Cold, briny, sharp with kelp and storm.
It clung to her lashes, salted her tongue, threaded itself into her hair like a warning—or a welcome. Even before Harris gripped her waist and lifted her down from the fishing boat, she felt it:
Skye was different.
Older than the mainland. Wilder than Lochaber.
A place that didn’t bow to kings or redcoats or men with guns and grudges.
A place that breathed in deep, tidal lungs.
Wind barreled down the narrow inlet, tearing through her cloak and yanking her curls clean off her face. Great basalt cliffs towered above them, spines of black rock rising like the ribs of a long-dead giant whose bones still shaped the island. Gulls wheeled overhead, crying sharp warnings to no one in particular. The tide foamed white at her boots, hungry as a living thing.
The boatman shoved off so fast she barely had both feet on land before he was rowing for his life. He didn’t look back. Sensible men rarely did.
Harris stood beside her with Dubh’s reins in hand, scanning the ridge the way hunted men count exits.
“You’ve been here before,” Fiona snorted, seeing the way his shoulders tightened. Not in nostalgia, but in old dread.
“Aye.” His voice nearly vanished into the wind. “But not when the price on my head could buy a kingdom.”
She huffed. “A steep price for a man who nearly drowned himself for dramatics.”
He ignored her.
Typical.
“Flora will be waitin’,” he said.
“Flora who?”
He did not elaborate.
Also typical.
So she followed.
Up the slope.
Into a wind that smelled of peat-smoke, ancient stone, and secrets older than clan feuds.
Dubh snorted behind them, ears flicking at every gust as though decoding messages carried across the island. Fiona reached out to comfort him.
He leaned away by exactly an inch, politely offended.
“Rude,” she muttered.
“He approves of ye,” Harris said.
“He won’t even let me touch him.”
“Aye, he’s not tryin’ tae end ye though.” As if that were the height of praise. “Approval.”
She glared at the horse. Dubh glared right back.
They crested the hill.
And there, tucked between two jutting rocks as if sheltered by the land itself, stood a cottage. Low-roofed. Weather-beaten. Smoke curling from the chimney in a thin, skewed ribbons.
