Chapter Eight The Edge of the Blade #3
Eilidh sat through it with her hands folded tightly in her lap. She did not challenge the numbers. She could not. The result would save Kincaid lives. It might save villages. It would likely force Roderic to rethink his next campaign entirely.
The horror lay precisely there. In how well it had worked.
Kenan accepted the praise without savoring it. That was almost worse. If he had looked proud, she could have fought pride. If he had looked shaken, she could have reached for that weakness. Instead he looked like a man already studying the next move.
When council ended and men began to disperse, Gavin touched Eilidh’s sleeve lightly.
“Do not mistake him,” he said in a voice only she could hear.
She looked at the laird. “Then tell me what I am seeing.”
Gavin’s face seemed years older in the candlelight. “A man learning too quickly.”
That was as close to fear as she had ever heard from him.
Night settled thick over Kincaid Keep by the time Eilidh found Kenan again.
He was on the western battlement alone, one forearm braced on the stone, looking out toward the dark where the ridges lay unseen. The wind had risen after sunset and pulled at his cloak. Below in the yard, the last of the wounded had been carried inside.
He heard her steps and did not turn. “You should be warmer than this.”
“So should you.”
“That has not been true for days.”
The answer carried no jest.
Eilidh came to stand beside him. For a time she said nothing. The battlements were no place for soft entrances to hard subjects.
At last she said, “They called you brilliant tonight.”
Kenan’s mouth flattened. “A poor blessing.”
“You do not sound pleased.”
“I am not.”
She studied his profile. “But you would do it again.”
That brought his gaze to hers.
The pause before he answered told her everything. Not hesitation over the truth. Calculation of how much of it she could bear.
“Yes,” he said.
The word landed like a stone dropped into cold water.
“That is what frightens me,” Eilidh said.
Kenan did not speak for several heartbeats. “Because it means I was right?”
“Because it means the thing that horrifies you no longer stops you.”
He went still beside her.
Eilidh pressed on. “You still feel the cost. I know you do. But you are becoming able to set it aside faster.”
The wind moved between them.
At last he said, “Would you prefer I be worse at this?”
“No.”
The answer came with painful immediacy.
That drew something like a bitter laugh from him. “Aye. There is the knot.”
She turned to face him fully. “Do not make light of it.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
His eyes met hers. “I am trying not to drown in it, Eilidh.”
There it was. Not denial. Only exhaustion and the awful knowledge that she was not wrong.
Her anger collapsed under that truth, leaving only fear and love and helplessness.
“I do not know how to stand beside this,” she admitted.
“Neither do I.”
For a moment she thought he would stop there. Then he added, quieter, “But I know how it felt when you crossed the hall.”
The memory struck between them. The great hall, the eyes of the warriors, her deliberate steps through judgment toward him.
She swallowed. “That was easier than this.”
“Aye.”
He turned back then, and the look in his face undid her more than any argument might have. Not because it was softened. Because the hardness remained, and beneath it the man she loved still fought to be seen.
“I am not asking you to bless what I did,” he said. “Only not to lie about why.”
She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, she found the only truth left. “I know why.”
The words trembled.
“And I still fear it,” she said.
Kenan nodded once. “Then perhaps you are the last wise person in this keep.”
Despite everything, despite the ache in her chest and the blood still drying on his sleeve, a breath that was almost laughter escaped her.
He stepped closer then, not enough to crowd, only enough that she could feel his presence as warmth in the cold air. “Do you think I do not fear it too?”
Her eyes rose to his.
The answer was there before he spoke again. In the tightness of his jaw. In the weariness under the hard edge. In the simple fact that he had come alone to the battlements instead of staying below to bask in victory.
“I know you do,” she said.
That was all. No absolution. No promise that the fear would lessen. Only the shared recognition of a thing neither could mend tonight.
Kenan lifted a hand and touched the side of her face with roughened fingers. “Then stay afraid,” he murmured. “And stay.”
The two halves of that request tore at her equally.
Eilidh laid her hand over his. “I will stay,” she said.
Fear, she did not promise away.
They stood together on the battlements while the wind moved over the darkened land and the keep settled around them into its uneasy night. Below, men slept or groaned or whispered over remembered fields. Beyond the walls, Roderic’s army licked its wounds and planned anew.
Kenan had won a brilliant victory that day.
He had also frightened the woman who loved him.
Both things were true. Both would remain true when dawn came.