They stood in silence for a long moment, watching the flames dance. The storm still rattled the shutters, but it felt distant now, muffled by thick stone walls and the crackling heat.
Finally, Gareth signed.You wanted to go.
It wasn’t an accusation. His hands moved carefully, deliberately, and his face held no judgment—only a kind of quiet resignation that made her heart ache.
I have to try,she signed back. Her fingers felt clumsy, uncooperative.I have obligations. People who depend on me. A life.
She didn’t tell him that her life felt increasingly distant. That his face had become more real to her than her own flat, her own office, her own memories. That some traitorous part of her was relieved the magic hadn’t worked, because staying meant?—
She couldn’t think about what staying meant. Not yet.
Gareth nodded slowly.I understand.
But his eyes told a different story. His eyes were the colour of the storm outside, and they held a grief so profound it stole her breath.
He was letting her go, would help her try again, if she asked. He would tear apart the world to send her home if that was what she wanted, because that was who he was—a man who gave and gave and asked for nothing in return, who had locked himself in silence and solitude rather than burden anyone with his pain. And she was breaking his heart.
The realisation hit her like a physical blow. She swayed, and he reached out to steady her, his calloused palm warm against her elbow, and the touch sent sparks racing up her arm.
“Gareth,” she whispered. Her voice came out as a croak, wrecked from screaming. “I?—”
She took another drink. The words caught in her throat, tangled with everything she couldn’t say, and suddenly she was babbling—the nervous chatter that always overtook her when emotions ran too high.
“I had this friend,” she heard herself say. “Rachel. American. I told you about her. We met at a conference in Edinburgh, both of us presenting papers that everyone thought were rubbish. She invited me to visit her in Boston once, for their Independence Day—the Fourth of July, they call it. Massive celebration. Fireworks and barbecues and everyone waving flags about.” Shelaughed, though it came out more like a sob. “She kept going on about how brilliant it was that they’d got rid of the monarchy. No kings, no queens, just—just elected officials and constitutions and the freedom to cock everything up themselves without blaming it on some bloke wearing a crown.”
Gareth watched her, patient as ever, his head tilted slightly in a way that meant he was listening with his whole being.
“I thought she was barking mad,” Elodie continued, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I mean, I’m British. Welikeour royal family—most of us, anyway. Tea towels with the King’s face on them, that whole business. But Rachel said something that stuck with me. She said home isn’t about where you were born. It’s about where you choose to plant your flag.”
She looked up at him, at this scarred, silent, beautiful man who saw her more clearly than anyone ever had. Who heard her when no one else did. Who would let her go rather than see her unhappy.
He shook his head.Rest now. We will speak tomorrow.
He was protecting her. Even now, even with his heart cracking behind his eyes, he was giving her space, giving her time, putting her needs before his own.
She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t sure she wanted to go anymore. That somewhere between teaching him signs and making him almost-smile and learning the shape of his silences, she’d started building a life she might actually want to keep. That when she’d knelt in that clearing screaming at the sky, part of her grief had been terror that the magicwould work, that she’d be ripped away from this place, from these people, from him.
But the words stuck in her throat, tangled with exhaustion and confusion and the sheer overwhelming weight of everything she couldn’t quite bring herself to admit.
So she just nodded. Let him guide her toward the stairs. Let Marian appear to help her change into dry clothes and bundleher into bed. And as she lay in the darkness, listening to the storm finally begin to fade, she faced the truth she’d been running from for weeks.
She was in love with Gareth de Clare.
And she had no idea what to do about it.
CHAPTER 18
Afew weeks had passed since the storm, and neither of them spoke of the night Elodie had her meltdown and tried to leave. It hung between them, that rain-soaked confession, but not like a wall. More like a bridge half-built—something fragile and unfinished that they both tiptoed around, afraid of adding too much weight or it might collapse. Gareth watched her with something dangerously close to tenderness when he thought she wasn’t looking. She caught herself reaching for him, a touch on the arm, a brush of fingers, and pulling back at the last moment, her heart hammering against her ribs. But if words remained unspoken, other things had changed.
The morning sun slanted through the high windows of the great hall, catching dust motes and turning them to gold. Late summer had settled over Greywatch like a benediction—nearly four months since she’d tumbled out of the sky, and the world outside hummed with the urgency of the approaching harvest. The grain fields beyond the castle walls had turned from green to burnished gold, ready for the reapers. Plums hung heavy in the orchard, their skins blushing purple. The heather blazed across the moors in waves of violet and rose, and the air carried the rich, drowsy scent of sun-warmed earth and ripening fruit.
Elodie paused at the entrance to the hall, a smile tugging at her lips as she surveyed the chaos within, eating a plum, the juice dripping down her chin. Three trestle tables had been pushed together near the hearth, and around them clustered what appeared to be half the castle’s household. Old Bertram sat at one end, his weathered face creased in concentration as he practiced fingerspelling. But he wasn’t leading the lesson anymore—that honour had passed to Marian.
The kitchen maid stood at the head of the tables with the easy confidence of someone who’d found her calling. Her cap was askew as always, hair escaping in wild curls, but her hands moved with crisp authority as she demonstrated a sequence of signs to the assembled servants.
Again, Marian signed.Slower this time.She pointed at one of the scullery maids.You—your fingers are lazy. Make them sharp.
The girl tried again, and Marian nodded approval before turning to correct a guardsman’s posture. She’d become indispensable over the past weeks—not just fluent in sign language, but the bridge between Gareth’s silent orders and the household’s execution of them. When Gareth signed instructions too quickly for Bertram to catch, Marian translated. When servants needed to report to their lord but feared his reputation, Marian coached them through their signs. When disputes arose in the kitchens or the stables, Marian mediated in two languages at once.
