Chapter 14
Evan had meant to turn back toward Edinburgh.
That had been the plan. Put distance between himself and Niall’s estate, between himself and Ruby, between himself and anything that could tear open wounds he’d spent years cauterizing. He’d even taken the first turning that would lead him back to the main road.
But somewhere along the way, without quite realizing when the decision had been made, his feet had carried him off the path and deeper into the countryside.
The land rose gently here, the ground soft with pine needles and damp loam. He moved through it without thought, his body remembering what his mind tried not to. He knew where the roots lay hidden, where the ground dipped treacherously after rain.
After all, this had been his home.
His parents had once owned all of this land. Forest, moor, pasture—stretching farther than a man could walk in a day. Before lawyers and bitter rivalry had carved it up into neat, soulless parcels. Before titles were contested and loyalties broken and brothers turned on one another like wounded animals.
Now he had no right to be here. This was Niall’s land now and he was nothing more than a trespasser, a shadow slipping through places that no longer knew him.
He slowed as the trees thickened, light dimming beneath the canopy. The air changed here, becoming cooler, damper. And then, abruptly, the forest opened.
A large stone building sat in a broad clearing ahead of him, as it had for as long as Evan could remember. But it was not the same. The roof had collapsed, beams rotted through and sagging like broken ribs. Bramble crawled up the walls, claiming the old stone inch by inch.
Evan stopped and stared. When he’d been a boy, this place—his family’s summer lodge—had seemed magical. A refuge from lessons and expectations, from the weight of being a Campbell. His mother had loved it here—had laughed more freely beneath these trees than anywhere else he could remember. His father had been looser too, less lord and more man, teaching his sons to fish in the stream and hunt fossils along the riverbanks.
Memories surfaced. Five boys, muddy and sunburnt, racing each other through the trees until their lungs burned. Climbing trees. Building dens. Sleeping by the fire while the wind rattled the shutters and the world felt impossibly safe.
Evan swallowed hard and forced himself forward, boots crunching softly as he crossed the clearing. He laid a hand against the stone wall, rough beneath his palm.
In his youth the summer lodge had sat in the center of Campbell lands. Now it sat on the border—in a no-man’s-land of neglected ground because no one wanted to claim it after the partition. A building stranded between loyalties, left to rot because tending it would mean remembering what had been lost.
It was a fitting monument, really.
He moved past the lodge and deeper into the trees until a stone wall came into view.
The wall hadn’t been there when he was a boy. Now, it cut brutally across the slope, a hard line drawn through whathad once been open ground. Beyond it, the land changed. The trees thinned, giving way to harsh, exposed fields dotted with a handful of crofts. Smoke rose thinly from their chimneys. The soil looked poor, the buildings small and weather-beaten.
Evan stared out over that parcel of land, something sour and heavy pooling in his gut.
Shame, mostly.
He pressed his lips together, fighting the snarl that wanted to twist them. It wasn’t his fault. He’d never wanted any of this. Could he be blamed for walking away? For choosing a different life to one of bitter recriminations and obligations he never wanted?
This wasnothis responsibility. The people that lived beyond the wall were nothing to do with him.
But the excuses rang hollow.
He heard movement behind him. He spun, twin daggers appearing in his hands, blades flashing as he brought them up in a smooth, lethal arc—
—and stopped an inch from the throat of the man behind him.
A familiar voice spoke. “I see ye’ve not lost any of yer skill, brother.”
Evan’s breath punched out of him. He recognized the man before him. He was older, aye, but he’d recognize his youngest brother anywhere.
“Niall,” he breathed.
He seemed broader than Evan remembered, harder around the edges—but unmistakably Niall. The boy who had followed him everywhere, who had trusted him without question. The brother he had loved best, if he were honest.
Slowly, carefully, he lowered his knives. “Shite,” Evan muttered. “What are ye doing here?”
Niall’s mouth twitched. “I might ask ye the same.”
