Page 23 of A Highland Healer Captured
Skylar snorted. “I can imagine.”
They walked through the kitchens next, where a few cooks were already kneading dough, their arms dusted white. The warmth and smell of bread wrapped around Skylar, nearly dizzying her with memories of home.
Cora kept up her commentary, gesturing toward the hearth, the hanging herbs, the way Katie bullied the cooks into feeding the laird when he forgot himself.
“Does he often forget?” Skylar asked before she could stop herself.
Cora’s lips twitched again. “He remembers battles more easily than meals. Mason says it’s because food cannae kill him, but men can. Mason’s wrong. Hunger’s sharper than a sword.”
They passed the stables, the smithy, the inner yard where boys sparred with wooden blades. Skylar’s eyes never stopped roaming, noting where the walls leaned, where guards loitered, where escape seemed impossible. Mason trailed behind, never intervening, but the weight of his watch sat heavy on her neck all the same.
At last, after a slow climb up a narrow stair and through a corridor that smelled faintly of dried thyme, Cora opened a heavy oak door and swept her hand inward.
“Back in surgery. Ye ken this place well.”
Skylar stepped in and breathed deep, “Aye.”
This place, at least, makes sense.
“Ye keep it well,” Skylar murmured, running a hand over a shelf.
Cora smiled faintly. “I do me best. Katie says I maither the jars too much. But if I daenae, who will?”
Skylar turned to her then, truly studying her. She looked so young, yet there was an old weight in her eyes. Something held back, something folded neat but not forgotten.
“How long have ye lived here at Strathcairn?” Skylar asked.
Cora glanced at her hands, twisting them together for a moment. “Long enough to forget some things, but nae long enough to forget all.”
“Twisty words again,” Skylar teased gently.
But Cora lifted her gaze and answered this time, clear and unflinching. “Since me clan was broken. Zander destroyed them, and he took me in.”
Skylar froze, the jars around her blurring. She had expected any number of answers, anything else made sense, but not that.
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
Cora only tilted her head slightly, as if waiting for the next question.
Skylar’s heart thudded. “D— Destroyed?” she repeated softly.
Cora nodded. Her voice remained calm, though her hands tightened together. “Aye. Me clan was… nae kind. Nae to its own, and nae to its neighbors. Me faither ruled like a whip, and his men were worse. Zander came with fire and sword. He ended it.”
Skylar’s breath caught. “And ye?”
“I was twelve,” Cora said simply. “Old enough to understand cruelty, young enough not to have learned to wield it yet. He spared me. Said I’d seen enough of one kind of laird, and might as well learn another.”
Skylar sank onto a stool, jar forgotten in her hand. Images spun through her mind. Blood on stone, a keep razed, children clinging to each other. The very thing she had accused Zander of,whispered in horror around Highland firesides, here sitting calm before her in the form of this girl.
“I’m so sorry, Cora,” Skylar said quietly, meaning it.
But Cora shook her head, surprising her again. “Daenae be. I’m grateful. Me faither would have sold me to the highest bidder before I was of age. Zander gave me work. A bed. A name worth speaking. I’d rather scrub his floors than sit at me faither’s table again.”
The bluntness of it cut through Skylar. She tried to see cruelty in Cora’s eyes, bitterness, anything, but there was only a steady truth. Gratitude, even.
“Still,” Skylar murmured, unsettled, “to lose so much…”
“To lose rot is to gain breath,” Cora said. “It’s strange, but it’s true.”
