I remember the sound of the iron cage long before I ever saw it— the groan of metal in the wind, the whisper of rain on rusted bars, the soft rattle that carried across the stones of Roxburgh like a ghost dragging its chains.

But I did not know her then. I only knew the tale of her suffering—Bruce’s wee sister, handed over to the English like a lamb to wolves, locked in a cage where decent folk would nae keep a dog. Four years she hung there against the sky, flesh and bone and quiet defiance, while Longshanks used her as a lesson and a mockery.

Four years. Christ help us all.

When word came that she was to be freed—traded for noblemen taken at Bannockburn—Robert called me into the smaller tent beside his command. His face was stone, colder than any winter I’d known, but when he spoke, the edge beneath his voice nearly split me.

“I trust you alone, James,” he said. “Bring my sister home.”

The weight of that trust settled heavy on my shoulders. Not a burden—more like armor. Robert Bruce knew me as I truly was: fierce enough to stain every English banner with ash, loyal enough to give him my life without a thought. If he asked this of me, I would see it done.

But I was not ready for the sight of her.

She stepped out of the English fort with the slow, unsure movements of someone who had forgotten what freedom felt like—who’d forgotten what earth under her feet meant, or wind against her cheek. A cloak had been thrown around her, far too big, hanging off her thin shoulders. Her hair fell in tangled waves, half-shorn in places where wind and rust had taken it. Her wrists were scarred from manacles that had been removed only hours before.

But her eyes— God above, her eyes.

They were the same color as her brother’s, aye, but deeper, quiet and fierce all at once.

She looked at me as though I were some marvel— or perhaps as though I were another cage she was expected to endure.

“I’m Sir James Douglas,” I said softly, bowing my head. “I’m to take ye home.”

She held my gaze a moment too long. Then she whispered, voice raw from disuse, “Home. I dinnae remember what that is.”

My throat tightened. A strange thing—for I had seen women slain, villages burned, men torn apart on battlefields… yet this one frail voice nearly unmade me.

The road was long. We avoided English watch, rode through thick woods and cold streams, kept close to the hills where shadows were kinder than men. She scarcely spoke for days—only watched the world as if relearning the shape of it.

I gave her my cloak on the first night; she protested, weak and uncertain, but I insisted. “Ye’ll take it,” I said, “else I’ll lay awake the whole night frettin’.”

That earned me a ghost of a smile—the first I had seen from her.

In the mornings, when the frost bit hard, I made the fire myself. She’d sit close, hands trembling against the warmth, and I’d look anywhere but at the bruises along her throat or the way her ribs showed through her gown. Rage lived in me then—raw and bright, the kind that could hollow a man out if left to fester. But whenever she lifted her gaze to mine, the anger softened into something else entirely. Something gentler.

Something far more dangerous.

One evening, as the sun bled red over the moors, she spoke at last.

“Why do ye look at me so kindly, Sir James? I am no prize. I am… ruined.”

The words struck like a spear.

I turned to her, slow and deliberate, and knelt before where she sat on a fallen log.

“Listen well, lass,” I said. “What the English did was wicked, aye… but they didnae break ye. They tried. God knows they tried. But I’ve seen broken folk. They hide their eyes. They flinch at every sound. They beg for death.”

I reached, gently—so gently—and brushed my knuckles along the edge of her jaw.

“You look the world straight on. Even now. There’s more strength in you than in half the warriors I’ve fought beside.”