He felt a profound, sickening disappointment expanding in his chest. It swallowed the hope he had nurtured so carefully, snuffing it out like a candle in a gale. He looked at her. Enya was shaking now, her knuckles white as she clung to the edge of his desk.
I dinnae ken her.
Then, he finally moved, taking a slow, deep breath.
"What would ye have me say, Enya?" he asked. His voice was calm—terrifyingly so.
"Harald—"
"I understand why ye did it," he interrupted, his tone devoid of warmth. He turned away from her, walking toward the window to stare out at the dark courtyard. "Loyalty tae clan... loyalty tae family. It is a weight I have carried me entire life. Ye did yer duty. Ye were a good soldier fer yer braither."
"I chose ye, Harald!" she cried out, her voice cracking. "I stopped the moment I realized ye werenae a threat tae me people."
Harald understood her, yet he still felt a surge of bitter, jagged hurt. He wanted to reach for her, and he wanted to banish her from his sight.
"We are married," he said flatly. "That much is clear. We have a keep tae run and a winter tae survive."
"Is that all?" she whispered, her eyes wide and overflowing with tears.
Harald looked at her, seeing the raw vulnerability in her face, and it made his heart bleed. But he couldn't find his way back to the softness of the dawn. The lie was too big.
"Go tae sleep, Enya," he said, his voice cracking with a sudden, weary weight. "I’ll take me time here. I have... much tae think on."
She stood there for a heartbeat, her face crumpled in a mask of pure, unadulterated pain.
She looked as though she wanted to say more, to reach for him, but something in his face stopped her. With a small, broken nod, she turned and rushed out of the study, the door slamming behind her.
Harald stood in the center of the room, his breath coming in shallow, jagged gasps. He felt the impulse to go after her, to tell her it didn't matter.
But it daes matter.
It mattered that the only person he had ever truly let in was the one person who had been looking for a way to destroy him.
He couldn't stay in the room. It felt like a tomb.
He grabbed his heavy wool cloak and strode out of the studio, through the quiet halls, and out into the biting night air of the courtyard. He needed to breathe. He needed the cold to numb the fire in his chest.
He had barely reached the center of the yard when the sound of frantic boots hit the stone.
"Me laird! Harald!"
Harald turned to see Leo, his face pale and slick with sweat, his eyes wide with panic.
"There’s a fire! I’ve already sent men," Leo gasped, his breath hitching. "In one of the farther villages—it’s their granary! It’s burnin'!"
Harald’s blood turned to ice. The granary. Their winter stores.
"Sound the bell!" Harald roared, already breakin' into a run toward the stables. "Wake the guards! They move now!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The sheets were too cold.
No matter how Enya curled her body, no matter how tightly she wound the furs around her shoulders, the bed felt like a vast, empty desert. It wasn’t just the physical lack of Harald; it was the frost he had left behind in the studio.
She lay on her side, staring at the embers in the hearth until they turned to grey ash.
Every word of their confrontation looped in her mind like a hangman’s noose.
