Frederick looked once more at Iona, limp in his arms but breathing, her head fallen against his shoulder, and knew therewas no argument in him for anything except getting her away from this place.
Iona surfaced from darkness in fragments. First, the cold. Then the movement. Then the sound of hooves striking earth in a steady rhythm beneath her, the shift of muscle and leather, the quiet breath of a horse working through distance.
She drew in a sharp breath and stiffened.
At once, an arm tightened around her. “Easy,” Frederick’s voice came low at her ear. “I have ye.”
The world settled into place around that.
She was seated before him in the saddle, her back against his chest, his arm firm around her waist to keep her steady. The night air pressed cool against her face, and the faint silver of moonlight stretched across the land ahead.
Home.
She saw it then. The outline of McIntosh Castle rising in the distance, familiar and solid and real in a way nothing had felt since she stepped into that hunting lodge.
Her throat tightened.
“We are nearly there,” Frederick said quietly.
Iona leaned back into him without thinking, the instinct too deep to question. “I am awake,” she murmured.
“I ken.”
His hand shifted slightly at her waist, not loosening, only adjusting as though to make certain she remained upright. There was something in the way he held her now that felt different. Not only protective. Something more careful than that. As though she were something breakable, he had only just realized he could lose.
“How do ye feel?” he asked.
She considered it, though the answer did not come easily. Her arm throbbed where Noor’s blade had cut her. Her body felt heavy, as though it had not yet fully returned to her. But beneath all of that, there was something else. Something lighter.
“I daenae ken yet,” she said honestly. “Only… different.”
He pressed his lips briefly to the back of her head, just at the edge of her hair. The gesture was so quiet it might have gone unnoticed if she had not been paying such close attention to him now.
“Iona.”
She turned her head slightly. “Aye?”
“Ye did well tonight.”
The words struck her more deeply than she expected.
She swallowed. “Ye killed her.”
“I did.”
“I needed that,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “I didnae think I would ever feel safe if she still walked this world.”
His arm tightened slightly around her. “She was never leaving that place alive.”
Iona let out a slow breath. Relief moved through her again, not sharp now, but steady. Settling.
“Thank ye,” she said.
There was a pause.
“For doing yer duty to protect me.”
The moment the words left her, she felt it. The shift in him. Small, but unmistakable.