Chapter 28
The slam of the oak doors echoed through the entry hall, a deep shuddering that vibrated through the marble beneath Aoife’s feet.
Halverton didn’t release her.
His grip tightened as he dragged her further inside, his pace unrelenting. She stumbled once, catching herself before she fell. Servants scattered at the edges of the room, shrinking back against the walls.
Aoife met Clara’s eyes. She gave the smallest of nods before slipping away, quick as a shadow.
Beyond the doors came the sharp crack of a whip, followed by a roar of voices. The noise made her flinch.
A soft pounding at the door came next. She turned instinctively. Eoin. Her breath caught as she silently prayed for him to run away, back to their father, back to the village. Somewhere he would be safe.
The soft pounding of his small fists on the door continued.
The soldiers who had entered with them flanked the doors: Wiren, Norin, and Kian. For a heartbeat, her dread eased. What had been a problem might yet become a lifeline.
“What,” Halverton said, each word tight with restraint, “do you think you were playing at?”
Aoife straightened slowly.
Her pulse was loud in her ears, drowning out the distant noise beyond the doors. She forced herself to meet his gaze.
“You set them against me,” he went on, his voice rising despite himself. “And now a soldier is dead.”
Another crack split the air outside.
Halverton didn’t even glance toward the door.
“His blood,” he said, fist clenching, “is on your hands.”
As he spoke, Halverton turned away from her.
The movement was abrupt, pent-up energy with nowhere to go. He crossed to the sideboard, yanked the stopper from the decanter with a sharp crack, and poured himself a glass. The wine sloshed against the sides.
He didn’t savour it, but drank it down in one swallow.
Halverton stood there, back to her, shoulders rising and falling, and filled the glass again.
She hadn’t taken a proper breath since they’d come inside.
She forced one in now. Slow and steady.
Her pulse still roared in her ears. How quickly she’d lost control of the situation. For a brief shining moment, she’d thought the tide was with her, but Halverton had regained the upper hand with ease, and now Lugh was dead, and she did not know what to do next.
When he turned back, she lifted her head and met his eyes. Whatever came next, she would not cower.
“And those things,” he said, stepping toward her again. “What were they?”
He gestured with his glass, wine slopping over the side.
“How did you perform the trick?”
His voice was sharp and cutting, with a fracture of uncertainty underneath it. His mind was still trying to deny what his own eyes saw. This time it wasn’t the glimpse of an animal at the edge of the forest. The Athraith had stood before him plain as day; it was hard to deny it.
“They were no trick.”
The words came more quietly than she had expected. She steeled herself before continuing.
“They came,” she said, “because Inis Morra itself hates you.”
Halverton laughed, loud and sharp and wrong. A forced thing that did not suit him.
“Superstitious nonsense. You think fairy-stories will frighten me?” His grip tightened on the glass. “I know it was a trick. And I will find out how you did it.”
The wine trembled in his hand, catching the light.
“I gave you everything,” he went on, voice rising, finding his footing again in anger. “Clothes. Safety. Food. While the rest of your kind starve.”
He took a step toward her.
“And this is how you repay me? By making me look a fool?”
He slammed the glass down on the sideboard and crossed the hall, stopping barely a foot from her. He was close enough that she could see the tension in his jaw, the tightness around his eyes.
“You should be grateful.”
Aoife’s heart hammered so hard it made her chest ache. She breathed hard, the words she wanted to say tangled in her throat. What was she doing? Surely whatever she said would only make things worse? A flame of anger burned in her, and the words came almost without her consent.
“I never asked for safety bought with their suffering.”
Her whole body trembled, part fury, part fear.
“You gave me nothing I needed.”
Halverton’s lip curled. “Ungrateful wretch.”
He took another step, closing what little space remained, his wine-filled breath hot on her face.
“Without me, you would be rotting in a ditch. I lifted you out of the muck, and you dare to stand there and sneer at me?”
Aoife didn’t move.
Didn’t step back.
“You didn’t lift me,” she said, her voice steady, clenched fists shaking at her sides.
“You caged me.”
His hand twitched on the glass. The stem creaked faintly under the strain of his grip, knuckles whitening.
He leaned in to her, like a lover whispering in her ear. “You would be nothing without me.”
Aoife shoved him away from her.
“With your peasant manners and your dirt-eaten hands. I made you a lady.”
“I don’t want to be a lady.”
Her answers came faster now. Clearer.
“I want my people to live.”
Behind him, there was movement.
The room shifted with the quiet gathering of bodies, the weight of watching eyes, but Aoife didn’t turn her head.
Clara had returned.
The others were with her.
Halverton didn’t notice.
Clarity slowly replaced the fear that had been gripping her. This was her only chance, right here, right now. Perhaps she couldn’t change him, but he wasn’t the only person in this house.
“I have kept this county fed,” he said. “Do you think a peasant could do better? No. Without me, the whole place would fall apart.”
Aoife shook her head.
“It’s falling apart because of you.”
A breath.
“Not despite you. Because of you.”
She raised her voice a fraction. It wasn’t the man in front of her she was talking to anymore, not really.
“I agreed to come here because I was certain there was goodness in you,” she said.
Her gaze didn’t leave his, but she was aware of every set of eyes in the room watching her.
“I thought there had to be.”
The crack of the whip outside almost made her falter.
“All my life,” she went on, slower now, as if she were finding the thought even as she spoke it, “I believed there was no such thing as evil. That every man must see himself as the hero of his own story. That he must be fighting for what’s right in his own mind.”
She faltered for a moment before lifting her chin.
“I see it now. Evil is not fire and fury,” she said. “It’s emptiness.”
Her hands were steady at her sides now as the truth of her words settled over her.
“It’s the absence of any goodness at all.”
A breath.
“And that’s what you are.”
She locked eyes with him.
“Empty.”
Halverton was silent; behind him, the staff were frozen in place. Aoife’s breathing quickened as he continued to stand there in silence. After seconds that felt like minutes, Lord Halverton gave a mocking smile, a thin stretch of the lips, almost pleased with itself.
“Empty?” he said.
The word lingered between them.
“No, Aoife. Not empty.”
He took a step away from her.
He flung his arms wide, a gesture encompassing not just the room but the house and even the whole county.
“Full.”
He dropped the word softly, watching her as he said it.
He let his arms fall, eyes gleaming. “Full of your father’s life,” he went on. Aoife clenched her jaw. “Your brother’s.” Eoin’s small fists continued to pound on the door.
“Your sister’s.”
Each name settled heavily, one atop the other.
“All of them,” he said quietly, “are in my hands.”
He tilted his head slightly, and the world narrowed to the rush of her own pulse.
He gestured lazily toward the door. “The village?”
Another crack of the whip echoed faintly through the hall.
“They live or starve because I decide it.”
His gaze sharpened. “That is not emptiness, girl.” He stepped toward her again.
“That is power.”
His shadow stretched across her, swallowing the space between them, dark and suffocating.
“And do not think,” he added, more softly now, “that I have not noticed the ones you cling to in this house.”
Aoife didn’t move.
Didn’t dare.
“Clara.”
A pause.
“Mrs Harrow.”
Another.
“That gardener…” He gave the faintest shrug. “Whose name I cannot be bothered to learn.”
She was almost impressed that he’d noticed.
“They breathe,” he said, “because I allow it. I hold their lives in the palm of my hand.”
He leaned closer, a quiet, terrible control in the way he held himself.
“You call me hollow,” he murmured.
A beat.
“Tell me…”
His voice dropped further. Almost gentle.
“What will you do…”
Another inch closer.
“…when I close my fist?”
Aoife’s throat tightened. She had to choose her words carefully, remembering that it wasn’t him she was talking to. She kept her head high. Inside, the fear curdled and hardened. She couldn’t afford to mess this up.
Before she could decide what to say, a familiar voice broke the silence.
“You will close it on nothing but air.”
Lord Halverton’s head snapped round, startled. Clara stepped forward from the line of servants.
Her hands were clenched in her skirts; the tension visible all the way up her arms. Her chin was high, her gaze fixed, unflinching.
“You’ll find it hard to do anything,” she said.
Her voice shook.
She didn’t stop.
“…without staff to follow your orders.”
She took a step, then another.
Her shoes were impossibly loud against the marble.
She came to stand at Aoife’s side, trembling but resolved.
“Clara,” Halverton said. As though the word itself stopped making sense.
“What do you think you are doing?”
She met his gaze.
“My name,” she said, “is Clíona.”
Halverton spun around as more footsteps fell behind him.
Alton stepped forward without hesitation, crossing the space to stand beside Clíona.
Halverton’s head snapped toward him.
“Alton,” he said. “That is enough. Get back in line.”
A small, dismissive gesture of his hand.
“You have made your point.”
Alton didn’t move.
Halverton frowned, a flicker of irritation crossing his face.
“I said—” he began, sharper now, “that is enough.”
Still nothing.
Something in his expression shifted.
“You owe me better than this,” he said. “You would be dead without me.”
His gaze hardened.