“I am not ordering anyone to be executed,” Cain said, his tone low.

Gideon glanced over his shoulder. “They do not know that.” He turned to Cain. “Perhaps ye should go to the loch alone to strategize.” There was only the tiniest edge of insolence in his words, as if he hinted that Cain was not planning this conquest and victory properly.

“Hold your foking tongue,” Cain said, the iciness of his words making Seraph’s ears twitch as if detecting a possible battle.

Joshua chuckled. “Ho now, I am usually the one Cain swears at.”

Cain exhaled slowly and pushed Seraph to ride ahead so as not to be in line with either of his brothers. Ella didn’t fear that he was a threat to her brother anymore, did she? He’d held her as they rode from Varrich the day before, cradling her against him. She had assured him that the stain on her gown was wine and not blood, but still he listened for her breath, making sure it was not labored.

They hadn’t spoken further.

There was too much to say and no privacy surrounded by armies of men. He had left her safely with his sister and aunt and gone below to bear Gideon’s lectures, Joshua’s ranting about crushing the Mackay defenses, and Kenneth Macleod’s heated explanations. Bàs had remained quiet as usual, his dark expression giving away little.

Cain looked out across the moor and lifted Eun up into the sky to soar again. The summer grasses and wildflowers stretched out before him, but he paid little attention to the wind making them bow. Instead, his mind moved the players about in the game of strategy he always had laid out in his head. Four armies of horse, a newly acquired Varrich Castle, a boy chief, an experienced Sutherland advisor who had wanted him poisoned, the future of Sutherland clan in his grasp. And Ella.

The polished wooden queen sat in the satchel strapped to Seraph, and he pulled it out, wrapping his fist around it. The queen in his mental game was in jeopardy. He could conquer her and take Sutherland lands, with or without a vow to King James. It was what he was taught to do and raised to believe was his destiny.

Conquest above all else.

And that meant conquering Ella, Jamie, and the Sutherlands. He tucked the queen inside his tunic, the sash of tartan across it keeping it snug against his heart.

As his gaze lowered to the field before him, crops of Scottish thistle sat upright in the breeze even though the fragile wildflowers whipped in the wind around them. He halted Seraph and leaped down to pinch off one spiky flower head.

Joshua halted beside him, his brow rising. Cain remounted and looked forward across the moor. “The thistle is good luck and strong, like our clan and all of Scotland once we unite.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four