Read Chapter 13: The Fracture

The tower room was cold even with the fire banked in the grate. Iona had not slept. She had sat in the chair by the window since Lachlan had left, watching the moon drag shadows across the yard below, and now the grey light of dawn was bleeding through the glass. The lock on the door had not turned since he'd thrown it. She had not tested it. There was no point.

A tray had appeared at some hour she could not name—porridge gone stiff, bread going hard at the edges—but she had not touched it. She was still wearing the clothes from yesterday. The sketch was folded in her pocket, pressed against the ledger figures she had copied in her own hand. Both of them useless to her now, trapped as she was. But not entirely useless. Not yet.

A noise. Soft, deliberate. The scrape of a key in the lock.

Iona rose from the chair, heart pounding against her ribs. The door swung open and Gregor MacAllister slipped through, closing it behind him with a quiet click. He carried no tray, no pretense. He simply stood there, looking at her with those dark, careful eyes.

"You," she said. Flat.

"You're still angry. Good." He moved toward the hearth, warming his hands though the fire was low. "Angry is better than afraid."

"Where is my husband?"

"Below. He took a horse out at first light. The southern fence line, his steward said." Gregor's mouth thinned. "He won't be back for hours."

"And Elspeth?"

"Asleep. She doesn't rise before noon when she's won." He turned to face her. "You have time. But not much."

"Time for what?"

"To hear the truth." His voice was quiet, steady. "The full truth. Not the pieces I've given you."

Iona crossed her arms, pressing her fingers into her sleeves. "You told me you owed a life-debt to my father. That he saved your family. You told me that was why you came to Braemore."

"It was a lie."

The words landed between them like a stone in still water. Iona stared at him. The fire cracked and settled.

"I fabricated the debt," Gregor continued. "Every word of it. The drowning, the rescue, the gratitude—none of it happened. My father never met yours. I came to Braemore looking for work because I needed to be inside these walls. That is the truth."

"Who are you?"

He met her gaze. "Gregor MacAllister is a name I took. My family name is Ross. I am a nephew of the Rosses who held land south of the river before the Campbells took it."

The breath went out of her. The innkeeper's voice came back to her—*Tam lives under the name Jamie Ross*—and the pieces slotted together with a sickening click. She took a step back, her hand going to the sketch in her pocket.

"The shepherd. The other witness. He's your kin too."

"Distantly." Gregor's voice gentled. "I didn't know about Tam until you found him. I swear that on my mother's grave. I came to this house to find proof of what the Campbells did to my family, and I found it instead. But I never sent Tam. I never knew where he was."

"But you knew he existed." Her voice was sharp. "You knew he saw something."

"I knew there was a witness. The Rosses passed down what we knew—that the raid was not what the Campbells claimed, that someone on their side fired the first shot, that the whole feud had been engineered to swallow our lands." He took a step toward her. "My family lost everything in that feud. The house, the fields, the name. My father died in a Campbell debtors' prison when I was twelve. My mother followed within the year. I am the last of them. I came here to see justice done, and I will not apologize for it."

Iona's hands were shaking. She forced them still. "You lied to me."

"I did."

"You used my father's name as a tool."

"I did." His jaw tightened. "And I am sorry for it. Not for the cause—but for the deception. You deserved better than lies. I see that now."

She laughed, bitter and short. "You see it now. Convenient."

"It is convenient that you now hold what I have been trying to find for years." He nodded toward her pocket. "Gregor MacAllister's confession. A sketch of the man who fired the first shot. Ledger figures from the Campbell accounts. You have more evidence in your pocket than I have gathered in three years inside this house."

"Then perhaps you should have looked harder."

"I was looking for papers. Account books. Letters." He shook his head. "I never imagined the answer would walk into my room wearing a MacTavish plaid."

Iona turned away from him, moving to the window. The yard below was empty. A single crow perched on the fence post, watching nothing. She pressed her forehead against the cold glass.

"Why should I trust you now?" she asked.

"Because I have told you the only truth that matters." His voice came from behind her, closer than she expected. "I want the same thing you want. The truth buried beneath this feud. The people who started it held accountable. Your family's land saved and my family's name restored."

"Restored." She turned. "You think the truth will bring your father back? Your mother? You think a confession written in a Campbell ledger will rebuild a house that's been gone for twenty years?"

"No." His eyes were steady. "But it will clear my name of the lie that I am a thief and a coward. It will clear my family's name for the thievery the Campbells pinned on them. And it will clear the MacTavishes of a feud you never started."

She went very still.

"The land the Campbells took from the Rosses," he said. "The land my family lost. It was the same tract the MacTavishes were accused of raiding. The Campbells used your clan as their scapegoat. They blamed the raid on the MacTavishes while they feathered their own nests, and they've been paying for that sin ever since—though they didn't count on the cost of keeping the secret."

The ledger figures flickered in her mind. The regular payments to D. MacAllister. The G in the margin. She had assumed blackmail, a secret unconnected to her own family. But what if it was something else? What if it was the price of silence, paid to the man who had started the raid in Campbell tartan?

"Who is D. MacAllister?" she asked.

"I don't know." Gregor shook his head. "I searched for that name for two years. There are no MacAllisters in the Campbell line. No known servants by that name. Whoever they are, they are paid well and often, and they are not known to anyone inside this house."

"But the G."

"The G." He paused. "I thought it was a ledger code for a particular fund. A black fund. But my father had a name for it too." He met her eyes. "We called it the Guilt. The money the Campbells paid out to buy what they could not take."

Silence while the fire popped. The crow on the fence took flight.

"If what you say is true," Iona said slowly, "then the Campbells did not just raid the Rosses. They framed the MacTavishes to cover it. They set the foundation of this feud on a lie."

"Yes."

"And Lachlan—" She stopped, something turning in her chest. "Does he know?"

Gregor was quiet for a long moment. "I don't believe he knows the full truth. He was not raised with the knowledge. But the accounts are kept in his house. The payments pass through his ledgers. Whether he knows what they mean, or simply knows not to look—that is a question only he can answer."

Iona turned back to the window. Her reflection stared back at her, pale and hollow-eyed. The man she had married, the enemy she had sworn to hate, had locked her away on suspicion of conspiring against him. And she was, she realized. She had been conspiring. But not the way he thought.

"Gregor." She said his name quietly. "The crypt. The key beneath the chapel. What is down there?"

"I don't know." He came to stand beside her at the window. "But I know what the Campbells keep in their crypts. Their dead. Their titles. Their secrets." He glanced at her. "And I know that when a family buries something beneath a chapel, they do not expect it to be found."

Iona closed her eyes. The key was still in her pocket, cold against her thigh. She had forgotten it, until now. Beth had given it to her, an heirloom of the MacTavish chapel, passed down through the generations to "whichever keeper needed it most." She had thought it a gesture of faith, nothing more. Now she wondered.

"If I can get free," she said slowly, "if I can clear my name with Lachlan—"

"Then you have a way to make him listen." Gregor's voice was low. "The key, the evidence, the accounts. You have more than enough to build a case. But you cannot build it alone. You need him to believe you."

"And why would he believe me when he thinks I've been lying to him since the wedding night?"

"Because you haven't been." Gregor's gaze held hers. "You've been hiding. There is a difference. And I think he knows it, under all that pride."

Voices rose from the yard below—men calling to each other, the stamp of horses. Gregor straightened.

"He's back early." He moved toward the door. "I have to go. But Iola—"

"Iona," she corrected, though her voice was barely a whisper.

"Iona." He said it carefully, like a prayer. "You are not alone in this house. Whatever you decide, whatever path you take—you are not alone."

He was gone before she could answer. The lock clicked behind him.

Iona sank onto the edge of the bed, her hands pressed flat against her thighs. The sketch burned in one pocket. The ledger figures in the other. The crypt key hung on its cord beneath her collar, hidden against her skin.

Outside, Lachlan's voice carried up through the window, sharp and tired. She sat motionless, listening, and felt the fracture between them like a physical thing—a wound she had not made and could not yet heal. But perhaps, if she was careful. If she was patient. Perhaps it could be mended.

The tray of untouched food sat on the table. The fire had burned down to ash. She rose and crossed to the hearth, stirring the embers back to life with a brass poker.

She had not fed the fire in hours. It, too, had gone cold.

She would learn to tend what had been neglected. She would have to.