He thought to leave it there, to let the quiet settle, to give her only what comfort he could without reaching further into what she had shared. But the raw vulnerability of the way she had spoken stirred something in him in return.
Duncan drew a slow breath. His hand did not leave her, though his gaze shifted slightly, drawn somewhere deeper than the dim outlines of the chamber.
“It was much the same fer me,” he revealed.
The admission came without force, but it carried a weight he did not often allow himself to revisit. Elaina did not move. He felt her listening.
“When me parents died,” he continued measuring each word as though each one had to be chosen carefully to be spoken at all, “the nights were… the worst.”
A faint tension settled through him. The memory did not come as images alone, but as sensation. Both his body and his mind remembered the cold stillness of the halls, the way shadows stretched too long in the darkness and the way sleep never came without something following close behind it.
“I would wake thinking I could still hear them,” he said quietly, feeling the pain of every word. “Or that if I moved fast enough, I might find them as they were before.”
He never spoke of this. He did not often allow himself to remember it so clearly.
“But it never changed,” he added. “Nay matter how many nights passed.”
Elaina’s hand shifted slightly against him. He felt it, and it steadied him more than he expected.
“And Catriona,” he started, halting. “She suffered worse than I did.”
Elaina lifted an eyebrow, but she still said nothing.
“She would wake in fear,” he continued, “nae always kenning where she was. She would be crying out as though the world had ended all over again.”
His heart ached at the memory of little Catriona crying in the darkness before he would hear her and rush to her. The quiet of the castle broken by the soft, terrified cries that carried through the halls long after the fires had burned low.
Catriona, small and trembling, would be waking from dreams she could never fully explain, and her voice would be raw with fear as though she had been pulled from something she could not escape. He would find her curled into herself, with eyes wide and unfocused, reaching for something that was no longer there. And he would sit beside her, speaking softly until her breathing slowed, until her grip on him loosened just enough for sleep to claim her again. Those nights had carved something into him, not just grief, but purpose.
“I couldnae afford tae fall apart,” he told her.
The words were quiet, but they held more than they revealed.
“Looking after her…” he went on through the pain, “it gave me something tae hold on tae.”
He didn’t say that looking after her gave him something that kept him from being swallowed by the pain, and it also kept himfrom losing himself entirely to grief that had no place to go. But somehow, he knew that she understood that.
“She needed me tae be there,” he said. “So, I was.”
Elaina’s breath had softened against him. It was no longer as uneven as before.
“I ken what it is tae wake with something still holding ye,” he added more quietly. “Even when the world around ye has changed.”
His gaze lowered slightly, though he did not look away from her entirely.
“And I ken how long it can follow.”
The quiet stretched between them, not empty, but filled with a gentler weight, one that did not need answers, only presence. Duncan drew her closer, his arm tightening around her in a way that felt instinctive rather than deliberate. It was not possession, but protection, an unspoken claim that she would not face this alone.
“It does pass,” he spoke in a voice low enough that it seemed meant only for her. “Nae all at once and nae in a way ye can always see. But it daes.”
There was no false comfort in his tone, only quiet conviction, shaped by years he rarely spoke of. Elaina did not answer, but hefelt the gradual easing of her breath and the way the tension in her began to loosen, as though his words had reached her even where she could not fully respond.
Duncan lowered his head slightly, his lips brushing softly against her hair. The gesture came without thought. It was simple and it felt natural, like a quiet comfort offered without expecting anything in return.
“I am here,” he murmured. “And I will be.”
It was not a grand oath or declared promise, but the meaning was there. His hand moved along her back, slower now, guiding her further from the remnants of fear that still clung to her.
