Chapter 2
“What? Moira Mullen is me mother,” Chloe declared desperately.
The name the man spoke was a title belonging to a world of stone keeps and silken banners. It did not belong here, amid the smell of tallow and the familiar ache of hard labor.
She felt Jenny’s fingers slacken on her arm, and that loss of contact felt like falling. All these years, her identity had been a simple, sturdy thing—a girl of the village, a daughter of a maid.
Now, with a few dry words, this stranger was trying to unmake her.
Me mother is someone else?
Images shifted to the woman who had raised her, the face she had kissed goodnight, the hands that had bandaged her knees. That was her mother.
For a long moment, nobody spoke. Then the man reached into his coat and pulled out a ring. He held it up between two fingers. Heavy gold with a crest pressed into it, symbolizing a legacy passed down through generations.
“The O’Donell seal.” He set it on the table beside him. Then came the letter, folded and waxed, with the seal matching the ring exactly. He placed it next to the ring and stepped back. “Written by me wife before she died. In her own hand.”
Thomas picked up the letter. His face gave nothing away as he read it. Jenny read over his shoulder, and Chloe watched the color shift in Jenny’s cheeks.
“She was unwell,” the man said. “For years. Her mind…” He paused, and his voice dropped just enough to sound like a man choosing his words carefully over grief.
“She made decisions I was never told about. I didnae ken about Chloe until recently, when me wife’s lady maid came forward after her passin’. I came as soon as I could.”
Thomas set the letter down. His eyes met the stranger’s with a cool gaze. “And ye expect us to simply hand her over?”
“I expect ye to recognize what’s in front of ye. That seal. That letter. Me daughter is Lady Chloe O’Donell by birth, and she has a home, a clan, and a name waitin’ for her.” He looked at Chloe. “I am nae askin’ yer permission, Lord Thomas. I am tellin’ ye, as a courtesy, what is already decided.”
Jenny’s face was tight. She was thinking fast; Chloe could see it, running through everything available to her and finding its edges.
A sudden, sharp spark of resentment flared through the numbness. She wanted Jenny or Thomas to scoff and throw the man out into the cold.
Instead, Thomas spoke carefully. “We’ll need time to verify this.”
“Ye have until mornin’.” The man’s response was instant. He picked up his ring and slid it back onto his finger. “I’ve ridden three days. I will stay the night at an inn, and we leave at first light.” He looked around the hall once more, already done with the conversation. “See that she’s ready.”
He walked toward the guest corridor without waiting for an answer, his guards falling in around him.
The hall went quiet.
Chloe looked at Thomas. There was something in his face she had never seen there before. He looked back at her, and his jaw was tight, his eyes steady but dark. A man who had run out of moves and knew it.
Jenny reached over and took her hand.
“We’ll think of somethin’,” she said.
Chloe looked at the way Jenny would not meet her eyes, and the hollow space in her chest widened. Jenny was not thinking of a way to disprove the man; she was looking for a way to soften the blow of a truth she knew was undeniable.
“Nay.”
The entire room turned to look at her. The man stopped walking.
Chloe had stared at the stranger’s mud-streaked boots, and the realization hit her that if she followed him out that door, she was not just leaving a house; she was agreeing to let the girl she had been simply vanish.
She would rather be a nameless maid in a drafty cottage, confident in who she was every morning, than a high-born ghost in a glen she did not recognize.
“I am nae goin’ anywhere with ye. I daenae ken ye. I daenae want yer name or yer clan or whatever it is ye think ye’re offerin’ me. I am stayin’ here.”
He turned around slowly. He looked at her with a blank expression, which was somehow worse than anger. He moved back toward her, stopped close, and lowered his voice so only she could hear.
“Ye’ll come willingly, or ye willnae wake up tomorrow mornin’. That I promise ye.”
Chloe heard Jenny’s sharp intake of breath.
She looked into his eyes. There was nothing performative in them—no bluster, no frustration. Just a flat, sure calm that told her he had said things like this before and meant every word.
“Ye cannae threaten her in her own home.” Thomas was already moving forward. Jenny’s hand came to Chloe’s shoulder.
“She’s nae in her own home.” The man’s voice was cold. He did not look away from Chloe. “She’s in yers.”
Thomas stepped forward, his boots heavy on the floorboards, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. “Nay. Ye’ll take yer ring and yer lies, and ye’ll leave. Ye cannae come into a man’s home and threaten his family like they’re livestock for the takin’.”
The stranger simply let out a short, sharp breath and looked directly at Chloe.
“Is that so?” the man asked, his voice smooth as whetstone. “I am thinkin’ Chloe here is more sensible than her guardians. She looks like she kens what I am capable of if I am denied what is rightfully mine. I will be at the trailhead at first light. Be ready, lass.”
He turned on his heel, his heavy plaid swirling behind him, and vanished into the night. The door remained open for a heartbeat, letting in a gust of wind that made the candles sputter and hiss.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Chloe looked around the room and felt the world tilting.
She saw the servants huddled in the shadows, their eyes wide with fear.
She looked at Thomas and Jenny, and in the sagging line of their shoulders and the frantic, hollow look in their eyes, she saw the truth: they were brave, but they were powerless against the storm this man could bring to their door.
The weight of their safety settled on her shoulders, heavier than anything she had ever experienced.
“It’s all right,” she said quietly.
“Chloe—” Jenny started, her voice breaking.
“It’s all right,” Chloe said again, her voice gaining a cold, steady edge. She looked at them both, her gaze lingering on the fear in their faces. To stay was to burn everything they loved to the ground.
She let out a shaky breath. “I will go.”
Her father stopped at a keep to rest after one week of riding.
It was small and much older than anything she had ever seen.
The stones were dark with moisture, the mortar between them crumbling in places, and the courtyard they rode into smelled of wet hay and horses.
A fire burned somewhere inside. She could see the light through the narrow windows, orange and unsteady.
She had stopped counting the hours somewhere on the road.
Her back ached, and her hands were cold inside the cloak they had given her at the last stop.
It was made of thick wool, the kind of quality that cost money.
She had pulled it tightly around herself, hating the way the expensive fabric felt like a bribe.
Saying nothing had become her only defense, a way to keep the girl from the glen alive inside a shell of silence.
A woman met them at the door and casually ushered her inside. The table was already set with food—bread, cold meat, and a bowl of something warm that steamed when she leaned over it. Her stomach responded before she could stop it, a sneaky growl that made her pulse race with shame.
“Eat,” her father said from across the room.
She picked up the spoon and ate. Not because he told her to, but because she refused to be weak.
She would take their food and their fire, but as she chewed the heavy bread, she made a silent vow: they could claim her blood and her name, but they would never truly have the part of her that still belonged to the glen.
She took another spoonful of the broth, hating that her body was already accepting the warmth and the salt while the rest of her still screamed to grab the horse and ride away.
To eat was to accept she was staying. To swallow was to admit that the girl who spent her mornings gathering eggs and her evenings by Jenny’s side was being replaced by this captor.
The woman led her to a room upstairs. Small, tidy, with a bed covered in two blankets and a candle on the windowsill.
Chloe sat on the edge of the bed and listened as the keep settled around her.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside.
She heard a low exchange of voices she could not understand. A door closed somewhere below.
She went to the window.
Two guards were in the courtyard, both looking outward, which meant they weren’t watching for something coming in.
They were watching her.
She lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
She thought about Jenny, about the candle on Jenny’s windowsill and how the kitchen smelled on cold mornings, and the sound of Thomas’s voice echoing up through the floorboards when he did not realize anyone could hear him.
Small things. The kind you never thought you would hold onto because you believed they would always be there.
She thought about her birth mother’s letter, and wondered if any of it would have been different if she had known sooner what she was.
Lady Chloe O’Donell.
The name sat in her chest like something foreign. Like something she could not yet afford to acknowledge.