“Where the hell are they?” a deep voice hissed from the other side of the door. “The captain will have their bloody heads.”
The door opened, and we were down to two guards.
“Up you come,” said the kinder of the two, hooking his arm beneath mine and helping me to my feet.
Ruairi followed us out, his head bowed. I stumbled a little, weeping and putting on a good show for the crowd gathered in the square. That gave Ruairi enough time to slip away, leaving me to face death on my own.
Each step felt like a victory. Each breath felt like a defeat.
Even though we had saved Aveen, she and I could never be together.
The magistrate’s nonsense about laws and justice barely registered as I knelt on the dais, my skirts snagging on a twisted nail.
This would be the most excruciating pain I’d ever experienced.
And it had nothing to do with the axe coming for my—
33
After so many goodbyes,you’d think I’d be used to the idea of losing Aveen forever. Instead of getting easier, it only got harder the more deeply I fell under her spell.
Tadhg appeared in the study, his expression wary.
Of the thousands of questions on my tongue, only one mattered. “Is she safe?”
“She is.”
With a nod, I turned back toward the window, staring into the sunny day without really seeing anything. I traced the thick scar at my throat, the lingering pain nothing compared to the ache in my chest where my heart should have been.
“You need to go to her,” he said.
“You know I can’t do that.” I was finished putting Aveen in jeopardy. Finished dragging her through the cursed mud with me.
“If you don’t, then she claims she will throw herself into the sea at sunset.”
“She didn’t say that.” Even as I denied it, I knew Tadhg could speak only truth. She wouldn’t dare throw herself into the sea. Aveen was free, as safe as she could be on this island, and I’d given her everything she’d dreamed of. Had she not liked the cottage?
It must’ve been too small. I knew I should’ve gotten her something larger. She’d grown up in a feckin’ mansion. To her, a “cottage” was probably a five-bedroom dormer with a conservatory.
“She did,” Tadhg confirmed, his lips pressing flat. He eyed the bottle in my hand with such longing but didn’t try to take it from me.
It’d do no good to have saved Aveen from certain death only tohave her drown, now, would it?
Using threats to keep me at her side.As if I didn’t already care for her enough.I liked to know that she had a touch of darkness in her as well.
“She sounded serious,” Tadhg said. “I wouldn’t delay.”
If Aveen thought she could order me around, she had another thing coming. I would go, of course I would. But I’d leave it until the last minute, tear her from the waves myself if I had to.
When I did evanesce to the dry well, I kept moving at a normal pace, even when I felt like running, scanning the shore below the hill for signs of her. All I found was an orange sun setting over the horizon.
At the cottage, Aveen was still wearing the black priest’s robes as she stomped through the front garden, muttering to herself.
“Throw yourself into the feckin’ sea?” I said. “What sort of shite is that?”
Aveen whirled so fast, the front of her robe came untied. My eyes devoured her. The dirt on her hands. The red scars at her wrists. The lines of tears down her dirt-smudged cheeks. “It’s how I respond to ‘accept my bargain or die,’” she replied.
A smile tugged at my lips. One I couldn’t let her see. “I’m here. What do you want?”