Chapter 18 Green at the Gates of Home
Chapter eighteen
Green at the Gates of Home
Cillian
Rouge left with her only thirty minutes ago. Half an hour. Half an eternity.
And I’m pacing the length of the stable house like a man waiting on a verdict. Back and forth across the old wooden floorboards, hands in my hair, stitches in my arm pulling, heart beating like a bodhrán in my ribs.
Every two minutes I check the clock. Every three I check my phone. Every breath hurts.
I should’ve gone with her. I know that. I should’ve been the one to bring her back to that manor, to the ghosts of everything she lost. But she asked me to stay. Said she needed to see it alone first, needed to face the ruins of the life she had before mine swallowed hers whole.
So I stayed. And now I’m going mad.
I move to the window, stare out at the frost settling over the fields. The horses are sleeping in their stalls, slow breaths turning to mist. The world is quiet—peaceful—in a way I don’t feel inside.
I step outside just to breathe. Cold air burns my lungs. The sun is sinking, painting the horizon gold and green, the colors of home and war. I run a hand over my face. Christ, I want her back. I want her safe. I want her to choose me. Choose this life. Choose home.
I walk farther than I mean to. Past the frost-bitten hedges. Past the stone fence we carved our initials into when we were twelve. Past the ghost of a life that could’ve been simple, if men like my father hadn’t poisoned the soil generations before I was even born.
My boots crunch over frozen earth. Each step feels like a confession. The wind is sharp—clean—cutting straight through my coat. It feels deserved.
Ahead of me, my family manor rises like a mausoleum. Dark stone. Dark history. Darkness in the bones of the place, sunk deep enough that even God wouldn’t touch it.
That’s where it happened. Where blood stained the carpet. Where I put a bullet in the man who raised me. Where I gutted the legacy that made me. All to give her a chance at a life without monsters nipping at her heels.
I stop at the tree line, staring at the windows gone cold and dim. They used to glow at Christmas—gold, warm, proud. Now they look like empty eyes. Watching me. Judging me.
You’re the head of the Red Hand now, the silence whispers. Are you any better than the man you killed?
I drag in a breath until it burns. I’ll be better or I’ll die trying. I’ll end the pointless violence. I’ll build something new from the rot. For her. Always for her.
She deserves a home that doesn’t choke her with ghosts. She deserves a family that doesn’t bleed her dry. She deserves peace—God, she deserves peace.
And all I can do is pray she comes back to me so I can give it to her. My vision blurs. Whether from cold or fear, I can’t tell.
I close my eyes and let the weight of everything settle. The crown of the Red Hand. The love I’ve never been able to shake. The future hanging in the balance of her choice. Christ, she’s the only thing in this world that’s ever made me want to be a good man.
The wind shifts. Just a small thing—barely more than a breath across the frozen grass—but something in me goes still. A prickle down my spine. The kind you get right before a gunshot or a miracle.
Then I hear it. Footsteps. Fast. Uneven. Kicking up frost and gravel. My heart lurches so violently I swear it knocks the air from my chest.
I turn—And God. God. It’s her. Siobhán. Running.
Not walking. Not approaching. Running at me like her soul’s on fire, like the earth itself is cracking behind her and I’m the only safe thing left in the world.
Her coat flies behind her like wings. Her hair’s loose, wild, golden against the dying green light.
Her eyes—Christ above—her eyes are already shining.
I don’t even feel myself move. One second I’m standing there, praying to saints I don’t believe in, and the next she’s colliding with me.
Arms around my neck. Fingers fisting in my coat.
Her whole body shaking against mine. Her breath breaks on a sob, and it goes straight through me, clean and cruel.
“I—Cillian—” she gasps, the words catching like she’s choking on them. “I can’t—I can’t leave you.”
Her voice cracks open, splintering something deep inside me. She presses her forehead to mine, crying, trembling, trying to speak around the storm in her chest.
“It’s always been you,” she whispers, like a confession, like a prayer. “Always you. Even when I tried to run. Even when I hated you. Even when everything hurt—I still—” Her voice collapses. She sobs again. “I still loved you.”
And Christ, I’m ruined. Absolutely ruined.
I pull her tighter, bury my face in her hair, breathing her in like a dying man and she’s the first lungful of air I’ve had in years.
Her tears hit my collar. Mine hit her temple.
My hands cup her jaw so gently I think they might break from the effort of it.
“Mo chroí,” I breathe. My heart. My life. “Don’t cry, a rún. Don’t cry, I’ve got you.”
But she shakes her head, gripping me tighter, like she’s afraid if she loosens a single finger I’ll vanish into the frost. “I thought I could,” she whispers. “Thought I could leave and build something new. But it’s here. It’s you. You’re my home. You always have been.”
Her voice is breaking. Her shoulders are shaking. And I swear to God, the man I used to be—the angry prince, the weapon Darragh forged—is kneeling inside me, hands to the floor, undone by the woman who’s loved him since they were children.
I close my eyes. And for the first time since I put a bullet in my father, I feel like I’m allowed to hope.
I kiss her like I’m drowning. Like she’s the first breath after a lifetime underwater.
Like every version of me that ever existed has been waiting for this one impossible moment.
She clings to me, fingers buried in my coat, mouth trembling under mine.
When we break for air, she whispers against my lips, voice raw: “Stay forever?”
I rest my forehead to hers. “Forever, a rúin.”
Her breath stutters. I can feel the hope fighting the terror inside her, the way it always has.
And that’s when I know— I’m not waiting another second. I drop to my knees. Her gasp cuts the cold air. Frost swirls around us, tiny flurries catching in her curls, on her lashes, as if the whole goddamn world stopped to bow with me.
“Cillian—”
“Mo ghrá,” I say, voice breaking on the words. “My love. My heart. My fucking reason for living.” I take her shaking hands in mine. “I’ve spent my whole life fighting ghosts, fighting my father, fighting myself. But loving you… loving you was the only thing that ever made sense.”
Her tears fall hot onto my cheeks as I kiss her knuckles.
“I don’t want a throne,” I whisper. “I don’t want a legacy soaked in blood.
I don’t want a future that doesn’t have your music in it, your laughter in it, your fire in it.
” I look up at her fully, letting her see all of me—every broken, desperate, hopeful part of me.
“I want you. I want a home with you. I want Christmas mornings and your terrible tea and your tiny fucking socks in my dresser. I want four kids running wild through the halls and you yelling at me for letting them climb the rafters.”
She laughs—an aching, shattered sound—and drops to her knees in front of me. “Cillian—”
I pull the ring from my pocket. It gleams even in the weak winter light—a massive emerald cut diamond with a halo of tiny stones, set in old white-gold filigree. My mother’s. The only thing I ever kept from her. Siobhán’s hand flies to her mouth.
“Marry me,” I say. My voice shakes. My soul shakes. “Marry me, a chroí. Let me spend the rest of my life loving you the way you deserve.”
Her sob breaks open somewhere inside my ribs. “Yes,” she whispers, then louder, desperate, laughing and crying all at once. “Yes, Cillian, yes—God, yes—”
I slide the ring onto her finger, and it fits like it always belonged there.
She launches into me, kissing me so hard I fall backward into the snow, her hair a golden halo around us as she straddles my waist, laughing, crying, kissing me again and again until I can’t breathe for how much I love her.
“Is leatsa mé go deo, a ghrá geal1,” she murmurs against my mouth.
And I swear the world tilts. I pull her tight against my chest. “Agus táim leatsa go deo, a cholm.2”
Snow falls around us, soft and glowing in the morning light. And for the first time in my entire fucking life, I believe in forever.
We stand there for a moment, just breathing each other in—the cold air turning our breath into little clouds, her tears still glistening on her cheeks, my heart pounding like a war drum finally at peace. Then, hand in hand, we walk back toward the stable house—our home now—and push open the door.
Rouge is sprawled on the couch, one eyebrow raised, looking all too pleased with himself. “Took you two long enough,” he drawls. “I’m starving, and I’m pretty sure true love isn’t on the menu.”
Siobhán laughs, bright and free, and we step inside together.
The whole house smells like butter and curry and something sweet she refuses to tell us until dessert. Siobhán moves around the kitchen like she was born there—bare feet on the old stone floor, my ring glittering on her hand every time she reaches for a bowl or the oven door.
Christ, the sight of it is enough to undo me all over again.
Rouge sits at the table with a pint, boots up, pretending he isn’t watching her like she’s the first sunrise he’s ever seen. “You two gonna sit down at any point?” he grumbles. “Or am I meant to celebrate Christmas alone like some Dickensian orphan?”
I shove his boots off the table. “It’s December, not the 1800s.”
He grins. “Wouldn’t know. You two acted out half of Wuthering Heights on the lawn a bit ago.”