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The problem was that Evander couldn’t say for sure if he had or not. He had been too wrapped up in his anger to notice anything beyond it for the past few days.

That was the cruelest part. He had been so busy guarding the borders that he had never thought to guard against the man standing at his shoulder.

This didn’t happen overnight. A man didn’t go mad overnight. Hate was a slow thing; Evander knew that all too well. It grew in the dark, and the more resentment one fostered, the bigger it grew.

Evander had let it grow within his own walls. Now his oldest friend stood with a sword raised over his wife, smiling as if he had finally come home.

“There he is,” Callum breathed. “There’s the Wolf.”

Evander drew his sword. He didn’t take his eyes off Callum’s blade. He moved sideways, slow and careful, putting himself between the blade and his wife, the way a man moved between a hound and a lamb.

“Freya.” He kept his voice low. “Come to me. Slowly.”

She slid along the wall toward him. Callum’s sword tracked her. Evander’s tracked Callum’s. When her shoulder brushed his back, he felt her tremble, and something in him went quiet and cold as a winter loch.

“Behind me, lass. Stay there.”

“Evander—”

“Stay there.”

She stayed.

Callum watched all of it with that terrible, bright smile. “Look at ye. Look at the way ye stand. I’ve missed it, me Laird. Ye’ve nae looked like that in weeks.”

“Put down yer sword, Callum.”

“Nay.” Callum shook his head. “Nae until ye remember who ye are. I’ll nae watch ye rot in a castle, changing clouts and bowing to MacArthur greybeards. Ye were meant for more.”

“I was meant for this.” Evander’s voice didn’t rise. “Ye’d have murdered a woman in a nursery while her bairns were downstairs havin’ a wee treat.”

“Yer woman. Yer braither’s bairns. They’re nae yers, or have ye forgotten that, me Laird?”

“Mine,” Evander said. “All three of them.”

Callum’s smile faltered for the first time.

Good. Let him falter.

Evander lifted his sword and settled into the stance they’d both learned in the mud of a dozen camps, the one Callum knew as well as his own name.

“Ye want the Wolf?” he said softly. “Then ye should fight someone who can actually fight back, ye coward. Did ye nae learn anything all these years ye spent next to me?”

For a moment, nothing in the room moved. Not the dust in the sunlight. Not the woman at his back. Not the man before him, whom he had loved like a brother.

Evander didn’t dare hope that Callum would come to his senses. Even if he did, the fact was that he had raised a sword against his wife, intending to strike her down—a defenseless woman.

Freya was many things, but Callum was a trained fighter, and with a sword, she was no match for him.

Callum stood there, breathing heavily. He glowered at Evander. “Ye’re the one who’s forgotten, me Laird. But ye’ll learn to fight again, or the clan will fall to our enemies.”

Then he came at him.

37

Freya had seen Evander fight before.

It was a frightening but fascinating thing.