Chapter 25
The first note hit badly enough that Ava stopped in the corridor and stared upward.
The second was worse.
By the third, she knew two things with certainty: someone was in Ciaran’s tower, and whoever it was had no business touching a piano.
She gathered her skirts and hurried up the stairs, already half-annoyed and half-curious.
The sound that met her as she climbed made the whole thing harder to believe.
It was not music. It was an assault. A heavy strike, then a pause, then another cluster of notes that landed in no sensible relation to each other at all.
“Bruce,” she muttered under her breath. “If that is ye, I swear I shall sell ye to a monastery.”
Another wrong note rang out.
By the time she reached the tower door, she was almost laughing with sheer disbelief. She pushed it open and found exactly the disaster she deserved for not catching him sooner.
Bruce stood on the piano. All four paws were planted on the keys with full confidence. His little body was stiff with indignation, and his ears were perked up. One paw struck again as she came in, producing a sound so offensive that she stopped short and put a hand over her mouth.
“Bruce.”
He barked at her, then at the room itself, then stamped once more on the keys as if defending his position.
Ava crossed toward him at once. “I kent ye were up to nay good. That is exactly why I came looking for ye.”
Bruce answered with a low growl meant to sound formidable. It did not. He was too small, too dusty, and too pleased with himself.
“What do ye think ye are doing?” Ava demanded. “This isnae yer instrument.”
He struck another key with his front paw and looked directly at her, as if the point were under debate.
A laugh sounded behind her, and she froze.
She had felt him before she heard him. The tower had become one of those rooms where her body knew he was present before her mind caught up. Even so, the sound of his amusement moved through her with a quick, foolish warmth she had not expected.
She turned anyway.
Ciaran stood near the door with his arms folded, looking at Bruce with a composure that would have been more convincing if a laugh had not just escaped him.
“Ye find this funny?” Ava asked.
“Aye.”
“That is because it is yer piano and nae mine.”
“He has taste,” Ciaran said. “Questionable skill, but he does have the chops for this.”
Ava rolled her eyes. “The chops. Really?”
Ciaran shrugged. “Aye. Considerable nerve, too.”
Bruce barked again, while Ava tried to glare at Ciaran and failed because the whole thing was too ridiculous. “Can ye do something, please?”
Ciaran came forward at last, but Bruce turned on the piano with speed and planted himself more squarely over the keys, ready to defend his claim. Ciaran merely bent, slid his hands under the little beast, and lifted him clean off the instrument.
Bruce wriggled at once and let out a series of sharp, offended barks. It was to no avail.
“Aye, ye monstrous creature,” Ciaran rumbled. “The performance is over.”
Ava folded her arms and watched as Ciaran carried him to the door. Bruce twisted around in his hold to glare at both of them, then barked once more when he was set outside.
“Stay there,” Ciaran ordered.
Bruce scratched once at the wood in protest. Then his furious footfalls retreated down the passage, and the room went quiet.
The silence after his chaos felt close and particular. Ava was suddenly aware of where she stood, of the piano between them, of the fact that she was once again alone with Ciaran in the tower. Her amusement shrank to something much more careful.
“I should go,” she muttered.
It was the sensible thing to say. The room held too much history for anything else to come out easily.
She had barely formed the thought of turning toward the door when her eyes caught on the telescope by the window.
She stopped.
The instrument stood where it always had, plain and steady and far more dangerous to her peace than Bruce’s paws had just been.
Last time she had stood in this room, it was only meant to be a symbol of breaking down Ciaran’s walls.
She had never truly looked through it. The knowledge returned now with a flush that rose warm into her face.
Ciaran had followed her gaze. She felt that, too.
She kept her eyes on the telescope and coughed, feeling the flush spread to her ears.
“Ye all right, lass?” Ciaran asked.
Ava nodded. “Aye. ’Tis just that I never properly got the chance to look at it before.”
The words carried more than the telescope, and she knew it. Perhaps he did too, she couldn’t tell. She could feel the memory in the room, though. The piano, his hands. The floor beside it. Everything rang in her head over and over.
Ciaran said nothing for a moment. Then, very quietly, he swallowed and stepped forward. “Aye.”
Ava felt the permission in his words and moved toward the window before she could lose her nerve. The telescope was cold beneath her fingers as she grabbed it, and she felt a chill skitter down her spine.
“’Tis a bit cold,” she whispered.
Ciaran shrugged his shoulders. “The wind blows at it all day. I suppose it was bound to get cold.”
She could feel him watching as she bent to it, squinted her eye, and looked out into the dark. At first, she saw only pieces of the sky, then nothing, then a line of black trees, then stars scattered wide above the loch. Her breathing slowed, and the tower changed with the shift in her attention.
The room behind her remained present, and so did Ciaran, but the pull of the sky reached further than the charged air within these four walls. She felt like she was floating, and her attention was only on the bright stars and the bright stars only.
At least, that was all she thought until something sharp and bright flashed before her. She froze. It had been so fast that she didn’t have the time to see what it was. And yet she knew.
“Wait—” she sputtered.
“What? What is it?” Ciaran’s voice came right behind her.
She didn’t want to speak, lest she jinx. She adjusted the angle again and—
There.
She went still. “Oh, dear Lord.”
“Ava?” Ciaran called, concern now evident in his voice.
Ava felt her heart pound hard in her chest. She knew where she ought to look. She had always known. Yet seeing the place alive above her, real and immediate, made her pulse flutter. She stepped back from the telescope, then leaned in once more as if her own eyes might be deceiving her.
Nay.
The alignment was right. The timing. The place in the sky. Everything her mother had written in her old books and notes rose up whole in her mind.
“It cannae be… Oh, good God, ’tis happening.” Her voice came out as a whisper.
She turned to Ciaran, her eyes wide with shock.
“’Tis happening,” she said again, her voice stronger now. “If that is what I think it is, it is happening.”
Ciaran came closer. “What is it?”
“The comet.” She was almost laughing in disbelief, joy, and fear that if she stopped speaking, it would vanish.
“Me mother saw it once when she was a girl. She never forgot it. She used to say she had seen many fine things after—balls and London rooms and the sea in summer and a hundred other pretty sights—but none of them struck her as that comet did.”
His gaze stayed on her face.
Ava took a breath and steadied herself enough to continue speaking. “She said it made her feel the world held things larger than just what we concerned ourselves with. She used to say that if she achieved nothing else in life, she wanted at least to see that comet once again.”
Ciaran’s eyes moved briefly to the telescope, then back to her. “And ye kept her notes.”
“Aye.” Ava turned back to the instrument and laid one hand on its brass tube with more care than before. “After she died, I kept all of it.”
She swallowed once. The excitement stayed, but something deeper had joined it.
“It changed after she was gone,” she murmured.
“When I was little, it was only one of Ma’s stories.
Afterward, it became something else. A thing she had loved.
A thing she had waited for. A thing she had left behind without meaning to.
” Her fingers tightened. “I think I began waiting for it because it was one way to wait with her.”
Ciaran said nothing. He stood there and listened, which was what she needed from him most.
“She had a whole life,” she continued quietly.
“Marriage, children, duties, disappointments, ordinary tiredness—all the things that crowd a person into thinking only of what is in front of them. Yet she kept room for this, too. For the thought that one beautiful thing might return after years. I could never quite forget that.”
Ava looked back at him. Her face felt warm, and her eyes stung.
“I always thought that mattered more than the comet itself. She kept believing she might see it. She kept looking up. I loved her for that. I still do. And I always felt that if she could carry such hope through all the hard parts of life, then I ought nae become the sort of person who stops looking.”
Ciaran’s face contorted with an emotion she felt before she could name. He looked at her as if she had given him something heavy and living and a little dangerous.
She looked away and quickly bent to the telescope once more. One look was enough.
“Oh, we shall miss it if we stay here talking.” She moved at once, her skirts gathered in one hand, excitement taking her whole body with it. “Come.”
“Ava.”
“It is there. Truly there. Come.”
She was already halfway to the door. Ciaran followed without argument, which only made her hurry further.
They went down from the tower, through the passageway, and out into the night, leaving the castle behind them.
The air by the loch was cold enough to wake every part of her. She did not care. She looked up once, then down toward the end of the loch, trying to find the best place, then back up again in case the sky had changed in the breath she had spent moving.
Ciaran took off his coat. “Lie there,” he said.
He spread it on the ground with care, before Ava sank down onto it and gathered her skirts close. The grass beneath still held the dampness of the night, but the heavy wool kept the worst of it from her.
Ciaran lowered himself beside her, one shoulder nearly brushing hers, one arm bent behind him for support, before he shifted and lay more fully on his back. She did the same.
The loch stretched dark at their side, and the sky opened wide above them. The cold air touched her cheeks, and the ground pressed firm beneath the coat.
She was aware of Ciaran every second, the heat radiating from him near enough that she could feel his breathing. She could even feel just how small the space between them was, and she knew one careless moment would close it.
“Me mother once told me that she would stand outside with her father to see it when she was young. She wrote that down once. She said she thought the sky had opened just for them.”
His voice came low beside her. “And did it?”
Ava smiled despite the lump in her throat. “She believed it did.”
She kept watching the sky as she spoke.
“After she died, I used to take out those notes and read them when I missed her worst. Some daughters inherit jewels. Some inherit recipes. I inherited this.” Her hand moved once over her middle, then settled again. “Dates and stars.”
A pause followed, and in it, all she could hear was her heartbeat. Then Ciaran asked, “Did ye ever think ye might nae see it?”
“Of course.” She gave a small breath that was almost a laugh. “Most years, I was certain I wouldnae. But that was part of it, too. I think Ma kent that one may wait for beauty and still never hold it. She looked anyway. I loved that about her.”
The cold had begun to redden the tips of her fingers, and she tucked one hand beneath the other to warm them. Ciaran noticed, and a moment later, his hand wrapped around hers and drew it nearer his side.
Ava went still.
He did not look at her. His eyes stayed on the sky.
“Yer fingers are freezing,” he murmured.
Ava let him hold her hand. The touch was simple, but the effect spread through her slowly.
“There,” she whispered.
The comet appeared at last with a clean, pale brightness. Then it grew, and the trail behind it became clear.
She forgot to breathe for one second as her eyes welled up.
“There ye are,” she said, though she did not know whether she was speaking to the comet or to her mother or to the years of waiting.
The tears came quietly, and she let them. Her hand tightened around Ciaran’s without thought.
“She saw it,” she whispered. “And now I do.”
She looked up at the passing light until the stars around it blurred. The memory and grief hit her all at once, and she felt another shudder run through her.
“I saw it, Ma,” she sniffed.
Ciaran did not speak. He stayed beside her and let her linger in the moment, a feat she could not be more grateful for if she tried.
She lay there with the comet overhead, her hand in his, and felt a rare peace settle over her. She had wanted this for years. She had carried it through girlhood, marriage, and everything that had followed. Now it was here, and Ciaran was here to witness it with her.
That mattered. It mattered so much that the tenderness of it felt almost too fine to last long. Even so, for that stretch of time by the loch, she let herself stay inside it fully.
The comet moved above them, and Ciaran’s hand remained wrapped around hers. And in that moment, under the dark and blinking sky, all Ava could feel was safe.