Roger looks down at his son. His lips move. No sound comes. But Jemmy’s tiny hand curls around his finger.
At dawn, Roger is brought to the village edge. The rope is cut from his neck. He stumbles, and Claire catches him. He doesn’t speak. He can’t. His voice is gone — rawed to silence by days of screaming.
The Mohawk chief, Kaheroton, watches with old, unreadable eyes.
“Do you think we’ll ever stop losing pieces of ourselves?” she asks.
“I can,” he says softly. “And I will.”
Silence. Claire grips his arm. “You can’t.”
Outside, as dusk bleeds into night, Claire finds Father Alexandre’s old rosary in her sporran — the one from the mission. She presses it into Kaheroton’s hand.
Jamie squeezes her fingers. “Aye. When the losing stops, we’ll be dead. Until then… we build.”