Frederick reached the door first. One of Archer’s guards had barely lifted the latch before Frederick struck it with hisshoulder and drove it inward so hard the hinges screamed. The room beyond exploded into motion.
He saw too much and not enough at once. Women against the wall. Children bound close. Men turning with weapons already half-drawn. Noor by the hearth, surprise flashing across her face before it twisted into something vicious. And Iona, standing too near the center of it all, too near danger, too near everything he had been trying not to imagine.
Noor moved first. Not backward, but toward Iona. “Kill her,” she snapped.
That was all Frederick heard.
The first man reached him with a knife in hand and died before his second step fully landed. Frederick’s sword went through him low and savage, then tore free wet and hot. He did not stop to watch the body fall. Another came from the right. Lennox met that one with a short blade under the ribs. Archer’s men crashed into the far side of the room, dragging one guard away from the women before he could put steel to a throat.
Frederick pushed forward.
A heavyset man with an axe came between him and Iona. Frederick turned the first swing with his blade, felt the jolt travel all the way to his shoulder, then drove his elbow into the man’s face and cut upward under his arm when he staggered. Blood sprayed the wall. Someone shouted. A child began to cry.
He kept moving.
Noor had taken a knife from one of the fallen men. Her face was no longer composed. It was wild now, bright with the sort of fury that had long ago burned away whatever dignity rank had once lent her.
Iona met her.
For one impossible second, Frederick saw it too clearly. Iona seizing a broken candlestick from the side table, Noor lunging, the two of them colliding in a shower of overturned wood and spilled oil. Noor slashed. Iona twisted, not quickly enough. The blade caught along her arm, slicing cloth and skin.
Frederick saw red.
He did not remember crossing the distance. Only that a man tried to block him, and Frederick killed him so brutally that by the time the body hit the floor, Archer was swearing at his shoulder to watch the women, watch the women, but there was no room left in Frederick for anything except Iona and the blood on her sleeve.
Noor came at her again.
Iona did not retreat. She drove the candlestick hard into Noor’s face with both hands. Bone cracked. Noor cried out and reeled back, one hand flying to her cheek where blood had already begun to pour between her fingers.
That should have relieved him, but instead it made everything worse. Because if Iona could still strike, then Noor could still strike back. But if she was wounded enough to bleed, she was near enough to be lost. The thought arrived suddenly and whole, and impossible to deny any longer.
I love her.
The truth went through him with the same violence as the fight. Love, full and terrible and too late to soften itself into anything easier.
Noor raised the knife again, and Frederick reached them before she could bring it down.
He caught Iona by the waist and dragged her behind him with such force she stumbled into his back. Then his left hand shot out and tangled in Noor’s hair, wrenching her forward so sharply that the knife dropped from her fingers with a clatter against the floorboards.
She laughed, and even then, blood down her face, one eye already swelling, the room around her collapsing into shouts and groans and dying men, she laughed.
“Ye fool,” she hissed at him. “Ye cannae kill me. Nae if ye wish to avoid war.”
Frederick’s grip tightened until her neck strained with it.
Behind him, Iona’s breath was ragged. He could feel it. Feel the slight trembling where she stood pressed too close to his back, whether from pain or shock, he could not yet tell.
Archer came up on his right, sword wet to the hilt, chest rising hard with the exertion of battle. He took in the room in one sweep. Two of his men were already cutting bonds from the women. Lennox had pinned another attacker through the throat and was kicking the body clear of a child’s feet. The fight, for all practical purposes, was over.
“We can put her below,” Archer said, breathing hard. “A dungeon will hold her until morning.”
Frederick looked at Iona then. Only a glance, but it was enough.
She stood pale and bleeding from the arm, the broken candlestick still in her hand, her eyes fixed on Noor with such exhausted hatred that Archer saw it too. Frederick knew the instant he understood. Knew the instant he abandoned any pretense that this would end cleanly if Noor continued drawing breath.
Noor saw the change and tried to pull away. “Archer?”
He did not answer her.