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The trees had changed since Sorcha Sutherland last rode this road. Or perhaps it was only that she had changed.

The pines rose like dark spires against a winter sky, the colour of tarnished pewter, their boughs heavy with last night’s frost. Every breath Sorcha drew seemed to scrape her throat, sharp and cold as broken glass. The air smelled of wet bark and leaf rot and distant smoke from someone’s hearth, someone’s warmth, someone’s life continuing as if the world had not shattered. Somewhere far off, faint as memory, she thought she caught the scent of peat and pine burning together, the smell of Yuletide fires meant to hold back winter’s darkness and welcome the returning light.

Her boots were soaked through. Each step made a quiet, miserable sound, leather squelching, mud clinging. Her skirts were stained to the hem, and the thin cloak she had taken from the peg by the back door of her aunt’s house—without permission—was no match for the wind that wormed beneath the wool and pressed icy fingers against her ribs.

Yule. The word itself felt like an ache.

By now, hearths across the Highlands would be lit against the longest nights. Families would gather close to the fire, passing bread and ale from hand to hand while children listened to old stories carried through the ages. Evergreen boughs would hang over doorways. Candles would glow against frost-dark windows. Somewhere, mothers would still be singing the same quiet songs Sorcha’s own mother once sang.

Her mother was gone. Her clan was no longer hers. And for the first time in all her life, Yuletide would come without the certainty of belonging anywhere at all. Sorcha’s throat tightened as she pushed herself forward, the memory of Yuletide pressing against her ribs like a bruise she could not escape.

She should have had a horse. She should have had an escort. She should have had her name as a shield. But Sutherland had become a curse. And perhaps it always had been, only she had been too young and too trusting to understand that blood could become a chain, dragging someone down into waters in which they never chose to swim.

William.

Even thinking his name made something tear inside her, a tender rip that bled into everything. He had been her brother, aye, but more than that. Her twin. Her other half. They had shared the same womb, the same cradle. As children they had made up secret languages, had shared sweets stolen from the kitchen when Cook was not looking, and had taken comfort in each other’s presence when the world felt too large.

Her grandmother had once called them one heart in two bodies. Now the clan used those same words as proof that she could not be trusted. Two halves of one soul, they had claimed.

As if that meant she must be as guilty as he was. As if William’s sins were stamped on her skin, visible to anyone who cared to look closely. As if the forged letters tying him to Jacobite rumours could reach across miles and destroy her as surely as they threatened to destroy him.

Sorcha’s stomach knotted as she pushed through a thicket of birch and bracken. Somewhere ahead, beyond these trees and the rising slope, lay Foulis Castle and her best friend, Destiny.

Warmth. Safety. A hearth. A friend who once laughed with her and promised that no matter what storms came, Sorcha would always have a place. But she had not expected to come crawling and with shame so heavy on her shoulders it felt like stones in her cloak. And yet she walked, because if she did not, William would die.

The image rose without warning—her brother’s face, pale and furious, eyes bright with panic he would never admit to anyone. The filthy stone walls of a tolbooth. The noose. The cold, practical finality of a sentence that could be carried out too quickly because it served someone’s purpose to make an example of him.

She pressed her fingertips to her throat as if she could hold back the sick fear. You can still save him, she told herself. You must.

Gavan Munro.

The thought landed like a blow. Her pulse stuttered, and for a moment, the forest seemed to tilt.

Gavan, who had every right to despise her. Gavan, whom she had shot. She could still remember the crack of the pistol, the recoil that jarred up her arm, the instant horror as he staggered. She could still see the blooming red stain on his linen shirt, the sharp, stunned disbelief in his eyes.

She had fired in self-defence over eight months ago. But time did not soften what she had done. If anything, it made it clearer.

The forest swallowed her, the path narrowing into shadow. The wind moved through the branches with a low, mournful sound, like the moan of something wounded and unable to die.

Sorcha pulled her cloak tighter, and her hand brushed the cool shape beneath it, an emerald pendant resting against her breast. Her mother’s necklace. Her last piece of the woman who had loved her and William unconditionally.

The emerald was set in silver, a green as deep as summer bracken. Her mother had worn it on feast days and holy days, on evenings when she sang at the hearth and the whole house seemed safe simply because she was in it. Sorcha remembered as a child curling against her mother’s skirts, staring at the stone as it caught the firelight, certain it held secrets.

When her mother died, the necklace had been pressed into Sorcha’s palm. For your future, her aunt had said. For your marriage portion. For your safety, should you ever need it.

Sorcha’s throat tightened. She had sworn she would never let it go. It had been the one thing she still held that William had not stained. It was proof she had once been loved, and the only thing that gave her any hope for a future.

Her steps slowed as the forest thickened again. A narrow ravine cut through the land to her left, wet stones gleaming, a thin trickle of water running over them. On the right, the trees rose close, trunks dark as iron.

Something rustled behind her. Sorcha froze. The hair at the nape of her neck prickled, and every instinct screamed. She turned sharply, her gaze sweeping the shadows between the trunks. “Hello?” Her voice sounded too small, too thin in the cold.

Silence.

Only the wind. Only the drip of water.

Her heart hammered harder. Do not be a fool. Keep moving.

She took a step forward. Another. The rustle came again, closer this time. Not a bird. Not a squirrel. Footsteps.