A Love Unveiled

Chapter Twenty-Six

            Her captor loomed above her, blood seeping from a nasty split in his temple and all the anger glinting from his eyes as he reached down and pulled a dirk from his waist-belt.

            Alana grew breathless and lightheaded as he raised the blade, leveling the tip with her eyes.

            “What do you think, Ives, a scar for a scar?”

            The man called Ives tightened his grip around her wrists as he pinned them to her back, holding her firmly in place as the bearded man wielded the small blade before her face.

            Riveted with fear, Alana had not noticed a shadow garbed all in black, standing beyond her captor’s shoulder.

            The moment her eyes averted from her captor’s, he whirled around, surprised to find a stranger observing them through piercing, silver eyes.

            Alana’s heart did a strange flip in her chest the moment she recognized the stranger. She had not realized how terrified she had been of her captors until relief at seeing Curran, flooded through her.

            “Something interests you, stranger?” her captor grumbled, leisurely waving his blade in the air as if unmoved by the sudden interruption.

            Alana watched Curran’s face, noting the grim set of his mouth, the keen sharpness to his icy stare as he regarded the two men with due deliberation. She had recognized that hardness before, that cutting gleam that eventually led to bloodshed.

            His mouth twisted into a sudden grin as he stepped toward them, the sun glinting off his black breeches as he motioned to the woman trapped between them. “I was merely wondering if you’d be willing to share her.”

           Alana’s heart dropped and all relief turned to disbelief.

           Her captor snickered as he turned back around to her. “I don’t think you could handle her, mister.”

          “On the contrary-“ Curran’s voice grew closer and her captor’s face creased with growing irritation. There was a sudden whoosh in the air and Alana flinched as her captor went stiff, his eyes growing wide with a dying light as he stumbled away from her, the dirk falling to her feet as he staggered around to face Curran, exposing his punctured back, blood seeping a dark path through his clothing.

           Curran shuffled his sword from one hand to the other, catching the hilt with relaxedness as he stepped toward Ives. “Do you share your dead-friend’s word?”

           Alana gritted her teeth as his fingers tightened painfully around her wrists, “We can share her, stranger.”

          Curran shook his dark head, “I don’t share.” He raised his blade, coated in the bearded man’s blood, and wielded it. Ives shoved her aside, brandishing his sword and the air was severed with steel.