The peak hit her with the force of a Highland gale. Her breath caught, then broke into a high, thin cry that echoed off the silver birches. Waves of heat crashed through her, her muscles pulsing against his mouth as she found her satisfaction in the center of the still water.
He held her through the aftershocks, his face pressed against her stomach as her breathing slowly found its rhythm again. The silence returned to the loch, heavier and warmer than before.
* * *
"Want to go for a walk with me, Lilly?"
Lilly's eyes half-lidded, her fist clenched against Margaret's collarbone, fighting sleep with the stubborn determination of someone who suspected that as soon as she closed her eyes, something interesting would happen without her.
Margaret swayed left, then right, her lips close to the soft crown of her head, humming something she could not have named if asked, a tune that lived in the body rather than the mind, her mother's kitchen and warm bread and a life that felt very far away now.
"Aye," she murmured. "That's it. There ye are."
Lilly's eyes dropped. Opened. Dropped again.
"Ye are nae goin' to win this." Margaret turned left at the end of the corridor, following the natural curve of the passage without particular intention. "Ye are exhausted, wee one." She pressed her lips briefly to the bairn's hair.
Lilly made a small, considering sound and turned her face toward the window.
"Aye, look at that light," Margaret said softly. "I see it too."
She turned left at the end of the corridor without any particular purpose, following the natural bend of the passage. Her feet found a new route she had not taken before. Lilly's head lolled slightly with the movement, and Margaret adjusted her, tucking the blanket higher.
"This castle is an endless maze, is it nae?" she said softly. "Every time I think I ken it, it shows me another corridor."
The castle revealed itself gradually and without warning. Rooms she had not known were rooms. Doors opening onto other doors. She had discovered the herb alcove off the kitchen by a similar accident, and the old chapel window that captured the sunrise perfectly if you stood in just the right spot. She stopped being surprised and started being curious instead, which felt better.
The passage narrowed. The stone here was older, the walls closer together, the ceiling lower, and the air carried the distinct coolness of a place that saw little traffic. An empty torch bracket hung on the wall. The daylight streaming through the window at the far end did most of the work.
There was a door on the left, slightly ajar.
"Oh." Margaret slowed. "A door, Lilly. What do ye think is in there?"
Right on cue, Lilly cooed.
"Ye ken it all, do ye nae?"
Margaret smiled down at her, pushing the door with her shoulder.
The smell of old parchment, dust, and something underneath it, dried herbs perhaps, or old wood reached her first. She looked down at Lilly immediately, pulling the corner of her blanket up and folding it gently across her nose and cheek. "There ye are, wee one. Just for a moment."
The light came through a single window, low and slanted, falling in a long pale strip across the floor.
Shelves. Everywhere she looked—shelves. Not the grand library above the solar with its neatly ordered volumes and careful arrangement. This was less intentional, with books stacked sideways across other books, rolled maps weighted at the corners with stones, manuscripts bundled with fraying cord—a collection that had grown naturally when no one was curating and someone was simply keeping everything.
"What do we have here, Lilly?" Margaret murmured softly.
She moved between the shelves slowly, her swaying pace unchanged, Lilly's weight warm and heavy against her shoulder. She ran her free hand along a row of spines, reading the faded lettering with her fingertips as much as her eyes. Latin texts. Agricultural records. A bound volume of clan histories with the cover coming away from the spine.
She paused at a slim, dark volume wedged between two larger ones.
She worked it free carefully, tilting it toward the light.
Tales and Traditions of the Highland Clans.
"There it is." She looked at Lilly, who had sagged slightly further into her shoulder. "Can we find a fine old Highland folklore to read to ye before ye sleep? We can, apparently." She tucked it under her arm and kept moving.
Further along, a bundle of loose pages sat between two weights, the handwriting on the top sheet smaller and more careful than the clan records. She lifted the corner with one finger.
