“Moray Breccan has escaped from the dungeons.”
When Sidra was a girl living in the cradle of the vale, she had often gone deep into the hills when she was troubled or upset. She would take her staff, sometimes herding the sheep but most of the time she’d go alone. She would walk and walk and walk. She would walk until she found a marker, which could be anything—a strangely shaped rock, a small trickle of waterfall, a patch of wildflowers, a cloud in the sky that cast a distinct shadow on the grass. Then she would stop and sit beside it. Usually by then she was so tired from walking that her troubles had lost the worst of their sting and she was beginning to see a way out of them.
She wanted now, more than anything, to walk the hills.
“I need to make one more stop,” she told Blair after he had lifted her up to the saddle.
Yvaine had long since galloped away to rejoin her guards’ search, leaving Blair and Sidra behind on Rodina’s croft. Blair hadn’t even flinched when the captain whispered into his ear the news of Moray’s escape, but his eyes were quick, taking in every flicker of shadow as if the prisoner could spring forward at any moment.
“I’ll follow you,” Blair said, and Sidra nodded, waiting for him to mount his horse.
They rode side by side at a gentle trot, past white chickweed and violet mallow blooming along the edges of the road. The wind blew warmly from the south, unfurling clouds across the sky as the sun continued its morning rise. A deer and her speckled fawn bounded from a thicket and stopped halfway up a hillside of heather to gaze back at Sidra curiously.
She couldn’t walk the hills, so she rode home. To the cottage that now sat quiet and empty and full of shadows and a kail yard slowly being taken over by weeds.
Blair helped her down. This time she winced when her foot touched the ground, and he noticed. Yes, Sidra thought, so weary she could have collapsed right there in the grass. He must have sensed something wasn’t quite right, but he only ensured she was steady before turning to search the cottage. It was clear, as Sidra knew it would be, and Blair waited outside while she sat at her old kitchen table, trying to think of what to do. How to resolve a situation she didn’t want to handle.
She closed her eyes, but the house felt hollow and strange. Sidra could hear the wind rattling the shutters, panting on old ashes in the hearth.
She would find no answers here, even though Moray had once stood in this very place. It made her shudder to remember that night.
Sidra gritted her teeth.
She pushed herself up from the table and emerged back into her sun-limned garden. Blair, as expected, was standing by the gate. Sidra paused to pick an armful of her herbs, as well as a few of the weeds. She had been working several hours a day to find a cure for the blight, but nothing slowed its spread; she could only treat minor symptoms in her patients who also suffered from it. She sighed as she tucked the harvest into her basket.
Her gaze absently drifted to the hill. The place where she had once stabbed Moray.
“I’m going to visit my father-in-law for a spell,” she told Blair.
He gathered their horses and walked beside her up the hill to Graeme’s croft. When Sidra paused, halfway up the path, Blair offered her his arm.
Sidra hesitated but took it, swallowing her embarrassment as she leaned on him. If Blair was going to shadow her for the next few weeks or months or however long until Torin returned, then he would eventually discover the truth about her foot. He would also eventually know she was carrying a child. Sidra’s mind began to reel as she wondered if she should just go ahead and announce both of her conditions to the clan.
No, I can’t. Not yet.
Sometimes she couldn’t sleep at night, and in those silent hours she would worry over her child. She didn’t know if the blight would affect the baby growing inside her. Eventually, it might, given its creeping power. But even if the blight never touched her child, she didn’t know if the herbs she had previously taken had already done so. It was too much to think about, though, when she was lying in the dark those sleepless nights, wide-eyed and lonely and heavy hearted.
She sighed with relief to reach Graeme’s gate and slipped her hand from Blair’s arm.
“I’ll wait here for you,” he said.
Sidra thanked him and found Graeme inside the cottage, reading a thick mainland tome by the hearth.
“Sidra?” he greeted her, surprised. He stood and removed his spectacles. “Did you need me to watch Maisie?”
“No, she’s with the castle care keeper today,” Sidra said. “I need your advice. Another man has been lost beneath my watch, and I don’t know what to do.”