He looked, at that moment, like something that had been under pressure for a long time and finally reached its breaking point. Not dangerous anymore, just broken in the way a man is when he’s run out of story.
“She’ll never be safe with ye,” Noah said quietly. “Nae because of the clan or the title. Because of who ye are with her. Ye look at Esther, and ye see somethin’ that makes ye feel small, and ye cannae forgive her for it. Ye never could.”
William said nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Ye think ye’ve won,” William said. Breathing hard, voice cracking at the edges. “Ye think because ye have the clan and the castle and that woman that ye’ve won somethin’. But ye’re wrong. There are others who ken what was taken from me. Others who’ll carry it forward after I’m gone. And this will never truly be done.”
He had a second blade, smaller, the kind kept in a coat lining—something a man carries so long he forgets it’s there until he needs it. He held it in his left hand and was already moving, the arm rising quickly and low, with nothing left to lose in the motion and everything left to prove.
Noah moved into the angle instinctively, not thinking. It was how he’d been trained before he was old enough to understand why. His left hand grabbed William’s wrist, and his right shot forward.
His dirk, retrieved from the stones in the scramble, without knowing he’d done it, went in below the ribs.
William’s breath left him.
The stable went entirely quiet.
Noah held the grip for one second. Two.
He felt his brother’s weight shift against him. Not fighting, not resisting anymore, just leaning, like a man leans when the support holding him up has given out. He carefully lowered him to the ground, laid him against the cold flagstones, and did not look away from his face.
William looked up at him. His expression in those final moments was something Noah had not expected. Not rage, nor the grinding resentment that had lived in his face for as long as Noah could remember, but something closer to the absence of both. His mouth moved.
“All… this… should … have been. Mine,” William said.
Then nothing.
Noah stayed crouched over him for a long moment.
He had spent twenty years managing William. Keeping him at arm’s length, giving him the edges of territory, and maintaininga guilt that was not entirely guilt and not entirely pity but had lived in the same part of his chest as both.
He had told himself it was what family meant, that it endured even when it had stopped deserving to. That there would always be more time. Another conversation. Some version of this that ended differently.
He looked at William’s face, still now. The grinding resentment that had lived in it for as long as Noah could remember was finally, completely gone. He felt nothing he had words for yet. He suspected he would, later, in the dark, when there was nothing else to occupy the space. But not now.
He straightened up, stepped back, and stood quietly for a moment—just that, just standing—and then he turned.
Ava was at the stable entrance. She had not gone inside. She stood very still with her arms at her sides and looked at him with an expression he couldn’t entirely understand. Not fear, not shock, something more complex than either. Her cheek was darkening along the bone where William had hit her.
He crossed the courtyard toward her.
“Are ye all right?” he said.
“Aye.” She did not look away from his face. “Are ye?”
He considered this honestly. “I’ll tell ye when I ken.”
She nodded as if this was a reasonable answer, which was one of the things he had come to understand about her. She accepted the truth of something even when it was not yet clear. She did not expect him to be further along than he was.
“Esther,” he said.
“She’s inside with Elliot. She doesnae ken.” Ava paused. “She ran the whole way, Noah. I could hear her footsteps from across the stable.”
“I ken.” Something tightened in his chest. “I was at me desk when she came through the door. She couldnae get the words out at first.”
“What did she say?”
