The Journey Back: The Red Fox of the Highlands
About this audiobook
Scotland, 1311.
Darach Arduin has spent his life moving through shadows. A member of the legendary White Raven Guard, the English know him as the Red Fox: a man capable of crossing the Highlands by following invisible trails, stealing messages from the enemy, and vanishing into the mist before anyone can catch him.
But neither war nor the battlefield has prepared him for Eirlys Vaelin.
Disguised as a nun and secretly serving King Aedan — whose cause also survives thanks to the Church’s vast network of messengers — Eirlys risks her life crossing a Scotland ravaged by war. She has no intention of surrendering her fate to an arranged marriage or spending her life trapped behind castle walls.
The last thing she needs is a Highland warrior determined to protect her.
Forced to flee together across the northern borders, Darach and Eirlys will discover that some wounds are not left by war… but by the fear of loving.
And that sometimes, true home is not a place.
But the person capable of finding you even in the heart of the mist.
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About the author
Since childhood I have felt a fascination difficult to explain toward everything time seems to have left behind. Ancient paths wrapped in mist, ruins still carrying names erased by centuries, symbols carved into stone that seem to hold secrets impossible to fully translate… all of them have always spoken to me of a memory that never truly disappears, but instead remains sleeping beneath the surface of the world.
Perhaps that is why I write.
Not merely to recreate distant eras or raise landscapes of the past, but to explore what continues beating through the years: the invisible traces lives leave upon one another, the echo of loss, the silent weight of decisions, and that inner call which sometimes leads people toward destinies they never imagined.
For me, stories are a form of return.
A way of going back to an intimate and ancient place where beauty and wounds, nostalgia and longing, coexist without needing justification.
Within them I find women walking between loyalty to what they love and yearning for what they still do not know; men marked by guilt, war, or honor; and landscapes that are not merely settings, but living presences, almost reflections of the souls inhabiting them. I am especially moved by that moment when a human being understands that certain forces can never be controlled: love, loss, the land one feels belongs to them.
With time, writing has become for me a way of listening to the ancient voices still echoing within silence.
Like those who centuries ago patiently wove Highland tapestries thread by thread, I try intertwining memory, emotion, and symbols until they take the shape of stories capable of breathing on their own. Perhaps because, deep down, we all seek the same thing: to recognize ourselves within something greater than ourselves — a shared memory, an inherited dream, an ancient truth we barely know how to name.
Thank you for coming this far.
And above all, thank you for allowing these stories to find a place within your memory as well.
With sincere gratitude,
Arhane Igya
