At last, she spoke, her voice so soft it was nearly swallowed by the wind. "I left because I couldnae survive hearin' those words from ye again, Fergus."
Fergus briefly closed his eyes against the sting of the wind, his jaw tightening. Every bit of smoke in his lungs, every blisterforming on his back, and the exhaustion of the night suddenly felt insignificant compared to the weight of that single sentence.
He tightened his arm around her waist, pulling her so close he could feel her breathing.
"I ken," he said.
Margaret looked down at his dark arm wrapped around her middle, at the bare skin blackened with soot and ash from saving her. Then, quietly, she asked, "Do ye?"
Fergus looked toward the distant, flickering torches of the keep, barely visible through the smoke-dark hills ahead. For the very first time in his life, the answer mattered far more than his stubborn Highland pride.
"Aye," he said, his voice dropping into a rough, honest rasp. "I do now."
Margaret went very still against him, her weight relaxing into his chest at last. The horse carried them onward through the dark valley, away from the heat. Behind them, the dragon's tail burned a violent, bloody red against the night sky, consuming the brush. Ahead, home waited in the shadows.
And wrapped around Margaret with the smoke still burning his lungs and the terror still shaking his bones, Fergus understood one thing with a complete, terrifying certainty. He would ratherburn alive beside his woman than survive another day of a life without her in it.
* * *
By the time they finally reached the keep, the fire had become a bruised, glowing red scar bleeding across the distant western hills.
Contained. But not gone.
Dark silhouettes of men still moved along the jagged northern ridge, carrying sloshing water barrels and heavy axes through the gloom, while thick gray smoke drifted low across the gravel courtyard like a ground fog. Frightened, lathered horses steamed in the freezing night air, their chests heaving. Lanterns burned frantically from nearly every narrow window of the fortress, casting long, wavering fingers of yellow light onto the stones.
But the immediate, terrifying danger to the glen had passed.
Margaret barely registered any of it. She felt strangely suspended in some weightless, liminal space between profound exhaustion and raw relief, her limbs still trembling faintly from the lingering effects of smoke inhalation, pure terror, and the violent rush of a night that had moved far too quickly for her mind to track.
Fergus dismounted first, his boots hitting the gravel with a heavy, solid thud. Without a single word, he immediately turned back for her.
His massive, calloused hands closed around her waist before she could even think to protest or offer a weak excuse. They were firm. Unyielding. Certain. He lifted her down from the saddle with an urgent, almost desperate care, as though the mere thought of letting her touch the cold ground herself was entirely unendurable to him.
The moment her leather boots hit the stone flagstones, his right hand instinctively slid down to the small of her back, keeping her pressed against him and refusing to let even a breath of space form between their bodies.
Margaret looked up into his face. Thick gray smoke streaked the pale skin of his cheeks, and black soot darkened the sharp, aristocratic lines of his jaw. His dark hair hung damp and tangled against his sweat-beaded forehead from the intense heat of the pass. One broad shoulder was already blistering a nasty, raw red where flying sparks had burned clean through the wool of his shirt before he had ripped it away.
He looked entirely exhausted.
And somehow, he was more breathtakingly beautiful than she had ever seen him in her life.
Because there was absolutely nothing guarded left on his face now. The cold Laird's mask had been completely incineratedin the dragon's tail. There was no calculated distance. No rigid restraint. There was only a raw, terrifying, naked relief that flared openly every time his dark eyes landed on her face.
"Angus," Fergus called out sharply over his shoulder, his voice a gravelly rasp that never once detached from Margaret's eyes. "Double the watch along the entire southern line. If the wind turns on us again before dawn, I want a warnin' before the sparks can reach the lower ridge."
"Aye, me Laird," Angus's deep voice boomed from somewhere near the stables.
"Move the survivin' livestock farther east into the valley before the sun breaks."
Another compliance rang out amid the yard's noise.
Fergus didn't check who answered. He just kept walking, guiding Margaret toward the heavy oak doors of the keep. One large hand stayed pressed firmly against her back. Always touching her. Pressing in. As if he were constantly reassuring his battered instincts that she was still real, that she hadn't vanished into the smoke of the canyon.
The gathered clansmen and servants stepped aside immediately, carving a wide, silent path for them as they crossed the crowded courtyard. No one dared speak to the Laird in this state.
Through the haze, Margaret became dimly aware of Isobel descending the main stone steps of the keep, a heavy wool plaid wrapped tight around her shoulders. Lilly was cradled securely in her arms.
The child instantly recognized the familiar silhouettes in the darkness. Her small, high-pitched cry cut through the noisy courtyard like a silver bell.
