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He hadn't run to her immediately. That was the part he could not forgive himself, the part he kept turning over like a blade he couldn't stop testing the edge of. He'd heard the sound of the commotion. He had even heard shouting, a woman's cry cut short and for one paralyzing half second his mind had simply refused the information, some frightened part of him needing to hear it twice before it would let him move, and in that half second three men had very nearly finished what they'd come to do.

A half second. That's how close it came. A half second of my own disbelief.

He found Lachlan waiting in the small hall, and one look at Marcas's face was apparently enough to tell him exactly what kind of conversation this would be.

"She's resting," Marcas said, before Lachlan could ask. His voice came out flatter than he intended, stretched thin over something that wanted very badly to break loose. "Sleeping, finally."

"And ye're nae."

"How could I be?" He didn't sit. He crossed to the hearth instead and gripped the mantel hard with both hands because it was that or put his fist through the stone above it. Some distant, still-functioning part of him understood that frightening the household with the sound of a laird destroying his own hall wouldn't help anyone.

"I left her, Lachlan. Fergus came for me, some fool argument over a fence line, and I went, because I always go, and while I was standing there listening tae two grown men shout about a boundary stone, three men had her by both arms in the middle of the street."

"Ye couldnae have kent."

"I should have kent." The words came out through his teeth, low, close to a growl. "I've spent a week watching every road in and out of my land for exactly this. I kent someone was after her. I kent it, and I still let a clansman pull me forty feet away.

"Marcas—"

"I froze." He turned from the fire, and whatever composure he'd been holding together cracked properly now, the words coming fast and raw. "For half a second, Lachlan, I heard her voice break on my name, and I froze. When I finally got there, they had her half off her feet already, dragging her, and if my horse had been a stride slower⁠—"

He didn't finish it. He couldn't. His hand had found the mantel again, gripping hard enough that the old wood groaned under it, and he stood there actually shaking, with a fury that had no target within reach.

"Ye got there," Lachlan said, quietly. "That's what matters. Ye got there."

"I killed one of them before he'd even fully turned tae face me. I wounded the second. " Marcas's voice had gone hollow, remembering it. "I felt naething doing it. I've killed men before and felt the weight of it after, even men who deserved it. This time I felt naething except that it wasnae enough. I wanted the third one too, the one who ran. I wanted tae chase him down and finish it”

He paused. “And I'd have done it, Lachlan, I'd have left her standing there shaking in the street tae chase a coward intae the hills if some part of me hadnae remembered, right at the last, that she needed me more than my anger did."

"That's the part that matters," Lachlan said. "That ye remembered it."

"It shouldnae have been a close thing tae remember." Marcas dropped into the chair at last, elbows braced on his knees. His hands, he noticed, werestill not fully steady. "I've never wanted tae kill a man so badly in my life as I wanted tae kill that third one. Nae in battle. Nae even the night in Struan, with my hand at that drunkard's throat. This was different. This was—" He stopped, searching for the shape of it, and found only one word that fit. "This was fear, Lachlan. Pure and simple. I was terrified, and it came out looking like rage because I didnae have anywhere else tae put it."

Lachlan was quiet for a moment, watching him with none of his usual easy humor.

"She wasnae unguarded," he said instead, low. "Uisdean and Fergus's boy were both with her, and both of them were on the ground inside the first minute. Whoever planned it kent exactly how tae clear the ground around her fast."

"I think it's a verra convenient quarrel that boiled over the precise hour ye were pulled away from the one person these men wanted." Lachlan's voice had lost all its usual ease, gone flat and serious. "I already have men asking after it. I think somebody kent yer movements well enough tae use them against ye, Marcas, and that's a bigger problem than ye simply failing tae stand close enough."

The fury in him sharpened, finally finding somehwere to turn

"Then someone inside my own walls is talking," Marcas said. "Or watching closely enough tae guess it. Either way, I'll find them, and when I do—" His hand closed again, slow and deliberate this time, and he made himself stop there, because he recognized, distantly, the shape of a man who let his fear turn permanently into violence, and he'd buried that man's victim in a walled garden behind the kirk fifteen years ago and sworn never to become him.

"Ye'll find them," Lachlan agreed, "but nae tonight, and nae by sitting here trying tae put yer fist through my hearth." He crossed the room, laid a hand briefly on Marcas's shoulder. "Ye cannae stand between her and every danger in the Highlands every hour of every day, Marcas. Ye ken that. And if ye try…if ye wrap her in guards until she cannae breathe…ye'll lose her tae the cage as surely as ye'd have lost her tae those men today."

Marcas said nothing for a long moment, staring into the fire, the fear slowly beginning to burn itself down into something he could carry rather than something carrying him.

"Find out who started that quarrel," he said at last. "Every name. I dinnae care who takes offence at the asking."

"Aye, laird." Lachlan turned to go, then paused at the door, his voice softened. "Go and sit with her again, Marcas. Ye've done all ye can do tonight, and I suspect ye'll rest easier where ye can see her breathing than ye will down here alone with yer own thoughts."

Marcas didn't answer that, but he didn't argue it either. Once Lachlan had gone, he sat a moment longer with his hands finally, slowly, unclenching, and thought of her voice screaming his name in the street, and of the half second he'd stood frozen before his legs would move, and knew, with a certainty that settled far deeper than the fear had, that he would never again let himself be that far from her when it mattered.

He climbed the stairs before he'd fully decided to, eased her door open quiet enough not to wake her, and settled into the chair beside the bed to watch her sleep, unable, even now, to make himself walk away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The guards laid the recovered items from the attack out across the council table like evidence at a trial. Marcas had asked Neilina to join them in case she recognized anything recovered from the men who attacked her. There wasn’t much, just a dagger, a torn strip of plaid, and a leather pouch with a few coins inside. Neilina stood at the edge of the room feeling distinctly out of place among the grim-faced men, until her eyes focused on the small scrap of cloth and something in her chest went cold and still all at once.