“Nay.”
“Ye’re...” He paused. “The opposite of that.”
She looked at him. “That’s the most romantic thing ye’ve ever said to me.”
His mouth moved. “I have better ones.”
“Ye really havenae.”
“I have the one in the chambers.I love ye.That was good.”
She threw back her head and laughed.
He looked at her with the expression that still, weeks on, did something to the inside of her chest that she had stopped trying to describe.
“Dance with me,” he said.
“I’m nae good at dancin’. I daenae ken this one.”
“It’s a reel. Ye follow the steps.”
“Easy for someone who grew up doin’ this.”
“Ava.” He held out his hand.
It was the same gesture Marcus had used with Annabeth, not a question, just a fact presented simply.
She had spent weeks learning that this was how he did everything: plainly, directly, without ornamentation. She had come to find it the most reliable thing she knew. “I’ll nae let ye fall.”
She took his hand.
The reel was fast, warm, and loud.
With the fiddles driving the pace and the whole hall moving together in the way a ceilidh moved, half-organized, half-joyful chaos, everyone finding the beat or giving up on it and moving anyway.
Ava lost the steps twice, and Noah caught her wrist and gently set her back in place without comment. By the third time, she had most of it, and by the end, she was laughing, flushed, and completely herself.
When it finished, she was breathing hard.
“Told ye,” he said.
“I fell over.”
“Twice.”
“That counts.”
“It doesnae.” He had not let go of her hand.
He was looking at her with the settled, certain expression she had come to understand meant he had made a decision. “Come on,” he said.
“Where?”
He didn’t answer.
He led her out through the side door of the hall.
The one behind the dais, the one that led to the east corridor. The sound of the ceilidh faded behind them, muffled by stone, and then it was only their footsteps, the torch-lit corridor, and his hand warm around hers.
