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“You told Niall. And instructed him to lie to me.”

“I should not have done so. Your father and I have spoken at length on the matter and know we should have told you years ago. With Niall, I had no choice. If he continued to press for you to be named second in command, the truth would have to be told.”

“Because I am a MacKinlay.”

“Aye.”

He agreed with her. “You should have told me. Long ago. I am no child but a man who held his family as the enemy.”

“You’ve no family worthy of calling them so,” his father said.

“I have two aunts, and likely uncles and cousins, very much alive.”

“One aunt. The other passed, and the surviving one cares more for placating her husband than the abuse his children endure. His love for ale is even stronger.”

“You know who my family is,” he accused. “And did not return me to them.”

He’d been calm when he came, but Kieran was anything but now.

“Sit,” his mother said. But Kieran ignored her. He was too wroth to sit.

“Return you? To a man who struck his own children? Nay. I’d never even considered such a thing.”

“How could you know how my uncle treated his children?”

His father’s jaw flexed as it clenched. It was his mother who answered. “We knew not who you were for some time. The blow, against, I assume a rock in the river, ensured it. But we assumed you were a MacKinlay, and so your father traveled many times to Aberdale. It was not difficult to learn a boy had gone missing. Or to discover your mother had died in childbirth and your father in battle. With no siblings to speak of, he found your aunt. And planned to relinquish you to them against my protests. I’d grown to love you then as my own and could not bear to part with you.”

“And so, you dinnae?”

“Nay. We dinnae. But not because I had convinced your father to keep you here. He insisted on watching first to learn what kind of family you’d be given to. The first time he saw your uncle strike his son, he returned here to inform me you would be staying.”

Her tale made no sense.

“Father has not been to Aberdale, to MacKinlay land, since before the battle.”

“I have,” his father said. “Many times after we found you.”

“And that dinnae cause a stir? The chief of Clan Duncraig in the midst of his enemy?”

“None knew, as I was disguised.”

Kieran tried to imagine his father sneaking around Aberdale, in disguise. It was a difficult image to conjure, but he did not question his words. His father had been the one, after all, to teach Kieran how to decipher a lie. And he could not detect one now.

“And my family? You disguised yourself to them as well?”

“‘Twas not necessary. They had the good grace to live just beside a treeline. Was easy enough to watch them without being seen.”

An even harder image than the other to imagine.

“You hid among the trees watching this family to determine if they were worthy of me?”

“Aye.”

He said it with the directness and authority Kieran was accustomed to from the chief.

“He went there many, many times,” his mother said. “And a good thing too.”

If what they said was true, his father had gone into enemy territory on multiple occasions to assure himself the family he would return to would treat him well. It was an act of such love that Kieran could hardly comprehend it. Unlike his mother, his father rarely showed affection. And he told neither Kieran nor Niall he loved them.