Read Chapter 29: The Aftermath of Blood

The great hall of Dunmore felt smaller than Iona remembered. Or perhaps it was the crowd that made it so—every MacTavish and Campbell of consequence packed shoulder to shoulder, their voices a low rumble beneath the rafters. Morning light fell through the high windows, catching dust motes and the sheen of polished swords laid flat on the tables. A peace offering, Lachlan had called it. Leave your weapons at the door. Trust us enough to listen.

So far, no one had reached for a blade.

Iona stood at her father's side, one hand resting on his arm. Alistair MacTavish had been delivered from the magistrate's cell at dawn, gray-faced and trembling, his wrists raw where the irons had bitten. He had not spoken since they pulled him into the carriage. He had not looked at her, either. She squeezed his arm now, feeling the bone beneath the thin wool of his coat. He flinched but did not pull away.

Across the hall, Lachlan stood with his mother and the elderly Campbell laird who had come down from the northern estates to witness this gathering. Gregor was there too, leaning on a crutch, his face still bruised from Donal's hospitality. He caught Iona's eye and nodded once. She nodded back.

Old Elspeth MacTavish, the clan's most senior elder, rapped her walking stick against the stone floor. The murmuring died.

"We have buried our dead," she said, her voice like dry leaves. "We have seen the last of Donal Drummond. What remains is to decide what we do with the living."

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Fergus Campbell, Lachlan's uncle, stepped forward. "The Campbell lands are whole. Donal's holdings are seized by the crown, pending the investigation. But our estate—" He glanced at Lachlan. "The deed was burned. Legally, we hold nothing."

"Then we hold it together," Iona said. Her voice carried further than she expected. Heads turned. "The MacTavish charter is intact. We have grazed our cattle on those hills for a century, and your people have worked them." She looked at Lachlan, then at the assembled lairds. "Let the Campbell tenants stay. Let both clans work the land under a joint agreement until the crown sorts out the titles."

"This is a MacTavish land grab," someone muttered from the back.

"It is not." Iona's father spoke.

The hall went still. Alistair lifted his head, and Iona saw the effort it cost him. His eyes were clouded, but they were clear enough to find Fergus across the room.

"It is not a land grab," Alistair repeated. His voice cracked. "It is a reckoning. I knew what Gregor's father did to Moira. I knew, and I used it to fuel a feud because I could not bear to look at my own failure." He swallowed. "I did not push her. But I let her death become a weapon instead of a grief."

Lachlan's mother, Isobel, stepped forward. "And my husband let Donal stand beside him and watch. He did nothing. We have all failed in our own ways."

The silence stretched. Iona felt the weight of it pressing against her ribs. These were words that had been buried for twenty years, rotting in the dark, poisoning everything they touched. And now, in the cold morning light of Dunmore's hall, they were being dragged out into the open.

Elspeth MacTavish nodded slowly. "Then we speak of what is true, and we let the old lies die." She looked at Alistair. "Your wife was a MacTavish by marriage but a Drummond by blood. Did you know?"

Alistair shook his head. "Not until it was too late."

"I did." Tam's voice came from the doorway. He stood with his bonnet in his hands, his face weathered and tired. "I knew Moira was Donal's half-sister. I knew she carried the Drummond name in her veins. And I knew that if the truth came out, the MacTavishes would never trust her—or me." He stepped into the hall. "So I kept it. I watched the feud fester, and I said nothing. That is on my head as much as anyone's."

Iona felt a strange pang of sympathy for the man who had been her mother's brother. He had hidden the truth to protect his sister's memory, and in doing so, he had let the lie consume everything. She did not know if she could forgive him. But she understood him.

"We cannot undo the past," she said. "But we can choose what we build on top of it."

Fergus Campbell looked at his nephew. "The girl talks sense."

Lachlan's jaw tightened. "She does. She always has."

The morning wore on. Agreements were drafted on parchment, argued over, amended. The MacTavish charter would be extended to cover Campbell tenants. Grazing rights would be shared. A joint council of elders from both clans would arbitrate disputes. And when the crown's investigators arrived, both families would speak with one voice.

By the time the sun climbed to its zenith, the hall had emptied. Most of the lairds had gone to break bread in the yard, a gesture that felt almost ceremonial. Iona watched them go, feeling the strange lightness that came after a long fever breaks. The world was still bruised, still healing. But it was no longer bleeding.

She found Alistair in a small antechamber off the hall, sitting by the window with a cup of untouched tea in his hands. He looked smaller than she remembered. Frail.

"Father," she said softly.

He did not look up. "I saw her face when I admitted what I knew. Your mother's face. I saw the way she would have looked at me if she had lived to hear it."

"Father—"

"I should have protected her." His voice was barely a whisper. "I should have protected you. Instead, I let my pride turn grief into a blade, and I cut down everything I loved."

Iona knelt beside his chair and took his hands. They were cold. "You are here. That is a beginning."

He finally looked at her. Tears streaked his face, cutting tracks through the grime of the cell. "I don't know how to be anything other than what I have been."

"Then let us show you." She squeezed his hands. "We have time. We will make time."

Alistair's breath hitched. He nodded slowly, and for a moment, he looked almost like the father she remembered from childhood—before the feud had eaten him alive.

When she left the antechamber, Lachlan was waiting in the corridor. He leaned against the stone wall, arms crossed, his wounded shoulder wrapped in fresh bandages. The bruise on his jaw had darkened to a deep purple, but his eyes were steady.

"How is he?" Lachlan asked.

"Broken." Iona stopped a few feet from him. "But he spoke the truth in there. That took more courage than I ever gave him credit for."

Lachlan nodded. "It took more courage than most of us have."

They stood in silence for a long moment. The sounds of the gathering drifted through the walls—laughter, the clink of cups, the low murmur of voices learning to speak to each other again.

"I thought you would leave," Iona said quietly.

Lachlan's jaw tightened. "I considered it."

"And?"

He looked at her, and she saw something raw in his gaze—something that had been stripped bare over the past weeks. "I have done terrible things, Iona. I hunted your family on my father's orders. I threatened you. I came within a breath of burning your lands." He shook his head. "I am not the man you deserve."

"Let me be the judge of what I deserve." She stepped closer. "You stood beside me in Donal's manor. You bled for me. You were willing to give up everything you had to keep me safe." She reached out and touched the bandage on his shoulder. "That is not the act of an unworthy man."

Lachlan caught her hand in his. His palm was rough, calloused, warm. "I have nothing left. No estate, no title, no name to speak of. The Campbells will rebuild, but they will rebuild without me."

"Then rebuild with us." Iona met his eyes. "The MacTavish charter covers the land. I will see that it covers you too."

He stared at her for a long moment. The weight of everything they had been through seemed to hang between them—the lies, the fights, the stolen kisses in dark corridors, the terror of watching each other almost die.

"I love you," he said roughly. "I did not mean to. I fought it. I told myself it was foolishness, that we were enemies, that there was no future in it." He laughed, hollow and broken. "But I love you, Iona MacTavish, and I do not know what to do with that."

She stepped closer still, close enough to feel the heat of him, the tremor that ran through his body. "Then stay," she said. "Let us figure it out together."

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, there was something like hope in them—fragile, cautious, but there. "I am not sure I know how to be at peace."

"Neither do I," she admitted. "But I have found that peace is not a place. It is a choice." She lifted her free hand and cupped his jaw. "Every day, we choose it again. That is what I am offering you. Not an easy life. Not a simple one. But a life, together, built on the truth instead of the lies."

Lachlan looked at her for a long moment. Then he pulled her into his arms, careful of his injured shoulder, and buried his face in her hair.

"I will stay," he murmured against her. "For as long as you will have me."

Iona closed her eyes and let herself be held. The noise of the clans drifted around them, voices raised in tentative accord, and somewhere beyond the walls, the hills of the highlands rolled green and patient under the afternoon sun. There would be more trials to come. There would be scars that never fully healed. But for now, standing in the cool corridor of Dunmore with Lachlan's arms around her, Iona felt something she had not felt in years.

She felt home.