The noise drew attention. Heads turned. Eyes found her hooded figure.
From the edge of her vision, she caught movement. The two men were closer now than before. One wore a sprig of purple heather pinned to his shoulder. Her father's marker. His men always wore it, a symbol of Clan MacTavish that turned her blood cold.
Ada slipped between tents, weaving past a pen of bleating goats and a table cluttered with clay trinkets and wooden carvings. The crowd was pressed too close to allow her to run—merchants hawking their wares, children darting underfoot, musicians playing badly-tuned fiddles near the ale stall.
Panic clawed at her throat, but she forced her mind to work through it. The shore lay open and exposed, no cover there. She needed something else. Someone else. A shield.
Her eyes caught sight of a woman passing by. Blonde hair similar to Ada's own, though more faded with age, and wearing a threadbare cloak so patched and worn it looked ready to fall apart in a strong wind. Perfect.
"Please," Ada said, catching the woman's arm. "Yer cloak fer mine."
The woman jerked back, startled. "What? Why would I dae that?"
"Take mine." Ada's fingers worked frantically at her own clasp, unfastening it with shaking hands. "Look at it. Feel the quality. It's worth ten times yers, maybe twenty. Just, quickly, please."
The woman's eyes widened as Ada pressed the fine cloak into her hands. She ran her fingers over the silk lining, testing the weight of the wool.
Good sense warred with greed on her weathered face. Greed won.
"Aye, all right then," she said, already shrugging out of her own tattered garment.
Ada pulled it on before the woman could change her mind. The rough wool scratched against her neck, smelled of smoke and old sweat and something vaguely like fish, but Ada didn’t care. It would serve its purpose.
She drew the hood up, tucking her blond hair completely out of sight.
"Blessings to ye," the woman said, clutching Ada's fine cloak like a treasure.
Ada didn't answer. She was already turning away, already scanning the crowd for another escape route.
At the far edge of the green, near where the festival grounds gave way to the rocky shore, a tall man stood apart from the noise.
Broad-shouldered, with dark hair tied back from a face that might have been carved from stone by an artist who believed beauty and severity were the same thing.
His eyes were the color of steel in winter. Cold and sharply assessing everything around him. A thin scar cut through his left eyebrow, pale against tanned skin. It was the kind of face that belonged on a warrior or a king. He watched the crowd with unreadable calm, and the villagers gave him wide berth as they passed, not from fear exactly, but from instinctive recognition of authority. Of power held in check.
As if sensing her gaze, his eyes found hers across the crowded green.
Ada's breath caught. For one suspended moment, the festival noise seemed to fade—the fiddles, the shouting merchants, the bleating goats—all of it muffled beneath the sudden, startling weight of his attention. He didn't smile. Didn't move. Just watched her with that same unreadable calm, as though he could see straight through her threadbare disguise to the terrified woman beneath.
Her pulse hammered harder.
Ada's pulse hammered in her ears. Behind her, closer now, she heard one of the men call out. "There! Her cloak!"
“Ye, lass with the cloak. Stop there.”
Footsteps pounded. The woman in Ada's cloak let out a startled yelp.
Ada didn't think. Her body moved before her courage caught up. She crossed the distance to the tall stranger in quick strides, her breath coming fast, her mind screaming at her that it was madness, that she was about to throw herself at the mercy of a man who might be worse than her father's hunters.
But she was out of options. And wasn't this what survival demanded? Using whoever was within reach? The thought should have shamed her. Instead, it felt like the only power she had left.
She stopped before him, close enough to catch the scent of salt and leather and something woodsy beneath. Up close, he was even more imposing—taller than she'd realized, broader, with hands that looked capable of snapping bone.
"Ye look like a man who kens how to handle trouble," she said, fighting to keep her voice steady.
His gaze swept over her—the ragged cloak, the flush on her cheeks, the way her chest heaved with barely contained panic. "Depends on the trouble."
"The kind that follows a lass who daesnae want tae be found."
