Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Prelude in Red Minor
Siobhán
Iwake slowly, the kind of slow where the air feels heavier and the light too soft to trust. My eyes flutter open, not with panic, but with the weight of everything that happened yesterday anchoring my limbs to the mattress. I don’t move. I just breathe—shallow, unsure.
Cillian’s chest rises and falls beside me. He’s awake, though still, his arm draped over my waist like it’s the most natural thing in the world. As if we never stopped being us. As if the years and miles and damage never carved us into two aching pieces of a broken melody.
His lips brush my shoulder, and I feel it like a blessing. “Good morning, a rún,” he murmurs, his voice all velvet and gravel. Irish and honeyed and safe.
I choke on the softness of it. There’s a peace here I don’t trust. I don’t deserve.
But god, I want to stay in it. I turn toward him and press my forehead to his collarbone, breathing him in—salt and clove and the faint smoke of yesterday’s rage.
I could bury myself in this moment and never come up for air.
His hand slides up my spine, slow and reverent. “Still with me?” he asks gently.
I nod. I’m with him. I always have been.
I look around the room again. This house.
This bed. This man. It’s the home we whispered about at seventeen when we didn’t know what we’d lose.
Four rooms upstairs—he kept them exactly the way we planned.
One for each child we swore we’d name after poets and saints and stars.
He built this life with me in mind. Every hall.
Every lock. Every code. Every inch of this place is carved with a prayer to the girl he lost.
And I’m lying in his arms like I never left. My chest tightens with guilt, thick and rising. But then he looks at me. Like I’m music he’s waited years to hear again. Like I’m the only sound that ever mattered.
I trace the line of his jaw with shaking fingers. He lets me. Even with all the blood he’s spilled. Even with everything he’s capable of. I love him. I love this cruel, brilliant, violent man who once knelt beside me at the piano and promised to make the world quiet so I could play.
I swallow the sob rising in my throat. I don’t deserve this moment—but I want it. And for once, I let myself have it.
The ceiling above us is old timber, warm with the morning light sneaking through the curtain cracks. I can smell the faintest mix of cedar, dust, and horses—the ghost of the stable’s past life—wrapped in the softer scent of him.
Cillian’s arm is still around me. We’re tangled, our legs knotted like we never learned how to sleep apart.
This bed is rough-hewn. Sturdy. Made by his own hands, probably.
I can picture it—twenty-something Cillian, angry at the world and aching for something soft, carving this place out of the storm. And still… he made it for me.
I press my palm to his chest, feel the steady rhythm beneath it. “Did you ever… stop?”
“Loving you?” His voice is gravel and sleep and velvet all at once. “Not even for a second.”
I close my eyes. “Even when I was with someone else?”
His breath hitches. Then, softly—too softly. “I figured that was my penance.”
It shatters something inside me. The quiet stretches. He kisses the top of my head. Then my temple. Then the tip of my nose like he used to when we were young and stupid and thought love could fix everything.
“So you saw the rooms upstairs,” he murmurs.
“I did.”
“For the kids we were gonna have. Remember?” My throat tightens. He brushes my hair back, his eyes steady on mine. “You said you wanted two girls, and I said we’d end up with four boys who’d drive us mad. So I built four rooms.”
“Cillian…” I whisper, barely breathing.
He cups my face like I’m the most fragile thing he’s ever touched. “Everything in this place, Siobhán… it’s always been for you. Even when you weren’t here.”
Tears spill over before I can stop them. I don’t even bother wiping them away. I just bury myself against his chest and whisper the truth that’s been clawing its way up my throat since the moment I walked through that door.
“I love you.”
“I know.” His lips brush my hairline. “You always did. Even when you hated me.”
I lift my face and find him smiling—that smile, the crooked one I haven’t seen in years.
“Tá tú fós ag caoineadh dom,1” he says, low and teasing.
“I’ll cry for you forever,” I murmur. “If it means you’re still here when I wake up.”
The front door slams, making us both jump. Cillian bolts upright, body coiled like a spring, grabbing for the gun on the nightstand. My heart hammers, still tangled in blankets, breath caught somewhere between dream and dread.
A voice echoes down the hall. “It’s me!”
Rouge.
Cillian exhales sharp relief and drops the weapon back down, then drags his hands over his face. The sheets fall from his chest. I already miss his warmth. He’s up, halfway to the door before Rouge even rounds the corner.
“It’s your father,” Rouge says grimly. “He’s looking for you.”
My stomach sinks. Of course he is. Of course Darragh O’Dwyer knows I’m here.
“It’s not good,” Rouge adds, voice low, eyes flicking toward me.
Cillian doesn’t hesitate. He’s already moving, pulling on his pants, his sweater, the shoulder holster he’d discarded like armor last night.
“No,” I whisper, sitting up, the sheet pulled up over me. “Don’t go.”
He turns to me, comes back to the bed, kisses me once—slow and deep and grounding. “I have to, mo ghrá.”
“I’m not worried about you,” I murmur. “I’m worried about Rouge.”
He grins at that. A sharp, wicked flash. “So am I.”
“Fuck off,” Rouge grumbles, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m delightful.”
Cillian pulls his jacket on, but before he steps away, he cups my cheek again, rough thumb trailing down to my jaw. His eyes burn into mine.
“Don’t leave this house,” he says, voice suddenly all command and steel. “I mean it. Not even a toe across the threshold.”
“I won’t.”
He nods, presses one last kiss to my forehead, and then leans in toward Rouge. I can’t hear what he whispers, but Rouge nods once, serious. Then Cillian’s gone. Gone to face the devil who raised him. I pull the blanket tighter around me, already cold.
I sit on the edge of the bed for a long moment, the silence pressing in around me. My mind races with possibilities, each one darker than the last. But I know he walked straight into the fire for me. And I can’t sit here doing nothing.
I move.
Dressing quickly, I choose comfort without sacrificing the elegance Cillian wrapped around me like a vow.
Everything in the closet fits me like it was made for me—because it was.
He remembered everything I ever dreamed of wearing.
I pull on a soft cashmere set in forest green, the color deep and grounding, the fabric a whisper against my skin.
Gold thread at the cuffs. A perfect weight for a morning spent in limbo.
Hands need to be busy.
I walk barefoot into the kitchen, tie my hair back, and start breakfast. The familiar rhythm steadies me. Kettle on. Eggs, toast, berries. Tea for me. Coffee for Rouge. He never was one for dainty things. By the time the scent of butter and bread fills the air, my shoulders have dropped an inch.
Just as I set the table, Rouge wanders in, yawning like he’s still half asleep and entirely too tall for the delicate linen chair he slumps into. He doesn’t ask what I’m doing. Just lets me do it. I pour the tea. And for the first time in years, I tell someone everything.
Rouge doesn’t touch his food right away. Just watches me, the steam from his coffee curling up into the space between us like smoke from a long-buried fire.
When I finally speak, my voice is quieter than I expect. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”
He doesn’t flinch. Just lifts his brow. “Like what?”
“Like… all of it. Coming back. Seeing him again. Feeling like I never left, and like I’ve changed too much all at once.”
Rouge doesn’t say anything right away. Just lets the silence sit. Then he shifts on the hay bale like his ass is made of glass. “Well, fuck. That’s heavier than I expected.”
I huff out a laugh that isn’t really a laugh. “It really is.”
Rouge scratches behind his ear and leans forward, elbows on his knees. “So what really happened, duchess? Why are you really back?”
I stare at the floor between us. “My father was violent,” I start, slowly.
“Behind the music and the champagne smiles and the press clippings… he was a cruel, hollow man. My mother tried to shield me. We’d disappear to the countryside some weekends and she’d pretend like we were just…
normal. But she couldn’t hide the bruises forever. ”
Rouge doesn’t interrupt. Just watches me the way only someone who’s seen blood spill for less could.
“One night, he went too far. Broke her arm. Tried to break me too. But Darragh got to him first.”
That makes Rouge blink. His brows rise a little.
“He killed him,” I say, voice flat. “Darragh killed my father. Said it was for us. Said we’d be safe.”
“You were?” Rouge asks.
“For a while. But it wasn’t safety, not really. It was a deal. A transaction. He didn’t save us out of mercy—he did it for leverage. My mother owed him, and he made sure we remembered.”
Rouge’s mouth pulls to the side. “Jesus.”
“I became payment. Dublin’s Darling Daughter. The little prodigy with the pretty fingers and the pretty smile. I played piano at his private parties. Wore the dresses he chose. Sat beside him like a fucking porcelain doll while men twice my age clinked glasses and told him what a treasure I was.”
Rouge snorts. “Bet he didn’t know who he was parading around, yeah? A siren wrapped in silk and stage lights.”
The laugh that follows is dry, sharp. It dies in the quiet like a match burning out.