Chapter 13
The castle sleeps like a liar.
It looks peaceful in the early morning, mist tucked into the low places of the grounds, light softening the sharp angles of stone, the wind moving through the trees like it’s only passing through. If you didn’t live here, you’d think it was all old-world romance and quiet history.
Callum knows better.
History isn’t quiet. It just learns to whisper.
And this morning, the whisper has a mouth and a name and the taste of citrus soap and heat, and it’s the reason he’s been awake since before dawn.
Isla MacLaren kissed him like she didn’t care what she shattered.
Callum has replayed that mouth sucking kiss a hundred times and hated himself a hundred times for the same reason, because the moment she surged into him, his restraint broke clean in half.
He didn’t stop her. He didn’t step back and let her recover control.
He kissed her back like he’d been waiting for permission.
It wasn’t romance.
It was anger. It was grief. It was a woman finally snapping under a lifetime of being managed and tugged and steered.
All of that can be true and still not change the fact that his body remembers the pressure of her mouth, the sharp hitch of her breath, the way her hands fisted in his shirt like she needed something solid to hold onto or she’d come apart completely.
He scrubs a hand over his jaw and forces himself to breathe.
It’s daylight now. It’s morning. He is not sixteen, not trapped in a boys’ school where every choice was punishment. He is not fourteen, waiting for another adult to decide what he’s allowed to want.
He is a man in a castle he has fought to keep standing.
He can make a decision.
So he does.
When he hears footsteps, fast, clipped, purposeful, he keeps his hands in his pockets. A deliberate act of self-control. A reminder that desire doesn’t get to decide what happens next.
Isla enters without looking at him, a folder tucked under her arm, hair pulled back tight. She’s dressed for work, clean lines, minimal fuss, a kind of composure that reads like armor. Shadows sit beneath her eyes, faint but unmistakable.
She didn’t sleep either.
“Morning,” Callum says.
“It is,” she answers, as if the words cost her nothing.
No mention of last night. No awkwardness. No apology.
He almost prefers it to the alternative, almost.
She crosses to the long table and spreads the papers they found yesterday in Keir’s office: flight searches, torn calendar pages with dates crossed out again and again, a half-completed list of requirements in Keir’s handwriting that reads like a man talking himself into a life he kept postponing.
One piece of paper they found yesterday gave her hope. One simple clue that was both gratifying and infuriating. A letter from his solicitor that simply said, Alisa said now was not a good time. It appeared that Keir had tried to visit Isla, and Alisa told him not now.
“We need to organize this,” Isla says. “Chronologically. Without interpretation.”
Callum leans against the back of a chair. “That’ll be difficult.”
Her gaze flicks up, sharp. “Then don’t make it harder.”
He gives a shallow nod and pulls out a chair, sitting opposite her, close enough that the table feels smaller than it should.
He becomes aware of her in the way he becomes aware of a storm building, pressure, electricity, the certainty that something is going to break if the air gets heavy enough.
They start sorting.
At first, it’s pure mechanics: dates, cities, torn edges fitted back together like a puzzle. Isla’s hands move with precise efficiency, fingers quick and decisive. She’s good at this kind of work. Not because she likes it, but because she’s been trained to treat chaos as an enemy.
Callum watches her, and he hates the idea that this, sorting through the debris of Keir MacLaren’s life, is something she’s better at than grief.
Her phone buzzes on the table.
She ignores it.
It buzzes again.
Callum doesn’t need to see the screen to know who it is.
“They’re persistent,” he says lightly, testing the surface.
“That’s one word for it,” Isla replies, not looking up.
Her phone vibrates a third time, then stops. A moment later, her email pings. Then again.
She closes her eyes for half a second, so brief, he almost misses it, then turns the screen facedown as if that can silence the world.
Callum feels something cold settle in his chest.
“You’re not going to check?” he asks.
“No.”
Another ping. Another.
Callum can hear the tension building under her skin. She’s not calm; she’s contained.
“They won’t stop,” he says.
Her laugh is quiet and razor-thin. “No. They don’t.”
He watches her stack the papers with more precision than necessary, like order can keep her safe.
“Who is it?” he asks anyway.
“My manager. My agent. And my mother, no doubt triangulating through both,” Isla says. “They’re threatening to release my performance slot. Framing it as a concern.”
“Of course, they are.”
“It’s always a concern,” she murmurs. “Concern that sounds like love until you realize it’s just control wearing perfume.”
The words surprise him.
He knows Isla is successful. That her life is built of airports and concert halls and applause. He’s admired her discipline from a distance, the way her hands can summon something sacred from wood and ivory even before he knew she was Keir’s daughter.
What he’s only beginning to understand is the machinery around that success, the quiet network of people who make decisions about her life and call it support.
It looks like a cage.
They continue sorting. Callum forces his gaze to the papers, to the evidence, to anything that isn’t the line of Isla’s mouth. The fullness of her lips. The way she smells.
He fails when she leans forward to reach a page near his side of the table. Her arm grazes his chest as she reaches across him, and the contact, brief, accidental, hits him like a spark.
Isla stills too.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moves.
Then she withdraws her arm quickly, like she’s been burned, and resumes sorting as if she hasn’t just turned the air between them into something volatile.
Callum’s jaw tightens. He keeps his hands in his pockets.
Control is a choice, he reminds himself.
He makes it again.
“Here,” he says, forcing his attention to the papers. “This one repeats.”
He slides a page across. In the margin, in Keir’s sharp handwriting, a line is repeated, small, almost hidden in the corner as if it shouldn’t be read by anyone else.
If A. refuses again, wait.
Isla leans in, close enough that her shoulder nearly touches his. Callum is suddenly too aware of her heat, her scent, the way her breath shifts when she concentrates.
“A,” Isla says softly. “Any idea who that is?”
Callum shakes his head. “Keir wasn’t big on initials. If he used one, it was deliberate.”
“So he’s hiding someone.”
“Or something,” Callum says.
Isla sits back, lips pressed together. “‘Refuses again.’ That means this conversation happened before. More than once.”
Callum looks at the dates and the crossed-out calendar pages. “And every time, he waited.”
Isla’s eyes narrow. “Why?”
Callum knows the truth. “He didn’t wait unless someone forced him.”
Isla’s gaze snaps to his. “You sound sure.”
“I am.”
The silence stretches. Isla’s phone pings again, and it’s like the sound slices through the room and hits her in the ribs.
She flips it over, just long enough to see what’s on the screen, and Callum catches a glimpse too: bold subject lines, urgent phrasing, a calendar invitation shoved into her day.
She turns it facedown again.
“Penalties,” she says flatly. “If I don’t confirm by the end of the week, they’ll start shifting my dates. Reassigning slots.”
“That’s fast,” Callum mutters.
“It always is,” she says. “Pressure works better when it doesn’t give you time to think.”
Callum feels something harden inside him.
“What did your mother say?” he asks carefully.
Isla’s hands pause over the papers. For the first time this morning, she looks tired rather than controlled.
“She said ninety days is excessive,” Isla replies. “She said closure doesn’t require excavation.”
Callum’s stomach tightens.
“And what did you say?”
Isla’s eyes lift. “I didn’t agree.”
A simple sentence. A rebellion. He can hear the cost of it in the tightness of her voice.
Callum finds himself standing without realizing he’s moved. The chair scrapes softly behind him.
Isla looks up, startled, and Callum realizes he’s too close, on the same side of the table now, close enough that the air between them is warm.
He stops before he can reach for her.
“Is that what it’s always been like?” he asks, and he hates that his voice is low, too intimate. “People deciding what you’re allowed to do and calling it care?”
Isla’s throat moves as she swallows. “Since I was a teenager.”
The answer hits him like a fist.
Callum inhales slowly, forcing himself not to touch her. Not yet. Not unless she chooses it again.
“And you still became this,” he says quietly. “You still built everything you have.”
Isla’s laugh is brittle and sharp. “At what cost?”
The question hangs there, raw.
Callum sees it then, clearly, without myth, without story. Isla’s success isn’t just talent. It’s survival.
He reaches out before he can stop himself and brushes his fingers against her wrist. He feels her pulse jump under his touch.
Her eyes widen.
Callum doesn’t pull away. He cups her wrist gently, thumb pressing against the inside where her skin is soft and vulnerable.
“I don’t know what it cost you,” he says honestly. “But it wasn’t because you weren’t strong enough.”
Isla’s breath stutters.
For a heartbeat, she leans into his hand. Just slightly. Enough that Callum’s control wobbles.
The room feels smaller. Hotter. Charged.
“This is a bad idea,” Isla whispers.
Callum’s mouth goes dry. He doesn’t deny it.
He dips his head, just slightly, close enough that his breath ghosts over her lips. Close enough that one more inch would undo both of them.