Chapter Nine The Ashes of Home #3
That truth cut too close.
Eilidh rose from the bed before she knew she meant to. “Do you know what I was doing while they burned?”
His expression changed, stricken already because he knew.
“I was here,” she said. “At your table. In your councils. In your bed.” The last words almost failed, but she forced them through. “And my home burned.”
Kenan shut his eyes briefly.
The sight of it gave her no satisfaction.
When he opened them again, he said, “I know.”
“No, you do not.” She heard herself and knew the lie in it instantly, because of course he did know something of such loss. Still she could not stop. “I spent days helping you save everyone but my own.”
The cruelty of that sentence landed between them both.
Kenan’s hands closed once at his sides and then opened again. “If I could undo it, I would.”
“Would you?”
The question came out almost savage.
He did not answer at once, and in the pause she heard all the unbearable truths tangled beneath it. Undo which part. The war. The councils. The night with her. The time spent on Kincaid roads while Jardine stood exposed. None could be separated cleanly now.
At last he said, “Aye. Every part that took them from you.”
The answer should have eased something. Instead it broke what remained of her control.
“You cannot fix this,” she said. “You cannot map it, or trap it, or win some crossing to pay it back. It is gone.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
His face tightened. “What would you have me say?”
She stared at him.
Nothing. There was nothing. No arrangement of words that could rebuild a hall from ash or raise her uncle from the east gate.
Kenan seemed to read it in her silence.
He took one careful step forward. “Eilidh.”
She stepped back at once.
Not from fear of him bodily. From fear of what taking one more step toward him would mean. If she let him hold her now, if she let his presence become shelter again, then some part of her would begin forgiving the world for what it had done, and she could not bear that. Not yet.
The recoil hit him visibly.
He stopped.
“I cannot,” she whispered.
The words were torn raw from the center of her.
Kenan went still enough that for a heartbeat she thought he had ceased breathing. Then he nodded once. A tiny motion. Controlled. Deadly in how much pain it cost.
“Aye,” he said.
No protest. No demand. No claim on the tenderness they had shared only hours before Hamish rode through the gate. He accepted the boundary exactly because he loved her, and that made it crueler still.
Tears blurred the room again.
“I loved you last night,” she said before she could stop herself.
The truth came out like confession and wound together.
His face changed, all the grief in it laid bare.
“And today,” she went on, shaking now, “I do not know what I can bear to feel.”
Kenan looked at her as if the words had gone through him cleanly and left no piece untouched.
At length he said, “Then feel none of it for me.”
Her breath hitched.
“I will still be here,” he said. “But not for your pity. Not for your duty. Only when you can bear it.”
She wanted to tell him not to be so kind. Kindness had become intolerable. She wanted to strike him for understanding too well, for refusing to make it easier by angering her.
Instead she covered her mouth with one hand and turned away.
The movement was answer enough.
Kenan remained only a moment longer. She knew it from the shift of air that held quiet in the doorway. Then his footsteps withdrew, slow and measured, down the passage beyond.
Only then did she let herself sink to the edge of the bed again, hollowed out beyond tears.
Morna returned some time later to find the broth untouched and Eilidh staring at nothing.
Mairead followed with red eyes and fresh resolve.
Somewhere below in the keep, horns called the changing of morning watch.
Riders left the gates for Jardine lands and the sheep hills and the birch hollow.
Gavin would already be folding this disaster into the larger shape of the war.
Baird would be calculating what the loss of Jardine grain meant for winter.
Donal would be watching everyone and saying less than he knew.
The world had not ended.
That was the worst part.
It went on.
Her home was ash. Her uncle was dead. Her people were scattered in fear across hills she knew better than the lines of her own palm. And still the day advanced, still water boiled in kitchens, still horses were saddled, still councils formed.
Eilidh lowered her head into her hands.
For the first time since Hamish arrived, one thought came through the grief with enough clarity to name itself.
Love had not protected anything.
Whether that belief was fair did not matter. It lodged like iron all the same.
And because of it, when Kenan’s footsteps returned later in the day or on the next morning, if they returned at all, she knew she would not yet be able to take his hand.
Not because she loved him less.
Because the loss hurt too much to let anything living touch it without feeling like betrayal.