Somewhere in the Highlands of Scotland
They took the long road back from Skye, skirting the highlands as the afternoon light turned amber. The clouds, exhausted from their tantrum, rolled into wisps across a washed-out sky. The scent of heather and salt lingered in the air, mingling with the faint sharpness of loam and moss. The wind carried the cries of far-off seabirds and the faint bleating of sheep tucked into the folds of the land.
Grey sat curled in her seat, pallor clear even in the softened light. Her hand throbbed beneath the bandage Alaric had wrapped with surprising tenderness. She hadn't spoken much since the gate collapsed, and silence pressed against her like mist—clinging, difficult to shake.
Alaric kept glancing over, concern tightening his jaw. She pretended not to notice, though part of her—traitorously—wanted to lean her head against his shoulder and close her eyes for just a moment. She was so tired it felt like her bones were trying to dissolve. If exhaustion had a personality, it would probably be smug and passive-aggressive, like Wickham before his third coffee.
A few miles later, Alaric turned abruptly down a side road.
Grey blinked. "Wait, what are you doing?"
"We're stopping," he said firmly, already navigating into a quiet village dusted in leaves. Ivy clung to every stone surface, curling like an enchantment. The place looked like it had grown slowly from the earth rather than been built. A small café nestled near the town square, its windows glowing soft and amber through the fog.
"You need something hot," Alaric continued. "And food. Something with actual calories."
"I'm fine," Grey muttered, though her voice lacked conviction.
"You're not," Alaric said. "And I know the signs. Come on, mo chridhe."
She faltered. The unfamiliar words curled around her ribs like warm ribbon. Mo chridhe. It made her chest ache in a way she couldn't name, but she nodded tiredly.
He swung out of Wickham's Jeep with catlike grace, like exhaustion was merely a suggestion to be ignored, and opened her door. That was new—and unfairly elegant for someone who'd also fought a corrupted gate and kissed her into silence just hours ago.
She mutely followed him inside.
The scent of baking bread and woodsmoke greeted them like a hug.
The café was small and lovely in the way of forgotten postcards. Timber beams lined the ceiling, and faded tartan curtains framed the misted windows. A log fire crackled in the hearth, peat-scented smoke threading through the air. Black-and-white photos of mossy hills and sea cliffs hung crookedly on the walls.
Locals occupied mismatched chairs and threadbare booths. An old man dozed with a terrier at his feet. Two women gossiped in soft lilting tones. A teenage couple shared a plate of chips, their pinkies just brushing.
A woman with a ruddy face and a grey-streaked ponytail paused mid-wipe of a table, eyes narrowing slightly as the door chimed. She took in the pair—one looking like a windswept storybook soldier, the other like she'd lost a duel with a thunderstorm and kept walking anyway. Her gaze lingered not with suspicion, but with a flicker of something knowing, as though she'd seen wariness and weariness dressed up in different coats before. After a beat, her expression softened.
"Sit where you like, dears," she said, voice rough with smoke and kindness. "Got cullen skink on, fresh today, and venison pie just out the oven."
Grey collapsed into the seat with a sigh of relief. Her hands trembled as she wrapped them around the steaming teacup the woman brought with surprising speed. Alaric ordered for both of them, confident and precise, and she found she was grateful to be spared the thinking.
When the food arrived—piping hot soup, flaky venison pie, creamy neeps and tatties, and oatcakes with golden butter—Grey's eyes widened at the abundance.
Alaric leaned back, smug grin back in place. "Told you. Calories."
She gave him a look, but it was half-hearted. The first spoonful of cullen skink melted across her tongue like balm, and her shoulders sagged in relaxation as the warmth of the meal began to thaw the ice in her veins.
Several minutes passed in quiet chewing. Then Grey let out a soft sigh, barely audible over the clink of silverware. "Okay," she murmured, cheeks pink from heat and something gentler. "You were right."
Alaric didn't gloat. Not really. He just watched her with that maddening unreadable softness. His eyes followed the movement of her hands, her mouth, the way she blinked slowly with each taste. She flushed more deeply under his gaze, stabbing another piece of pie to break the silence.
Why does he look at me like that? she wondered, throat tight. It felt like he was memorising something he knew he would lose.
He looked away first.
When they stood to leave, Alaric turned on the charm like a switch. "Exquisite," he said to the server. "You may have just converted my friend here to Highland cuisine."
The woman snorted, but it was good-natured. Her eyes lingered on Grey for a moment longer than necessary, assessing the drawn lines around her mouth, the way she stood like someone bracing for the next battle. Something in her expression shifted—less hospitality, more recognition. "You look after each other," she said, quieter this time. Not a suggestion. A benediction. Like she'd seen war-walkers before, and knew the weight they carried didn't always show in the gait.
Then, with the quiet certainty of someone who'd witnessed too much and survived it all, the woman said, "Young lovers ought to steal every scrap of joy they can in this world. It's rarely handed to them."
Grey rolled her eyes as they stepped into the cold, but her breath caught halfway through the motion. "Honestly," she muttered, aiming for sarcasm but missing the mark by a hair. Her cheeks were already hot with mortification.
Lover? The word echoed in her head like a dropped plate. She wasn't his anything. Was she? Gods, she hadn't even figured out how to talk about the kiss yet—and now some kindly café hedgewitch had basically declared them a couple. Her mind was a cacophony of objections she didn't have the courage to voice, so instead she defaulted to theatrics, hoping it would mask the slow-spiraling panic beneath her ribs.
"You heard her," Alaric said, opening the Jeep door with a grin. "Mistaken for a couple. Again."
"We're never coming back here."
"Pity," he said. "I liked her. And the soup." His grin was wicked and teasing again.
Grey buckled in, trying not to smile. "You're hopeless."
"Aye," Alaric replied softly, looking out the window. "Completely hopeless."
The road unfolded before them in winding ribbons. They said little. The quiet was companionable, for once not made of tension. Grey leaned her head against the glass, watching the highlands pass like sleeping giants.
Alaric eventually pulled over near a stone-walled field with the crumbled remains of a croft. He sat in silence, staring at the sky for a long moment.
"I fought a battle here once," he exhaled a deep breath.
Grey glanced over, surprised by the rawness in his voice.
"Not a grand one," he added. "No banners. No cause worth writing songs about. Just blood, and mud, and too many dead."
He stepped out. Grey followed.
"The boy beside me," Alaric said, standing at the edge of the field, "was seventeen. Mortal. He held the line while shaking like a leaf. Didn't run. Didn't scream. Just… stood."
Alaric closed his eyes. "I don't even know if anyone remembers his name."
Grey's chest tightened. She moved closer, laying a hand gently on his arm. "You do."
He nodded, lips pressed thin. "That's the curse of living long enough. You become the memory-keeper for people the world forgot."
Grey looked out over the field. It was peaceful now. Only the wind moved. She tried to break the heaviness. "So when I turn fifty and start going grey—"
"Greyer," Alaric said, with a grin.
"—you'll leave me for someone younger with better knees?"
His smile faltered.
"You think that's what I fear?" he asked, voice quieter now, as though the answer itself might bruise if spoken too loudly. His gaze flicked to hers, then away—like he wasn't sure he wanted to see her reaction. "Because if it is," he added, a beat slower, "then maybe you don't know me at all."
Grey blinked slowly. "Isn't it?"
Alaric shook his head. "Mortality doesn't scare me, mo chridhe. Loss does. Repetition does. Loving someone only to lose them. Again. And again." His voice was low, but steady, like it had been practised in the mirror of too many nights alone. His expression softened, eyes distant—not with indifference, but with something that looked like worn-out grief. His shoulders sagged slightly, like he'd just laid down a burden he didn't expect anyone to see. And yet, when his eyes met hers again, there was vulnerability there, raw and unguarded, like a wound he no longer bothered to hide.
Grey swallowed. How many names does he carry? The weight of that thought weighed her down.
"There was a film," He said. "From the mid 1980's. Highlander. It tried to explain what it meant to live too long."
Grey huffed a laugh. "You've seen Highlander?"
"At a drive-in outside Stirling. I rather liked Connor MacLeod."
"Because he brooded in leather?" she grinned mischievously.
"Because he knew that the cost of immortality was surviving love. Over and over."
She sat for a while, trying to process how he must be feeling. Wanting to comfort him, but not understanding how. Then she smiled softly. "Did you ever know a Connor MacLeod?"
"Oh yes," Alaric said, eyes gleaming again. "Red hair. Fierce temper. Smelled of wet hound and peat. Once drank a selkie under the table."
Grey laughed, sudden and bright, the sound bubbling up like a spring breaking through frost. For the first time in what felt like hours, her chest loosened. "I needed that," she eventually breathed, wiping a tear from her eye with the heel of her palm, and willing her heart to slow its ridiculous thundering. She wasn't sure if it was the joke or the company, but something in her had unclenched.
"So did I."
Grey reached over and, without thinking, laced her fingers with his. "You're not alone," she said.
Alaric squeezed her hand. Then, with a reverence that made her breath catch, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss there—light as breath, fleeting as moth wings at dusk, but leaving behind the warmth of something quietly sacred.
She wondered what he was thinking. His grip was steady, warm, but there was that dark shadow behind his eyes again—some place his mind had wandered where she could not follow. She didn't press. She just let the silence speak for them both.
They stood for a while in the hush of dusk.
Then, without a word, they turned back toward the Jeep. The field behind them faded into memory.
And the wind, for once, did not howl.
Folio of Threads: The Battle of Cnoc na Fola
In the year 1279, beneath the blood-red moon of Samhain, two Highland clans met in brutal conflict near the windswept rise of Cnoc na Fola—Hill of Blood. The Clan Donnachaidh, known for their fierce loyalty and deep ties to the Old Ways, had long held territory that the ambitious Clan Gairloch claimed through a long-dead betrothal and the thin excuse of ancestral entitlement.
What made this battle unique among the blood-feuds of its time was the involvement of the druids of Donnachaidh, a secretive order known as the Briathrach. These druids, stewards of the leylines and keepers of ancestral flame, were said to have struck a bargain with the Wild Folk of the hills—Faeborn spirits who whispered in the fog and left gifts at doorways.
When the battle came, it was not fought by steel alone.
Witnesses—few survived—spoke of the storm that rolled down the glen, of wolves that shimmered in and out of form, of fire that danced in patterns no torch could mimic. And at the centre of it all was a warrior none could name, tall and cloaked in wild fury.
His hair, black as ravens' wings, streamed in a crown of braids, and his eyes—fierce amber, burning through mist and blood—saw all. He moved through the battlefield like a storm made flesh, neither wholly mortal nor spirit. Men from both sides swore he fought with them, protected them, cursed them.
When the sun rose, Clan Gairloch was broken, and the druids vanished into myth.
The unnamed warrior was never seen again.
Some say he was a revenant summoned by the Briathrach. Others whispered he was one of the old Fae—forgotten by the Courts, beholden to no king or queen. In truth, no one knew.
But the land remembered. The field remained barren for generations, and strange lights still flicker on Cnoc na Fola during storms.
And sometimes, when the wind howls just right, villagers say they see a shadow with burning amber eyes, watching from the stones.