Page 79 of Highland Storm

Much like the keek stane in Una’s grotto, the crystal in Sorcha’s hand suddenly appeared to glow. The forest fell to silence, and the mist about them seemed to flow deep into the crystal. Inside the crystal, shapes began to coalesce, and Sorcha’s heartbeat a little faster. Mesmerized, she studied the changing shapes.

“Well?” Cailin prompted.

“What is wrong wi’ ye, Sorcha?” Lael asked. “Ye look like ye’ve seen a ghost. And by the by, what the devil’s happened to your eyes?” she asked, as though she’d only now noticed the different colors in the glow radiating out from the crystal.

But Sorcha couldn’t pry her gaze away. She spied the same tower rise up—the one she saw in Una’s keek stane. Only now she recognized it all the better.

Because she had been there.

Dunràth.

The blood drained from her face. There in her crystal, before the motte and tower raged a blue, four-legged bird, its beak dripping with blood… and then a wounded and bleeding wolf… Keane would be that wolf. Even as Sorcha tried to make sense of the images, she knew it for truth. The four-legged bird… it was the sigil of William fitz Duncan.

White-faced, Sorcha peered up at her sisters. “We must hurry back to Dunràth!”

Look to your heart, not to your head.

Una’s words echoed in Keane’s head. Logic told him he should stay and fight beside his king, but his heart said he must go.

With the sweep of a hand, he could lose everything: Lianae. Dunràth. Lilidbrugh, and perhaps even his kinsmen, if Lianae had betrayed them. All for what? For a chance to hold his own seat under a sovereign his people never recognized?

But nay, that was not why.

He’d done everything for Lianae—for the woman who held his heart.

He had been willing to lie, to accept the sins of another man, to eschew his best friend—because, in truth, it should have been Cameron to hold Dunràth in his stead. If only Keane had not taken command of their men. And still, Cameron had stood beside him. The man’s greatest sin had been to withhold the news that Lianae’s brothers were awaiting sentencing at Dunràth, and this was why Murdoch fled as well.

Keane would not fool himself into believing that Lianae had chosen him for love. All she needed to do now was to free her rebel brothers and then hand over the keys to Dunràth to them—a stronghold from which they could mount a new rebellion against the king. There was no way to tell what might come thereafter, for half of Moray remained loyal to Óengus the Mormaer, even unto the grave.

For five years, David had held those lands per force. Why would he now put the Kingdom of Moray at risk? The king had pushed his pieces around his chessboard, marrying this laird with that lady, assimilating rather than conquering, despite that his armies grew and grew. But, then, he ought to know by now that you could not force Highlanders into subjugation. Even in death, the sons of Óengus would plague him still. Unless…

And suddenly he realized…

It was a test.

A test Lianae must not fail.

She held the keys to Dunràth and David’s writ. David mac Mhaoil Chaluim had placed them knowingly into his wife’s hands, and he must have known she would find her brothers—and what then?

Did he have men at the ready to crush a rebellion? Did he mean to ferret out the rebels using Lianae? Even now, was fitz Duncan preparing to ride on Dunràth under the king’s command?

Alas, but the one piece of this puzzle that David could not have anticipated was the Stone of Destiny, and Keane realized that Lianae knew. He spied the truth in her face the day he’d ridden out from the vale.

Aye, she knew.

When he arrived, would her brothers put an arrow through his heart the instant they spied him? Would they open the doors for the new laird of Dunràth? Would Lianae hand over the keys to Dunràth willingly? Would the king’s men turn on her if she chose the wrong path? She had fifty good men at her disposal, but how many of those men were loyal to David and how many remained loyal to Óengus?

I am not witless enough to leave any stronghold of import without men enough to guard her, he remembered David saying. And he knew instinctively it would be true.

Heartsick, Keane picked up his gait. He could smell it now—the salt fury of the ocean, and he prodded Beithir faster, faster, eager to arrive—eager to set eyes upon his wife—eager to know whether his life would be crushed as easily as the Destiny Stone had been removed from their grasp.

“Riders, m’lady!”

Lianae peered up from the house ledgers she’d been studying for the majority of two days. If she was not mistaken, there were discrepancies in the accounts. Cartloads of their supplies had been requisitioned by Kinneddar. What this meant, she hadn’t any clue, but she wouldn’t put it past fitz Duncan to empty the coffers and pantries of all demesnes under his control. “Do they bear the royal standard?”

Balloch shook his head. “If they fly any, m’lady, we canna see it.”

Lianae worried the pen in her hand, unaccustomed to making such decisions, and just now, the moment of truth had come. She could read and write and keep the ledgers as well as any man, but could she hold Dunràth against invaders?