“Ye cannot blame yerself, Noah.”
He gave a chuckle. “Can’t I?”
Abruptly, he rose to his feet and turned to go. Before she knew what she was doing, Senga had reached out and grabbed his hand. He paused, glancing back at her, and for a moment, the world seemed to stop spinning. It narrowed to him and her, staring wide-eyed at each other, their breath catching in their throats.
“I don’t much feel like being alone right now,” Senga managed at last, giving a faint, rasping laugh.
Noah swallowed and nodded wordlessly. He turned back to her, crouching before her. This put them more or less on eye level, him crouching and her sitting on the low chest. Picking up the plate, Senga tore the bread in two and silently offered him a piece. He took it, chewing.
“We must stop him,” Noah said, after a few moments of silence. “Laird Dickson. Laird Murray. The deaths won’t end until we put a stop to this.”
“Nay, I suppose not,” Senga murmured. “It’ll only get worse. More innocents dead, more villages destroyed like this one.”
As far as she could tell, there wasn’t a single family left whole in the village. There were perhaps fifty or sixty left alive, out ofa village of around five hundred people. Some were injured and might not last the night. Some were injured but would recover, but the scars—inside and outside—would never disappear.
“When I heard that shout,” Noah whispered, his voice catching. “I recognized Laird Murray’s voice at once. But I never heard yers. So I thought… I thought the worst. I thought ye were gone, Senga. I thought I had lost ye.”
She tried to meet his eye, but he kept glancing away. At last, he looked at her straight on, and she was surprised to see tears glittering in his eyes.
“I thought ye were dead,” he managed, his voice cracking altogether. “And I felt… I cannot describe how I felt. As though I’d been hollowed out. Cored like an apple.”
Senga gave a tentative smile. “But I’m not dead.”
“It was so close, Senga. If he takes ye with him, ye will be as good as dead.”
She swallowed, biting her lip. “Do ye think I don’t know that? The point is that we are here, and he didn’t take me. Ye saved me, Noah. Ye saved me.”
“Laird Murray knew about us,” Noah rasped out, head bowed. “He said that ye had given me up out of fear. I didn’t believe him, but he locked me away that night I was supposed to meet ye. I didn’t believe him, but when I learned that ye were gone, he said that ye had used me as a distraction so that ye could escape.”
Senga sucked in a breath. “What?”
“I’ve thought about it over and over again since I met ye again,” he continued, voice quavering. “I thought they would kill me. I almost wished they had, the pain was so bad. Part of the blood in the stables was mine, to be sure, but not all. I had no one to care for me, to speak for me. Sometimes I cannot quite work out how I escaped at all.”
Senga felt a rush of nausea curling in her gut. She recalled seeing a bloody handprint on one of the stall doors and wondered if it had been Noah. It must have been.
“I never betrayed ye,” she whispered, determined to say something at last.
He nodded, still not looking up. “I know now. I believed for so long that ye did, but I was a fool, wasn’t I? A fool and a coward. Our separation is my fault.”
“Who cares whose fault it is? Besides, ye are no coward, Noah.”
“No? I abandonedye, remember? And I let ye walk into danger just now.”
Senga reached out, cupping his face in her palms, and turned it up towards herself. His gaze dragged along with it, finally landing on her face.
“I am safe,” she said, as quietly and firmly as she could. “I do not blame ye for anything. I wondered for a long time why ye never came for me, because I wouldn’t allow myself to believe that ye were dead. I… I suppose I knew, deep down, that my father had finally come between us.”
He reached up, gripping her wrists.
“I was a fool to let him,” Noah murmured fervently. “I swear, Senga, if he’d taken ye away, I’d have burned the world down to find ye.”
She laughed aloud at that, tears prickling at her eyes.
“No need. I am right here. I never betrayed ye, Noah.”
“But I did abandon ye,” he whispered. “I knew ye were alive out there, but I never tried to find ye. I believed that ye did not want to be found.”
“It doesn’t matter. I am here now. Ye are here now.”
