Not power.
But the heart of what we fought for.
Keep it hidden.
Keep it safe.
And remember mo ghràidh—
It was never for the gold.
It was always for the ones we leave behind.
— Harris Mackenzie
Heather covered her mouth.
Flynn pulled her against him, arms strong and sure, holding her while her body shook with the weight of centuries settling into her bones.
“He wrote to her,” Heather sobbed. “He wrote to Fiona. To the daughter. Flynn… he knew. He knew someone would come.”
Flynn kissed her hair, speechless for once.
Heather pulled back, wiping her face.
Then froze.
Because deep in the hollow…
The torchlight struck something else.
“Flynn,” she whispered. “There’s more.”
Chapter 45
Heather—Present Day
The glint in the hollow wasn’t a trick of light.
“Move back a wee bit,” Flynn murmured.
She shuffled aside on her knees, heart rattling her ribs. Flynn angled the flashlight deeper into the chamber and reached in, fingers careful, feeling past the iron box they’d already taken out. Something small and round shifted with a faint clink.
He drew his hand back.
A coin lay in his palm. Its shine had long since dulled, but it was unmistakably gold—its edge milled, its face stamped with a royal profile worn nearly smooth.
Heather’s breath left her in a punch. “Oh my God.”
Flynn turned it between gloved fingers. “It’s real,” he said softly. “More Jacobite gold…”
Heather’s vision swam. For so long, the gold had been story, grief, rumor. A pattern in her mother’s notes. A challenge in Eilidh’s eyes. Now it was weight and metal and fact.
“It was never a fairy tale,” she whispered.
Flynn pressed the coin gently into her gloved hand.
Her fingers closed around it, feeling its solid weight.
