Then she turned and moved back toward the brighter part of the corridor, toward the hall, toward the company she meant to rejoin with all the grace of an innocent guest at dinner.
Iona did not follow immediately. She stood where she was, one hand pressed flat against the stone beside her, and let herself take one full breath. Then another.
It is working.
The thought steadied her as much as anything could. Noor believed herself in control. Noor believed Frederick knew nothing, or at least not enough. Noor believed Iona still stood alone inside her own fear.
Good.
By the time Iona reentered the hall, her pulse had slowed enough that she trusted her face again. Archer looked at her once, only once, but whatever he saw in her expression sharpened his attention immediately. Frederick stood a little apart from River, listening to something she said with polite focus that fooled no one who truly knew him. The moment his gaze found Iona, she felt the force of it.
She crossed the room carefully.
“I should like to retire early,” she said, projecting just enough that Archer would hear if he cared to. “It has been a long day.”
River at once answered with warmth. “Of course. We would nae keep ye.”
Noor did not speak. She only watched.
Frederick’s jaw shifted once. “I will walk with ye.”
There was no refusing that without making too much of it, so Iona inclined her head and allowed him to guide her from the hall. They said little at first. The corridor swallowed the sounds of the room behind them in slow degrees until it was only the two of them and the hush of torchlight along the walls.
When they reached their chamber, Frederick closed the door and turned to her at once.
“What happened?”
He had not phrased it as a question meant for denial. He had seen enough in her face already.
Iona moved farther into the room, her hands oddly steady now that the hour itself had begun to take shape. “She took the bait.”
His expression darkened instantly. “What did she say?”
“That she is keeping the women in the old lower holding near the east tower.”
Frederick went still.
Iona watched the anger move through him without noise, settling first in his shoulders, then in the set of his mouth, then in his eyes. It was not wild anger. That would have frightened her more. This was colder. Sharper. The sort that promised action.
“And?”
“She told me to come tonight,” Iona said. “Alone. So nay one will suspect her.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then crossed the room in two strides and caught both her arms, not hard, but firmly enough that she had no choice but to look directly at him.
“Ye have nothin’ to fear,” he said.
The words struck her more deeply than they ought to have, perhaps because they came from him in exactly the tone she had once trusted without question. Perhaps because some part of her still wanted to. Still needed to.
“She thinks I am by meself,” Iona replied. “That is what makes this possible.”
“She is wrong.”
“Aye.”
His grip eased, though his hands did not leave her. “Lennox, Archer, and four of his best men will be behind ye from the moment ye leave this room.”
“I ken.”