The truth pressed at the back of her throat. It always did when the nights grew quiet.
Tell her, a voice urged. Tell her what ye did. Tell her who is hunting ye.
If she spoke it aloud, it would become real again. It would stop being a story she held at bay with work and routine and vigilance.
Erin paused near the hearth, then turned and leaned one shoulder against the mantel as if she had all the time in the world. “Ye’ve got that look again,” she said.
“What look?” Iona asked, though she already knew.
“The one that says ye’re walking a cliff edge in yer head.”
Iona let out a breath that sounded too sharp. “I am fine.”
Erin’s brows lifted. “Aye? Then why are ye gripping that cup like it insulted yer mother?”
Iona swallowed a smile. Erin had a way of disarming her even when dread sat like iron in her chest.
“I keep thinking,” Iona began slowly, choosing each word, “that I should tell ye everything. So ye ken what danger ye might be in for keeping us here.”
Erin’s expression softened, the sharpness in her eyes easing into a small degree of tenderness. She pushed away from the mantel and crossed the room, her steps quiet despite the years in her joints.
She rested a weathered hand on Iona’s shoulder. Warm. Steady.
“Lass,” Erin murmured. “Ye daenae have to force yerself. I have kent fear. I have kent the sort of fear that makes ye swallow words until they turn bitter. If ye’re nae ready, then ye’re nae ready.”
Iona’s throat tightened.
Erin gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “All I want is for ye and Jamie to be safe. That’s it. I didnae need the rest to do what must be done.”
The simplicity of it nearly cracked Iona open.
Iona nodded once, hard, because if she spoke she might weep and she refused to do that tonight. “Thank ye.”
Erin huffed. “For what? For having sense?”
“For… giving us a home,” Iona said, and the word home landed oddly on her tongue, as if it belonged to someone else.
Erin’s gaze held hers. “This is a home,” she said firmly, as though willing it to be true.
Iona managed a small smile, but fear curled beneath it.
Because homes could be taken away. And safety could vanish in a single night.
Her mind slid, unbidden, to a memory she kept buried deep. A different room. A different fire. The weight of a man’s arm around her waist as morning light spilled across rumpled blankets. The solid warmth of him. The steady beat of a heart beneath her cheek. For one breath of time, she had felt… held. Protected. Not hunted. Not alone.
She had slipped from that embrace like a thief.
Now, years later, the echo of that warmth flickered through her chest at the worst moments, not as longing, but as a reminder that safety had once existed. That she had tasted it and then survived without it.
Erin’s voice drew her back. “Ye’re pale,” the healer said. “When did ye last eat?”
“I ate at the tavern.”
“Then why do ye look like ye swallowed stones?”
Iona opened her mouth to dismiss it. To say it was nothing. To pretend she was still the lass who could endure any storm so long as she kept moving.
But she was nae alone anymore.