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PROLOGUE

Islay, Scotland, October 1306

“Aulay, dinna fash. God willing, she will pull through,” came his brother Èoin’s voice, and Aulay MacDonald looked up from his cup of uisge.

Èoin sat by his side at the long table, the fires of the braziers playing against his deep wrinkles, his grief-stricken eyes hiding in the shadows. Around the table, Aulay’s six closest warriors sat, everyone’s hands curled around cups of uisge.

Beathan, one of his closest friends, was among them. His mouth curved in a smile under his short, dark beard. He laid a supporting palm on Aulay’s shoulder and squeezed. “God always has a plan.”

The great hall of Dunyvaig Castle with its high cathedral ceilings was quiet and dark. Flickering firelight from the braziers cast feral shadows upon the tapestries of the MacDonald crest that hung on two long walls, six on each side. A dozen red fists holding a dozen crosses didn’t fill Aulay’s chest with pride as it did most days.

They seemed to judge him. He shouldn’t be here, they said. He should be up on the next floor, in his bedchamber where his wife may be dying in labor.

And there was not a bloody thing he could do about it.

Burning wood crackled. The whisper of the waves came from the slit windows, bringing the salty scent of the sea and algae. Through that quiet, the disturbance of what was going on above assailed his ears…the shuffling of the feet, his wife’s agonized moans, and the worried voices of the midwives.

Aulay did his best to shut them out. He could not help Leitis, no matter how much he wanted to.

And yet, he needed to do something useful. He was a man of action, the laird of his clan, and simply sitting and waiting for Leitis to give birth was torture. This was her seventh. She had survived six previous stillbirths and miscarriages.

But Bhatair, the clan’s physician, and the midwives had never been as worried as they were now.

So, he needed to be useful. He needed to do something that would bring hope. Plan Colum’s rescue with his clansmen.

The place at his right hand was empty. It was Colum’s—Èoin’s oldest son and the closest Aulay had to an heir.

Aulay brought the cup to his mouth and threw the uisge back into his throat. The alcohol burned in a fiery kick.

“We find Colum,” he said through a hoarse throat, meeting Èoin’s dark gaze. “Losing him was like losing my own son…” He suppressed the sick, sinking feeling of an impending disaster in his gut. “I dinna ken yet how, but we will. We send out the spies. We quietly ask the common folk. We lie and pay gold and do everything that we can.”

Èoin nodded. “Thank ye, brother.”

Aulay stared into the brazier. “What do we ken?” he asked to distract himself.

“We ken he was taken by the Earl of Pembroke,” said Seoras, Colum’s younger brother. “He gathered all the surviving wounded.”

“Aye,” said Èoin, looking at his younger son with something like reverence. “We’re lucky he wasna killed like so many. And I am so glad ye’re still alive.”

“We all are,” said Aulay.

A long, loud female moan from upstairs made him shudder. The men all glanced at him with worry. His fist curled around his cup, and he squeezed it to stop himself from jumping up and hurrying up the stairs to her.

He shouldn’t be jealous of his brother, who had two sons and a daughter. While Aulay had dug six wee graves for his six dead bairns, Èoin had never had to do that.

In his forty-four years of life, all Aulay had wanted was a family. He’d worked hard to build a strong clan and keep it together. He was not a young man anymore. He wanted to leave a legacy behind. Perhaps, today his heir would finally be born.

Or he’d lose the bairn and the love of his life forever.

“Uncle!” his twelve-year-old niece, Anna, called. She had completely changed in the two moons since meeting her father, Robert the Bruce, for the first time. Gone was the girl who ran with the village children and shepherds. Now she was like Laoghaire, Èoin’s daughter. A small noble lady in the making. Her hair was done in two pretty buns, one on each side of her face. The dress she wore was clean and new. Her face and hands didn’t bear any signs of dirt or dust.

He jumped up.

“Come!” Anna urged. “She’s close.”

The hall went completely still. Everyone here had lived with Aulay through the six devastating pregnancies. The six wee funerals that followed.

Could this be the one time that Aulay would hear his bairn cry, would feel the wee fist squeezing his finger?