“I do, too,” Hayden agreed. “It makes sense.”
Fallon turned to Isla. “Did she ever send you into villages?”
“Nay.” Isla licked her lips and tried not to fidget. “She had other things for me.”
Arran spoke up from down the table. “How long are we going to wait before we go looking for Broc?”
“If he isn’t back in a few days, I doubt there will be anything to look for,” Isla said. “If Deirdre detects him, she will do anything in her power to capture him. Her anger will be fierce, and he’ll be the first who feels her wrath.”
Lucan swiped a hand down his face lined with worry and focused his gaze on her. “How long do you think we have before she attacks?”
“As I said before, I really don’t know. She’ll need a Druid’s blood to help regain her lost power. If she hasn’t already sent Dunmore after a Druid, she will soon.”
The door to the castle suddenly opened and Broc strode inside. He looked exhausted, but none the worse for wear. He smiled at them and started toward the tables.
“Are those long faces for me?” he asked.
Ramsey rose and shook his head. “God’s teeth, Broc. What took you so long?”
Broc held up a hand as others began to ask questions. He took a seat at the table and nodded to Larena, who handed him a goblet of water. He downed the entire goblet and wiped his mouth before he looked around the table. “Deirdre is at her mountain.”
“As Isla suspected,” Fallon said. “What else? Are there wyrran?”
Broc curled his lip. “The little bastards never seem to go away. There are more than I expected. They’ve been cleaning the mountain, but more disturbing than the wyrran is that Dunmore has returned.”
Isla fisted her hands in her lap. She had hoped she’d been wrong, but it seems she knew Deirdre much better than she wanted.
“Again, just as Isla suspected.” Fallon leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his stomach. “Let me guess. They’ve gone after a Druid.”
Broc nodded. “They have no idea where to find one, so they may be searching for a while.”
Isla listened as Broc recounted everything he had heard regarding Dunmore’s speech to the wyrran. If anyone could have gained entrance into the mountain without being detected, it was Broc. He was a formidable enemy, and she was glad he was aligned with the MacLeods.
Thinking of Cairn Toul made Isla remember Phelan. She wanted to ask Broc about him, but didn’t want everyone to know. Once Cara brought Broc a plate of food, the other women rose to clean the table.
Isla hesitated. When only Quinn, Broc, Ramsey, and Hayden remained she knew she had to ask. She wished Hayden would leave, though. She didn’t like him to know any more of her misdeeds, but there was no way around it.
“Broc, I need to speak with you about something.”
He nodded and shoved a huge bite of bread in his mouth.
Isla’s stomach wound into tight, hard knots. She was nervous, nervous about all of them discovering this dark secret of hers, but she had to know the answer. “Do you remember the doorway in the mountain that Deirdre forbade anyone enter?”
Broc paused in his chewing, his soft brown eyes regarding her. He swallowed and nodded. “I went there when the attack began. I heard something or someone roaring down there.”
“There was nothing there when you went.”
He set aside his food and regarded her with hard eyes. “What was down there, Isla?”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “A Warrior by the name of Phelan Stewart.”
“What?” Broc placed his hands flat on the table, his gaze narrowed and dangerous.
Isla could see the other Warriors staring at her. Their presence only made this situation more uncomfortable, but she had already begun. She would end this. “Deirdre had him chained down there for … decades.”
“How did he come to be there?” Quinn asked.
It became difficult to breathe. It always did when Isla thought of Phelan and what she had done to him. “I brought him there when he was just a small child.”
FIFTEEN
Hayden never expected those words out of Isla’s mouth. Even as they revolted him, one look at her angst- ridden face and he knew she regretted it.
“What happened?” he asked when no one else would.
She glanced at him, her ice-blue eyes wide and full of remorse. She seemed surprised he spoke. “Lavena had seen a vision of a great Warrior from the Stewart clan, one who could help Deirdre do amazing things.”
Quinn leaned his forearms on the table. “What kind of things?”
Isla lifted a slim shoulder in a shrug. “Lavena never said. The other part of her vision, however, was one of her most clear. She described Phelan perfectly, as well as where he would be and his age. Deirdre thought it would be an ideal opportunity to raise the boy as she thought he should be.”
“So that when she unbound his god he would pledge himself to her?” Ramsey finished.
Hayden fisted his hands. He hadn’t spent near the time in Deirdre’s mountain as some of the others, but even that small amount of time had left him with scars upon his soul that would never mend. He couldn’t imagine a young boy being brought there.
His gaze swung to Isla. What would make a woman, one who supposedly fought against the evil inside her, bring a young boy into Deirdre’s care?
It didn’t take long for him to find the answer. “Deirdre threatened your niece, didn’t she?”
Isla looked away, but not before he saw the answer in her eyes. She nodded and blinked rapidly. “I had no choice but to find Phelan. Deirdre knew it would be folly to send Dunmore and the wyrran. She needed Phelan to come to her of his own free will.”
“Isla,” Broc said when she paused.
She blinked and looked around, as if she had been deep in her memories. “I had to trick Phelan to get him to leave his family. Deirdre had yet to turn Grania evil, and I thought I had a chance to gain her freedom. Phelan trusted me, and I delivered him into misery.”
“Holy hell,” Quinn murmured and rose to pace in front of the table. “What happened to him? If he was chained up, I gather he didn’t trust Deirdre?”
Isla shook her head. She looked so desolate that Hayden found he wanted to go to her, to pull her against him and shelter her.
“Phelan blamed me,” Isla said. “And rightly so. He fought Deirdre repeatedly. Nothing she did to him would break him. She starved him, beat him, and at one point killed him only to bring him back to life. And every time he refused to join her. She kept him separate from everyone, especially other Warriors. I was the only one besides Deirdre who ever saw him.”
Broc put his elbows on the table and leaned his forehead on his hands. “When did she unbind his god?”
“When he was eighteen summers. I’d brought him to the mountain when he was only a lad of five,” Isla explained.
Hayden’s stomach churned as he thought of his fellow Warrior. “How long after his god was unbound did she keep him chained?”
Isla wouldn’t meet his eyes, and her face grew pale. “One hundred and fifty years.”
“Dammit, Isla!” Broc roared as he rose to his feet. “How could you do that to one of us?”
If Hayden thought she would cower and cry, he was wrong. Rage filled her eyes, turning them cold and haunted. She stood slowly, her lips flattened as she glared at Broc.
“Aye, Broc, I regret bringing him there. I did everything I could to make sure he was spared many terrible things.”
Broc’s hands were fisted at his sides, his rage evident in the way his skin flashed from normal to indigo. “Did
