She lowered her eyes for a moment and thought of home. She could almost see the halls. She could almost hear Bruce tearing through familiar rooms with his crooked little bark and even smell the kitchens in the winter. Her old bed. Her old routine. The comfort of going back to something she was already used to. All she had to do was leave all of this behind.
The temptation of it was not small.
To leave now would mean rest. Breathing space. A gentler landing after blood and vows and fear and the bewildering heat of what had happened between her and Ciaran only moments before. It would mean time to gather herself in a place where she did not have to think about who she was becoming.
But that was the truth of it, was it not? Leaving would delay what she was becoming, not completely erase it.
This life had begun around her already. The wedding, even broken as it was. The attack. The kiss. The chamber she now stood in, wearing a fresh gown, while the ruined one waited tobe burned. None of it could be neatly undone by returning to her father’s castle for a few soothing weeks.
More than that, a bigger part of her knew with uncomfortable clarity that what troubled her most would follow her there untouched. Especially the pull she now started to feel toward Ciaran.
She had been offered escape before, but she had not taken it. And now, with the choice laid before her again in a kinder, quieter shape, she found the answer had not changed.
Eventually, she lifted her head.
“Nay,” she said, the word calm enough to surprise even her.
Ciaran raised an eyebrow, while her father narrowed his eyes. “Nay?”
Ava nodded slowly.
Her father’s face did not harden. If anything, it softened with sorrow, as though he understood that her refusal had not come lightly.
“I trust that I shall be safe here,” she added, looking first at him and then briefly at Ciaran.
This place was now hers in a difficult and unfinished way. If she ran from it, she would only teach herself that belonging could be postponed forever.
Her father’s eyes flicked to her husband, measuring perhaps the weight of the statement and the man beside it.
“And,” she went on, “I need to get used to me new home anyway.”
Her father eyed her for a moment, then nodded. “Aye,” he said softly. “I think ye do.”
The pride in his answer was quiet, which made it cut deeper. There was sadness there too, of course. The sadness of any father seeing his daughter choose the threshold she must cross without him.
But he did not reach for persuasion. He did not turn the offer into a second test. He accepted her answer for what it was—a choice. And because he accepted it, Ava felt more strongly that it had been truly hers to make.
Rory stepped forward and took her hands in his own. His grip was warm, familiar, and steady enough to make her throat tighten.
“If ye ever need me,” he said, “ye just send word.”
“I ken.”
“At once,” he added, his voice clear.
A faint smile touched Ava’s mouth. “Aye, Da.”
He bent and kissed her brow, and for one brief moment, she let herself lean into the comfort of him as she always had.
When he straightened, his eyes had gone suspiciously bright, though whether from feeling or fury at the whole day’s violence, she could not tell. Perhaps both.
He nodded once to Ciaran, a gesture of measured respect and unfinished judgment, then made for the door.
It opened again almost immediately to admit Isobel, who must have been waiting nearby for the conversation to finish. Her gaze darted first to Ava, then to Rory, and she seemed to read enough of the room’s stillness to understand that something had been decided.
“I shall stay with her,” she declared.
Rory gave a grunt that was half approval, half relief. “See that ye do.”
