Isla was maddeningly normal.

When she wasn’t in the village helping with repairs or visiting the sick, she was in the garden with Fenella or closeted in Vaelen’s lab. Every moment seemed accounted for. Every glance, every word seemed natural.

No secret lover. No strange rituals. No evidence that would turn Lachlan against her again.

And Lachlan himself — gods, he had changed. He avoided Isla now, but Mairi saw the flickers of his gaze when their paths crossed. The way his hand twitched when she passed too close. The restraint. The pain.

He hadn’t come to her chambers since that night. Not once.

Even Alistair had vanished from the halls, consumed with whatever guilt or madness now plagued him.
Her plan — her perfect, precise plan — was unraveling one thread at a time.

And the worst part was, Isla was still standing. Still breathing. Still there.

Mairi stared into the mirror again, eyes dark and wild.
“She should’ve been gone by now,” she hissed to her reflection. “Ruadhán promised she would be erased.”
She paced the floor, her robe dragging against the cold stone. The questions pressed in like claws.
How had Isla known of illusion magic? How had she uncovered Ruadhán’s name — his name, the one she was never supposed to speak?

And what if the bond breaking meant more than she understood?

Panic curdled into anger.

No — she couldn’t afford to lose control. Not now. Not when Isla was growing bolder by the day.

If she wanted answers, she’d have to get them from the source.

She went to the hearth, pressed a loose stone on the right-hand side. The hidden latch gave way with a faint click, revealing the dark passage behind it.
Cold air spilled through, thick with the scent of damp earth and something far older.

She wrapped her cloak tighter around herself. “He’ll know what to do,” she whispered.

And with that, she stepped into the darkness — toward the only man who could help her finish what she’d started.

Ruadhán Dubh was waiting.