CHAPTER 1
The guard foundErica in the passage outside the solar. He stood with his helm in his hands, sweat at his hairline, though the air was cool.
“Me Lady,” he said. “Laird MacGee is riding in.”
A cold shiver ran down her spine. She turned to the open door, where her mother stood by the window with a needle between her fingers and despair in her eyes. No time to argue. No time to hide the worry that had lived within these walls for three months.
“See him to the hall,” Erica instructed. “Open the gate proper, and keep the yard clear.”
“Aye, me Lady.”
Word ran faster than feet, and by the time Erica and her mother reached the Great Hall, the room had gone too quiet. Servantsstood straighter than the hour demanded, and a pair of kitchen boys froze at the threshold with a trencher and did not dare move.
Laird MacGee entered with six men and the smile of a man who had practiced it in front of a mirror.
“Lady Dunn,” he greeted, bowing over her mother’s hand. “Such a lovely morning, would ye nae say?”
“Laird MacGee,” her mother returned. “Ye have brought a full company for a friendly call.”
“It is a long journey,” he said. “Friends travel safer in numbers.”
He took the chair offered and did not ask whose he displaced.
Erica stood behind her mother’s right shoulder and kept her hands still.
“Ye will forgive me if I ask at once,” MacGee continued. “Word is thin, and rumor is cruel. Yer faither, and yer braither. There has been nay sign of them still?”
“Nay,” her mother said. “Three months this week.”
MacGee’s face arranged itself into grief. “Three months,” he repeated, as if he, too, felt the weight. “I hoped for better news as I rode. I didnae hear it.”
His tone said he had heard everything he wished to use.
Erica watched the rim of his cup rather than his mouth and caught the way two servants tried to look nowhere at all. The hall seemed to breathe shallow.
“Ye ken Bryden men,” her mother said with a smile that did not reach her eyes. “They have a hard habit of finding their way back.”
“Aye,” MacGee said softly. “And a harder habit of finding trouble first.”
Silence tightened, and Erica felt her teeth touch.
MacGee set his cup down.
“Forgive a blunt friend,” he said. “Alliances are made of more than hope. Yer Laird has dealt quick and sharp in the past season. I warned him that such bargains grow teeth. There are names that daenae forget insult, and there are men who daenae forgive lost coin.”
Her mother’s hand shook once over the table linen. Erica pressed two fingers against her wrist and felt her pulse jump.
“We are Bryden,” her mother said. “Our word stands.”
“Aye,” he said. “And yet there is a word that hangs in the air like smoke.”
Erica knew the word he was referring to.
He didn’t even have to say it, yet she heard it.
Traitor.
The servants heard it as well and failed to hide that they had. The boys at the door looked at their shoes as if the stones might swallow them.
