“Nay, they wouldnae.”
For a moment, she tried to imagine it clearly. Ciaran in his tower alone, looking upward through glass and brass toward the same heavens her mother had taught her to dream about.
The image should have felt odd. Instead, it felt reasonable in the strangest way, that a man like Ciaran would have quite an odd hobby.
How could something make sense and no sense at the same time?
“Me mother would have liked that,” Ava said.
“The telescope?”
“Theideaof it.” She glanced up at the sky again. “That a man who looks as though he might distrust every soft thing in the world still keeps a way to study the stars.”
He gave her a look at that, not offended but not amused either. More as if he had not expected to be read so neatly and did not entirely care for it.
“It serves practical uses as well,” he pointed out.
“Of course, it does.”
That made him breathe out something close to a laugh.
The sound was so small that she might have missed it if she had not been listening to him with far too much attention already. She said nothing about it. Instead, they just walked on.
Ava did not press him with foolish questions about how often he used it or whether he watched the stars alone or what first made him want to do such a thing. The moment felt too finely balanced for that.
He had given her a nugget, and she sensed that taking it too greedily might snap whatever had opened.
Still, the knowledge remained between them and felt heavier than anything.
She understood why he did that at the end of the day. She had spoken of her mother and a dream held for years, and he had felt it was only reasonable to reveal something about his private life.
Ava grew aware of him beside her in a new way then. He was not just the man she had married or even the man who had kissed her so fervently the other day. Rather, he had become more present. Moreapproachable.
She kept her hands folded before her because she did not trust them to stay still.
The path narrowed slightly where grass pressed close to stones, and when they rounded a stand of low shrubs, his arm brushed hers for the briefest instant. The contact was nothing, yet her whole body noticed it.
She did not know whether he felt the same thing until she saw him look away. Was he as affected by that light touch? Was he avoiding her eyesbecauseof it?
She didn’t have the time to answer these questions when Ciaran looked toward the sky and swallowed, too abruptly to sound natural. “The light is dimming.”
Ava followed his gaze. The light had dimmed a little, yes, though not so much that their walk needed to end.
“I daenae see how?—”
“We should go back.”
There it is.
Ava felt his withdrawal at once, quick and clean.
“All right,” she relented.
He steered them toward the castle.
They walked back side by side the way they had come, yet nothing felt quite the same. The path was the same. The grounds were the same. But Ava carried the sharp knowledge of what had nearly happened without either of them moving so much as a hand toward the other.
He had stepped away from the moment because it had become too much for him. That certainty settled in her with every step as they returned to the warm castle walls.
