Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
"Untie me."
She said it quietly.
Not a plea, a statement, the way someone speaks when they consider the matter already settled and are simply waiting for the other person to catch up.
Anthony kept his eyes on the path ahead. "Nay."
"I will nae flee."
"I ken."
She turned her head slightly, enough that he caught her profile, the sharp line of her jaw, the set of it. "Then why bind me?"
"Because I cannae afford to be wrong."
She held that a moment. Then faced forward again without another word, which told him more than argument would have.
She was thinking. Filing. Deciding what kind of man he was from the inside of the answer rather than the outside of it.
They rode with eight men surrounding them, spread wide enough to cover both shoulders of the path.
The glen fell away behind them and the terrain climbed, stone replacing grass, the track narrowing as it pushed toward the pass.
She sat straight-backed in front of him despite the rough ground, despite the angle of the ascent, refusing by will alone to lean back against his chest. When the path tilted and her weight shifted, she corrected it herself, silent and deliberate.
He noticed. He said nothing.
"How far?" she asked after a time.
"Two hours. Less if the pass is clear."
"And if it isnae?"
"Then longer."
She made a short sound, not quite a scoff. "Ye're a man of tremendous detail, me Laird."
"Anthony."
She said nothing to that. He wasn't sure why he'd offered it.
The fox trotted below them on the left side, picking its way across loose rock with a sureness that matched hers.
One of the younger lads riding ahead kept glancing back at it, then at her, then back at it again. Anthony tracked the look but let it go.
Superstition was a weed, you pulled it before it seeded, but you didn't pull it in front of an audience or it grew back threefold.
"The boy," she said. "James. Has he been seen by anyone before yer castle healer?"
"Two physicians. Both from the south."
"What did they say?"
"That his lungs were damaged and there was nothing to be done." He paused. "One suggested prayer."
She was quiet for a moment. "And the other?"
"Suggested prayer more specifically."
A short exhale through her nose. Almost a laugh, caught before it became one. "And yer castle healer? Before she died?"
"She managed the fevers. Kept him stable." He kept his voice even. "She bought him years. But the breathin' worsened this winter and she ran out of answers before she ran out of time."
Catriona nodded once, slow. Processing.
He could feel her doing it, some quality of attention in the way she held herself, pulled inward and working.
"How old was he when it all started?"
He stiffened. Fractionally. "Months."
She said nothing more. He didn't offer more.
The pass rose ahead of them, the track narrowing sharply between two rock faces that pressed close enough to force them into single file. The lead rider pushed through first. The horses behind followed one by one, hooves careful on shale that shifted underfoot.
Then the rocks came.
No warning, a crack from above, sharp as a shot, and then the face of the cliff let go.
Stone broke loose in a cascade, crashing down across the path directly ahead.
The lead horse screamed and reared, hooves striking air. Shouts erupted from the front of the line. The men behind bunched and pulled at reins, horses slamming into each other in the narrow space.
Beneath Anthony, his own horse lurched.
The animal spun sideways. Away from the noise and toward the cliff's outer edge, toward the drop, hooves skidding on loose shale, finding no grip.
Anthony hauled the reins hard left. The horse fought him, white-eyed, beyond reason, weight already pitching wrong.
From ahead, one of the younger lads twisted in his saddle, arm thrown out, pointing. "She does that! It's witch's work, she called them down!"
The words landed in the chaos like a torch in dry grass.
He felt her move before he saw it. Bound wrists together, she leaned forward over the horse's neck and pressed her fingers to the flat muscle behind its jaw. Both hands, firm and certain, thumbs tracking something. Her voice came out low and even beneath all the noise.
"Easy now. Breathe. Easy."
The horse shuddered. Fought once more, then stilled. Four legs planted. Breathing hard but standing, no longer pulling for the edge.
The silence that followed was the particular kind that happens when men don't know what they just saw.
"Aye." One of the older clansmen, Donal, grey-bearded, thirty years in service, spoke from behind. Voice carrying the specific flatness of a man stating fact. "She calms beasts too easy."
Nobody answered him. Nobody needed to.
Then another voice, from the middle of the line. Callum, younger, louder, always the one to say the thing the others were only thinking.
"She'll stand trial once the heir breathes. We cannae bring a witch into McArthur without answer."
She went rigid. He felt it, her spine, already straight, going to something harder than straight.
"Trial." She didn't raise her voice. Didn't need to. The word came out cold enough to lower the temperature.
"Trial," she said again, as if confirming she'd heard it right.
Anthony turned in the saddle. He looked at Callum with the particular quality of attention that ended conversations.
"She heals the boy first."
Callum held his ground, barely. "And after?"
"If there is need," Anthony said, measured and deliberate, spacing the words evenly, "she answers before the council." He let a beat pass. Let the silence do the work. "There will be nay more talk of trial on this road. There will be nay more talk of witchcraft in me hearing."
His gaze moved across the line, touched each face in turn. "Are we clear?"
Not a question. It didn't need to be.
The men went quiet. Callum looked away first. Donal found something to study on the horizon. The younger lad who'd pointed was already staring at his reins.
Anthony turned back to the path.
She had not moved. She sat exactly as she had before, straight-backed, chin forward, bound hands still. But the quality of her stillness had changed. She wasn't thinking now. She was somewhere else.
"So I am prisoner twice," she said. Quietly. Not to him, or not quite to him. The words landed between them like something set down carefully. "First in yer saddle. Now before yer council."
He said nothing.
"Useful first," she continued, same flat tone. "Judged after. Aye, I ken that shape well."
The bitterness in it wasn't hot, it was old. Worn smooth. The kind that had been carried long enough to stop cutting and start simply weighing.
He leaned forward slightly, dropping his voice below the sound of hooves on stone.
"Be still and silent for the rest of the ride." He kept it even, kept the edge out of it. "Ye will calm me men, or they will work themselves toward somethin' I cannae stop before we reach the gates."
She turned her head. Looked at him directly for the first time since the cliff.
"And ye?" she asked. No heat in it. Clean and straight, the way a blade is clean and straight. "Ye will nae turn on me?"
His hand tightened at her waist, an involuntary correction, the same as steadying a grip on something that mattered. "Daenae test me, healer."
She held his gaze for a moment. Whatever she was looking for, he didn't know if she found it. Then she faced forward again.
The pass opened ahead of them, the cliff faces falling back, the track widening into the broader glen that ran south toward McArthur.
Below, the valley stretched pale and grey under flat afternoon cloud, and at the far end of it, barely visible yet, the dark shape of the keep sat against the hill like a stone fist.
She saw it. He knew she did because she went still again, differently this time. Not the stillness of anger. The stillness of someone calculating distance.
"Two hours, ye said," she said.
"Less now."
"And James. He'll be awake when we arrive?"
"He sleeps in the afternoons. The breathin' costs him."
She nodded once. Let the silence run for a moment.
Then, "When I ask for somethin', herbs, water, particular temperature in the room, I need it done without argument and without delay. Every minute matters with lung damage that old."
"Ye'll have what ye need."
"And I work alone. Nay servants hoverin'. Nay council watchin' over me shoulder while I compound a remedy."
"Agreed."
She glanced back at him, briefly, as if she hadn't expected that. "Ye agreed quickly."
"I want the boy well. Nae an audience."
She faced forward again. The fox moved below them, still steady, still unbothered, navigating the rocky ground as though it had made this journey a hundred times before.
Anthony kept his eyes on the keep in the distance and said nothing more.
She would argue again before they reached the gates.
He already knew it. She was the kind of woman who stored things up and came back to them, and she hadn't finished with the word trial yet. He could feel it in the set of her shoulders, in the particular quality of the silence she was keeping.
He told himself that was why he was still paying attention to her. Because she was unpredictable. Because unpredictable things needed watching.
Not because the silence itself had a quality he couldn't quite name.
Not because he'd noticed, somewhere in the last two hours, that she smelled of pine resin and something green and faintly sharp - herbs, probably, always herbs - and that it was not unpleasant.
He fixed his eyes on the keep.
Two hours. Then walls. Then James.
One thing at a time.