Page 55 of The Heather Wife
Warm. Real. Holding on.
Chapter 43
Calum
The world came back to him in pieces.
A whisper of heat.
The crackle of fire.
The faint scent of herbs and smoke.
Then pain — dull and deep, pulsing just beneath his collarbone. Each breath pulled at something that felt stitched together, tender and wrong. For a time he lay still, trying to remember how to breathe without drowning in it.
Light crept through the shutters, soft and gold against the far wall. The fire had burned low, the air thick with the musk of fever and old sweat.
He shifted slightly, and a weight tightened around his hand.
Sorcha.
She sat slumped beside the bed, her head tipped against his arm. The plaid he’d given her was still wrapped about her shoulders, though it had slipped crooked with sleep. Her hair had fallen loose from its braid, a dark tangle glinting with red where the firelight touched it.
Her face, even in rest, bore exhaustion like a wound — lashes heavy, mouth pale, smudges of shadow beneath her eyes. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days.
A rush of memory struck him then. The forest. The horn. The hiss of the bowstring and her cry — “Calum!” — just before the world went white with pain.
He blinked hard, the effort making the room tilt. His fingers brushed the thick bandage between his collarbones, still warm beneath the linen. Pain pulsed there — distant, dull, alive. He couldn’t tell if it had been hours or days.
The door creaked softly, breaking the quiet. The healer stepped in with a basin and stopped short. “By the saints,” she breathed, one hand to her heart. “Ye’ve chosen to wake after all.”
Her whisper carried no scolding — only relief.
Calum’s voice was raw, barely sound. “How long?”
“Four days since the field. Ye’ve been fightin’ fever near as long.” She glanced at Sorcha and smiled faintly. “And she’s fought harder still. Near broke herself to keep ye with us.”
He looked back at Sorcha, at the stillness of her sleep. “She… she stayed?”
The healer’s brows rose. “Aye. We couldn’t pry her away with the point of a spear. She’s eaten next to nothin’ and won’t rest unless she falls where she stands.” She bent, wringing the cloth in her basin. “Ye’ve a stubborn wife, Calum MacRae.”
He managed a weak smile. “Aye. I ken it well enough.”
“Would ye have your father sent for?” she asked softly.
He hesitated, then nodded once. “Aye. Him—and no noise. Let her sleep.”
The woman left, her steps quick but quiet. Calum let his head fall back against the pillow, watching the faint rise and fall of Sorcha’s shoulders.
In the stillness, memory bled into thought—fragments of the fever that had held him. Fire and shadow. The sound of her voice, low and shaking.Ye gave me this to keep,she’d said.So I’ll keep ye too, stubborn fool that ye are. Come back to me…
He could almost feel her hand closing his around something cold and familiar.
When he turned his palm now, a glint of silver caught the light.
His brooch.
The one he’d used to secure his mother’s plaid when he draped it over Sorcha’s shoulders. His thumb brushed the edge, tracing the familiar knotwork — the same lines he’d followed since boyhood, when his father first pressed it into his hand and told him it marked the laird he was meant to become.
