“Iona.” His voice dropped lower. “Ye daenae go one step farther than planned. Ye shouldnae attempt anything foolish. And if there is even the slightest turn in it, ye let us move.”
There it was again. Command brushing too near care. It ought to have annoyed her. Instead, with so much waiting in the next hour, it only made her chest tighten.
He is worried.
That truth slipped through her before she could stop it. Not dutifully watchful. Not merely responsible, but worried. And though she had decided, had sworn to herself only yesterday, that she would step back from wanting more of him than he had offered, she felt desperation rise all the same. Sudden. Fierce. Entirely without dignity.
What if this is the last quiet moment?
The thought came and undid whatever distance she had meant to keep. Before she could reconsider, Iona rose onto her toes and kissed him.
For a breath, Frederick did not move. Then his hands came up fully, one at her back, the other at the nape of her neck, and he kissed her back with a force that was not rough but carried all the strain of the day beneath it. The kiss deepened almost at once, not into passion exactly, but into something hungry and pained and far too honest for either of them to disguise.
Iona clung to him for one helpless moment, letting herself feel the heat of him, the steadiness of him, the way his breath shifted when she pressed closer. This was a mistake, she knew. It changed nothing. It promised nothing. Yet she could not stop herself from taking it.
When they parted, it was only because he drew back enough to look at her.
His thumb brushed once over her cheek. “Come back to me.”
The words almost broke her. She nodded instead of answering, because she did not trust her voice. The departure itself was quiet. Deliberately so.
By the time Iona slipped from the side door of O’Douglas Castle, the night had settled fully over the grounds. The air was colder now, damp with the coming of mist, and the moon gave only a weak, veiled light through the clouds. She had drawn her cloak close and pulled the hood low enough to shadow her face, though she knew perfectly well it was not concealment that would protect her tonight.
It was the men behind her.
Frederick. Lennox. Archer. Two of Archer’s guards and two of Frederick’s own. All of them keeping far enough back that Noor’s watchers, if she had any, would see only what they were meant to see.
Iona walked alone, or that was the appearance of it. But every few steps, when the wind shifted or the gravel changed underfoot, she caught the faintest sign that the others remained there. A distant footfall. The soft click of harness checked quickly. The brief shape of movement swallowed again by the dark.
She was not alone anymore.
The thought gave her strength enough to keep moving.
The path toward the old lower holding curved away from the main grounds and down toward the east side, where the land fell into harsher shadow and the older stones of the estate rose more bluntly from the earth. Iona knew this sort of place too well. Built for storage once, perhaps for livestock, perhaps for keeping unruly things where guests would not see them. Repurposed later because old walls asked too few questions.
Her hand closed inside the folds of her cloak.
Noor believed she had come here to surrender.The thought nearly made Iona smile.
Tonight, if it came to it, she would put her own hands around that woman’s fine white throat and end every last shadow she had cast over other women’s lives.
Iona kept walking, her steps sure despite the dark, her pulse steady now for the first time all evening.
Let her try.
30
The path narrowed as it left the main road and cut through a stand of dark fir, the trees growing thicker the farther Iona went. The mist had settled low by then, hanging close to the ground and softening the shape of everything below her knees. It made the world feel smaller. Closer. As though the night itself meant to guide her into some waiting mouth and close over the entrance once she had passed through.
She kept walking.
The hunting lodge appeared gradually through the trees, first as a shape where no shape should have been, then as stone and timber half-lost in the dark. It was older than the main castle, less refined, built for use rather than comfort, and the place of it alone told its own story. Too far from the central grounds to invite notice. Near enough to the eastern edge that one could bring things in or out without troubling the household proper. A place meant for retreat and rough sport. A place easily turned to uglier purpose.
A single lantern burned beside the door.
Noor had not meant this to be difficult to find.
Iona mounted the shallow steps without haste, though every part of her had gone taut.