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God knew he scarcely understood it himself.

*

The door closed behind Sorcha and Destiny with a soft, final sound. For a long moment, Gavan did not move. He stood where she had left him, gaze fixed on the empty space she had occupied, as if the air itself still held the shape of her defiance.

Cameron broke the silence first. “That was harsher than necessary,” his brother said quietly.

Gavan exhaled through his nose. “Necessary is not measured in comfort.” He turned at last, flexing his right hand slowly.

The ache in his right shoulder pulsed, a dull reminder he refused to acknowledge.

“You think she lies?” Cameron asked.

Gavan did not answer immediately. He walked towards the hearth instead, staring into the embers as if they might offer something clearer than the chaos of the last hour.

“I think,” he said at last, voice low, “that she is not telling us everything.”

Cameron’s boots sounded softly behind him. “Because she is guilty?”

“Because she and her brother moved in circles that now stink of treachery.” The words hung heavily between them. “I have dug into some of the records in Dingwall. Her brother traded through the burgh more often than his standing required. He met with Crown factors. Signed witness lines on documents that passed through too many hands.”

“Those same routes appear in the forged letters,” Cameron added. “The ones bearing our name.”

A slow, dangerous heat spread through Gavan’s chest. “Her brother may have forged them,” he said. “Whether he shaped those letters or was forced into it, I cannot yet say.”

Gavan stared into the fire, watching the flames fold and shift against the blackened logs while Sorcha’s face refused to leave his thoughts. He remembered the way she had knelt before him, exhausted and half frozen, yet still holding herself rigid with pride. There had been fear in her, certainly, but not the slippery fear of someone guarding a lie. Her voice had trembled because she was grieving, not because she had been caught.

And still, he could not wholly trust it.

Blood loyalty ran too deep in the Highlands for that. Twins, most of all. What one carried in silence, the other often bore without question. Sorcha might never have forged a single letter herself, yet she could still have shielded William out of love, out of habit, out of the blind devotion family demanded before honour or reason.

“She claims she did not know what her brother intended,” Gavan said at last, his voice low. “That by the time she learned the letters had been forged it was already beyond her power to stop.”

Cameron leaned back slightly, studying him across the firelight. “Do you believe her?”

Gavan let out a slow breath. That was the question that had been grinding against him since she had left the room.

“She knew he was angry,” he said slowly. “She knew he blamed the Munros for her clan’s losses. But she says she believed it was only talk. Desperation. Pride.” He exhaled through his nose, frustration roughening the sound. “God help us, I think she speaks honestly.”

The admission settled heavily between them.

Cameron’s expression softened slightly. “Meaning and consequence rarely walk the same path, brother.”

Gavan looked back into the fire. William Sutherland might not have intended executions or Crown scrutiny or the ruin of innocent men, but intent did not erase the damage once done. The forged letters had spread suspicion like poison through the Highlands, staining every clan they touched.

“If her brother helped craft those lies,” Gavan said quietly, “then she stands closer to the danger than she understands, whether she wished it or not.”

“And if William acted alone?” Cameron asked.

Gavan did not answer because he did not know which possibility unsettled him more. That Sorcha might still be hiding loyalties dangerous to them all, or that she had been dragged into destruction she neither wanted nor deserved, punished for a treachery she had been powerless to prevent.

Cameron stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You offered her Lemlair for a reason beyond punishment.”

Gavan’s gaze snapped towards him. “She is leverage. Nothing more.”

Cameron’s mouth curved faintly, unconvinced. “Aye.”

Silence stretched again.