Diary Entry
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In Scotland
The Castle
Summer 1594
Duncan’s Return.
Aye... though I longed for the hearth’s warmth and the embrace of familiar stone, returning home proved heavier than I’d dared imagine. What should have been a season of jubilance was instead shadowed by grief.
When word reached me that Ceit had taken her own life, the marrow in my bones chilled with guilt.
I was not prepared.
Though her threats came often, like storm winds battering the walls, I never believed she would leap from fury into finality.
I, a Lord well-versed in death—who’s stood where blood pools thick beneath fallen men and comrades—wept not for the dead in battle, but for what was left behind in silence.
The cruelty of her act lies not only in its sharp end, but in what she abandoned. Our son, barely weeks old, left in the care of servants and a wet nurse, without mother’s arms or milk, without lullaby or love.
Her act of rage struck me in surprise—not to pierce, but to punish.
And punish she did.
The summons came as dawn broke over the crest—the rider’s silhouette not bearing war’s echo, but something far more personal. The truth of what was to come was mine. The pain it carried, also mine.
In that moment, my thoughts did not run to Ceit, but to my son.
Had he survived?
Had fate robbed me before I’d ever held him close?
I feared the worst of his fate, for power breeds enemies, and enemies seek the easiest target.
But the news cleaved two ways—grief for Ceit, yes, but light for Callum, who lived still.
I will not feign purity of heart. Ceit's death was an easing of burden.
The boy mattered more.
She had been wife in name, not in soul. What love I bore her was weathered and thin—tolerable, but never transcendent.
The letter from the castle spoke plainly as it told that she ended her life upon hearing that our union would dissolve, that she was to return to Ireland.
And though part of me grieves for the madness that consumed her, another part—a quieter, shameful part—is grateful.
Grateful that Callum was spared. Grateful that I had not lost the child who now bears my name, my legacy, my heart.
Yet even as I rode to my estate, burial rites awaited, and with them—Oison Darragh, Ceit’s father, demanding recompense through marriage to another daughter.
It was grotesque, his request. That he would barter another child so swiftly told me all I needed that he is a creature of ambition, not affection.
The lineage is cracked.
Ceit's death speaks of deeper illness. To wed into that again... is a risk I dare not shoulder, but if it is to protect us from the church, I may have no choice.
