They leave separately.
Back in the gallery, the party continues as if nothing has shifted.Laughter.Glasses clinking.Lives moving on.
Isla catches her reflection again, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, alive with emotion.
She presses a hand briefly to her chest.
She didn’t fake grief.
She told the truth.
And in doing so, she collided headfirst with the one man in this castle who loved her father enough to hate her for it.
Which somehow feels like the beginning of something far more dangerous than either of them is ready for.
Chapter6
The castle does not mourn.
It endures.
That is Callum Fraser’s first thought when gray morning light seeps through the narrow windows and spills across stone floors that have known centuries of footsteps.He has been awake for hours, pacing corridors that still feel like Keir might step out of any doorway and tell him to stop wearing a path in the rugs.
The house is too quiet.
Not empty, never empty, but hollowed, like a chest after something vital has been cut out.Keir’s absence is everywhere.In the silence where music should be.In the cold hearth.In the way the walls seem to be watching him, waiting to see what he’ll do next.
Callum stands in the library with a mug of coffee gone untouched in his hand, staring out at the beauty of the land.Fog clings to the land, lifting slowly, revealing fields dark with damp and stubborn with life.This place has survived wars, betrayals, and entire bloodlines rising and falling.
It should survive this.
But survival isn’t the same as belonging.
Keir had taken him in when no one else wanted him.Had pulled him out of a school that smelled like bleach and quiet cruelty, signed papers without hesitation, and driven him here without asking whether Callum deserved it or even wanted to live here.
You stay, you follow my rules.You don’t want to obey; you can leave.
Callum had stayed.
He had learned structure.Discipline.Responsibility.He had learned how to stand still when anger threatened to consume him.How to build something instead of burn it down.
And Keir, brilliant, selfish, impossible Keir, had promised him this place.
Not in a will.Not in ink.
But in late-night conversations.In shared silences.In the way Keir spoke about the castle like a living thing they were both responsible for.
This place is yours someday, boy.Don’t let it rot.
Callum had believed him.
The library door opens.
Belief becomes fragile.
Andrew Bell enters first, carrying a thick leather folder that looks far too heavy for the damage it contains.His expression is composed, professional, almost kind, the face of a man who knows this will hurt and intends to deliver the pain efficiently.
Behind him comes Isla MacLaren and her mother.
