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He laughed, low, despite everything, and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Then he sat beside her, holding her hands, as they contemplated the postponed waiting and the work waiting beyond the solar's quiet walls.

By the following morning, the castle had transformed. The soft bustle of wedding preparation was replaced by hurried footsteps and urgent conversations, carts rolling through the gates loaded with grain sacks instead of bolts of cloth, the ring of hammers on iron carrying up from the smithy at every hour, men moving along the battlements checking rope and stone and the old machinery at the arrow-slits that hadn't needed testing in months.

"I want these counted twice," Neilina said, setting down a ledger of stores in front of Elspeth and five other maids that morning and found, somewhat to her own surprise, that the work steadied her. Numbers didn't lie, didn't waver, didn't change their answer depending on how frightened the person doing the counting happened to be. "Grain, salted meat, oil for the lamps. If this becomes a siege, every miscounted sack is a day less we'll have when it matters."

"I'll see it done properly, my lady." Elspeth took up the quill, no trace of the warm, teasing woman who'd been fussing over wedding linens a day before.

Neilina spent the morning moving between the storerooms and the kitchens, tallying, redistributing, settling a dispute between two cooks over whose stores took priority with the same flat, unbothered authority she'd once used on Cailleach's guards.

By midday, her hands were chalk-dusted from the tally boards and her feet ached from the stone floors. She hadn't seen Marcas since dawn, when he'd left her bed still half-asleep with a kiss against her temple and a murmured apology about the gates needing him before the light was even fully up.

She found the first note that afternoon, tucked beneath the ledger on the small table in her chamber where she'd gone to change her gown after colliding with a child running with a jar of honey.

The west gate holds well enough for now. Baird complains about the hinges, which I take as a sign they're sound, since Baird complains about everything regardless of its actual condition. I missed ye at the midday meal. — M

She laughed, alone in the empty room, and found a scrap of parchment of her own, scrawling a reply before she talked herself out of the small, foolish pleasure of it.

The grain stores will see us through six weeks at minimum, longer if we're careful. Tell Baird his hinges are fine and his complaining is a family tradition, same as his grandfather's was, if Elspeth's stories are tae be trusted. I missed ye too, though I'll deny it if ye repeat that tae Lachlan. — N

She left it where she'd found his, and went back to the stores, and found, three hours later, his reply waiting on the same table, his hand considerably more hurried than it had been that morning.

Lachlan already kens. He kens everything, which is why I've stopped telling him anything of consequence. The eastern wall needs another day's work before it's sound. I'll find ye tonight, whatever hour it takes, and I promise ye that I will take my sweet time with ye. — M

She pressed the note to her chest a moment before she could stop herself, something warm cutting through the exhaustion and the low, constant hum of fear that had settled over the whole castle since the scout's first warning. She tucked it into the small chest she’d found to be a safe place to keep the precious messages.

Over the following days, the notes became their way of showing each other affection when there was no time left for anything softer. They exchanged short lines passed between storerooms and battlements, he wrote a brief note for her to meet him in a shadowed corridor and entirely ravished her with kisses before hurrying towards his next task.

At a point, they passed each other in the yard and their hands briefly touched then squeezed in passing. She found herself watching for his notes the way she'd once watched for his footsteps in the corridor. She understood, turning over yet another hurried scrap of parchment late one night by candlelight, that this small, rushed note was its own kind of love letter, written in the margins of a war neither of them had asked for.

Ye work too hard, she wrote back, once after finding him collapsed into a chair in his study past midnight, quill still in hand, half a letter to Fearchar's scouts unfinished before him. She didn't wake him. She only draped a blanket over his shoulders, and left a note tucked beneath his own hand where he'd find it first upon waking.

Ye fell asleep at yer desk again. I didnae have the heart tae wake ye, though I'll want an explanation in the morning for why ye're neglecting yer own bed in favor of a chair that will ruin yer back. Rest, MacKinnon. The walls will still need mending tomorrow. — N

She found his reply two mornings later, tucked into the ledger she'd left in his study. It was shorter than most of the others, but it stayed with her the whole of that day regardless.

I keep the chair because it faces the door. I keep watching the door because some part of me still cannae quite believe ye're truly here each time it opens. Forgive an old habit, formed from nearly losing ye twice already. I'll find ye tonight, I want ye. — M

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The scout rode in at a hard gallop just past midday, his horse lathered and blowing, and Marcas was already crossing the bailey before the man had fully dismounted.

"How many men?" he said, no preamble.

"Three hundred men, maybe more, laird, moving south from the old MacRath holdings. They're nae hiding it this time. They have their banners up in plain march, two days' ride from here at most, less if they push the pace."

Three hundred. Marcas felt the number settle cold into his chest, the last of any doubt about Cailleach's intentions burning away. He ran a hand through his hair and swore under his breath, then straightened purposefully.

"Secure every gate," he said, turning, already moving toward the walls. "Double the watch on every road. I want word sent tae Fearchar's men at the border post within the hour, and send riders tae the outlying farms. Anyone within half a day's ride of this keep needs warning tae come inside the walls now, nae wait for the enemy tae be at their doors before deciding it's urgent. Go."

The order went out fast, the household's careful preparations finally finding their purpose, and within hours the first of the frightened villagers began arriving at the gates. Several farmers with carts loaded hurriedly with whatever they'd managed to save, mothers carrying infants and dragging older children by the hand, an old shepherd driving a small, bewildered flock ahead of him because he couldn't bear to leave them behind to Cailleach's men.

Marcas stood near the gate overseeing the flow, and it was there, amid the rising chaos of frightened people and confused animals and too few hands to manage either, that he found Neilina.

She'd planted herself near the inner yard with a small table dragged out and a ledger already open, and she was working through the arriving families with the same calm, methodical efficiency she'd brought to the grain stores. She began directing a young mother with two children toward the great hall, instructing a servant to bring water to an elderly man who'd clearly walked further than his legs could withstand while also settling a dispute between two families over whose cart could be unloaded first with a few plain, unhurried words that ended the argument before it could escalate.

"Ye'll have space in the west hall," she told a weathered farmer, not looking up from her tally. "There's straw being brought for bedding, and the kitchens are preparing a proper meal for everyone by evening. Yer animals can go in the lower paddock, past the stables. Tell the groom I sent ye, he'll ken where."

"My lady." The farmer's voice cracked with relief. "We didnae ken where else tae go. We heard they were burning…I…"