“Moira! You know you cannot hide forever!”

“That is what you think,” Moira whispered, halfway up a sturdy oak tree. She pressed her front to the trunk, with one hand gripping a branch to either side and both bare feet balanced on the strongest limb she could find.

“Moira!” Jamie’s singsong tones reached her ears as they echoed through the woods. “Come out! Come out! You know I’ll find you!”

“Jamie!” Iain’s voice rang out, so similar to his twin’s, much like everything else about them.

Moira could always tell them apart, however, both by sight and by sound. They could not fool her into mistaking one for the other, though this never stopped them from trying.

“Aye!” Jamie shouted.

“I checked the brook. She isn’t there.” The two of them met up not twenty feet from where Moira watched, biting her lip to silence the laughter bubbling up in her chest.

The sight of her twin brothers scratching their curly, brown heads and turning in circles was nearly too comical to be borne. It was unfair, perhaps, to play these games with boys so much younger than herself. But they insisted that reaching the ripe age of twelve years made them men, and this meant they were keen to prove themselves.

Finding Moira when she hid in the woods was as good a way to do this as any, since no one knew the woods and all their secrets the way she did. No one was as swift, as surefooted, as fearless.

And they were becoming frustrated at their lack of progress.

They began looking up, into the trees. She ducked behind the trunk, hiding her face. The bark beneath her feet was uncomfortably rough, but she was accustomed to it and felt no need to shift her weight. Such movement would only give her away.

“I know what let’s do.” Jamie’s voice held a note of secret devilishness.

“What?” Iain asked.

“Let us practice the trick-shooting with our bows, since we are alone now.”

Moira held her breath, straining her ears to listen. Trick-shooting? What was he on about?

“Do you think it is wise?” Iain asked, always the more cautious of the two.

“Moira is in hiding. She won’t find us and tell Father.”

She screwed up her face in a scowl. Ooh, the little devil.

So, this was how he wished to win? By cheating? For he knew she must be somewhere close and wagered on her flying at them in a half-crazed rage if they engaged in anything as daft as what they were hinting at.

He would find out she was not so easy to fool as all that.

She peered out from behind the trunk, watching with one eye as the twins positioned themselves roughly thirty feet apart, with Iain standing against a pine. He nestled a large pinecone on top of his thick, unruly hair so like his brother’s and sister’s.

Moira’s nails all but dug into the bark. They would not attempt something so dangerous. No, worse than dangerous. Deadly.

Jamie took his time drawing an arrow from the quiver strapped to his back. Oh, would that she had never seen to it that Father acquired one for each of the boys on their twelfth birthday. Was this what they had employed their time in practicing?

Shooting objects off one another’s heads?

Iain, for his part, looked confident as he stood there, waiting for the moment of truth. “Do take your time about it,” he smirked.

Jamie nocked the arrow, holding it and the bow at shoulder-level. “What? You cannot remain still for a minute? You had better, or I might miss.”

He was not serious. Neither of them could be.

Could they?

She watched, chewing her lower lip to bits, as Jamie drew back the bow. Iain drew a deep breath and steadied himself, eyes closed.

She looked back and forth. Back and forth. Would they? They wouldn’t. They were merely testing her.

What if they were not?

What if she lived the rest of her life knowing she might have saved her brother from a terrible death at the hands of a hare-brained stunt?

“Ready?” Jamie asked.

“I think so,” Iain muttered through gritted teeth.

Jamie began to count. “One…”

“No,” Moira whispered.

“Two…”

“You wouldn’t,” she breathed.

“Th—”

“Stop! Stop! I’m here, I am right here, I’ve been watching you all this time.” She glared down at the pair of them. “You do not play fair, brothers.”

Jamie doubled over with laughter. “I knew you could not remain hidden!”

Iain, on the other hand, removed the pinecone from his head with a trembling hand. “It is good to know you were so certain. What would you have done if she did not call out?”

Jamie shrugged while replacing the arrow in the quiver. “I would have shot high up in the branches. I would not have harmed you.”

Moira swore under her breath as she shimmied down the tree, landing on the ground with a thump. “Both of you are no better than hedge-born scoundrels. And I will have you know that I wouldn’t have stopped you if it had been Jamie waiting there with the pinecone on his head.”

Jamie’s fair skin turned an alarming shade of red. “You would not?”

“No, and not because I feel Iain is the better marksman.” She stuck her tongue out at him before scampering away, laughing gaily as her brothers followed, shouting half-hearted insults.

Of course, both boys—she refused to think of them as men and likely would never be able to after having raised them—meant more to her than her own life. They were well aware of this, which was why Jamie had been so certain of winning their game once he’d placed Iain’s life in danger.

Even if there had never truly been danger.

She emerged from the woods, still running—it brought her where she wished to be faster than mere walking, and she never took her time when there was a faster way of getting somewhere—but her lightheartedness did not last long.

The sight of her father’s gray gelding hitched to the post beside the front door to their home took the heart from her, as knowledge of his presence normally did.

The boys caught up with her in quick fashion, the laughter leaving their voices as they observed what she had already seen.

“He ought to have been gone another three days, perhaps four,” Iain observed. They exchanged a knowing look. “Perhaps he finished his business at the meeting sooner than he expected.”

Moira could not help smiling at her brother’s hopeful tone. He was a lovely boy who would make a good man one day, though their father had done little to teach him through example.

Perhaps his frequent absence of late was the best thing he could give his sons, then. The less contact they had with him, the better.

As for Moira, she’d spent years in avoidance of the man, spending as little time in his presence as possible while still maintaining his home and ensuring the preparation of his meals. She could not remember a time when he had inspired anything warmer than apathy.

For that was the best he’d been able to muster for her, and for the boys whose delivery had killed his wife.

Not that he had expressed great warmth toward her, either, at least from Moira’s recollection. The man was simply not possessed of the ability to display affection—even if he’d been able to feel affection, which she found doubtful.

“Come, then,” she smiled, injecting what cheer she might into her voice. “He will be full of stories, which shall keep him employed in talking until it is well past twilight.”

This was normally the case whenever Kin Reid returned from a meeting of the clan. His blood would be up, his desire to remind his sons of the importance of their clan, stronger than normal.

Even Moira knew of the clan’s strength, the way their influence stretched through her home of Banff and far beyond.

Not that she was supposed to know, she reflected as she escorted her brothers through the fields between the woods and the stone cottage with its sagging, plank roof. She was but a woman, and therefore thought to be unworthy of such understanding.

It was enough for her to wait at home by the fire, to tend the children and keep the house as though it were her own and not her father’s.

Enough for some, perhaps. But not for her.

Upon crossing the threshold, Moira immediately set herself to work so as to avoid conversation with her father. The boys, however, had no such occupation in which to take solace.

“Where were ye?” Kin demanded, ducking to avoid smacking his head on the doorframe between his bedchamber and the kitchen.

“Only in the woods,” Jamie explained, always the quick-tongued of the twins. “We had long since finished the chores and felt it would suit us to engage in practice with our bows.”

This mollified the hulking man, but only slightly. He folded his body, taking a seat at the table in the center of the cottage’s main room. “What about ye, then, lass? Do not tell me ye were practicing yer archery.”

She merely gritted her teeth and replied without turning from the pile of potatoes she peeled. “I do not need practice, as you well know.” She was by far the best hunter of the four of them—while it was no great feat to surpass her younger brothers, the fact that she’d outperformed her father time and again in the last several years was a thorn in the man’s breast.

Perhaps if he would spend less time with his head in a mug of wine and more time at practice, he would be able to bring home a stag every so often.

Kin Reid took this with uncharacteristic calm—which, upon later reflection, should have been when Moira first realized something was amiss.

“Aye, I suppose ye are quite the archer, though I have never approved of ye running wild as though ye were a man.”

She rolled her eyes, peels flying away from potatoes at an alarming rate as she imagined skinning her father alive. He may have sired her and supported her, therefore deserving her allegiance, but his attitude toward her and women on the whole made him repugnant.

Only the presence of her brothers and the love she bore them kept her under the man’s roof. She would have just as soon seen him hire help than live another day in that cheerless home.

Iain, always aware of how to best alleviate a tense situation, spoke up. “What was the business of the meeting, then? You said you would spend the entire fortnight away.”

“Aye, the road was easily traveled. And there was a matter I needed to bring home with all haste.”

Moira placed a mug on the table before him and filled it as he liked—to the brim. She had already borne the weight of his hand against the side of her head after not filling it near the point of overflow.

And she never made the same mistake twice.

Jamie sat opposite their father. He and Iain both would inherit Kin’s height and rangy build—the twins were already taller than the sister ten years their senior—and he made a show of folding himself into his seat as his father did.

Another sign of the man he believed himself to be.

“What did you need to bring home?” Jamie asked. “Is there to be a war?”

“Perhaps.”

When Moira glanced over her shoulder in surprise, she found her father sneering. At her.

“For what reason do you smirk, then?” she asked, turning with the paring knife still in her hand.

“There might very well be a war, my sons.” Rather than answer her question, he turned his attention to the boys. “For there are many types of war, and not all involve men and their swords and blood-soaked land.” He turned in the chair, stretching his long legs toward the hearth.

Moira studied him, eyes narrowing. “Out with it, then, Kin Reid. I know you speak of me.”

“If yer to speak to me, lass, you’ll speak with the respect a father deserves.” He tapped his meaty fist against the table, nostrils flaring as he hardly concealed his bitterness. “I know not who gave ye the notion that speaking to me in such a manner was acceptable, but ye ought to know by now how I’ll strip the hide from yer flesh over it.”

“Why do you speak of our sister?” Iain asked. For all of Jamie’s bravery and his saucy demeanor, it was Iain who possessed the courage to speak over Kin in such moments. The man might just as easily have slapped him hard enough to swell his eye shut. It was a great risk to take.

Kin held Moira’s gaze for another moment before turning back to Iain. “Because she is to be married.”

Even the fire in the hearth ceased to crackle in the silence which followed.

Iain and Jamie froze, likely terrified of what was to come.

Only Kin’s eyes moved, sliding from his sons to his daughter. Watching. Waiting.

Moira’s fist tightened around the handle of the knife.

“That is what you think,” she whispered for the second time that day.