The Renegade's Heart by Claire Delacroix Read Free Book Online

precisely
where it is.” She reached into the glittering expanse of her
embroidered skirts and set a crystal orb beside the board.
    Within it pulsed a blood red heart.
    It was not truly the man’s heart, Finvarra
knew as much, for a mortal man would have died without it. It was a
spell, a symbol of the magic which held this man’s heart in thrall
to the Elphine Queen. His actual heart was captive, as surely as
this one appeared to be.
    “ I lost a mortal myself,” she hissed. “A
decade ago. I resolved then that I would never lose another.” She
tapped the orb with a fingertip. “So captured, the heart sickens
and dies within one moon.”
    Despite himself, Finvarra was impressed by
the elegance of her sorcery. Her prize was both beautiful and
grotesque, the heart pulsing wetly within the orb of smooth
crystal. He could see the darkness on one side of the beating
organ, could fairly see the stain growing before his own eyes. He
met her gaze.
    “ I would make him one of us. He has the
tattoos and I have his heart.” She laughed lightly. “He wished to
go home again. He meant forever, but that was not my plan.”
    “ You might kill him.”
    She shrugged. “Dead or Fae, he will be
mine.”
    “ And where is the sport in that? If your
spell cannot be defeated, what is the point?” Finvarra decided that
he would side with this mortal man, and that he would let the
Elphine Queen win the chess game. It would lull her into
complacency. “Let him choose,” he urged as he moved a
piece.
    “ But I must win!”
    “ Mortals insist that love is measured by
the return of the desired one.”
    The Elphine Queen leaned across the table.
“Did you let Rosamunde leave by choice then?” She moved another
piece when he winced.
    “ The victory will be sweeter if he
surrenders willingly to you.”
    Finvarra indicated that his castle should
move, sending it along the board. “Check.”
    The Elphine Queen straightened and scanned
the board, her gaze moving quickly as she sought a solution. He
knew the moment she saw it. She smiled as she moved her queen.
“Checkmate.”
    Finvarra ceded the defeat he had
foreseen.
    For now.
     
    * * *
     
    Kinfairlie’s keep was a square tower of
modest size. At its heart was the great hall, where the laird
entertained his guests and his household, and all gathered in the
evenings. There were two fireplaces at either side of that chamber,
the better to warm the occupants. One portal led to the bailey and
the gates, while the other gave access to the kitchens and pantries
and storerooms.
    Stairs rose from the hall to the upper floors
of the tower. There were two chambers on the second floor, the
larger one shared by the remaining unwed daughters of the house.
That there were three sisters now instead of five left much more
room for each. More than two years had passed since Madeline and
Vivienne had married, and two Yules since Alexander had wed as
well. Annelise at nineteen was the oldest of the unwed sisters.
Isabella was next, and Elizabeth, a mere fifteen summers of age,
the youngest of the three.
    The smaller room on that second floor had
once been shared by Isabella’s brothers. Since the demise of their
parents, Alexander had become laird and now occupied the solar with
his wife, Eleanor. Malcolm and Ross, the younger of the brothers
but both older than Isabella, had left Kinfairlie after Alexander’s
nuptials. Malcolm was heir to Ravensmuir, the ruined sister estate
of Kinfairlie, but had surrendered the seal to Alexander and left
to seek his fortune. Ross had pledged his blade to the Earl of
Buchan and also departed. The room the boys had shared now stood
empty and unused.
    The solar was on the third floor, along with
the small chamber where Alexander, Laird of Kinfairlie, kept his
ledgers. There was only one floor above that, filled by a single
room with a sloping roof that had become the treasury when
Eleanor’s inheritance had been delivered to Kinfairlie.
    After Murdoch’s