He gave her a final look, one she could not entirely decipher, then disappeared behind the screen and out through the inner door.
Once alone, Iona let out a slow breath and pressed her fingertips briefly to her lips. Then she turned toward her gown and began to change.
By the time she left the chamber, the corridor beyond had grown quieter with the falling evening. Torchlight burned low along the walls, turning the stone a warm gold in some places and a deeper, more uncertain brown in others. She had meant only to walk downstairs and join the others.
Instead, halfway to the stair, something caught in her chest. It was the smell first. Damp stone and heated rushlight. Nothing more than that. Nothing uncommon in an old Highland keep. And yet the moment it reached her, her steps slowed.
The O’Douglas corridor here narrowed before turning toward the main stair. The ceiling dipped slightly lower overhead. The torch brackets were set farther apart, leaving pockets of shadow between each pool of light. On one side, three doors stood closed, identical in their dark wood and iron latches.
Iona went still. She recognized this shape. Not this exact passage, not this castle, not these walls. But the arrangement of it. The architecture of control. Narrow halls that funneled movement. Doors that could be watched from one end. Lightplaced just so, not to comfort, but to expose whoever passed through it. She had walked corridors like this before with a bucket in hand and her eyes lowered, praying not to be noticed and yet never truly escaping notice.
Her throat tightened.
For one terrible moment, she was back there.
Not at the O’Douglas Castle, where her husband was, but back at MacFarlane Keep.
Back in the place where every corner seemed to listen. Where the walls themselves had felt complicit in what they concealed. Where Lady Noor moved through the keep like a blade hidden in silk, never raising her voice, never needing to. A glance had been enough. A question asked too sweetly. A silence held too long.
Iona’s palm pressed flat to the stone beside her without her fully meaning to do it.
She could almost hear it again. The echo of keys. The muffled sound of weeping she had once convinced herself must have come from some other part of the keep, some other sorrow, anything but the truth. The truth had been worse. It had always been worse.
Her breath came shallower. Noor has not changed. The certainty of it moved through her with quiet horror. And neither has the danger.
That was the part that mattered now. Not memory for its own sake. Not fear returning merely because stone and shadow resembled what they once had. This place was different. These people were different. Yet what waited beneath it all remained the same. The same hunger for control. The same ease with cruelty. The same willingness to hide wickedness behind rank and manners and a lady’s smile.
Iona closed her eyes for the space of one breath, then opened them again. When she began walking once more, it was more slowly, but with greater purpose. She was not being dramatic. She was not imagining dangers where none existed. She knew what Noor was. She had lived too close to it not to know.
And when she reached the foot of the stairs at last and saw the light from the dining hall spilling warm across the floor, she went toward it with that knowledge settled more firmly than ever inside her.
29
The reunion began with too much candlelight and not nearly enough air.
Iona felt that before she had even crossed the last few steps into the hall. The room was warm, bright in all the places that mattered for appearance, with polished wood, silver laid properly, and servants moving about with the smooth quiet of those who knew how to make a noble table seem effortless. It should have looked welcoming. It did, in a way. That was the worst of it.
Everything in O’Douglas Castle looked as though nothing truly wicked could survive in such orderly grace.
And yet Iona knew better.
Frederick stood already near Archer, one hand resting at his back in that deceptively relaxed way he had when he wanted no one to notice how ready he was to act. Lennox leaned againstthe far sideboard with a cup he had not truly touched. Archer himself wore calm like another tailored layer of clothing. If Iona had not known the truth of what sat beneath this evening, she might have thought the men gathered for nothing more serious than supper and the careful strengthening of clan relations.
They were all playing their parts.
She should have been proud of how convincingly they did it.
Instead, she was too afraid.
Her pulse had not steadied since the corridor. Since the smell of damp stone and the torchlit shadows had reminded her that places changed less than people liked to pretend. Her hands remained cool despite the warmth of the hall, and when Frederick’s gaze found her from across the room, she knew at once that he saw more than he would ever say aloud.
He crossed to her quickly enough to seem merely courteous.
“Ye came,” he said softly.
Iona almost laughed at that. “Aye. I did say I would.”
His hand brushed once, lightly, against the back of hers before falling away. It was not a caress. Not here. Only a brief point of contact meant to steady. It helped more than she wanted it to.