Chapter 42
Sorcha
The healer’s chamber smelled of smoke, herbs, and blood.
The air was too warm, heavy with breath and fever, the shutters drawn tight against the night. Sorcha stood near the table where they had laid Calum, her fingers rigid around the edges of her cloak. She could hear her own heart more than she could think.
“Hold him,” the healer said.
She moved at once, bracing his shoulders as the old woman bent over the wound.
The arrow jutted from just below his collarbone, a hand’s breadth from his heart.
If it had flown the width of a finger lower, he’d already be gone.
Calum’s eyes flickered open, unfocused.
A harsh sound left him—half curse, half breath. “Sorcha—”
“I’m here,” she whispered. “Hush now. Let her work.”
The healer gripped the shaft close to the skin. “Brace him.”
Sorcha pressed down, her palms against the slick warmth of his skin, feeling the tremor of his muscles under her hands.
The arrow came free with a sickening, wet sound, and blood surged forth, hot and fast, pooling beneath her fingers.
She knew how much a man could lose and live, but this—this made her heart seize.
When Calum went still, for one terrible heartbeat she thought she had lost him.
But the healer’s voice came steady, commanding: “He breathes. Hold fast.”
She pressed cloth to the wound, chanting low under her breath—half prayer, half instruction to her apprentice. The girl brought boiling water and spirits, the sharp scent cutting through the air like a blade.
“Ye’ve taken a wound yourself, my lady,” the healer said without looking up. “Sit down before ye fall.”
“It’s nothing.” Sorcha’s voice rasped. “See to him.”
A gash ran along her upper arm where a raider’s blade had caught her; she’d barely felt it until now, but blood soaked the edge of her sleeve. The apprentice reached for her, but Sorcha shook her off.
“I said see to him.”
The healer muttered something about stubborn fools—then turned back to Calum.
She cleaned the wound, stitched it closed with deft, quick fingers, bound it tight, and left a narrow tube of hollow reed to drain the blood. By the time she was done, the fire had burned low and Sorcha’s knees threatened to give way.
When they moved him to the bed against the wall, she went with him, sinking onto the chair beside it. Her cloak was gone; she didn’t know when she’d lost it. Her arm burned, her whole body ached, but she couldn’t seem to look anywhere but at Calum’s face.
His skin was too pale. His chest rose shallowly, each breath a struggle.
The healer wiped her hands and said softly, “We’ll see how he fares come morning.”
Morning came.
Then another.
Calum did not wake.
The wound festered despite the healer’s work.
His skin burned, and sweat gathered along his temple, soaking the pillow beneath his head.
The infection had taken hold. The healer brewed tinctures of yarrow and willow bark, laid poultices over the wound, prayed and swore in equal measure—but the fever climbed higher with every passing hour.
Sorcha did not leave him.
She changed the cloths, cooled his brow with damp linen, forced water between his lips when she could. When her strength failed, she leaned her forehead against his arm and simply breathed with him, matching her heartbeat to his, willing it not to stop.
The other women came and went, soft as ghosts.
Katherine brought fresh linen and broth, her eyes red but determined.
Isla cleaned the floor where blood had dried in dark smears.
Moira lit candles near the bed and whispered prayers in Gaelic.
They spoke little. Their quiet presence filled the room like a hymn.
Once, when Sorcha tried to rise and nearly fell, Katherine caught her.
“Ye’ve a wound that needs tending,” she said. “Let me bind it, at least.”
“I can manage.”
“Ye canna if ye faint dead away.” Katherine’s tone brooked no argument.
She led her to the hearth, sat her down, and cut away the bloodied sleeve. The gash along Sorcha’s arm was deeper than she’d admitted. Katherine cleaned it gently, her hands steady despite the tremor in her voice.
“I remember the first day ye set us to train,” she murmured. “Couldn’t even draw a bow. Ye said strength comes slow—but steady, if the heart wills it.”
Sorcha managed a faint smile. “Did I say that?”
“Aye. And I mean to prove ye right. So ye’ll rest now, Lady MacRae. We’ll see to the clan.”
When Sorcha tried to protest, Katherine laid a hand over hers.
“Ye’ve done enough fighting for one night.”
The words undid her more than any wound.
She nodded once, unable to speak, and let the women do as they would.
They moved about the keep like quiet fire—organizing food for the men, tending to the wounded, keeping watch along the walls. The rhythm of life carried on because she had taught them how. That knowledge both steadied and broke her heart.
On the third night, the fever worsened.
Calum thrashed against the sheets, his skin flushed and burning.
The healer tried more tincture; nothing helped.
Sorcha held him still, whispering his name until her voice went hoarse.
“Calum… please.”
She wiped his face with a cloth, the water cooling as soon as it touched his skin.
“Ye said ye’d no leave me again. Ye said we’d begin anew. Do ye hear me? Ye’ve still debts to pay—words to keep.”
He didn’t stir. His breath came ragged and shallow.
Her tears fell freely now, landing hot on his chest. “Don’t ye dare,” she whispered, shaking. “Don’t ye dare leave me again.”
The healer touched her shoulder. “Lady… he’s past hearin’ ye.”
“I dinna believe that.” Sorcha’s hand found his. “He hears me. He must.”
Hours blurred.
The fire burned low; the world shrank to the sound of his breathing and her own.
When the healer at last left to fetch more herbs, Sorcha slid from her chair to her knees beside the bed.
She bowed her head until her forehead touched his arm.
Her whisper was a broken thing. “I’ve prayed for many things in my life, but never like this. I prayed for victory, for justice, for vengeance. But not for mercy. Not until now.”
Her voice wavered, the words falling like confession.
If she’d not spared Liam—if she’d finished what justice demanded when she’d had the chance—none of this would have come to pass.
“If this is punishment for what I’ve done,” she whispered, “let it be mine instead. Take me, if that’s what fate demands—but let him live. Please.”
Her hand trembled as she reached for the brooch pinned at her breast—the one he had used to fasten his mother’s plaid when he’d given it to her. She unclasped it and laid it in his palm, folding his fingers over it.
“Ye gave me this to keep,” she murmured. “So I’ll keep ye too, stubborn fool that ye are. Come back to me, Calum. Come back, and I’ll never shut ye out again.”
For a long time, there was nothing.
Then—a faint twitch beneath her hand.
His fingers, slack moments ago, seemed to stir against hers.
Her head snapped up.
“Calum?” she breathed.
No answer—only a sigh, shallow but steady. The fever had loosened its hold a little; the flush in his cheeks had dulled, the frantic pulse slowed. The healer returned moments later, and when she touched his brow, her face changed.
“His heat’s lessened,” she said softly. “He’s fightin’ it.”
Sorcha nearly sagged to the floor. She pressed her lips to his hand, shaking with a relief she didn’t dare release. “Then he’ll live,” she said fiercely. “He will.”
The healer hesitated. “If his strength holds, aye.”
“It will,” Sorcha said. “It must.”
Dawn came pale and cold.
The light slanted through the shutters, touching Calum’s face.
He slept deeply now, breath even, his skin cool beneath her touch. The worst, she prayed, had passed.
Sorcha sat slumped in the chair beside him, exhaustion heavy in her limbs.
Her head rested against his arm, her hand still caught in his.
She meant only to rest her eyes for a moment—to stay near, to listen for any change in his breath.
But the weight of the day pressed hard, and the sound that reached her through the shutters held her fast.
Outside, the courtyard was quiet. The smoke of battle had long since cleared, the air sharp with the scent of damp earth and ash.
Along the walls, Katherine and the others kept vigil—bows in hand, eyes scanning the dark horizon.
They watched for any sign that the raiders might return while the warriors beyond the gate finished burying the last of the dead.
Their heads were high, their shoulders squared, and their voices low with song:
“Tha mo ghaol air àirigh,” (My love is on the high seas).
Sorcha’s lashes lifted faintly, her mind turning toward the sound.
She remembered her mother singing it to her while they worked the loom or tended the hearth—and sometimes, in the quiet hours of night, when she’d fought against sleep, her mother’s voice would rise soft and steady with those same words.
Now, as the gentle refrain drifted across the hall, she could see it unfold in her mind’s eye: a lone figure silhouetted against the wide, still sky of the high pastures—her love, safe but distant, tending the clan’s cattle on the summer hills, the promise of his return held close through the long wait.
Sheinn mu 'gaol air chuan 'bha seòladh,
O bu bhinn a caoidhrean brònach,
Tha mo ghaol air àird a' chuain.
(Singing of her love sailing on the sea,
Oh sweet was her sad lament,
My love is on the high seas.)
The song’s words curled around her like a memory made sound. Calum, though near, felt so far away—locked in fever’s grasp, unreachable to her.
She reached for his hand, her thumb tracing the faint pulse beneath his skin. “Come back to me, Calum,” she whispered. “Please.”
Outside, the women’s voices rose and fell like the wind through the heather, soft and steady, carrying her mother’s song across the stone walls. Sorcha’s eyes grew heavy. She listened, chasing the image of the faraway hills and the promise of return, until the edges of the world blurred.
Sleep claimed her there—half prayer, half surrender—as the last notes faded into the night.
Beside the sleeping Sorcha, the healer moved in near silence, changing the herbs and laying fresh cloths over the wound. She glanced toward the chair, where Sorcha’s head rested against Calum’s arm, and smiled faintly.
“She’ll sleep now,” she whispered to her apprentice. “At last.”
***
Calum
Calum dreamed.
Through the fire of fever and pain, memory came in fragments. The night sky over the field. The whistle of an arrow. Sorcha’s cry. Then the moment her eyes met his—fear and defiance burning there before he threw himself between her and death.
The images shifted, tumbling one over another—the years folding back upon themselves.
Sorcha at six and ten, a small smile on her lips as she stood in his father’s solar, the light from the hearth catching in her grey eyes, making them near silver.
Her blue silk gown brushed the floor, her hands clasped before her.
He’d told her then that Elspeth was the wife of his heart, and watched the light die in her eyes.
She had only nodded, quiet and composed, and said she understood.
Sorcha on the training ground, her blade flashing in the sun. Sorcha in her clearing, speaking of her mother’s death, of being unseen—his own guilt burning with every word.
Around and around—Sorcha, always Sorcha—the thread woven through every part of him. He saw it now, clear even through the fever. He had known it before, but never like this.
And through it all came a song.
Faint at first, then nearer—the same soft melody weaving through the fog of his mind and shadow.
“Nuair a ghlac mi fhèin air làimh i,
Siab do dheòir, do ghaol tha sàbhailt,
Thill mi slàn bhàrr àird a' chuain.”
(When I took her by the hand,
Wipe your tears, your love is safe,
I have returned to you safely from the high seas.)
It wound through his dreams, pulling him from the fire and the memories, the guilt and the darkness—drawing him back toward her.
He reached for it—through shadow, through fever, through the ache in his chest—and found her hand.
Warm. Real. Holding on.