Matilda had said the green was fine.
She'd sat on the edge of the bed for a long while after Sigrid left, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, feeling the particular, very quiet anger of a woman who had seen a thing coming from a long distance and had still, somehow, hoped it wouldn't arrive.
Sent tae. Or Ragnar's holding. Just fer a while. Just until it's safer.
She knew the shape of that sentiment.
She'd been living inside versions of it for eight years. The careful, well-intentioned management of her movements by people who claimed to love her and could not stop treating her like something fragile that needed to be stored somewhere safe. Her father's guards at three paces. The door that was never locked from the outside but never felt fully open. The suffocating weight of being a problem to be solved.
She'd left all of that behind. She'd walked through a dark passage without a candle, her heart hammering against her ribs, and she'd done it because she was done letting fear, hers or anyone else’s, make her decisions.
She was not going to Skye.
She found him in their chamber, standing at the window with his back to her. His shoulders were set, his silhouette sharp against the grey morning light. She knew he’d heard her in the corridor; he chose not to turn around yet, as if bracing himself.
She closed the door behind her, the sound of the latch clicking into place feeling like a gunshot in the quiet room.
"How long has that conversation been happening," she said, her voice steady despite the heat in her blood, "without me in it."
He turned around.
He had the look of a man who had been planning to have a different version of this conversation. A more controlled, reasoned one, and had just recognized that the controlled version was no longer available.
"This morning," he said. "The elders raised it."
"And ye?"
"I heard them out."
"That's nae what I asked, Ivar."
He was quiet for a moment, the only sound the crackle of the fire in the grate. She watched him decide how much of the truth to give her, and she could see, fairly clearly, which direction he was leaning.
"I considered it," he said, his voice low. "Skye is defensible. Ragnar's holding is solid. If Callum's coming fer ye…"
"Then he'll follow me tae Skye," she said, cutting through his logic. "Or ye'll spend the gathering worrying about whether he has, and ye'll be fighting on two fronts at once, and distracted men make mistakes. They die, Ivar." She took a breath, the anger flaring hot in her chest. "Or were ye planning tae explain tae me why none of that is true?"
"Matilda."
"I am nae leaving Mull."
She said it with all the calm she had left, which was significant and still clearly not the whole of what was boiling underneath.
"I'll nae be moved off this island like a piece on a board while ye decide what's tae be done with me. I left Kinlochaline in the dark with me belongings in a sack because there was nay other choice. There's a choice here. And for onceIam making it."
He looked at her, his dark eyes searching hers. She looked back, unyielding.
"I ken," he said.
She stopped. The next sharp word died in her throat.
"I ken," he said again, quieter this time. "I told them nay decision today. I was going tae tell ye before they had a chance tae. Sigrid was faster." A pause, and she saw the very slight tension in hisjaw that meant he was annoyed with himself. "I wasnae going tae send ye."
The anger had been running so steadily that it took a moment to locate what was underneath it. She found it slowly, not relief, exactly. Something much more complicated than relief. It was the feeling of a floor finally becoming solid beneath her feet.
"Ye might have said that," she said, her voice dropping.
"I'm saying it now."