Page 103 of The Speed of Lightning
But Rory pressed on. “I’ve followed you. I know your friends—Fraser, little Arne MacSorley. I know those who mock you when the clan gathers—Anneli. I know you bathe wild at Lealt Linn when the weather is warm, the days you bring your embroidery to Gavina’s. Every summer but last. Too cold, wasn’t it? Disappointing. I think about summer all winter long—about you in that water.
“I know you’ve lied to your papa for years, taking advantage of his trust. I know you were closer to Týr and Mariota MacLean than you ever admitted. But most of all, I know this—you killed your mother, harmed your father, and if you’re the Storyteller, then you’re to blame for the deaths of ninety-one of your clan. What will they say when they learn the truth?”
Her stomach clenched, nausea clawing her. “I’m no’ the Storyteller?—”
He gestured to Arne’s gift. “Still desperate to win approval. Still trying to show you’ve changed—that you’re not the girl in trousers with a shorn head and shame in her eyes. Mariota polished the outside, but the inside is still blemished. What would she say of you now, knowing your words led her to the Wolf’s axe?
“And Týr… what would he think if he knew his son abandoned his clan for you? Cast out, penniless, no longer a chieftain—all because he pitied you. All because you couldn’t let him make his own escape ten years ago. You cursed him, Freya. You cursed him.”
He shoved her. She screamed, crashing to the floor, skittering through the rushes on her hands and knees.
“If you’re the Storyteller, you murdered his parents. You exposed every man of his team. You’re the reason King Dómhnall disbanded them. The reason the Wolf rules Ardtornish.”
She shook her head, voice breaking. “I’m not—I didn’t?—”
The door shuddered on its hinges. Bog’s howls split the air.
Rory’s face twisted. “Calum’s no’ in love with you. Has he told you so? Why hasnae he bedded you? Can’t you see? It’s pity. Just pity. Look at your legs—no wonder he hasn’t touched you. He’s always been bound by honor. It all makes sense now. You provoked your father, and the scars trapped him into marriage.”
As he voiced every one of her deepest fears, she scrambled to her feet and bolted for the door.
Papa caught her arm. “If he’s not bedded you, it can be undone?—”
She screamed, wrenching free with all her strength. “I dinnae want it undone! Leave me alone!”
Rory lunged, but she ducked beneath his grasp and tore through the door, sprinting for the gate. Bog raced at her heels as she flew past a stunned Ogilhinn without returning his wave. Shame burned in her gut—for Mariota, for her tales, for her mother’s death, for ten years of lies to her father, for the stories that had brought ruin on her clan, on the man she loved. Tears streamed down her face as she drove herself faster along the road out of town.
Needing only one person, she ran until her legs buckled before the crooked stone in the burial ground. Collapsing to her knees, she wrapped her arms around it, sobs tearing through her chest. “I’m sorry, Mama…I’m so, so sorry. I need you. Please come back. Please.”
Feelings of inadequacy she hadn’t felt since the night her legs were scalded erupted through her. Her presence brought misery and harm to everyone around her. It had led to her mother’s death. Better that she had burned in the fire than harmed her innocent mother. And now Calum—thanks to her interfering in his ceremony ten years ago, he’d truly lost everything. His gold, his home, his mission, his parents, his clan. He didn’t deserve one thing that had happened to him in the past four months, and it was all her fault.
Chapter 28
CRACKAIG, JURA - FEBRUARY 22, 1387
Evening dimmed to ash along the shoreline, the last light stretched thin across the waves. From the deck of the Leviathan, Doc squinted toward the lone figure on the sand.
“By the saints. Is that Balor?”
Calum called back. “Nay. A huntsman.”
Skiffs slid into the slip, the men rowing with practiced ease. They tied their lines without a word, ready for the evening’s training. They were secret keepers—the most able and driven men of Jura—trained in the hard grips of glíma, gathering for a task that, if discovered, would bring dire consequences from the chieftain. Each man bore the silence of purpose, the memory of the Wolf’s savagery written on his face.
From the waterline, Balder grinned, catching Doc’s jest. “Balor? I dinnae know if he’s ever been that formidable. He’s still the lad my father had to lash to a table to keep from squirming during his stigma.”
Calum ignored him. “MacLeans dinnae squirm.”
Hector waded from the cog, his massive frame parting the surf with deliberate strides. “Tha’s right, lad.”
Balder shrugged. “MacLeans dinnae, Chief MacLean—but a tànaiste o’er braw for his boots did. Couldnae wait to get away from us.”
Calum’s jaw tightened. Even among men he trusted, he felt untethered—a stranger to both the world he’d left and the one he’d learned to inhabit. They seemed to forget that until his tànaiste ceremony he had fit Jura like a hand in a glove. Leaving had never been his choice; it was the consequence of the one piece of his culture his conscience could no longer abide. “As I recall,” he said, his voice low, “the clan was calling to drown me in the bog not a hundred yards that way.”
Balder slung his shield across his back. “True,” he said, eyeing Calum with a raised brow. “Though if ye’d looked like this back then, we might’ve mistaken ye for a Scot and dragged ye off to herd sheep instead of to a bog. Have some pride, man.”
The remark drew a rare laugh from Hector. The giant snorted, then shook with amusement, his spectral eyes roaming over Calum.
Calum frowned, raking a hand through his hair. “What do ye mean?”
