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“No colors? No banners?” he demanded.

“The scouts said that they tried to identify them, but saw nothin’ remarkable, me Laird.”

He looked around the room, cold and calculating. This was a deliberate tactic on Sinclair’s part—forcing his hand, openly luring him into a trap. If Sinclair wanted an open war, he would have marched with his full host, banners flying.

No, this was something else. And damn him if he was going to play into that bastard’s hand.

“Are we goin’ to pretend that we daenae ken who is behind it?” Ewan scoffed. “It’s Sinclair! Let’s crush him.”

“Ye are young,” one of the elders interjected. “It’s easy for ye to say that. Ye are unmarried, with no family, and⁠—”

“I have no family because the Sinclairs took it from me!” Ewan growled.

The room went silent, the weight of old grief pressing down on everyone.

Alisdair looked at his brother. Both had lost so much that day, but after their parents’ death, Ewan had lost Alisdair too, in a way. Before, they used to hunt and goof around and talk and tease each other and fight. After, Alisdair had closed himself off, forced into becoming the rigid Laird everyone now feared.

“We need to be careful,” another elder advised. “We cannae enter a war we arenae prepared for.”

Alisdair had good intelligence on Sinclair’s resources. Still, after Isla’s flight, he had no doubt that his enemy had pulled out every stop available to him—blackmail, threats, whatever it took to drag smaller clans onto his side.

The elders were right that preparation mattered above all. As much as he wanted to ride out and have Sinclair’s head, just as Ewan suggested, he owed his clan more restraint than that.

“We need more information,” Duncan said seriously. “I have sent word to me faither and asked him to be ready to join us, but for now, I think we need to ken what we are up against first.”

“What? Are we cowerin’ now?” Ewan snarled.

“Going in blind is better?” Duncan shot back.

“Better than showing fear!”

“We are showing restraint and brains!”

Ewan took a step toward him, but Alisdair would not allow Sinclair’s poison to sow discord among his people.

“Calm down, both of ye!” he ordered.

Everyone went still.

“They arenae moving?” he asked.

“The scouts said that the camp is too idle for random traveling men.”

“And they deliberately came to our northern borders,” Alisdair read between the lines.

Everyone looked at each other. It would be foolish of them to think that this was nothing and that their hard-earned peace would last.

Alisdair should have been happy that he was getting what he wished for, an opportunity to confront Sinclair, to finally get the revenge he had longed for over the past eight years.

And yet he felt none of these things. Because his mind was still clouded with Isla’s scent, the look in her eyes, her taste. When she had ridden to his gates, she had brought more than tactical advantage. She had brought light to his life.

“Sinclair is behind this, and we all ken it,” he said calmly. “But if he thinks he will force us into his game, he has another thing coming.”

Everyone nodded. Heroic marches and grand speeches were good for bards, but Alisdair knew well that a true leader was level-headed and strategic.

“Duncan, we will ride out to scout the darned host ourselves. If it is a distraction, we will ken.”

“Alisdair!” Ewan protested.