Chapter Ten The Silence Between Ruins #3
Eilidh sat through the reading of them in Gavin’s solar with her hands folded in her lap and her face so still that even Baird kept his voice subdued.
Gavin dismissed him quickly after the last map was marked.
Donal followed soon after, leaving only Gavin, Eilidh, and Kenan in the room lit by two lamps and the fire burning low.
Gavin leaned both hands on the table. “You should rest.”
“I am rested enough.”
“That is not what I meant.”
No, it was not.
He was looking at both of them now, not only her. At the fracture made visible in the way Kenan remained near the hearth instead of the chair beside her, and in the way she had not once turned fully toward him through all the reports.
“There will be nothing more tonight,” Gavin said. “If Ross lives, darkness will keep him where he is until morning. No amount of staring at maps will drag him through the gate faster.”
He was right. She despised him for it, because rightness had become unbearable in every mouth but the dead.
Eilidh rose. “Then I will go.”
Kenan pushed off the hearth at once.
The small movement said more than any declaration could have.
Gavin saw it too. “Kenan.”
Just his name. A warning perhaps, or permission. Hard to tell with Gavin when he chose to be sparse.
Kenan looked at him. Then at Eilidh. “I will see you to your chamber.”
She was so tired she answered without thinking. “No.”
The refusal fell harder for being immediate.
Kenan went still. Gavin looked away.
Eilidh wished at once that she had spoken more gently. Yet the thought of walking the passage beside him, feeling that contained care in every pace while grief still ate at her from within, seemed more than she could bear.
“I do not need an escort,” she said more quietly.
Kenan nodded once. “Aye.”
That simple assent hurt.
She turned and left before anyone could make it worse by kindness.
At her chamber door, Mairead waited with one lamp lit and a fresh blanket folded over one arm. Her maid took one look at Eilidh’s face and said nothing.
“Did he find you?” Mairead asked once the door was closed.
Eilidh removed the pins from her hair one by one and set them blindly on the table. “He never stopped.”
Mairead’s mouth thinned. “And?”
“And I told him nothing useful.”
“That is unlike you.”
Eilidh let out a tired breath. “I am becoming unlike myself in many ways.”
Mairead came nearer, setting the blanket on the bed. “Grief does that. It is not always permanent.”
The reassurance slid off her like rain off slate.
“I sent him away again,” Eilidh said.
Mairead watched her carefully. “Did you want to?”
No.
The answer rang so plainly inside her that for a second she thought she had spoken it aloud.
Instead she said, “I needed to.”
Mairead did not argue.
When Eilidh was finally alone, she stood for a while in the middle of the chamber without moving. The lamp burned low. Outside the shutters, the night held close and starless. Somewhere distant in the keep a door shut, then all was quiet again.
She crossed to the bed and sat on its edge.
Her body ached with exhaustion. Her mind did not quiet with it.
Ross. The ledgers. The sheep rise. Her uncle falling at the east gate.
Her father in memory beneath the birch trees.
Kenan in the corridor saying he would stay where she could not mistake either.
Her own cruel confession, that she wanted one thing to be his fault.
The way he had taken that too and not flinched away.
What sort of love survived such things.
What sort of woman asked a man to remain near enough to hurt and far enough not to touch.
Eilidh pressed her fingertips hard against her brow.
When at last the first tears came again, they did not arrive in great breaking sobs like yesterday. They slipped more quietly, worn down by repetition and fatigue. She let them fall.
After some time, she rose, crossed the chamber, and laid her palm against the inner side of the door.
Wood. Cold. Still.
Beyond it, the corridor stretched toward stairs and hall and battlements, toward the war room and the search riders and every place Kenan still moved within the keep like a force too large for walls to contain.
He was not at the threshold. She knew that already. He had kept his promise. No waiting outside her door tonight. No silent vigil to shame her with care she could not accept cleanly.
The absence hurt more than it should have.
Slowly she drew the bolt across the door anyway.
Not because she feared he would come.
Because some part of her still feared she might open it if he did.
The metal settled into place with a final sound.
Eilidh stood with her hand on the bolt a long moment after, forehead bowed to the wood.
She had not ended what lay between them. She knew that. Too much truth had passed already for it to vanish under one day’s grief and anger. Yet she had done what this period of sorrow demanded. She had closed the door.
Behind it lay love, witness, and the unbearable possibility of comfort.
Before it lay loss.
Tonight, loss was the only thing she trusted enough to keep.