She stepped back before he could reach for her. For one terrible moment, he thought she might shout. Rage. Strike back at him in the same sharp way she had done a hundred times before when cornered. Instead, she only looked tired. And that, for reasons he could not fully name, felt worse.
“This is duty for ye,” she said, her voice very even now. “Keeping me safe. Deciding for me. Protecting what is yers.”
His chest tightened. “It is more than that.”
Her smile did not reach her eyes. “Is it?”
He tried to answer. Nothing he could say arrived in time.
Iona lowered her gaze only once, then lifted it again with an expression he had never wished to see directed at him.
“I was foolish,” she murmured. “I forgot myself.”
Then she turned and left him standing in the middle of the room, with all the force of his certainty still around him and no sense, suddenly, that any of it had been enough.
Frederick remained in the study long after the door had closed behind Iona.
The room had gone quiet in the sort of way that made every small sound seem louder than it was. The fire shifted once in the hearth. A coal settled. Somewhere beyond the walls, footsteps passed in the corridor and faded again. None of it touched the knot that had formed low in his chest.
By all sensible reckoning, Archer had been right.
That was the part Frederick disliked most.
There was a path before them, narrow and unclean, but a path all the same. If Noor Burnett had spent years hunting Iona, then Iona’s presence might indeed force her hand. It might draw her into the open in a way that patrols, warnings, and careful questioning had failed to do. It might save others. Women already taken. Women not yet taken. The missing bairns whose names now sat in men’s mouths and mothers’ prayers.
He had a duty to them.
He had always had a duty to his people.
So why, when the logic of it stood plain before him, did every part of him resist it as though it were madness?
He knew the answer well enough, though he did not like the shape of it.
Because it was Iona.
And the thought of putting her where Noor might see her, reach for her, claim her, made something hard and immediate rise in him that had very little to do with reason and far too much to do with possession, fear, and a fury he could not entirely name. All of the cold calculations he had made in other matters turned useless the moment they placed her at the center of the risk. He wanted her far from all of it.
He let out a slow breath and braced both hands against the desk, staring down at the papers spread there without seeing any of them.
It changes nothi’g.
That, at least, was familiar. He had long ago learned how to go on with what needed doing despite whatever private discomfort accompanied it. If the matter could not be settled cleanly, then he would settle it himself. He would ride with Archer. He would deal with Noor. He would take the burden where it belonged and keep Iona from it, whether she thanked him later or hated him for it now.
The look on her face stayed with him. Not anger. He could have borne anger more easily. Not defiance either, though he knew well enough how to answer that. It had been the quietness of her. The hurt. The way she had looked at him as though he had suddenly become a stranger wearing her husband’s shape.
He closed his eyes briefly and swore under his breath. He had spoken badly. Not falsely, perhaps, but badly. And worse than badly, he had spoken in the exact manner that ought never be used with her. Command where care should have sufficed. Authority where trust had been required.
By nightfall, the restlessness in him had sharpened past endurance.
He made his way to her chamber without announcing himself, knowing before he reached it that she would still be awake. He did not know how he knew that. Only that he did. There was a lamp still burning beneath the door, and quiet on the other side that did not feel like sleep.
When he entered, he found her as he had expected. Propped against the pillows, the blanket drawn up neatly, her hair loose over one shoulder. The book on her lap had not been turned for some time. She looked up at once when he stepped inside, but whatever she had been thinking vanished behind a stillness that set him on edge immediately.
“Iona?” he said softly.
She did not answer.
He crossed the room, slower than he might have otherwise, giving her space to turn him away if she meant to. She did not. Nor did she reach for him. That, more than the silence, made something tighten in his stomach.