“Why did ye stop the night before in the study? Why did ye nae just finish it?”
“Because ye’d have let me and hated me for it after. And I find I cannae stomach the thought of ye hatin’ me for a new thing. The old ones are plenty.”
She didn’t say anything to that. She bent over the board, the color high in her cheeks, and the game went on. Somewhere in the middle of it, the questions stopped being light.
She took a pawn and asked sweetly, “Did ye always want to be a monster? Or did it come later, like a gift?”
She meant it to sting. She was not remotely prepared for him to consider it.
“Nay,” Ragnall said after a while. He did not look up from the board. “I wanted to be me faither. He was a fair man and a slow one to anger. The villages came to him with their quarrels because he’d hear both sides out before he opened his mouth. I meant to be that.” He moved a knight. “And then he died at yer faither’s hand, and me maither made me swear at her deathbed that I’d find a way to end the war that took him, and I said nothin’ at all, because I kent well I couldnae let me people starve for the sake of a promise. That’s the first lie I ever told a soul I loved, and I told it by keepin’ me mouth shut.” He looked up. “So, nay, lassie. I didnae want to be a monster, but I’ve been one, and I’ll nae stand here and tell ye I havenae.”
Olivia found she had nothing to say.
“Me turn,” he said, and took her bishop. “Who were ye? Before.”
“Before what?”
“Ye ken fine before what.”
She did. She looked at the board for a long moment.
“I was a horror,” she began. “Ask anyone. I could ride afore I could plait me hair. I broke me arm at seven fallin’ out of the rowan by the well, and I told me maither I’d been pushed, and I let a stable lad take the blame for it a fortnight before meconscience got the better of me.” She moved a piece without much attention to where. “Magnus taught me to ride. That’s the thing nay one wants to hear now. He put me up on his garron when I was small enough that me feet didnae reach the stirrups, and he walked the beast around the home pasture with his hand on me knee so I wouldnae fall off, and he told me I had a better seat than any lad in the glen.” Her voice thinned. “He was seventeen. He was kind to me. Whatever else he was, he was kind tome.”
The silence stretched.
“Say it,” she said.
“I’ve said nothin’.”
“Ye’re thinkin’ it so loud that I can hear it from here.” She looked up, and her eyes were bright and furious. “Say it, then. Say, ‘He was kind to ye, and he threw me sister from a window.’ Say, ‘Ye’re mournin’ a man who isnae worth the water it’d take to weep for him.’ Ye’re thinkin’ it. Have the decency to say it out loud.”
“I’m thinkin’,” said Ragnall, “that a man can be two things. And that it’s the cruelest trick this world plays on the folk left behind.”
Olivia stood up from the bed. She could not stay still in it. She paced to the window and back again, twice, with her arms wrapped tight around her. She was not weeping. She absolutelywould not weep in front of him, yet her breath was coming short and ragged all the same.
“I daenae ken how to grieve him,” she said to the wall. “That’s the whole of it. I have nay road through it. If I mourn him, I’m mournin’ a man who did that to yer sister, and if I daenae mourn him, I’m the sort of woman who can put a braither down like a lame dog. There’s nay door out of that room, Ragnall. I’ve been lookin’ for one for six months.”
She did not hear him move. But his hand gently closed around her wrist and turned her. She found him standing far too close, in his shirt, with the candlelight behind him, and all the breath left her at once.
“There isnae a door.” His voice had dropped low. “I’ll nae lie to ye about it. I’ve looked as well.”
“That’s nay comfort.”
“Nay.” His thumb moved once, slowly, over the thin skin on the inside of her wrist, and she felt it in herknees. “But I’d sooner give ye the truth than comfort. Ye’ve had a bellyful of men decidin’ what ye’re strong enough to hear.”
He was close enough that she could see the small silver line where the scar ran into his lip. Close enough that if either of them moved a handsbreadth, the entire thing would be over.
Neither of them moved.
“The board,” Olivia said, her voice wrecked.
“Aye.”
“Ye’ve nae won yet.”
“Nay,” Ragnall agreed, and did not let go of her wrist for a moment longer than he had any business to. “Nae yet.”
He let her go. She sat back down on the coverlet with her heart pounding and her hands not entirely steady, and he sat down across from her, and the game went on.
