For the first time, she wasn't the demon child or the cursed girl. She was simply his.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The keep hummed. Harald had known preparations for war, for winter, but this was different. The air itself seemed thick, drawn taut by silk and voices and motion. Everywhere he turned, something was being carried, lifted, adjusted.
Tomorrow he would marry Enya Cameron.
The thought pulsed inside of him. It was no longer a distant strategic goal or a duty to the king. It was a weight that pressed against the very center of his chest, newer and far more dangerous than any armor he had ever worn.
He crossed the upper hall with the measured, heavy steps of a man who owned the stone beneath him. He nodded to a steward and acknowledged a captain with a brief lift of his chin, his face a mask of iron-cold composure.
Then he saw her. The iron mask vanished.
Enya stood near one of the long tables, her dark hair braided neatly against the pale curve of her neck—a neck he had wanted to press his lips to until she gasped. Her sleeves were rolled up,exposing the delicate strength of her forearms as she worked with Amelia and the maids. Ribbons lay scattered across the dark oak in a bright, chaotic disorder of silk and lace.
She was speaking, her voice light and musical, cutting through the din of the hall like a clear bell.
“If ye tie it that way,” Enya said, lifting a length of ribbon between her fingers with a grace that made Harald’s throat go tight, “it’ll loosen by noon. Ye want it firm enough tae survive the whole day.”
Harald stopped. He didn't mean to, but his feet simply refused to move. He watched the way her hands moved—the same hands that had gripped his tunic so desperately in the dark. He watched the tilt of her head, the way the torchlight caught the different depths of color in her eyes.
A terrifying wave of protectiveness crashed over him. He looked at her and felt a raw, primal ache to sweep all the ribbons and the maids aside, to pull her into the shadows and tell her that he would burn the world to ash before he let anyone make her feel wrong or cursed ever again.
He didn't just want her as a wife. He wanted to be the shield she had never had. He wanted to be the one place where she didn't have to be brave.
“Is there somethin’ wrong wi’ the ribbons?” he asked. His voice was mild, but it carried an intimacy that seemed to pull a veil over the rest of the bustling hall.
Enya startled, just barely. He caught the tiny, jagged hitch in her breath before she turned to face him.
Then her gaze met his, and he watched the frantic rhythm of her pulse settle. “Nay,” she said. “They’re fine.” Her tone was too quick, the words clipped.
Harald looked down at the table, at the neat stacks and bright disorder. “But ye arenae,” he stated, his eyes returning to her face.
A brief, suffocating silence opened between them. The sounds of the keep—the clatter of plates, the shouting of guards—seemed to fade into a dull hum, leaving only the two of them in a circle of cold tension.
Enya’s chin lifted, the movement precise, almost rehearsed. “I’m tired,” she said. “It’s a busy keep.”
“That it is,” Harald replied, his tone unchanged, his eyes searching hers for the cracks he knew were there. “But that’s nae what I said.”
Enya breathed out slowly, her shoulders tensing as if she were steadying herself against a gale. “Must everything be questioned?”
“Nay,” Harald said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble in his chest. “Only the things ye’re tryin’ hardest nae tae say.”
Her hands went still on the table. She met his eyes then and held them, a flash of her old defiance flickering like a dying candle before fading into something far more fragile—something that looked like a plea. Whatever she was carrying sat too close to the surface now; he could see it in the tight, white line of her jaw and the way she swallowed as if she were choking on her own heart.
“I’m fine,” she said again. The words were a whisper now, stripped of their authority “Truly.”
The lie sat between them like a living thing. He studied her face with a precision that bordered on hunger. Every instinct he possessed—the instincts that had kept him alive in shield walls and dark forests—was screamingdanger, even as her voice insisted onpeace.
He lowered his voice, dropping it to a rough, private register that he didn't trust for any other ears. The sound of it was less an order and more a desperate anchor.
“Come wi’ me.”
Enya frowned slightly, a ripple of confusion breaking through the surface of her careful calm. “Where?”
“Me chamber.”
The words seemed to sap the air from the space between them. Enya drew in a sharp, audible breath, her eyes widening. “Harald?—”
