I didn’t dare look at my brother.
Uncle Callum had taken us in eight years ago. He’d fought for our family home, but the soldiers burned it to the ground.
Every last memory turned to ash.
“Come sit doon, Euphemia,” my brother said, giving me his sweet smile as he pushed back from the table. The stool scraped against the packed earth floor, the legs leaving small grooves we’d all learned to step over.
He was only four years younger, but already towered over me like some blooming beanstalk.
“Naw. Am no sittin in yer seat. Ah dinnae want tae catch yer fleas.”
His smile vanished. He sat down again with a dramatic huff, making the dishes rattle on the shelf beside him.
“Yer so mean,” he muttered.
“Yae ken am jestin’ wae yae,” I said, blowing on the thin porridge before spooning it into my mouth.
It tasted of oat, smoke, and determination.
“Aye,” he said, wrinkling his nose at me.
“You two are worse than the wee ones,” Aunt Flora said, wiping little Moire’s mouth with the corner of her apron. She stood near the dresser stacked with chipped plates and mismatched bowls—the kind passed down until they became family themselves.
The truth was, we’d never managed to salvage much when our homes were taken, and rebuilding from nothing had been hard. Every piece in this room had been bartered for, gifted, or fought to keep.
The fire crackled, throwing a warm glow along the stone walls, and for a moment—just a brief, precious moment—despite everything we’d lost, the house felt like a beating heart. Patched together, smoke-stained, but still ours.
? ? ?
I was out picking the last of the berries from the bramble bushes when I spotted them—flashes of red weaving through the distant gorse. My breath stalled. The hatred in my heart would never die. Not for what they’d done to my clan, nor the dozens of others scattered like ash across the glens.
The initial uprising was long before my time, but the stories lived in us.
The brutality.
The burned homes.
The laws meant to choke our heritage.
The whispered threats—our kinfolk raped to break the will of a people.
I bent my head and kept plucking berries, pretending I hadn’t seen them. But the crunch of hooves over frost-bitten grass came closer.
A saddle creaked.
Someone slid off a horse.
I tugged my shawl tighter around my shoulders.
“You. Girl.”
His voice cracked like a whip.
I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood. One wrong word and they’d take it out on my family. We’d already lost too much.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, boots thudding closer.
From the corner of my eye, I caught the bright, hateful red of his uniform coat. My fingers tightened around my basket.
