The word slammed through his mind instantly, a chaotic, violent rejection of the reality before him.
Nay. She wouldnae.
"Where is she?" he roared, taking a step up the stone stairs.
Isobel did not answer him with words. Instead, she reached into the fold of her cloak and held out a piece of carefully folded white parchment.
Fergus stared at the paper for a fraction of a second. Then, he snatched it from her fingers. His hands, usually so rock-steady under the pressure of battle, suddenly felt strangely, terrifyingly unsteady. He unfolded the parchment with rough, clumsy movements.
The elegant, slanted handwriting blurred once before his eyes before snapping into sharp, brutal focus under the glare of the torchlight.
Ye daenae want a bride. Ye daenae want a bairn. Then ye willnae have either. We are nae going to be a burden for ye anymore. Ye are free.
Free.
Fergus read the short line a second time. Then a third. Each word felt like a physical strike against his ribs, twisting violently deep inside his chest until he could barely draw breath.
Free.
He had spent most of his life fighting for that very word: freedom from the lies of his past, freedom from a stolen identity, and freedom to become his own man, answerable only to himself. Now, standing in the middle of his own hard-fought courtyard with the smoke of his burning land still darkening the stars, he had never felt less free in his entire miserable life.
Because the realization hit instantly, bypassing all his carefully built walls. It wasn't a feeling of relief. It wasn't the clear, simple distance he had tried to create between them. It was a vast, terrifying void.
Margaret gone from the keep. Margaret gone from the high hall. Margaret gone from the quiet of his bedchamber. Gone from supper. Gone from Lilly. Gone entirely from him.
The sheer possibility of it hit him with the force of an incoming tide, a wild, unmanageable panic rising in his throat. He had driven her away. He had taken his fear and his guilt, and he had used them like a blade against the only person who had offered to help him carry the weight of his life.
"Where is she goin', Isobel?" he demanded, his voice cracking with a raw intensity that made Alasdair glance at him in surprise. Already, his soldier's mind was calculating routes. Distance. Terrain. Speed. How many minutes had he wasted fighting the fire while she rode away?
Isobel held his frantic gaze, her expression unyielding. "To Lady Alba MacLaren. Her cousin."
MacLaren lands. South.
Fergus's mind snapped instantly toward the topography of the land beyond the southern ridge, and his blood turned entirely to ice.
"She left alone?" he asked, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Fergus, she was determined."
"When, Isobel? When did she clear the gate?"
"Less than half an hour ago."
Fergus spun around sharply, his eyes locking onto the dark, jagged outline of the southern hills. Gray smoke was beginning to drift over those ridges now, too. It wasn't a thick, roaring wall of fire yet—not like the west—but it was enough to see. The wind had shifted.
God.
"The dragon's tail," Fergus muttered, his face turning pale beneath the soot.
Alasdair frowned immediately, stepping closer. "What? Fergus, what are ye sayin'?"
But Fergus was already moving, his boots pounding across the gravel as he sprinted back toward his bay stallion. Every instinct inside him had condensed into a single, brutal, terrifying certainty.
Find her. Find her now, before the fire gets to her.
"The lower southern pass," Fergus called back hoarsely over his shoulder as he threw himself back into the leather saddle. His thoughts raced at a frantic pace. "The narrow stretch of dirt between the rocky ridges. The wind funnels hard through there from the west, Alasdair. It's full of dry brush and gorse. If the sparks cross the ridge, the fire will run through that canyon fast. Faster than a horse can gallop."
Isobel stared at him from the steps, her face draining of color as she clutched Lilly tighter against her chest. "What are ye talkin' about? Fergus!"
