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Iona heard the fighting begin as the sky began to pale, and she knew whose it was before she would let herself say it.

He had come.

Shouting broke out high on the hill, and then steel, and then horses, the ground under her drumming with them. Her heart climbed into her throat and beat there until she could not swallow. She sat on the heap of old heather in the door of the hut with her nails driven into her palms, and listened for his voice in all that din, and could not find it.

Live, she begged him. Live long enough for me to tell ye. I’ll shout it from the walls, only live.

Most of the bowmen had gone up toward the noise. The rest stood at the lip of the hollow and over the stone pen, watching the crest.

Her father and Leith stood at the edge of the lantern light, looking up the hill.

“MacVey’s walked into it,” Leith said. “Just as I told ye he would.”

“Ye told me he’d come up the track,” her father said.

Nobody was looking at her.

Iona drew her skirt up over her knee with her bound hands, slowly, a little at a time. The knot of the strap would not give to fingers gone dead with the cord. She worried it loose with her nails. Then the little knife was in her palms, the handle warm from her skin.

She wedged the handle deep into the heather between her feet, blade up, and laid the cord against the edge. She sawed. The cord was tough and her fingers were clumsy and cold. Then the cord parted, and the blood came prickling back into her hands so fiercely that she nearly cried out.

She looked at the stone pen. It was still under guard. She could free nobody there without getting a lad killed.

So she ran the other way.

She came up off the heather with the knife in her hand and went around the back of the hut, low, toward the horses tethered against the wall. If she could reach a horse, she could reach the hill, and him.

A hand closed on her arm above the elbow.

It was not a hard grip. It did not need to be. She knew those fingers. They had stroked her hair the day the King’s letter came.

“Iona,” her father said softly. “Where would ye go, lass, in the dark?”

“To my husband,” Iona said. “Let go of me, Father, or I’ll scream so loud he hears me over all of it.”

“Scream, then,” her father said. “It’ll bring him quicker.”

He turned her back toward the light. She did not fight him. She let her shoulders drop and her head hang, and went where he led her as meek as a lamb. Let them both think the fight had gone out of her. Two men would have the knife off her in a heartbeat, and she would get one stroke with it, no more. She meant to wait for her moment and make that stroke hurt. She kept the knife flat in a fold of her skirt, and he did not look at her hands.

He brought her to Leith and stood her there.

“She’s cut her cord,” her father said. “Mind her.”

Leith looked her up and down. The lantern ran along his rings. Up on the hill a man screamed, and Iona felt it in her own teeth.

“Ye’ve spirit, my lady,” Leith said. “I’ll grant ye that. It’ll make the riding home more interesting.” He came a step closer. “Listen to me now, for I’ll say it the once. Yer MacVey is dying on that hill. When it’s done, ye ride to Leith with me, and ye ride willing or ye ride tied across my saddle. I’ve a priest who’ll say what I pay him to say. Ye’ll be my wife before the week is out, and I’ll no’ wait on yer leave for any of it.”

The blood drained out of her face so fast that the hollow swam. Her father’s fingers stayed on her arm, mild and heavy, and he let his friend say it.

“Ye’ll have to kill me first,” Iona said, very low, with her eyes on the ground.

“Och, no.” Leith smiled. “I’ll have to teach ye.”

He put his hand to her throat.

The rings were cold. He closed his fingers around her neck until she could feel every one of them, and then he tightened them, slowly, watching her face, until the breath stuck in her chest and the lantern light went grey at the edges. Her heart beat against his palm like a trapped bird. She did not lift a hand. She made herself stand there and choke, meek and still, and let him think she was beaten.