Chapter 33
A week after Ava left, the castle had learned to steer clear of Ciaran.
The men moved faster when he entered a yard, and the servants lowered their eyes and answered at once.
Training had turned ugly in ways that left bruises on other bodies and no peace in his own. He knew it, yet he did not stop. Every hour felt stripped down to work, temper, and the effort of getting through the next hour without saying her name aloud.
It had done nothing for him.
By evening, he had climbed to the tower because there was nowhere else left to go.
The fire had burned low, and the room held the same things it always had. The telescope stood by the window. The piano waited where it always had, and the star map still lay where he had hidden it.
The whole place had become unbearable in the week since she had ridden away, and still he came back to it as if pain had made it his truest room.
He sat on the piano bench with his hands resting on his thighs.
He had tried earlier. Once. He had put his fingers on the keys and found that nothing came except a broken line of notes that died almost as soon as they began. After that, he had closed the fallboard and stared at it until the urge to strike it passed.
Music had left him. Either that, or perhaps he had driven it off the same way he had driven off everything else.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked at the stone floor. The tower had once been the place where his thoughts came cleanly. He could play there. Look through the telescope. Sit in silence and still let his thoughts flow. Now, even silence had become foul company.
He saw Ava wherever he looked.
At the piano. On the floor beside it. At the telescope with her face bright over the comet. By the loch with tears on her cheeks. In the yard with her hand on the saddle as she left him behind.
He had told himself for a week that time would flatten it. That the castle would settle, and that work would help him get over her. He had been wrong every day since.
A knock sounded at the door at that moment, interrupting his thoughts. He did not answer.
A second knock came, and then Hector let himself in.
He stood just inside the door with a folded letter in one hand. A band of firelight caught the edge of the seal. Ciaran looked at it and felt something heavy coil in his gut before a word had been spoken.
“Hector.”
“It came from MacKenna.”
Ciaran said nothing.
Hector crossed the room and held out the letter. He did not speak in comfort or in warning. He had long since learned there was little use in either where Ciaran was concerned.
Ciaran took it.
The parchment felt ordinary as he broke the seal with his thumb and unfolded it slowly, though he had no clear reason for the delay except dread. He kept staring at the page while Hector watched him from the fireplace.
“What does it say?”
His voice sounded distant to his own ears when he answered. “She arrived safely.”
He paused, and Hector waited.
Ciaran looked down again, though there was nothing new to be found in the ink. His grip tightened on the paper until it gave a little under his fingers.
“And…?”
The next words stuck halfway up his throat. He forced them out anyway because leaving them unspoken would change nothing. “The marriage is annulled.”
Saying it aloud thickened the air. It was as if the tower held its breath.
For a week, Ciaran had lived inside delay, misery, and the stupid half-belief that misery itself meant something was still unfinished. Now, there was nothing else to think about for long.
Ava was no longer his wife. That was the end of their relationship.
He read the line once more, though his eyes had begun to blur with something he would not name. He had spoken of an annulment often enough, and he had held it up like a remedy, a kindness, a way to return to the status quo if he ever needed to.
For some reason, he had never thought that would happen, but it did. Here he was, in the middle of his tower, reading the confirmation that his last bond with Ava had been severed.
Hector said nothing for several moments. Then, carefully, he exhaled. “I thought that’s what ye wanted.”
Ciaran lowered the letter. He opened his mouth to answer and found there was no lie left within reach.
His voice came out rough. “Nay.”
The word hung between them, and the paper crackled once more between his fingers. Then he crushed it and flung it into the fire. It caught at once, edge first, curling black as the flames took hold. The ink vanished, and the seal darkened and split.
In a few breaths, there was nothing left of it that could be read.
Ava had still arrived safely. Their marriage had still been annulled. Burning the proof changed nothing, and that fact tore through him with searing force.
His hand went to the nearest thing, a low stool beside the fireplace, and he threw it hard against the wall. It struck the stone with a crack and fell on its side.
It has been annulled.
He spun around and swept a brass candleholder off the mantelpiece.
It hit the floor and rolled. A stack of sheet music followed, scattering across the stone floor in bent, useless pages.
He caught the lid of the piano and slammed it down so hard that the sound ricocheted through the tower like a shot.
Still, it did nothing.
Ava was gone. Their marriage was over. The thing inside him that wanted to strike and break and tear had nowhere to land except wood, brass, paper, and stone. He drove his fist into the wall beside the fireplace, and pain shot up his arm. He welcomed it and hit the wall again.
“Enough,” Hector’s voice cut across the room cleanly.
Ciaran rounded on him, breathing hard, blood bright on his knuckles where skin had split open. Still, Hector did not back down.
“Ye have always spoken about getting an annulment. Why is that a problem now?” he asked.
The question landed harder than Ciaran had expected.
For one beat, he could only stare at his brother.
The fire popped softly behind them. The stool lay broken. The candleholder had rolled under the table. The smell of singed parchment still hung in the air.
A week of misery and of telling himself this was the path he had chosen because it was the safer one.
A week of letting the castle rot under his temper while he clung to the idea that he was being brave to go through this.
Now that the idea had vanished and the truth confronted him head-on, every layer of sense he had wrapped around it fell away like rotted cloth.
“I…” The word stuck in his throat. He swallowed and forced the rest out. “Nay.”
The silence after was worse than an accusation.
Ciaran dragged a hand through his hair and turned away. He could not bear the look on his brother’s face if it held pity, and he could not bear it if it held understanding either.
He planted both hands on the table and bowed his head. “Nay,” he said again, quieter now. “I didnae want this.”
His own voice sounded wrecked. That hardly mattered. The wreck was there, whether he wanted it or not.
Behind him, Hector shifted once. Then came the next question, calm and direct and impossible to avoid.
“What do ye want, then?”
The room had gone still again, though it was a different stillness now. Ciaran lifted his head and looked across the tower.
His gaze found the map where it had lain hidden and half forgotten among other things on the shelf by the telescope. He had bought it for Ava after the comet. No, before that.
He had bought it because he had listened when she spoke of stars and notes and her mother’s old dream. He had bought it because what mattered to her had already begun to matter to him in ways he never cared to acknowledge.
He crossed the room and grabbed the map. The paper was fine. The markings were still precise, and he remembered choosing them. He also remembered thinking about what her face would look like when she opened it.
His throat tightened.
Everything was there on the map. The listening. The wanting. The care. The moves he had been making for months, while his mouth kept speaking a different language.
Hector’s question still hung in the air.
Ciaran looked down at the map once more, then lifted his head. “I want Ava.”
The words came out without strain this time.
He folded the map carefully, tucked it under his arm, and turned toward the door.
Hector watched him. “Aye, that sounds more useful.”
Ciaran’s hand closed around the handle. The man who had sat in this tower speaking of distance and wisdom and all the cold lies that passed for self-control had finally run out of places to hide. What remained had one purpose.
He opened the door and went to bring his wife back.