Chapter 31 #2
Frederick looked once more at Iona, limp in his arms but breathing, her head fallen against his shoulder, and knew there was no argument in him for anything except getting her away from this place.
Iona surfaced from darkness in fragments. First, the cold. Then the movement. Then the sound of hooves striking earth in a steady rhythm beneath her, the shift of muscle and leather, the quiet breath of a horse working through distance.
She drew in a sharp breath and stiffened.
At once, an arm tightened around her. “Easy,” Frederick’s voice came low at her ear. “I have ye.”
The world settled into place around that.
She was seated before him in the saddle, her back against his chest, his arm firm around her waist to keep her steady. The night air pressed cool against her face, and the faint silver of moonlight stretched across the land ahead.
Home.
She saw it then. The outline of McIntosh Castle rising in the distance, familiar and solid and real in a way nothing had felt since she stepped into that hunting lodge.
Her throat tightened.
“We are nearly there,” Frederick said quietly.
Iona leaned back into him without thinking, the instinct too deep to question. “I am awake,” she murmured.
“I ken.”
His hand shifted slightly at her waist, not loosening, only adjusting as though to make certain she remained upright.
There was something in the way he held her now that felt different.
Not only protective. Something more careful than that.
As though she were something breakable, he had only just realized he could lose.
“How do ye feel?” he asked.
She considered it, though the answer did not come easily. Her arm throbbed where Noor’s blade had cut her. Her body felt heavy, as though it had not yet fully returned to her. But beneath all of that, there was something else. Something lighter.
“I daenae ken yet,” she said honestly. “Only… different.”
He pressed his lips briefly to the back of her head, just at the edge of her hair. The gesture was so quiet it might have gone unnoticed if she had not been paying such close attention to him now.
“Iona.”
She turned her head slightly. “Aye?”
“Ye did well tonight.”
The words struck her more deeply than she expected.
She swallowed. “Ye killed her.”
“I did.”
“I needed that,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “I didnae think I would ever feel safe if she still walked this world.”
His arm tightened slightly around her. “She was never leaving that place alive.”
Iona let out a slow breath. Relief moved through her again, not sharp now, but steady. Settling.
“Thank ye,” she said.
There was a pause.
“For doing yer duty to protect me.”
The moment the words left her, she felt it. The shift in him. Small, but unmistakable.
Still, she pressed on.
“I have been… difficult,” she continued, her voice careful. “Questioning ye when I should perhaps have trusted more readily. I see now that ye have always meant to keep me safe. I am grateful for that. Truly.”
His hand stilled against her waist.
“If it is what ye wish,” she went on, though the words scraped against something inside her, “I will be more obedient. I will nae make things harder for ye. I—”
“Iona.”
Her name stopped her. She turned her head further, trying to see his face, but the angle did not allow it. She could only feel the tension that had moved through him.
They rode the rest of the distance in silence.
By the time they reached the gates, the guards had already begun to open them, called to readiness by the sound of approaching horses. The courtyard lay quiet beneath the night, the household long since settled. Only a few lanterns burned along the walls, enough to guide them in.
Frederick dismounted first. He reached up for her at once, lifting her down with a care that made her breath catch. When her feet touched the ground, she steadied herself, though the world still seemed slightly unbalanced beneath her.
Then she looked at him and saw it. He was looking at her as though she had struck him. He was masking heartbreak. The realization unsettled her more than anything that had come before.
“Frederick,” she said softly.
He exhaled once, then stepped closer, the space between them closing beneath the quiet glow of moonlight.
“Do ye truly believe that is what I want?” he asked.
She faltered. “I—”
“That ye should thank me for doing me duty?” he continued, his voice low but unsteady in a way she had never heard from him before. “That ye should bend yerself into something smaller so I may feel more comfortable in me place as yer husband?”
“I only meant—”
“I ken what ye meant,” he said, not unkindly. “That is what troubles me.”
Iona’s chest tightened.
“I never wanted ye to feel as though ye owed me anything,” he went on. “Not obedience. Not gratitude. Not silence. I wanted…” He stopped, as though the next words required something of him he could not easily give.
She waited.
“I wanted ye,” he said finally. The simplicity of it undid her. “Nae because it is me duty,” he added. “Nae because it is expected. Because I chose it. And I choose it still. Every time ye speak against me. Every time ye refuse to bend. And when ye stand where others would step back.”
Iona stared at him.
“I love ye,” he said.
The words fell between them with no flourish, no dramatics, no attempt to make them anything but what they were.
True.
Her breath caught.
For a moment, she could not move. Could not think. All the careful distance she had tried to build, all the quiet restraint she had wrapped around her own heart, unraveled at once beneath the weight of it.
“You… love me?” she repeated.
“Aye.”
Something inside her broke open. “I love ye too,” she said, the words coming without hesitation now, without fear. “I thought… I thought it was only me.”
He stepped forward at once, his hand coming to her face, his thumb brushing her cheek as though to make certain she was real. Then he kissed her.
It was not hurried. It was warm and steady and full of everything neither of them had managed to say until now.
When they parted, it was only because breath demanded it.
“Jamie,” Iona whispered.
“Aye,” he said. “We will see her first.”
They went together. The castle felt different now as they moved through it.
Quieter, yes, but not empty. Not haunted.
When they reached Jamie’s chamber, the door stood slightly ajar.
Caitlin had left a candle burning low within, and in its soft light, Jamie slept peacefully beneath her blankets, one hand curled near her cheek.
Iona went to her at once, kneeling beside the bed. She brushed her fingers gently over her daughter’s hair, then leaned in to press a soft kiss to her forehead.
“Safe,” she whispered.
Frederick stood behind her, his hand resting lightly on her back. After a moment, they left her there, warm and untouched by the night’s horrors.
The bath was already being prepared when they returned to Frederick’s chamber. Steam rose gently from the tub, the water fresh and clean and nothing like the cold, damp air of the lodge.
Iona stepped in first, the warmth wrapping around her in a way that made her eyes close briefly. Frederick followed, settling behind her, careful of her injured arm as he drew her back against him.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
He took a cloth and dipped it into the water, then began to wash her back slowly, his touch deliberate, almost reverent. As though each movement mattered. As though she mattered.
Iona let herself lean into it, into him, into the quiet that had replaced the chaos of the night. She turned within the space of his arms, facing him now, her hand lifting to his cheek. He leaned into the touch without hesitation.
The closeness between them shifted then. A quiet recognition of what they had nearly lost and what they now chose to hold onto.
When he kissed her again, it was with that same care. The same intention. Two hearts sharing one rhythm. Frederick pulled her out of the tub, and Iona’s legs instinctively wrapped around his waist as he walked them to the bed.
The light of the blazing fire danced across his darkened features as he hovered above her only for the briefest of moments.
“I love ye, Iona.”
Her breath hitched, and she arched her body up to him as she pulled his lips down to hers. “I love ye too, Frederick.”
It was hours in one moment when they came together. His thrusts were slow at first. Letting her desire wrap around him tightly. Each time he buried himself inside of her, all she could think to say was “I love you, I love you…”
“Ah!” she cried in ecstasy as he plowed into her harder.
“I love ye so much, mo chridhe,” his words were so delicate as his rhythm increased.
The two people who had finally spoken the truth of what lay between them, and found it stronger than anything that had tried to break it. It was her and him against the world, and nothing would get in between them. Nothing at all.
Frederick pumped into her, matching her cries for more until finally her grip on his shoulders tightened as she arched her body again toward him. His pace was almost punishing, but if he stopped, she thought that she would surely die.
“Please, Frederick. Please, my love,” she said finally. And with a rough groan, she felt him buck into her with such force that it threw her over the edge. Her cries of desire escaped from deep within her.
Frederick held her against him. “I have ye, Iona. Forever,” she heard him say as waves of heat crashed over her trembling body.
It was several minutes before their breathing caught back up to them, and the room came back into view. Frederick eased himself off of her and rested on the pillows beside her.
Iona’s head beneath his chin, and his arm around her once more. It was as it should be. Every action, every breath, every thought was shared between them.
And for the first time in longer than she could remember, Iona felt no shadow waiting at the edge of it.
Only peace.