The two words went through Olivia like a length of cold iron sliding between her ribs. “What?”
“Magnus happened to her.” He said the name carefully, like a man handling a blade that had already cut him once and might again. “He came courtin’ her in secret, more than a year past, down by the river where the two lands meet. She was lonely, and he was charmin’ when he chose to be, and she didnae ken whose son he was until it was far too late to matter. He got her with child.” His jaw worked, and the scar pulled tight.
“And when the bairn was born, he tried to take it from her. To carry it off and raise it as his own with some clan wife, and leave me sister with nothin’, nae even her good name to keep her warm. She fought him for her own child, Olivia. And he broke her for it. Her arm in three places, three of her ribs, and somethin’ inside her that nay healer can knit back together, however well the bones come along.”
“Nay.” Olivia shook her head. The word came out of her on pure instinct. “Nay, ye are lyin’ to me. Magnus was hot-tempered, I will grant ye that, and proud as Lucifer, but he’d never… he’d never have raised his hand to a woman. Ever. He was me braither. I’ve ken him me whole life.”
“Ye kent the braither he showed ye.” His tone was not unkind, and that was the cruelest part—that he would not even give her the gift of cruelty to push against. “None of us shows our sisters our whole face, lassie. Nor our whole hearts. He kept his darkness away from ye, as men do with the women of their families.”
Despite her resistance, her mind flashed back to Magnus standing on the keep steps, sword already in his hand, notonce looking at her. She also recalled the unfamiliar, flat voice speaking through him, and how he had given her no answer when she called out to ask what Cairn could mean.
For over six months, she had patiently polished a dozen small darknesses into the bright, clean shine of a hero, because mourning a hero was so much easier than facing the truth.
“I am sorry,” she said, and was startled to the bone to find that she meant it, every word. “For yer sister. For whatever me braither did to her.”
“And I am sorry for yer braither,” Ragnall said. “Truly, I am. I take nay joy in any of it. A man who takes joy in killin’ is a man I’d nae let near a sword.”
“So ye killed him,” she whispered. “For that.”
“I challenged him.” His dark eyes held hers, steady and open, hiding nothing now, asking nothing. “In open ground, blade to blade, the one honest way that was left to me after he refused all the others. Yer faither stepped between us into a blow that was never meant for him. I’d give a great deal of what’s left of me life to undo that part of it. The rest of it I would do again tomorrow.”
“But ye still had a choice,” she said, grasping at the air. “Ye could have forced him to wed her. Made it right that way, before God and the Council.”
“He hurt her.”
“Ye could have dragged him to yer dungeons, let the Elders judge him in their own time.”
“He. Hurt. Her.” Each word fell like a separate stone dropped into still black water, and the rings of them spread out across the quiet room. “Nay one hurts me family and walks the green earth after. I willnae beg yer pardon for that, lassie. Nae if ye go on hatin’ me for a hundred years.”
“There were a thousand things ye might have done that wouldnae have ended in any man’s death.”
“Aye,” he said. “And I laid every one of them before him on that field. Wed her. Stand for the Council’s judgment. Leave the Highlands and never come back. I offered him each in turn, in front of witnesses, and he refused them all. So I called him out in yer yard, and he met me gladly, blade in hand. He chose the duel, Olivia.”
“And what am I, then?” The question tore out of her before she could think to stop it. “Yer revenge? Is that all this is? All I am? A Blythe handed over by the Council for ye to do with as ye please?”
“Never say that again.” It came out low and hard, the nearest to true anger she had yet seen from him, and the scar stood white against his cheek. “I’d never do what he did. Nae to ye, nae to any woman who draws breath. If ye learn one thing about me before ye stand up beside me in that kirk, Olivia, learn that one.”
She had no response for him. The hatred she had guarded for months was a straightforward, warming fire, but he had shattered it completely. Beneath its ruin, a grief deeper than hatred remained, with no villain to direct it at.
If Magnus wasnae the man I mourned, then I daenae even ken who I’ve been grievin’. I’ve wept half a year for a stranger wearin’ me braither’s face.
She shook her head, helpless, drowning. “I need… I cannae… I need some time. To think on all of it. Please.”
He immediately backed away from her without any protest, and she escaped the dim, silent room and the broken girl inside. She moved blindly down the corridor, her pulse pounding loudly in her ears.
And there, coming toward her the other way, was Maisie, with the baby riding on her hip.
The child caught sight of Olivia and made up her whole small mind on the spot. She gave a fat, gummy, delighted shriek and flung both her arms straight out, leaning so hard and so suddenly from the old woman’s grip that Maisie staggered a half step to keep her.
“Och, she is determined,” Maisie said, comfortable as anything. “She does that, our Rosie. Picks her folk and willnae be argued out of them. Will ye take her, lass, before she flings herself clean to the floor for the love of ye?”
Olivia turned. Ragnall had followed her out into the corridor and stood a little way off, watching, his scarred face unreadable in the gray light.
“May I?” she asked him.
His expression shifted. “She is yer niece too, lassie,” he murmured. “Ye’ve nay need to ask me leave to hold her.”
Olivia cradled the baby in her arms, feeling the warmth and weight of her, the scent of milk and woodsmoke lingering. The tiny, fierce starfish fingers immediately clutched a loose lock of her red hair, slowly undoing her, even after the exhausting afternoon had not quite succeeded in doing so.
