Isla's Heart

Prologue

In the year of our Lord 1307

A storm raged outside the keep's walls the night his mother died. 

Seven year old Conall Cameron would always remember the wind whipping against the stone battlements of Castle Lochiel, the roaring power of thunder and the sizzle of lightning striking the hills and valley as his mother slipped away and his father tore rooms apart in his grief. Cowering in a corner, Conall would never have his chance to grieve; his father would make sure of that.

"Get out of that corner you rotten boy!" Alasdair Cameron roared from the doorway.

Conall stared up with frightened eyes and grimaced. The stench of whiskey assaulted him as his father towered there with large fists at his sides, his long black hair shrouding him and giving him the appearance of Death's Keeper come to call. If only that were true, he'd go gladly, leave this place and the angry bitter man that he claimed as father.

He shut his eyes tight as Alasdair marched towards him, raised one massive fist and sent him flying from the corner. Conall's world went bright and then faded into a painful gray as blood trickled down the side of his face where one of his father's knuckles had broken the skin.  He recovered quickly, as he always did. This was nothing new.

Alasdair watched him with cold green eyes as he stood, "Your mother is dead". 

"I know." Conall did his best to keep his small voice even and not show the tears that hid there, but there was only so much bravery a young boy could muster in the face of such an indomitable foe. 

"Good.  Then you know you'll be leaving."

Perhaps he wasn't as recovered from the blow as he'd thought. His father's words seemed far away and made no sense to his spinning head, "Why?" He managed to ask.

It was then that the last seven years of cruelty and neglect would be explained to him. Then, that he would be told in hard tones that the man he'd called father was in fact not his father but his uncle. He'd learn that his mother had not been the paragon of virtue he'd always thought her to be. Instead, he'd be left knowing that his late mother betrayed her husband. Took her husband's brother into her arms and made a baby that would spend the rest of his days unwanted. 

"You see Conall," Alasdair said behind a desperate laugh, "She never loved me. Us. When your father died, my brother Nial, your mother never stopped grieving for him, not even to care for the son she'd made with the thief." He looked at Conall then, "And I've hated your mere existence ever since."

The day after they put his beautiful lifeless mother in the ground, Conall Cameron of Lochiel was sent to a family in the Lowlands that had no ties to his Highland home.

Exiled.