Her throat tightened.
She flipped faster now, the paper whispering beneath her fingers. There was more of the same care, more order, more protection. Men assigned to guard villages, notes on weatherpatterns, on sickness among the sheep, on reinforcing watch points before winter.
This is nae a man planning war.This is a man trying tae keep what he has from breaking.
Amelia leaned closer, her voice barely a breath. “Find aught?”
Enya shook her head once, sharp. “Nay.” The word felt wrong in her mouth. She closed the ledger and opened another, her movements brisk, precise. Inside, something twisted, slow and unwelcome. Doubt, spreading its roots.
She had told herself it would be a clean trade. She would find proof of his aggression, carry it back to her brother, and save Finley’s life by exposing a monster. She needed him to be a monster. It was the only way she could live with what she was doing.
Instead, her gaze caught on a folded map tucked beneath a stack of parchment. She drew it free, smoothing it open. Defensive lines traced the coast. Villages marked and circled. There were no arrows pointing outward, no plans beyond the horizon.
He wasn't preparing to attack. He was preparing to protect.
Her chest tightened, the air in the study suddenly turning to thin, frozen glass in her lungs.
She wasn't just standing in an office; she was standing in the sanctum of a man’s soul. Every map, every defensive line, every grain of ink was a testament to his devotion to his people. He wasn't the warmonger her brother had painted; he was a shield.
The weight of her betrayal felt like a physical hand around her throat.
He had held her as if she were something precious to be guarded, while she was standing in the dark, trying to find the knife to twist in his back. The silence of the room screamed at her. She was a thief of trust, a ghost in his house. The realization that he was a better person than she was made her want to sink into the floor and disappear.
She was the monster, not him.
She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and folded the map back into place. Her fingers lingered an instant too long on the paper, a silent apology to a man who didn't know he was being betrayed. She felt small. She felt wretched. She had gone there to find war, but all she had found was the truth—and it was going to break her.
Amelia shifted, restless. “We should go.”
“Aye,” Enya murmured, though her feet were anchored to the floor by the weight of what she’d seen. “There’s naething fer us here anyway.”
She took one last look around the room, imprinting it on her mind. That was not the lair of a tyrant. It was the working space of a man who carried responsibility like a second skin. The knowledge settled heavy and hot beneath her ribs, making her acutely aware of everything she stood to lose.
The latch shifted.
Enya froze. Her blood turned to ice before her mind could even process the sound. The world narrowed to that single, metallicclack.
Amelia’s breath caught in a choked, jagged sob of air that sounded loud enough to bring the walls down. Enya didn't think;there was no room left for thought, only the frantic, slamming survival instinct of a hunted animal. Fear burned through her, a white-hot flash that cauterized her hesitation and turned her blood to liquid fire.
She seized Amelia’s wrist—her grip desperate and bruising, bone against bone—and hauled her toward the far wall. The world narrowed to the sliver of deep, suffocating shadow behind a tall oak cupboard. Every inch of movement felt like an eternity, her skirts hissing against the stone like a warning. They vanished into the dark just as the door groaned open.
Harald’s footsteps entered the room.
Enya shoved herself into the narrow gap beside the cupboard, pulling Amelia flush against her. They angled their bodies into the suffocating darkness, pressing so hard against the stone wall that the cold seeped through their bodices.
The door closed behind him, and he crossed the room quietly. Enya could hear the soft rasp of his breath, the faint creak of leather as he shrugged free of his belt. Candlelight shifted, shadows stretching and contracting with his movement.
Her pulse thudded so loudly in her ears she was certain he could hear it.
He stopped at the table as she heard papers rustling, then a chair scraped softly. Enya’s fingers curled against the wood, nails pressing into her palm. She felt Amelia trembling violently beside her, the girl’s heat radiating in the cramped space.
Harald exhaled—a long, weary sound that went through Enya like a blade.
She pictured him without meaning to: the way his brow would furrow in the candlelight, the way his large, scarred hands—the hands that had held her with such reverence—would be smoothing the very maps she had just violated. She wondered, with a sickening throb in her chest, if he was thinking of her. If he was looking at the chair across from him wishing she were there.
Time stretched. He turned pages, murmured something under his breath she could not catch. Her heart kicked harder when he rose again, crossing the room. He passed so close to their hiding place she could smell him—salt, cold wind, and that clean, masculine scent that was uniquely his. The urge to reach out, to confess, to touch the hem of his tunic surged unbidden and terrifying.
She closed her eyes tight, grasping Amelia’s hand, her knuckles white.
