Neil sat on the edge of the bed with his shirt back on, his fingers resting on the bandage. Warmth lived in the linen, and a faint herbal scent clung to it.
“I daenae fear ye enough to want ye dead.”
Her voice stayed in the room and would not leave, no matter how long he fixed his eyes on stone or wood.
He rose to his feet and walked to the mirror by the dressing table. Over the years, he had learned to keep his own company so he wouldn’t go mad.
One of the ways he did that was to speak out loud. Not only did it help him combat the loneliness that came with being a captive, but it also planted doubts in the minds of his captors.
“I didnae want ye afraid, Kristen,” he said to the mirror. “That was never the point.”
A gust of wind found the candle and bent the flame. He pressed his palm flat and felt the slow throb under the linen. A sound drifted through the stone, a clatter that could have been a dropped cup or a chain striking wood. His breath snagged, and he could feel smoke clog his nostrils.
Except there was no smoke.
Heat flared in the brand on his shoulder. He could hear the guard’s laughter as he stood over him, telling him what they planned to do to Kristen. He could hear and feel everything, including the rope biting his wrists and the air leaving his lungs.
He clenched his fingers until his knuckles whitened. The grain under his skin gave him something solid to name. He slowed his breathing.
“Quiet,” he muttered to the mirror. “Breathe.”
The mirror didn’t respond, but a part of him wished it did. Perhaps spending nights alone in a room after returning was not the best idea.
“Look,” he told himself. “It is wood. It is a table. It isnae the cabin.”
The shadows retreated momentarily, and sweat cooled at his spine. He rolled his shoulders back and stood taller.
“I’m in control,” he said to the mirror. “I kept it, even when they tried to scrape it off me bones.”
The candle burned lower, and his breathing slowly evened out. He didn’t want to think of his wife, but thinking found him anyway.
“She walked away,” he rasped. “She kept her head up.”
The words echoed, cold as a stream in shadow.
Why did he say that she wasn’t important to him?
“That was cruel,” he said. “Ye wanted to be cruel, did ye nae?”
Silence answered him.
He crossed to the narrow window, watching as the night blanketed everything in shadow. The courtyard lay quiet, and one time he saw a guard move beneath the wall and settle again.
“A rule is a rule,” he murmured.
He did not have to like it. He only had to make it hold.
He sat again and laced his boots slowly to keep his hands steady. The bandage pulled when he bent. He tied the knot again, but not as tightly as Kristen had.
“Ye can sleep here,” he told the empty bed. “It is cold, and it suits the life ye made.”
He pushed to his feet.
“Stop thinking. Walk.”
The corridor met him with a silence that felt like the pause before dawn. A guard shifted somewhere below and cleared his throat as Neil slowly stepped down the stairs, letting the stone indicate each turn.
At a corner near the far end of the castle, he passed a footman with a load of kindling.
