Chapter Seven #3
“I dinnae think, Hendry, I ken.” Her laugh was bitter, sharp. “I was told what ye were doing while apart from me. Taking maids to yer bed. Other women. Regularly.”
His face hardened, lips pressing into a tight line. But she couldn’t look away, not from the rise and fall of his chest, not from the hurt gathering in his stormy eyes.
“And ye believed it,” he said, quietly. “After everything. Ye believed I’d betray what we had.”
“Ye expected I wouldn’t find out?” she challenged, crossing her arms even as her throat tightened.
“And yet,” he pressed, stepping forward, “ye didn’t come to me. Didn’t ask if it were true. Ye took the word of some whispering tongue over the man who loved ye beyond sense or salvation.”
“I didnae want to believe it…” Her voice cracked. “But it made too much sense. Ye never sought me out before ye left or after ye returned. Ye vanished.”
“I returned,” Hendry said, his voice rising with frustration, “to find out ye’d married Brant. No warning. No explanation. What was I meant to do? Was I to chase after a married woman?”
“To explain!” she shot back. “Ye owed me that!”
“How was I to ken that ye thought the worst of me? I didnae understand what happened?”
For a moment she couldn’t speak. Had Brant lied?
His expression turned to anguish, then anger. “And when he died, ye turned cold. Bitter. Full of blame. And still I ensured ye had what ye needed to survive. I never stopped looking after ye, even when ye could barely stand to look at me.”
“I didnae want yer charity,” she spat. “He died because of the Ross clan, because of yer battles! And I was left alone!”
Hendry’s voice dropped, low and deadly. “Are ye angry because ye’re alone… or because ye still love me and cannae forgive yerself for it?”
The words gutted her. She inhaled sharply, eyes stinging.
He stepped closer, his voice like a blade now, tempered and honed.
“A warrior’s duty is to defeat the enemy.
We protect our kin when we can, even at the cost of our own lives at times.
Ye weren’t there, Ailith. Ye didn’t see what happened.
The men who fought beside Brant mourned him.
They wept. They bled. And they loved him like a brother. ”
His gaze pierced her. “But ye? Ye turned grief into hatred and flung it at those who didn’t deserve it. At me. And I wonder, do ye grieve him at all? Or do ye simply need someone to blame so ye can bury what ye really feel?”
She stumbled back, as if he’d struck her. The words left her stripped, raw and exposed.
Hendry’s expression shifted, horror creeping across his face at what he’d just said. His hands dropped from her shoulders as if burned.
“It’s best I go,” he said hoarsely. “There’s nothing left for me to say.”
And just like that, he turned, leaving her standing in the ruins of what might have been. Her heart torn between truth, grief, and the terrible ache of still loving the man who’d just broken her all over again.
She stood frozen, her hands balled at her sides, fingernails biting into her palms, but the pain was a distant echo compared to the storm inside her.
Brant had lied to her. Of that she no longer had any doubt.
Because what Hendry had said was right. She knew him better than any other person and just then he’d not lied. Every word he’d spoken was the truth.
All these years she’d accused him of betrayal, to every person who asked she’d repeated the same thing. Had somehow convinced herself with each repetition that it was true. That she had been right in marrying Brant.
Why? Because it was the only way to avoid the truth that she’d always known. Hendry had never betrayed her. It was the other way around.
It was she that had betrayed him. It was she who’d been unfaithful. All the blame was on her.
Hendry turned away.
And with every step he took, it felt as if pieces of her were being torn loose and carried with him.
She wanted to call out. To demand he stop. To take back every cruel word. No. Not take them back, but to explain them. So many years of resentment, loss, and heartbreak were tangled between them like thorn-covered vines. But she couldn’t speak past the knot in her throat.
Her legs gave out at the heaviness that overtook her.
Ailith crumpled to her knees, the grass damp beneath her skirts, her arms wrapping around herself as if she could hold in the heartbreak trying to spill out of her chest. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Tears streaming freely down her cheeks, falling to the earth with a quiet patter.
“It was me,” she whispered, voice shaking. “Ye have always been honorable.”
Through the years she’d built walls high enough to cage dragons. Walls of anger. Of pride. Of pain. And he’d broken through them all with a kiss, a question, and a single look of disappointment in his eyes. That was what shattered her the most. He still looked at her as if she mattered.
But she hadn’t believed in him.
Not when it counted.
She pressed her forehead to the ground, breath hitching as a sob escaped. How many lies had she swallowed just to survive? About what he felt. About what she felt. About how none of it mattered anymore.
She heard the faint crunch of his footsteps fading, swallowed by wind and distance. He wasn’t running. He was walking away like a man who’d given his final battle everything and lost.
And she let him go because in her heart she knew he would never forgive her. Even if he did, there wasn’t a future for them. It was finally the true end between them.
The ache in her chest burned hotter than any desire. It was the ache of words unspoken, of time wasted, of love still alive but buried under grief and doubt.
Ailith lifted her head, tear-streaked and trembling, and whispered into the silence he left behind.
“I never stopped loving ye.”
She looked up, noting he was gone.
And this time, she as sure he’d never return.
A black blur came into sight. Teller rushed toward her, ecstatic at having found her. The dog’s tail wagged furiously as he neared and licked the salty tears from her face. Then he sat on his haunches and leaned into her.
There in the forest, Ailith hugged her only source of comfort and cried and cried.