Read Chapter 21: The Unmasked Lie

The guard’s lantern swung as the key turned in the lock, and Callum stepped into the damp reek of the prison tent. Duncan sat on a straw pallet, wrists shackled to a ceiling chain, his face hollowed by three weeks of captivity. He looked up, and for a moment something like hope flickered in his eyes—then died when he saw who stood before him.

“Callum.” Duncan’s voice was a rasp. “They sent you to soften me up, then?”

“No one sent me.” Callum closed the flap behind him, letting the guard’s shadow retreat to the entrance. “I came to hear the truth from your own mouth.”

Duncan laughed, a dry, broken sound. “The truth? You want the truth after you tracked our own kin through the glens for a redcoat shilling?”

Callum’s jaw tightened. “I want to know why you were carrying rebel dispatches when the patrol took you. I want to know why Eilidh thinks you’re their messenger, and why Thorne thinks you’re a rebel spy. Both can’t be true.”

Duncan’s shackles clinked as he shifted. “Maybe both are.”

“Enough.” Callum stepped closer, low enough that only Duncan could hear. “I’ve stolen maps. I’ve knocked out soldiers. I’ve put my neck in a noose for you, thinking you were one of us. If you’re going to hang anyway, you owe me the truth before the rope.”

Duncan stared at him for a long moment. Then his shoulders sagged, and something in his face cracked open.

“Sit down, brother.” He gestured with his chin to the stool near the tent pole. “And pray no one’s listening close.”

Callum sat. The straw rustled. Outside, boots crunched on gravel as the guard paced.

“I’m not a rebel,” Duncan said quietly.

Callum’s blood went cold. “What?”

“I never carried dispatches for the clans. I carried them for the British.” Duncan’s eyes were wet, glistening in the lantern light. “I’ve been a double agent since last winter. Major Hargreaves recruited me before he was killed at Falkirk. They wanted someone inside the rebel network—someone the MacRaes trusted. I fed them false plans, sent them into ambushes that never happened, steered them away from real targets.”

The words hit Callum like a blow to the chest. He gripped the edge of the stool, knuckles white. “Eilidh trusted you. She gave you messages to carry. She—” His voice broke. “Those men you got captured with. The ones who were hanged at Inverness. Were they real?”

“They were real,” Duncan whispered. “And I didn’t mean for them to die. The patrol came too fast. I was supposed to warn them, but the redcoats moved early. I couldn’t—” He shook his head, chains rattling. “I tried to save them, Callum. I gave myself up to the patrol so they wouldn’t chase the others. But it was too late.”

Callum stood, pacing the narrow tent. His mind churned. The brother he’d crossed enemy lines for. The brother whose life he’d risked—whose rescue he’d built his whole desperate plan around. A British spy.

“Why?” He turned. “Why do it? Father raised us to hate the redcoats. Mother died praying for the Stuart king.”

“Because I saw what the rebellion would cost,” Duncan said, voice thick with emotion. “I was in Edinburgh when Prince Charles raised his standard. I saw the boys marching off to die with nothing but claymores and courage. And I saw what Cumberland would do to us if they lost. I thought—I thought if I could steer them away from full battle, if I could make the British win quickly and quietly, fewer Highlanders would die. I wanted to end it before the slaughter.”

“By betraying them.”

“By saving them.” Duncan met his eyes. “It doesn’t feel that way now. I know that. But I’ve sent word to Hargreaves’s replacement—Captain Thorne—about every rebel plan I could learn. And Thorne knows I’m his man. He’s been feeding me information to pass along, positions to give the rebels that look like advantages but are traps.”

Callum’s stomach turned. “The message you were carrying when you were captured. The one Eilidh sent.”

Duncan nodded slowly. “It was real. Eilidh trusted me completely. She gave me the names of two supply depots and the timing of a raid. I was supposed to deliver it to the Mackenzie camp. Instead I was going to bring it to Thorne.”

“But the patrol caught you before you could choose.”

“Aye.” Duncan’s laugh was bitter. “The irony. I spent months playing both sides, and in the end I got caught with rebel intelligence I was about to betray. Thorne can’t very well vouch for me without admitting he has a spy among the rebels. So I sit here, waiting for a trial that will convict me of treason against the Crown—a treason I never committed.”

Callum stared at his brother. The man who had taught him to set snares, who had carried him home after he broke his arm falling from a pine. That Duncan had been a mask. The real one was sitting in chains, stripped bare.

“You’re asking me to help you escape,” Callum said slowly.

“I’m asking you to help me finish what I started.” Duncan leaned forward as far as the chains would allow. “Thorne’s code—the one that makes his supply maps readable—I know where it’s kept. I’ve been in his tent. I’ve seen him use it. He keeps a cipher book hidden in the false bottom of his writing case.” He paused. “I can tell you exactly how to get it. But you have to get me out first. If they put me on that convoy Thursday, the code goes with Thorne, and everything you’ve done will be for nothing.”

Callum’s blood buzzed. “You expect me to trust you? After what you’ve just told me?”

“I don’t expect you to trust me,” Duncan said. “I expect you to use me. I know the British plans—the real ones, not the decoys. I know which officers are secretly Jacobite. I know Thorne’s weaknesses. If you let me die here, you lose all of that. If you help me escape, I can give you what you need to end this war before the slaughter.”

Callum paced to the tent flap, heart hammering. Outside, the moon had risen over the camp, silvering the rows of tents. Somewhere in the darkness, Eilidh was waiting for a signal that would never come. Laird MacLeod was awaiting a rescue that depended on a map Callum couldn’t read.

And Duncan—his brother—sat behind him, offering Judas’s bargain.

He turned back. “Even if I believed you—and I don’t—how would I get you out? The camp is locked tighter than a drum.”

Duncan smiled, and for a flash Callum saw the old mischief in his eyes. “Tonight. The guard changes at two. There’s a gap of eight minutes. Thorne’s sentry walks the east perimeter, but he always stops to piss behind the supply wagon. The lock on this cage is a standard English double-turn. I can pick it with a bit of wire if you get me one.”

Callum felt the weight of every choice pressing down on him. Thorne’s suspicion. Eilidh’s march in three days. The code hidden in the tent. All of it funneling into this moment.

“You swear on our mother’s grave you’ll tell me everything you know?”

Duncan met his gaze. “I swear it on her soul.”

Callum stared at him. Then he turned and walked out of the tent into the cold night air, his brother’s desperate eyes burning in his mind like a brand he couldn’t shake.