Jamie looked at me then, and I saw the boy I met at Leoch. The one who was flogged for my sake. The one who believed honor was a currency that could not be debased.

“I have killed men,” he said, his voice a low rumble, like distant thunder. “Englishmen. Frenchmen. My own kin, in a way. But I have never felt a blade turn in my gut until I saw him ride past at Ticonderoga. He has my face, Sassenach. And he looked at me as if I were a stranger.”

Jamie’s throat worked. He could have said a thousand things. I am your father. I loved your mother. I have carried your name in my bones like a splinter of glass.

Who is the man with my face, and why did he save my life?

“Who…?” William breathed.

(A slow, deliberate drumbeat fades in. The sound of wind across a Scottish moor. Then, a woman’s voice, weary but resonant—Claire’s.)

And William went. Because he was a soldier. Because he was afraid. Because sometimes, the truth is a heavier weapon than a musket.