“No,” Flora agreed, easing into her seat, “but they’ll come. Word travels faster than hooves these days. And faster still when gold’s involved.”
Gold?
Fiona wrapped her hands around the cup, letting the heat unknot the cold ache in her fingers. Her bruises stung faintly, and the salty breeze had left her skin tight.
She needed warmth. Answers. Maybe a miracle.
“What’s on Skye that they want?” she asked.
Flora and Harris exchanged a look.
Her temper snapped like kindling.
Fiona jabbed a finger at Harris without taking her eyes off Flora.
“I’ve crossed half of Scotland for ye. Nearly drowned for ye. Been bruised, chased, frozen, and insulted by a horse—repeatedly. Someone speak plain.”
Harris opened his mouth.
Fiona snapped her hand up.
“Not you.”
He shut it again with a scowl.
Flora watched the exchange with amusement. Sharp, assessing, and wholly unimpressed. She set her cup down with deliberate care.
“I want the truth,” Fiona insisted, turning her full fire on her.
Flora lifted one brow, the corner of her mouth tilting. “Aye. Definitely Cameron fire.”
Harris muttered under his breath, “Cameron trouble.”
“Same thing,” Flora said easily, and Fiona felt absurdly exposed, as if the woman could read her very soul with a glance.
But the warmth vanished as Flora leaned forward, elbows on her knees, her voice dropping into something older than any of them.
“What Mackenzie carries,” she continued, “what the Prince entrusted taeus—it cannot be buried the way folk bury coin. Not in earth, where greedy men can dig. Not in water, where tides shift loyalty. Not where kings send soldiers sniffin’ like hounds.”
She let that settle.
Let Fiona hear the weight of it.
Harris crossed his arms, the movement defensive in a way Fiona had never seen before. “We melted what we could. Hammered it thin.”
“Plate,” Flora clarified. “Flexible. Light. Pure gold. Enough to buy a rebellion twice over. Enough to damn every soul who touches it.”
Fiona blinked, pulse thudding. “Where is it?”
Harris finally met her eyes.
“In Dubh’s saddle.”
Silence.
Then—
“You’re telling me,” Fiona enunciated, “that the Jacobite gold, the treasure men would kill for, has literally been under your arse this whole time?”
