The fire popped softly behind them. The stool lay broken. The candleholder had rolled under the table. The smell of singed parchment still hung in the air.
A week of misery and of telling himself this was the path he had chosen because it was the safer one. A week of letting the castle rot under his temper while he clung to the idea that he was being brave to go through this. Now that the idea had vanished and the truth confronted him head-on, every layer of sense he had wrapped around it fell away like rotted cloth.
“I…” The word stuck in his throat. He swallowed and forced the rest out. “Nay.”
The silence after was worse than an accusation.
Ciaran dragged a hand through his hair and turned away. He could not bear the look on his brother’s face if it held pity, and he could not bear it if it held understanding either.
He planted both hands on the table and bowed his head. “Nay,” he said again, quieter now. “I didnae want this.”
His own voice sounded wrecked. That hardly mattered. The wreck was there, whether he wanted it or not.
Behind him, Hector shifted once. Then came the next question, calm and direct and impossible to avoid.
“What do ye want, then?”
The room had gone still again, though it was a different stillness now. Ciaran lifted his head and looked across the tower.
His gaze found the map where it had lain hidden and half forgotten among other things on the shelf by the telescope. He had bought it for Ava after the comet. No, before that.
He had bought it because he had listened when she spoke of stars and notes and her mother’s old dream. He had bought it because what mattered to her had already begun to matter to him in ways he never cared to acknowledge.
He crossed the room and grabbed the map. The paper was fine. The markings were still precise, and he remembered choosing them. He also remembered thinking about what her face would look like when she opened it.
His throat tightened.
Everything was there on the map. The listening. The wanting. The care. The moves he had been making for months, while his mouth kept speaking a different language.
Hector’s question still hung in the air.
Ciaran looked down at the map once more, then lifted his head. “I want Ava.”
The words came out without strain this time.
He folded the map carefully, tucked it under his arm, and turned toward the door.
Hector watched him. “Aye, that sounds more useful.”
Ciaran’s hand closed around the handle. The man who had sat in this tower speaking of distance and wisdom and all the cold lies that passed for self-control had finally run out of places to hide. What remained had one purpose.
He opened the door and went to bring his wife back.
CHAPTER 34
Bruce tugged onceon the strip of cloth in Ava’s hand and then stopped.
He sat back on his hind legs and looked up at her with his head cocked, as if he were waiting to see whether she wished to keep playing.
Usually, he would have thrown his whole little body into it, teeth set, paws braced, tail lashing hard enough to knock into chair legs. This morning, he only held the cloth gently and then let it fall from his mouth.
Ava stared at him. “Why are ye being so nice to me, Beasty?” Her voice came out thin from too many days of crying and too little food.
Bruce gave a small whuff and stepped closer, pressing his shoulder against her dress.
Laird MacKenna’s voice came right after. “Because he kens ye already have a broken heart and doesnae wish to break yer hand as well.”
Ava closed her eyes for a moment.
