Ariella started to follow a servant with a bowl of water, avoiding Maxwell with practiced ease.
Maxwell’s chest tightened with something like desperation.
He had protected everything he cared about.
And now he felt the most fragile part of his life slipping away.
That night, when the keep finally quieted enough that the silence had teeth, Maxwell could not bear it any longer.
He washed the blood from his hands, changed his tunic, and walked the corridor toward Ariella’s chamber with steps that felt heavier than armor.
He lifted his hand to knock.
Then stopped.
He exhaled once, sharp, and knocked anyway.
26
The knock was not the careful, courteous one servants used. Not the firm one messengers favored.
This knock was hesitant, as if the hand behind it did not know whether it should be lifted at all.
Ariella sat up in bed at once.
She had been staring into the darkness for too long already, listening to the wind scrape against the stone and wondering how many nights it had been since she last felt truly held. She pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders, heart already beating too fast.
“Come in,” she said, before she could change her mind.
The door opened, and Maxwell stood there.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
He looked different. Not battle-worn, not burdened with command. His hair was loose, his tunic simple, his shoulders no longer set as if braced against the world. There was something lighter about him, something almost… tentative.
“Ye should have a guard,” he said at last.
Ariella blinked. “I do.”
His mouth curved faintly. “Aye. I forgot.”
That small thing, that half-smile, struck her harder than any declaration could have. She found herself smiling back before she could stop it.
“Ye look tired,” she said.
“So do ye,” he replied.
She gestured to the chair by the hearth. “Then perhaps we’re evenly matched.”
He stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind him. The sound echoed softly, final in a way that made her breath hitch.
“I wanted to see ye,” he said.
Hope rose in her chest, fragile and dangerous.
“I noticed,” she said lightly, though her fingers twisted together in her lap. “I was beginning to think ye’d forgotten the way.”
His brows knit. “That was never the case.”
