Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Elsie stepped forward at once, kneeling beside the boy, hands steady even though her breath shivered against the smoke drifting from the open gates. She pressed two fingers lightly to his throat and looked up sharply.
“We have to go immediately.”
“Nay,” Halvard began, the refusal sharp and instinctive, a growl pulled from somewhere deep. “Ye’ll—”
She rose in one swift motion, lifting her chin with a resolve that punched straight through his ribcage. “I’m going. You’ll need hands for water, bandages, someone who can help keep the wounded alive.”
She wasn’t wrong, and that was the damned infuriating part. She stood so small and fierce before him, and yet she faced danger as though she had been born for it. Something inside him twisted—ugly, savage, protective.
Within minutes they were all ready to leave.
The boy had been seen too and Halvard was walking toward the horses.
Sten appeared beside him, face grim. Behind him came Thomas Redfern, still a little pale from illness but definitely better and determined, as though he dared the sickness to hold him back from the stables.
“We’re ready, me laird,” Sten said.
Halvard exhaled once, steadying the roil in his chest. “We ride.”
He stepped closer to Elsie—close enough that her breath brushed his jaw, close enough that only she heard the warning rasp low in his voice. “Ye stay at me side, lass. If I say move, ye move.”
She did not flinch. She only nodded. “Understood.”
The simplicity of her answer pierced him with something sharp and unwelcome.
Halvard tore his attention back to the task and raised his voice. “Mount up!”
Within moments the courtyard erupted into controlled chaos—men pulling reins tight, saddles thudding, blades clinking as they strapped on steel. Elsie mounted behind one of the men, skirts gathered so she could swing up without hesitation.
They thundered out of the gates, hooves pounding the earth in a heartbeat rhythm. The smoke plume that had been a distant smear now rose thick and dark, curling upward like a beckoning hand of warning.
Halvard did not slow. If anything, he urged his horse harder.
The air thickened long before they reached the village, acrid smoke turning breathing into a struggle.
By the time they crested the final ridge, the devastation struck like a blow to the chest. Three cottages stood half-collapsed, their frames glowing red in dying pockets of flame.
The stench of charred timber clawed at Halvard’s throat, but worse were the sounds—the hacking coughs, the cries, the ragged breaths of children too young to understand what was burning before them.
The villagers were ghosts against the haze—faces streaked with soot, eyes wild with fear and exhaustion. Men hauled buckets long after strength had deserted them; women crouched around crying bairns; older folk stood dazed, staring at the ruins of their lives.
Halvard swung off his horse before it fully stopped. “Sten, the well,” he barked. “Get more men on it. Double the line.”
Elsie was already running, skirts gathering soot as she reached a woman clutching a sobbing child.
She knelt, murmuring something calm, and Halvard saw the faint tremor of her hands even as she steadied the girl.
Redfern joined two men straining to drag a fallen beam from the main path, coughing hard as he heaved until the beam shifted.
Halvard strode into the wreckage, boots sinking into wet ash, each step releasing fresh heat from the smoldering earth. When he reached the first cottage remains, his entire body went rigid.
The pattern of destruction made no sense—unless someone had wanted it to make sense.
The fire had started on the outer walls.
Not on the roof, where a chimney spark could have landed, not on the hearth, but low.
Deliberate. The wind blew west, yet the flames had crawled eastward like serpents seeking fuel.
The narrow path cutting into the crops—too specific, too intentional—told a story Halvard wished he could ignore.
Someone had done this.
Someone had stood here with a torch and a purpose, he was sure of it.
He crouched beside a fallen beam, lifting it enough to see beneath. The underside remained untouched—smooth wood, barely warm. But the outer layer was burned to a hateful black.
“A torch was taken tae this,” he muttered.
Sten approached quietly. “Ye see it too?”
“Aye.”
“And th’ wind blows west today,” Sten added. “Nay east. Fire should’ve spread th’ opposite way.”
Halvard’s jaw tightened. “’Twasn’t nature.”
His gaze shot to the one cottage still standing.
Men formed a frantic line, tossing water up onto the thatch while others stomped out embers.
Halvard didn’t hesitate—he seized a ladder, jammed it into the mud, and climbed up to help douse the roof, his muscles burning with effort as he sloshed bucket after bucket across the dripping straw.
Twenty harrowing minutes later, the last sparks died. A wave of shaky relief moved through the crowd. A thin woman pushed forward, hands trembling as she gripped Halvard’s arm.
“Thank ye, laird,” she whispered hoarsely. “My man’s out huntin’. If ye’d nae come…” Her voice broke.
Halvard steadied her hand with his own. “We only did what yer home deserved. When yer man returns, send him tae me at th’ keep. I’ll speak wi’ him.”
She nodded, clutching her child as she stepped back, eyes shimmering with exhaustion.
Halvard turned slowly, surveying the ruin. Three homes gone. A strip of crops burned. Animals shivering and bleeding from smoke inhalation. Families displaced. Children crying. Men broken with helplessness.
This wasn’t an accident. This had a message in it, carved in flame.
A message Halvard recognized all too well.
Sten drifted closer. “Ye think it’s Harcourt?” he whispered.
Halvard said nothing. Saying the name would solidify the fear crawling across his skin. Saying it aloud would make suspicion into intent, and intent into war.
“The rumors of him lingerin’ near th’ coast…” Sten pressed, voice hard with unease.
Halvard’s spine stiffened but he remained silent.
A shuffling step behind them made him turn. Redfern stood there, face gray from smoke and his lingering sickness, but his eyes sharp as a blade. He coughed once, then said quietly:
“It’s a weighty accusation. One that cannae be thrown lightly.”
Halvard met his gaze. “I’ve made nay accusation.”
Redfern inclined his head. “Good.”
Nothing more. No defense of the earl he served. No warning either. That silence—unnerving though it was—offered some measure of relief. Politics were the last thing Halvard wanted spilling over raw flame and frightened villagers.
A soft scuff of boots on ash pulled his attention. Elsie approached with her arms full of bandages, her cheeks streaked with soot, hair damp from sweat and smoke. She looked exhausted, fierce, heartbreakingly determined. In that moment Halvard felt something lock painfully behind his ribs.
“We need to help rebuild,” she said softly.
Aye, they would rebuild. They always did. That was the Highland way.
But beneath the promise of rebuilding simmered something far darker inside Halvard. Something old and vicious. Something earned in the years before he became laird—years spent fighting men who believed fear was a tool and cruelty a language.
The Savage in him stirred—hot, violent, demanding release.
If Bowen Harcourt had any hand in this devastation, then the earl had just declared himself Halvard’s enemy.
And Halvard had never been a forgiving man.
It took every shred of his strength to push the Savage back down, to bury the fury beneath duty and strategy, because if he let it surface here—amid ruin and ashes—war would rise with it.
Still… the fire had been a message.
And Halvard intended to answer it.
With interest.