1495, Loch Eilein

The blood came first—not his own, not yet—splashing hot across Euan’s face as the sword cleaved through the man beside him.

He was six years old. He should have been in the keep, safe behind stone walls. Instead, he stood frozen on the field at Loch Eilein, watching men die.

“Stay close tae me, lad!” His father’s voice cut through the din of battle, sharp with command and fear. Laird Murtagh MacLeod never showed fear.

Euan tried to obey. His small legs pumped beneath him as he stumbled after his father’s broad back, but the ground was slick with mud and worse things. The clash of steel rang in his ears, drowning out thought. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The treaty talks were meant to bring peace between the clans—MacLeod, MacKinnon, MacDonald, MacRae, MacNeil. Five clans, five lairds, five promises sworn before God.

Lies. All of it, lies.

“Betrayers!” someone screamed. “They’ve turned on us!”

The MacDonald banner fell first, trampled beneath boots and hooves. Then came the MacRaes, pouring from the treeline like wolves, their war cries piercing the grey Highland morning. Euan’s chest heaved with panicked breaths. Where were the other boys? Calum, with his easy smile? David, always so clever? Archibald, who’d taught Euan how to hold a wooden sword properly just the day before?

“Da!” Euan’s voice cracked, high and terrified.

His father didn’t turn. Murtagh’s sword was out, already red, as he barked orders to his men. But there weren’t enough of them. The MacLeod contingent had come for talks, not war. They were outnumbered, surrounded, caught in a trap sprung by men they’d thought were allies.

A horse screamed. Euan whirled, and his stomach lurched. The battlefield wasn’t the orderly thing from his father’s war stories. It was chaos—a writhing mass of violence and mud and dying men who sobbed for their mothers. A MacKinnon warrior staggered past, clutching his opened belly, his face grey. Blood pooled everywhere, dark and spreading.

“Move, boy!”

Rough hands shoved Euan forward. He fell hard, palms scraping rock. When he looked up, the world had shifted. His father was ten paces away now, fifteen, locked in combat with two men. Twenty paces. Too far.

“Da!”

Something glinted in Euan’s peripheral vision. He turned his head just as the blade descended.

Time slowed to treacle. The sword was massive, far larger than it should have been, wielded by a scarred man with dead eyes. Andersen—Euan would learn that name later, would carve it into his memory alongside the faces of the other hired swords who’d orchestrated that massacre. But at that moment, all he knew was the blade falling toward him, and his own voice screaming.

His father moved like lightning.

Murtagh MacLeod was forty-two years old, in the prime of his strength, and he threw himself between the blade and his son with the fury of a man who’d fight the devil himself for his blood. The sword meant for Euan’s neck caught his father’s shoulder instead, shearing through leather and muscle with a wet crunch that Euan felt in his bones.

“No!” The word tore from Euan’s throat.

But his father didn’t fall. Not yet. With his good arm, Murtagh’s sword swung up, catching Andersen’s blade and shoving it aside. Then he was hauling Euan up by the back of his tunic, dragging him away from the melee, his blood soaking through Euan’s shoulder.

“Run,” Murtagh gasped. “Run, lad—”

The second blade came from nowhere.

It caught Euan across the shoulder as his father pulled him, a glancing blow that should have taken his head. Instead, it carved a line of fire down his arm and across his torso. Euan shrieked. The pain was white-hot, blinding, worse than anything he’d ever imagined. His legs gave out beneath him.

“Euan!” His father’s voice was frantic now, breaking. “Stay with me—”

But there were too many of them. Three men converged on Murtagh, their faces twisted with battle-fury. One blade caught his father’s leg. Another opened his side. Murtagh roared, swinging wildly, protecting Euan’s fallen form with his own body even as he bled.

“Help us!” someone bellowed. “The laird’s son—”

MacLeod warriors surged forward, forming a desperate shield wall. Steel crashed against steel. Men shouted, died, fell. Through the press of bodies, Euan saw Calum’s father dragging the boy backward, Calum’s face white with shock. David was being carried by a MacDonald soldier, his thin frame limp. Archibald fought beside his father, the big man-at-arms who cut down attackers with methodical brutality.

They were all children. They should have been safe.

Euan’s vision swam. The pain in his shoulder throbbed in time with his racing heart, spreading down his arm, across his chest. Blood soaked his tunic, warm and sticky. Was it his? His father’s? Both?

“Move him!” A warrior Euan didn’t recognize scooped him up, armor clanking. “We’ve got tae get the lad out—”

“Me faither—” Euan tried to reach back, but his arm wouldn’t work properly. The world tilted sickeningly.

He caught one last glimpse of Murtagh MacLeod, kneeling in the mud, his sword still raised despite the wounds covering his body. Their eyes met across the battlefield—father and son, laird and heir—and Euan saw everything in that look. Pride. Love. Anguish. Apology.

Then the warrior was running, and Euan was bouncing in his arms, each jolt sending fresh agony through his torn shoulder. The sounds of battle faded behind them, replaced by his own gasping sobs. He’d wet himself, he realized distantly. The shame of it cut through even the pain.

Around them, the other children were being evacuated. Calum, David, Archibald, and another boy Euan didn’t know—Lachlann, someone said. All of them bloodied, terrified, torn from childhood in a single morning of treachery.

Behind them, Loch Eilein’s waters reflected fire where tents burned. Men still screamed. Steel still sang its deadly song.

And Euan MacLeod, six years old, learned what betrayal tasted like. It tasted like copper and ash. It felt like his father’s blood cooling on his skin, like the deep wound across his shoulder that would scar him forever, like the permanent hitch that even now was settling into his young leg where a blade had caught him as he fell.

His childhood died that day at Loch Eilein. His trust died with it.

The pain, though—the pain would live forever.

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