“Aye.” Hamish stepped forward until they were standing close in the dark. “And so am I. Whatever we do with the rest of all this after tonight, we do it later. Right now me Lady is out there, and Malcolm has her, and ye’re nae goin’ without me. Daenae waste time arguin’ it.”
Alasdair looked at him for a moment. Every campaign, winter, council meeting, mistake, and success ran through his mind. He and Hamish had been raised together in the same house on a holding that had come into their family through bloodshed and theft, with Alasdair’s father not knowing the difference.
Alasdair gazed out at the glens, dark and expansive ahead, the heather spreading beneath the stars. Somewhere out there, a barefoot woman in a thin robe with a stone in her hand, having just crossed two hours of freezing ground, faced Malcolm alone.
“Come on.”
They ran into the dark together, side by side, the way they always ran toward the things that needed facing. The heather closedaround them. The sky was cold and clear overhead, and the glens stretched wide and empty ahead.
Isobel was somewhere in all of it. Malcolm likely followed close on her trail. But now, Alasdair and Hamish were tracking them too and the distance between them was closing with every stride.
Chapter Twenty-One
The heather tore at her legs, and the ground was uneven under her bare feet as she ran.
Behind her, she heard him crashing after her, loud and heavy, but she did not slow or look back. She veered east where the ground dropped, and the heather grew thick. She trusted the dark, the cold, and her lighter weight. Isobel kept running until the sound of him behind her grew ragged, then distant, and finally stopped altogether.
She slowed. She stopped. She stood in the dark and listened.
Wind. Her own breath. Nothing else.
He is coming, she thought.Alasdair will find me.
She moved north, toward the dark line of pines she had seen from her window every morning for the last few weeks. Then,she slipped between the trunks and pressed her back against the nearest tree and breathed.
“Isobel.” Malcolm’s voice reached her ears. Not close but not far enough away either
She slid down the trunk until she was sitting at its base, knees pulled up and arms wrapped tightly around them. Her feet had gone numb below the ankles. She rubbed them against the cold ground and took a breath.
Alasdair will find me. He will save me from Malcolm’s wrath.
She said it to herself like a truth she had earned. Not a hope. A fact built on evidence. He had come through a library door at a dead run. He had come through smoke and flame. He had held her in a cold corridor with his hands shaking.
She was certain he was in these glens right now, and he was not going to stop hurrying toward her hiding spot.
“Isobel.” Malcolm’s voice from somewhere south, further than before.
She did not answer.
Let him look. Let him look in every wrong place. He knows these trees, but he does not know where I am. All I have to do is stay still.
She pressed her back harder against the trunk of the pine tree and listened to Malcolm moving through the heather, slower now, the direction uncertain.
Alasdair will find him first.
She was certain of that, too. He had the passage, the footprints, and the broken lantern. He would come from the castle side, and Malcolm was south of the trees between them. When Alasdair found him, he would have to stop searching for her.
Hold on,she told herself.Hold on and stay still. Let Alasdair come.
* * *
He found Malcolm a quarter mile south of the tree line, standing still in the open heather with one hand pressed to his cheekbone and the broken lantern at his feet.
“Where is she?” Alasdair said.
Malcolm turned. When he saw Alasdair, his face shifted into a guarded, composed expression. Alasdair had seen that face for thirty years and recognized every version of it.
“Thank God ye found me.” Malcolm took a step towards him. “She ran. I came to bring her somewhere safe after the fire, and she panicked. The Lady struck me, and she ran before I couldexplain. She is out here somewhere in the dark, and if we daenae find her…”