Chapter Eight
Hendry dismounted with a curt nod to Tobin, handing over the reins without a word.
His boots scraped against the stone of the courtyard, echoing like judgment in his ears.
The sound of life around the keep, voices, footsteps, even laughter all felt strangely hollow.
As if the world hadn’t noticed something inside him had cracked open and begun to bleed.
He didn’t speak or look at anyone.
With shoulders tight and fists clenched, he stalked to his small cottage that was tucked just far enough from the main hall to be left alone. Once inside, he shut the door with more force than needed and slid the latch into place.
Cold met him like an unwelcome hand on his skin.
No fire glowed in the hearth. Of course not, Tobin had been away. The air was damp and still. Somehow more silent than the world outside, as if the walls themselves refused to offer comfort.
He crossed the room, pulling out a chair at the worn wooden table and dropped into it like a man whose bones had turned to stone.
Reaching for the half-full bottle of whiskey, he didn’t bother with a cup.
No ceremony. No pretense. Just pain. Drinking straight from the bottle, he let the burn sear its way down his throat.
It settled hot and hollow in his belly like everything else inside him.
Another swallow. Then another.
Finally, he set the bottle down with a dull thud and just sat there, staring blankly into nothing.
His vision blurred, not with tears, but with the haze of exhaustion that comes when a man has carried too much for too long.
Outside, life continued: boots scraping, the clang of practice swords, the rise and fall of voices.
But inside his home, time had stopped.
This was a day of endings.
Three men would die at dawn, their crimes unforgivable, their fates sealed. And Hendry…he would be the one to see it done. He had already chosen the manner.
Hanging.
Not quick. Not clean. It was fitting.
A slow, gasping death.
It was what it had felt like, walking away from Ailith.
That same choking sensation. As if his lungs had collapsed, and his soul had been sucked out through the wound she’d left behind. He’d thought himself hardened after all these years. But seeing her again, touching her, tasting her, had brought everything back.
Only he wasn’t able to lose himself in her. He’d asked the question he’d been wanting to ask, and her reply had shattered something he didn’t know was still breakable.
She’d believed the worst. That he would betray her. That his love, which had burned for her through every day of absence, could be so easily sullied.
He took another drink, the whiskey now dulling the sharpest edges of memory.
He remembered the day he returned. He’d been tired. Yes. But hopeful. Ready to see her. His mind had played the scene a hundred times. A thousand times.
He’d bathed, changed into clean clothes, and prepared to ride out and find her. His heart had beaten like a war drum in anticipation of being with the one he loved.
But fate had a cruel sense of humor.
Liam had pulled him aside. The archer’s usual easy grin was gone, replaced by something taut and nervous. Hendry had assumed someone, perhaps one of his parents, had died.
“Hendry…” Liam had said quietly, voice lined with sorrow. “I dinnae ken how to tell ye. Ailith… she married Brant. A fortnight past.”
The words hadn’t made sense at first. Not to his ears. Not to his heart. It was like being struck in the chest but feeling nothing until the breath refused to come.
He didn’t remember leaving the keep. Only the feel of the reins in his hands. The rhythmic clop of hooves. The path through the forest. He remembered seeing Brant first, standing outside the cottage. Then Ailith had stepped out, her gown catching the sun like spun gold.
They stood together. Close. Familiar.
And when Brant pulled her into him… when she leaned her head against his shoulder… Hendry’s world unraveled.
He didn’t confront them. He couldn’t. His mouth wouldn’t have been able to form words and deep inside, he understood that his soul couldn’t bear to hear any explanations.
Instead, he’d turned and ridden off without a destination, grief pressing against him from all sides like a crushing wall of rocks.
Finally, it was his horse that had chosen the destination, and somehow, they ended up at his parents’ door.
They’d said nothing at first. They didn’t need to.
Just Ailith’s name had been enough. His mother’s arms, loving and comforting, his father’s silence, solid and unyielding, had held him steady while the ground gave way beneath him.
He stayed there until the ache dulled enough to breathe again.
Until the pain reshaped itself into a man he no longer recognized.
Until Hendry McNichol became something harder. Sharper. A blade instead of a heart.
And now, all these years later, he found himself in the same place again. Still bleeding for her.
Still loving her.
And she still didn’t believe in him.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, head tilted toward the ceiling, bottle once again in hand.
“I would’ve given ye everything,” he whispered into the dark.
But the silence only answered with the sound of his own breath.
And the slow, steady ticking of time that would not turn back.
The latch gave a soft click.
Hendry didn’t move.
The door creaked open behind him, cold air drifting in before it was shut with a quiet thud. A pause. Then the shuffle of boots across the wooden floor.
Liam lowered to a chair across from him. He said nothing, but his presence pressed gently against the edges of Hendry’s sorrow like balm on a burn.
The silence between them stretched, filled only with the pop of the cork as Hendry opened the bottle again and took another long swallow.
Hendry didn’t look at him. Just stared at the ceiling. “We are meant to be resting. We ride early to the village.”
“Aye,” Liam said simply.
A few heartbeats passed.
“The burden of the sentence is a weight ye must bear knowing it is a just punishment from what they’ve done,” Liam said, assuming the reason for his glumness.
He tried and failed to say something about what awaited in the morning. In truth, he’d accepted it. Swallowing, he said. “I have accepted it.”
“Then something else burdens ye. It is Ailith?”
The words landed like a blade drawn gently, not to wound, but to acknowledge that the pain existed.
Hendry swallowed, jaw tightening. His voice was hoarse when it came. “Aye.”
“Ye look like a man gutted.”
“I feel worse.”
He sat back and let the bottle rest on the table between them, then dropped his head into one hand, elbow braced on the worn wood. The fire still hadn’t been lit. He didn’t want it. Let the cold in. Let it numb him.
“I waited for her,” he murmured. “Even when I tried not to. And all this time, she thought I…” His voice broke, not with tears but with bitterness. “She thought I’d betrayed her. Believed it without question. That’s what cuts through me.”
Liam didn’t offer comfort. Didn’t try to soothe or soften it. That was what Hendry liked about his friend. He didnae mistake silence for weakness.
Instead, Liam spoke truth.
“Ye have never stopped loving her. Have given way to the belief that one day ye and her will be together. Sometimes, my friend, certain things are nae meant to be. It may be time ye accept it.”
Hendry let out a quiet, humorless laugh. “I dinnae think I have any option but to move forward. I have wasted too many years pining over a woman who didnae believe in me.”
Liam offered the ghost of a smile but said nothing more.
The room settled again. Still no fire. Just the bitter cold creeping in, and the shared silence of two men who understood pain better than they should.
After a long stretch, Liam rose and walked to the hearth. He hesitated, then quietly struck flint to steel and sparked a flame to life.
Hendry didn’t stop him.
The fire began to glow, casting flickers of amber light across the stone walls. Shadows danced across Liam’s face, softening the hard lines carved by years of battles and the hardship of a warrior’s life.
After a moment, his friend took a few steps, lingered at the door, then turned back. “Get some rest, Hendry. Even if it’s the kind that only whiskey grants. We will head to the village directly after first meal.”
With that, his friend walked out, the sound of the door closing seeming loud.
And Hendry remained, staring into the growing flame.
He didn’t cry. Men like him had long since spent their tears.
But deep within himself, something cracked.