Chapter 21
When she returned upstairs, Cormac was awake, propped against the headboard.
“I need to tell you something,” she said, closing the door softly behind her. “There’s a barrel of grain in the woods.”
He gave a faint smile. “I know. I saw you hide it.”
Her head snapped up. “You saw me?”
He tilted his head.
“Oh, right.”
“Couldn’t exactly call out, could I?”
Aoife sat on the edge of the bed, hands knotting in her lap. “It’ll be weeks before you’re strong enough to lift it. You’ll need help, and I don’t know who we could trust or even ask to take that risk.”
“Aoife, I’ll manage. Another benefit of being an Athraith. I heal faster than you.”
She huffed a breath. “You make it sound simple.”
“It isn’t,” he admitted. “But it’s better than lying here waiting for someone else to solve things.”
His expression changed, growing troubled.
“I hate that you’re trapped here,” he said. “I’ll look for a way to break the oath.”
“Cormac… don’t. Please.”
He straightened a little. “Why shouldn’t I try? Maybe my mother knows something—”
“No,” the word came out too quickly. She forced herself to soften. “Cormac, I don’t want you risking yourself for something that might not even be possible.”
His brow furrowed. “You don’t think the oath can be broken.”
She didn’t answer immediately. The memory of lightning striking the ground was fresh in her mind.
“No,” she said, “I don’t think it can. And I think the Sheedar will punish you if you try. So… don’t, all right. For me.”
Cormac nodded, though she suspected he didn’t entirely mean it.
Aoife forced a smile. “So I have to make the best of it. I’ll sneak food out to the woods, if you can find a way to get it to the village.”
“That I can do.” Cormac said, biting off another chunk of bread.
“And I’ll keep working on Halverton.”
He gave her that look again, the one that said she was too naive. “Even after your conversation with Alton, you still haven’t realised you can’t change a man like him? You’ve done well getting anything out of him at all. A few small mercies. But you can’t undo what he is.”
She crossed her arms, more to hold herself together than to argue. “I don’t think anyone’s born cruel. Something made him this way, and if I can figure out what that is, maybe I can fix it.”
“Maybe,” Cormac tried to shrug, then hissed as pain sliced through him.
Aoife moved to check his shoulder.
“I’m all right.”
Aoife relaxed again.
“Aoife, some people don’t want to be fixed.”
***
Cormac fell asleep after that. Aoife took out her mother’s book and looked for anything she might have missed that would help Cormac heal faster. She hadn’t been reading long when there was another knock at the door.
Aoife’s heart jumped. She shot out of her chair and rushed toward the door to make sure whoever it was couldn’t barge in. She glanced toward the bed, her hand resting on the doorknob. Cormac was still dozing.
“Miss Aoife?” came Mrs Harrow’s calm voice. “Might I have a word?”
Aoife hesitated, then cracked the door open enough to see the housekeeper’s lined face and folded hands. “Of course,” she said. “Shall we walk?”
Mrs Harrow inclined her head. Aoife slipped out, closing the door behind her without ever opening it fully.
They walked side by side down the corridor, their footsteps soft against the carpet. Mrs Harrow said nothing for a long time. The silence stretched. Why had she come?
At last, the older woman spoke. “I think it’s time you knew a little more about Edward,” Mrs Harrow paused. “About Lord Halverton’s past,” she said, correcting herself. It was the first time Aoife had heard his given name.
Aoife slowed her pace. “Oh? You said some stories weren’t yours to tell.”
Mrs Harrow looked toward the window, rain dripping softly from the eaves. When she spoke again, her voice was low.
“Aye. And perhaps they aren’t.”
A breath.
“But sometimes… keeping a story secret does more harm than telling it. I’d hoped he’d tell you himself. It would help to understand him more if you knew what he’d been through.”
Aoife waited for the housekeeper to continue, but Mrs Harrow took a moment. Whether choosing her words carefully or hesitating over making the confessions Aoife wasn’t sure.
“He wasn’t always like this,” Mrs Harrow said at last. “When he was small, he used to follow me about. I was a maid in his father’s house, you see. He’d follow me from room to room, asking endless questions about what I was doing, my little shadow.”
Aoife had done the same as a child, shadowing her mother wherever she went. Asking about the herbs she was mixing, the treatment she was applying. She found it hard to imagine Halverton as a child, harder still to imagine him interacting with the maids.
“He was always clever, even as a boy. He was sent away to the best schools, the best university. It was clear to all he was destined for great things and then… Well…”
Mrs Harrow paused, and Aoife waited, longing to hear the story she was sure the housekeeper was on the cusp of telling her. The story that would explain him.
“You’ve heard of the insurrection at Dún Maebh?”
Aoife nodded, startled by the apparent change of topic.
Of course she had heard of the insurrection.
Unrest in the capital city had exploded into violence on the streets.
Normal people fed up with Eldrossi control.
A spontaneous outpouring of anger at an oppressive regime that had quickly been crushed.
“He was barely more than a boy,” the housekeeper went on, “fresh from Bayforth. Dún Maebh was his first posting. He took Alton with him.” She didn’t look at Aoife as she spoke; her eyes were fixed on the grey sky outside the window.
“Rioters set fire to the building they were in. They climbed out of a window onto the next roof, but the fire spread too fast. The roof they were on collapsed, trapping Edward inside.”
Aoife’s hand flew to her mouth. The origin of Halverton’s scars, Alton’s injuries becoming all too clear.
“Alton near tore his hands to shreds dragging Edwa—Lord Halverton out.”
Aoife said nothing. That explained a great deal: their bond, the quiet loyalty. Once you pulled a man from a fire, there was no going back.
“Alton saved him,” Mrs Harrow continued, “but by then the rioters were waiting outside. Alton tried to reason with them, but they didn’t want to listen. They beat him nearly senseless. Broke his hand beyond repair. It was only the reinforcements that saved them.”
It was strange to hear this account of the day.
The version she’d been taught centred on the hundreds of Morrans who had been cut down when reinforcements arrived.
The Eldrossi didn’t talk about their losses, didn’t show weakness.
Messengers had brought word of the rioters, struck down by the might of the empire, but no details.
The thatched roofs had been rebuilt. The burn marks on a few of the buildings were the only sign that there had been any altercation there.
It was an embarrassment for the Eldrossi Empire that the rebels had come so close.
They had wiped almost all record of it. All that was left were the whispers the Morrans spoke in secret.
“They needed someone to blame for the empire’s failure to defend the outpost.”
No wonder they had hidden Lord Halverton away, the face of their shame.
“His father sent me and a few of the others to get things ready. When Edward arrived, he was different. Quieter. Harder. I often think, how things might have been different if it weren’t for that day.”
Mrs Harrow seemed to be getting to the end of her story, but there were still questions Aoife needed answers to. “What about Florence?” she asked in a rush before she could think better of it.
Mrs Harrow sighed.
“He’d poured his whole self into shaping a future in which she’d shine.
He’d been promised a posting abroad after they were married.
But when he was demoted to Prefect of Briartha…
she vanished. Left before the bandages were removed.
She wanted the rising man, not the fallen one.
It changes a man, discovering that the life he thought was promised was an illusion.
He’s never tried again, didn’t risk it, not until now, not until you. ”
Mrs Harrow meant it as a compliment, that Aoife was the first person he’d found worthy of his trust. But she didn’t know about the oath. She didn’t know that Halverton wasn’t risking anything.
“So you see,” Mrs Harrow said gently, “he needs someone who can understand him and support him. He’s still ambitious, and with you at his side, I think he might become the man I’ve always known he could be.”
Aoife considered this. She knew all about his ambitions, but her place in them was only just becoming clear.
“What about his family?”
Mrs Harrow shook her head. “His mother said it would’ve been better if he’d died that day. His father was the one who arranged this posting to spare the family embarrassment. I don’t think he’s seen any of them since, and I’ve never seen a single letter.”
The words lingered.
Aoife walked beside her in silence, the echo of footsteps and distant rain filling the space between them.
Halverton had trapped her here with the same cruel precision he used to manage every life under his roof. And now she saw the shape beneath it: the loneliness, the rejection, the constant need to prove himself.
But pity, she reminded herself, was a dangerous thing.
Aoife thanked Mrs Harrow for sharing what she had. Armed with this new understanding, she went in search of Lord Halverton.
She found him in his study, the door half open. He sat behind his desk, eyes closed, dictating as Alton wrote; his tone was calm civility edged with hostility. A glass of wine stood beside him, half-empty.
She hesitated on the threshold, then knocked softly.
Halverton opened his eyes and gestured for her to sit without a word. He continued dictating as if she weren’t there.
Aoife took the seat opposite him and waited, taking the opportunity to look around properly now she wasn’t afraid of being caught.
Halverton sat behind his heavy oak desk, the pair of ledgers to one side.
Maps of the county covered the walls, lines marking quotas and boundaries, the land reduced to numbers.
A decanter sat within easy reach, half-empty already.
The air smelt of ink and wine, the curtains drawn to control the light.
Alton wrote quickly and precisely with his left hand. Was he naturally left-handed, or had he taught himself to be after his right hand was injured?
After several minutes, Halverton stopped speaking. “That will do, Alton.”
Alton returned the quill to its place beside the inkpot, bowed slightly, and left the room.
Halverton turned his gaze on her at last. “What can I do for you?”
Aoife swallowed. “Some information came to me recently,” she said, “that helped me understand you a little better.”
His mouth twitched into the faintest hint of a smile. “Oh yes? And what is that?”
She hesitated. “I heard how you came by your scars.”
He said nothing.
The silence that followed was thick, tightening the air in the room until it was difficult to breathe. Halverton’s expression did not change.
Aoife forced herself to go on. “What happened at Dún Maebh… I didn’t know. About the fire. About the roof collapsing. About your family.”
Her voice softened. “I didn’t know how alone you were.”
Still, he didn’t speak. His golden eyes, catching the lamplight, rested on her with a peculiar flatness. A man measuring a threat.
“I only meant,” she continued, quieter now, “that it helped me understand you a little better,” she faltered.
“You believe this explains me?” he asked at last.
It wasn’t anger in his voice.
It was soft, the dangerous kind that came before a blade was drawn.
Aoife straightened. “I think so. A little.”
Halverton leaned back in his chair, hands steepled. “What a generosity of interpretation.”
His tone was pleasant. Perfectly pleasant.
It chilled her.
“You think a tragedy forged my character,” he went on. “That pain made me unyielding. That rejection created ambition. That a wound,” he lifted two fingers to the right side of his face, “established a need for control.”
Aoife swallowed. “Isn’t that true of most people?”
“Most people,” he said, “are forgettable.”
He smiled. It was small, controlled, and utterly humourless.
“People love a wounded man, I suppose.”
“That’s not—”
“Or perhaps,” he cut in, “now you pity me.”
Her mouth went dry. “I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
A beat.
“You should not.”
He stood then, slow and deliberate, circling the desk. He stopped beside her chair, hands clasped behind his back, posture perfect.
“When a man is rejected by his family,” he said faintly, “he learns he can rely on no one.”
His voice dipped lower.
“When he is nearly killed by the people he was sent to govern, he learns the cost of leniency.”
He looked down at her, his gaze unnervingly calm.
“When his fiancée flees at the first sign of imperfection, he learns what love amounts to.”
Aoife forced herself not to retreat from his shadow. “That doesn’t mean you have to become—”
“Strong,” he supplied.
He smiled again.
“Efficient. Uncompromising.”
Her pulse hammered.
“That is what I became. Not because of a fire. Not because of scars.”
He leaned a fraction closer.
“But because weakness is remembered far longer than kindness.”
Aoife drew a careful breath. “I didn’t come to insult you.”
“No,” he said. “You came to understand me.”
He reached out and touched a strand of her hair, checking its place as though she were a picture hung askew.
“And that,” he murmured, “is the insult.”
Her throat tightened.
He released the strand, letting it fall.
“If you are wise, Aoife, you will not seek to interpret me again. It is not your task. It is not your place.” His voice softened, intimate and cold. “You have a role here. That is all.”
Halverton returned to his seat behind the desk.
“You may go,” he said, already concerning himself with other matters. Aoife stood to leave. When she reached the door, he spoke again.
“As you can see, there is nothing to understand.”