Only the whispering breeze answered her.
She was alone now. No one to talk to besides her donkey. No one to comfort her.
Throat aching, Hazel turned away from the grave, her gaze sweeping over the squat thatch-roofed cottage that had been her whole world. The herb garden she’d tended since she was old enough to walk. The encircling stone walls where ivy climbed in tangled profusion. The little lean-to where Duncan sheltered in winter.
Home.
Siùsan had urged her to leave it, to pack her essentials, take Duncan, and flee to the mainland like a thief. Ask a relative she’d never even met to shelter her. Start over somewhere no one knew her name or her face or her secret.
Start over as what? As who?
And what was she running from exactly?
From the man who raped yer mother … and who, hopefully, now thinks ye died with her.
Those words had haunted Hazel ever since hearing them.
Somewhere out there, men might be looking for her. Or maybe her aunt had been worrying unnecessarily. Maybe it wasn’therthey’d been looking for. Maybe Siùsan had gotten it wrong. Surely, a powerful man like her father had more important things to worry about than a by-blow. An illegitimate daughter.
Nausea churned within her once more.
Siùsan had given up the whoreson’s name before she died. However, she hadn’t been able to explain why he’d hunt her. It made no sense. Hazel posed no danger to him.
Questions spun through her mind like autumn leaves in a gale. There were no answers though.
But of one thing she was certain.
Standing here in the fading afternoon light, with the scent of wild thyme and summer grass heavy in the air, something shifted inside her. The grief and anger were still there—carved upon her soul—but beneath them, something harder took root.
Burning, stubborn determination.
This cottage, this garden, these woods—they were hers. Not because of blood or birth, but because she’d lived here, worked here. She’d helped make this place a haven. This secluded corner of Mull, these memories, were real, even if everything else wasn’t.
She knew every tree, every stone, every twist in the path through the woods as intimately as the lines on her own palms. The people of Lochbuie came to her when their children burned with fever, when their wives struggled in childbirth, and when their old ones needed easing into death.
This was where she belonged. She wouldn’t let some nameless threat drive her from this place.
Hazel walked to the cottage and pushed open the door. Inside, nothing had changed. It was as if Siùsan still lived here: the bundles of herbs hanging from the rafters, the worn table where they’d shared countless meals and prepared poultices and tinctures together, the pallet where her aunt had died still unmade in the corner.
It was all evidence of a life shared and of love given.
Pain lanced through Hazel’s chest, but she forced herself to breathe through it. Continuing without Siùsan was unthinkable, yet her mother was gone, and there was no bringing her back.
Duncan brayed again from outside, impatient for his evening meal. And despite everything, Hazel’s lips tugged up at the corners. At least she wasn’t entirely alone.
Leaving the cottage, she went to tend to her stubborn, loyal friend. She scratched behind his ears, her hands steadier now that she’d made her decision.
“It’s just ye and me now, pal,” she murmured, watching him snatch at barley straw. “And we’re staying.”
3: IN YER DEBT
THE BOAR BURST from the undergrowth without warning.
Craeg had only a heartbeat to mark the creature—all bristling fur and curved tusks—before his courser reared. The young stallion’s scream split the air, hooves pawing at nothing. Craeg grabbed for the reins, for Ruadh’s mane, for anything that might keep him in the saddle.
But the stallion twisted mid-rear, and suddenly, there was only sky and the sickening lurch of falling.
He hit the ground hard. Pain exploded through his left side as he rolled, instinct driving him to get clear before those thrashing hooves came down on him. The impact punched the air from his lungs.For a moment, the world narrowed to the taste of blood in his mouth and the smell of earth and crushed grass.
