Broken Threads

Broken Threads
Lachlan’s POV

The door thundered shut behind Isla, the impact ringing through the stone like a struck bell. The sound lived in his bones for a breathless beat—then silence rushed in, heavy and suffocating.

He stood with his back to the door, fists still clenched from pushing her out, chest heaving like a man who’d run too far, too fast. Her face—hurt, stunned—flickered at the edges of his mind. He forced the image away with a snarl. If he let it stay, he knew it would undo him.

When he turned, he found Mairi.

Her robe lay in a puddle of silk at her feet. Firelight licked along pale skin and the long lines of her body; her chin tipped up in offering, in triumph. Months without warmth, without Isla’s touch, without anything but steel and blood and the rough solitude of the road—suddenly all of it surged inside him like a breaking dam.

Instinct roared. Restraint cracked.

He crossed the distance in two strides and seized her. His mouth found hers, punishing, not tender; his hands branded paths along her sides, her hips, her throat. She gasped, then clung, but even as she rose to meet him he felt the wrongness—a hollow where something softer, truer, was meant to be. He crushed the thought under his heel. He would not think of Isla. He would not think of Isla with Alistair.

He didn’t hear the first small sound Mairi made—the catch of breath that wasn’t pleasure. Rage had him by the throat, a tide he rode because the choice was to drown. He poured it all into touch and pressure, into bite and grasp. He wanted to scour Isla from his skin. He wanted to forget the phantom pull of a bond that felt like chains.

“Lachlan—” Mairi’s voice broke on his name.

The sound finally pierced the haze. He stilled and looked—really looked. Red blotches bloomed along her ribs where his fingers had gripped too hard. Soft skin mottled into bruises at her thighs, on her shoulder, the curve of her hip. The cords at her throat stood out; her breath came quick with pain.

Shame struck him like a blade to the ribs.

He let go as if burned. She stumbled and gathered her robe with shaking fingers, wrapping it around herself as though it could mend what his hands had done. Her eyes shone—not with desire, not even with anger, but with a hurt that held a brittle dignity.

He had never touched her like this. Whatever Mairi had been to him before—an outlet, a distraction—he had not been cruel. Not until now.

She straightened as she could, chin lifting. “My lord,” she whispered, voice raw. No accusation—just fact. She turned and walked out holding the tatters of her pride about her like a cloak. The door closed gently, a softness that stung more than any slam.

Lachlan stood in the aftermath, heart pounding too loudly, his own breath ragged in his ears. The fire cracked and shifted, sending up a gout of sparks. His hands were still open and empty, and they shook.

What have I done?

He staggered to the table and seized the wine. The first swallow burned; the second numbed; the third did neither. He drank until warmth crawled up his throat and into his skull, but it did not smother the images blooming behind his eyes.

Isla in torchlight, head cocked when she listened too closely. Isla laughing under the harvest moon, a sound he’d wanted to swallow whole. Isla’s face the first time he’d said her name like a vow.

Then the smoke-vision—Isla in his brother’s bed. The tilt of her mouth. The intimate lean of her body. Alistair’s hands on her waist. The memory tasted like iron.

He pressed the heel of his hand to his sternum until it ached. The bond throbbed there, a living thing tethered through flesh and bone. He had trusted it once. Now it felt like a shackle he meant to snap.
She chose him. The thought tried to settle like a black bird on a branch. He fed it. She chose him and smiled while doing it. What does she deserve of you now?

But another voice, low and stubborn, gritted up from somewhere older than anger: You didn’t ask. You don’t know.

He drank to drown it. The room blurred and resolved, wavered like heat above a road. The fire sank to coals. At some point he fell into the chair and stared at nothing, the bottle limp in his hand, the night raveling into gray.

He didn’t sleep so much as slide into a shallow stupor where dreams lapped at him like cold water. He stood in a field while blood crept up between his toes, and no matter how he scrubbed his hands in the river, they stayed red. Over the hiss of water, he heard two voices: Isla’s pleading trust me, and Isla’s breathless Alistair—both impossibly hers. He woke with his jaw locked and his tongue dry as leather.

Shouts cracked the corridor. Boots hammered stone. A guard’s voice rose, urgent, stringing words he couldn’t catch.

He pushed upright too fast and the room lunged. He braced a hand on the table until it steadied, dressed by habit—clean shirt, belt, boots, the familiar weight of steel at his hip—and dragged the door open into the bright morning clamor.

Alistair nearly collided with him, hair unbound, eyes
wild. “Isla is missing.”

Everything inside Lachlan went still. Then he forced a scoff to his lips, defense moving faster than thought. “Missing? Would she not have run to you? Warm bed. Familiar arms.”

Alistair recoiled like he’d been struck. Confusion—pure, unfeigned—cleared any haze from his face. “With me? What in God’s name are you saying?”

“Do not play a fool,” Lachlan growled, heat snagging his tongue. “I will not be mocked in my own halls.”

“I’m not—” Alistair cut himself off, color flaring in his cheeks, anger sparking through the worry. “She is not with me. We are sweeping the gardens.”

He didn’t wait for reply. He ran.

Lachlan followed, the pounding in his skull keeping pace with the pounding under his ribs. Servants pressed themselves to the walls; a maid dropped a basket and apples scattered, rolling away like startled birds. The morning air outside hit like a slap—cool, damp, threaded with the green smell of the lawns and the iron bite of the river beyond.

She was there.

At the far edge of the garden, near the first yew arch, Isla stood with Fenella holding her arm and Vaelen hovering a step away, his healer’s gaze skimming her as if cataloging harm. Isla’s hair was a dark halo of tangles; dew threaded the ends. Mud stained the hem of her robe. Her face was pale and lovely and drawn tight with the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from lack of sleep.

Relief slammed through him so hard his knees nearly loosened. He took one step forward before pride and hurt dug in their heels and stopped him.

Alistair reached Isla first. “Where did you go?” he asked, gentle and breathless. “You gave half the castle a fright.”

Isla’s gaze swept over him, but her eyes locked on Lachlan. Her chin lifted, her voice sharp enough to cut. “You told me to sleep elsewhere. So I did. Where I go is no longer your concern, husband.”

A murmur rippled through the servants and guards gathered nearby. Lachlan stiffened, fury flashing hot in his chest as he stepped toward her. “I did not mean beyond these walls,” he ground out, his voice low but biting. “The world outside is dangerous. You could have been killed.”

Her laugh was short, humorless. “And you think I’m safer inside? You think these walls protect me?” She shook her head, dark eyes blazing. “I’ve been caged here, watched, whispered about, judged for every step I take. If danger exists, Lachlan, it sits at your table, not just beyond your gates.”

Gasps slipped from a few maids; one guard crossed himself. Lachlan’s jaw locked. He wanted to roar at her, to remind her who he was, what he bore on his shoulders. But her defiance—sharp and unflinching—stole the words from his tongue.

“You forget yourself,” he growled finally, the words brittle even to his own ears.

“No.” She stepped forward, close enough that only Fenella’s hand on her sleeve kept her from pressing nearer. “For the first time, I remember myself. You left me, Lachlan. You come back a stranger. Don’t ask me to play the dutiful wife while you stand there ready to condemn me for sins I’ve not committed.”

For a heartbeat, silence stretched taut across the courtyard. Lachlan felt the eyes of his family, his household, his guards all burning into the space between them.

Vaelen’s gaze slipped to the black mark at her chest, his expression tight with concern. Fenella, chin lifted, stepped subtly closer as if to shield her lady from the weight of her husband’s wrath.

Lachlan couldn’t decide whether to drag Isla into silence or walk away. His pride screamed for him to crush her rebellion here, to show everyone who ruled this house. But beneath that, something twisted and unsettled. This wasn’t the Isla he had left behind—the girl with careful smiles and hesitant steps. This was a woman who stood ready to fight him with fire in her eyes.

His father’s voice carried from the terrace, summoning him to the council chamber. The reprieve came like a blade between them. He clung to it, turning sharply on his heel.

The corridor swallowed him, but her words clung like thorns, pricking each breath he took.

In the corridor’s silence, a memory rose unbidden: the abandoned house on the hill, ivy and time pulling it down, the echo of laughter that was once his life. He had thought he could step through his own halls and find the boy he’d been, the vow he’d made, the bond he’d trusted. Instead he found ruin where a haven used to be.

He pressed his palm flat against his sternum again, as if he could coax the hum back with touch alone.
Nothing answered.

Outside, the morning brightened. Inside, Lachlan’s world dimmed to a narrow path between pride and regret, past and duty. He walked it because there was nothing else to do, because kings were made of motion when their hearts were mud. Every step sent the same thought ringing through him, dull and relentless:

What have you done?