Chapter Ten Ashes Between Us #2
Caelan’s voice came out strained. “I did it because if we stay, you die. Elara dies. Ewan dies. Men die one by one until the camp is quiet and profitable. I did it because I could see the line, and I stepped over it.”
Morna’s eyes stung. “And Fergus.”
Caelan’s gaze flicked away, just for a heartbeat, toward the yard where smoke drifted. “And Fergus,” he said, as if the name cut his tongue.
Morna’s chest tightened until she could barely breathe.
She wanted to strike him. She wanted to shake him until his rigid control splintered and he became human again.
She wanted him to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness, not because it would fix what he had done, but because it would prove he still felt something.
Instead he stood there, carved from discipline, as if the only way to survive was to become stone.
Morna forced her voice into a whisper. “Do you feel it,” she asked. “Do you feel what you have done.”
Caelan’s eyes snapped back to hers. “Every breath,” he said.
The answer should have eased her. It did not. It only made it worse, because it meant he understood and did it anyway.
Morna’s hands shook inside her cloak. “Then you will do it again,” she whispered.
Caelan’s mouth tightened. “If I have to.”
Morna recoiled as if he had struck her. The space between them filled with something jagged, something sharp enough to cut.
“You are not the man I thought you were,” she said, voice barely audible.
Caelan’s face went still. “No,” he said softly. “I am not.”
The admission landed like ash.
For a moment Morna saw him as Valerius wanted him to be, a man stripped of illusion, a man who would choose outcome over principle, who would trade one life for many and sleep afterward only because exhaustion demanded it.
A man who might be effective, might even be admirable in war, but terrifying in intimacy.
Morna’s throat tightened. “Do you think I can lie beside you again,” she whispered, “knowing what you are capable of.”
Caelan’s expression did not change, but his voice roughened. “I do not know what you can do,” he said. “I only know what I must.”
Morna’s eyes flashed. “Must. Even love becomes duty with you.”
Caelan’s gaze flicked to her mouth, then away, as if even looking at her would be another violation. “Love is not the word I deserve,” he said.
Morna’s breath hitched. She had wanted him to deny it. She had wanted him to fight her, to insist he was still the man she had chosen. His resignation felt like surrender, and it made her furious because it left her carrying the weight of the choice alone.
“If you think you do not deserve it,” she whispered, “then why did you let me choose you in the dark.”
Caelan’s eyes tightened. “I did not take,” he said, voice low. “You chose.”
“And you let me,” Morna hissed. “You let me give you something soft in a place that eats softness, and then you showed me the truth the very next day.”
Caelan’s shoulders rose and fell with a slow breath. “I did not plan the timing,” he said.
“No,” Morna replied, bitter. “You planned the lie.”
Caelan’s jaw clenched. He looked older in that moment, the lines around his eyes deeper, the control on his face stretched tight like cloth pulled over a wound.
“You should go with Ivor,” he said suddenly, voice flat. “When the opening comes, you take Elara and Ewan and you go.”
Morna stared at him. “And you.”
“I will cover,” Caelan said. “I will draw attention. I am already damned. I may as well use it.”
Morna’s stomach turned. She heard the readiness in his voice, not courage, but resignation. A man preparing to pay for his sins with his body because he could not bear them with his mind.
“No,” she whispered, the word torn out of her before she could stop it.
Caelan’s eyes sharpened. “You do not get to say no,” he said quietly. “Not if you want them to live.”
Morna’s anger flared. “Do not speak to me as if I am helpless,” she snapped. “Do not decide my choices after you have already taken someone else’s.”
Caelan’s breath hitched, and Morna saw the truth land in him like a stone. He had taken Fergus’s choice. He was trying to take hers now to make the world simpler.
Morna stepped closer, then stopped herself. She could smell him, smoke and sweat and a faint trace of the kitchen shed. The familiarity twisted inside her.
“I do not know who you are,” she whispered.
Caelan’s gaze held hers. “I am the man who will get you out,” he said. “Even if you cannot bear to look at me while I do it.”
Morna’s eyes burned. She wanted to tell him that she did not need him, that she could survive with her herbs and her grit, that she did not owe him forgiveness for his choices.
But she could not deny what was true. Without Caelan’s planning, his protection, his willingness to draw the blade onto himself, she would already be broken. He was the reason Elara had not been struck again. He was the reason Morna had not been dragged away when her fever made her weak.
And now he was the reason Fergus lay in the mud.
The fire roared louder. Another shout rose, closer, followed by the slam of a door and the rattle of buckets.
Caelan glanced toward the yard. “They will start counting,” he murmured. “They will lock the barracks. The moment we move must be precise.”
Morna swallowed hard. She forced herself to speak like the woman she had been before Blackwood, the woman who measured doses and watched for reaction. “I need to know where Elara and Ewan will go,” she said, voice tight.
Caelan’s gaze returned to her, and for a moment she saw relief flicker there, as if any practical question from her was a rope thrown to a drowning man.
“Ivor will pull them toward the far fence line,” he said.
“Where the smoke is thickest. There is a gap in the thorn hedge behind the latrine trench.”
Morna’s stomach turned at the mention of the trench, but she nodded once. “And if we are separated.”
Caelan’s voice was steady. “Rendezvous at the ash tree beyond the old stone wall. If one cannot reach it, they keep moving east to the stream.”
Morna heard the preparation in his tone, the way he spoke of their bodies like pieces on a board. It made her want to scream again.
Instead she looked past him to Elara and Ewan huddled behind the crates, eyes wide, faces pale. They trusted her. They trusted Caelan too, still, because they did not know what he had done.
Morna’s throat tightened. She could not break them with the truth. Not now. Not with fire and shouting and men running.
She turned back to Caelan and forced her voice into a whisper. “If you touch me again,” she said, “I will not be able to move. Do you understand.”
Caelan went still. “Aye,” he said.
The answer was simple. It did not soothe her.
Morna stepped back, putting a small distance between them, enough that she could breathe. She felt cold without his warmth, and she despised herself for noticing.
“You will not ask me to forgive you,” she said.
Caelan’s mouth tightened. “No,” he replied. “I will not put that weight on you.”
Morna’s chest ached. “Then you will carry it alone.”
Caelan’s gaze dropped for a heartbeat. “I already am,” he said.
The words were not a plea. They were a fact.
Morna’s hands shook. She clenched them hard. “When we are out,” she whispered, “do not think this ends. Do not think escape makes it clean.”
Caelan looked at her, eyes dark. “Nothing makes it clean,” he said.
For a moment the only sound between them was the roar of fire and the distant shout of Valerius barking for order. Morna felt the camp’s chaos press in, like a storm wall, and she realized they had only a narrow space left for their personal ruin. Soon survival would demand all of them again.
Morna turned and moved to Elara and Ewan, crouching beside them. She forced her voice gentle. “Stay quiet,” she murmured. “Hold onto my cloak. If I move, you move.”
Elara nodded, swallowing hard. Ewan’s eyes darted toward Caelan. “Is he coming,” he whispered.
Morna’s throat tightened. She hesitated, then nodded. “Aye,” she said. “He is coming.”