"After I walked in here ready tae fight ye."
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth, not a smile, but the ghost of one. "I've found it's more efficient tae let ye get there than try tae stop ye before ye arrive."
She stared at him, her pulse beginning to slow. "That's insufferable."
"It's practical."
She looked at the ceiling briefly, exhaling a long, shaky breath.
When she looked back at him, the anger had gone somewhere, not entirely, but enough to let the truth through. Underneath it was the thing she'd been carrying since she sat on the edge of thebed with her hands in her lap, the thing that had been building for longer than this morning's conversation.
"I'm nae going tae be afraid anymore," she said. "I ken the fear daesnae just stop. I'm nae naive about that." She shook her head. "But I willnae let it make me choices. I'm done with that. I was done with it before ye arrived at Kinlochaline and I've been trying tae get back tae being done with it ever since."
She held his gaze, her amber eyes burning. "I'm nae leaving ye. I willnae be moved, and I willnae be protected intae a smaller life than the one I'm standing in. I’m done living in the dark."
She paused, and the last of the careful management she'd been applying to her voice gave way, just slightly.
"I love ye. I'm also done with nae saying things. I love ye, and I'm staying, and those are the same decision."
The room went very still and the world outside the door seemed to cease to exist.
Ivar looked at her for a long, agonizing moment. He had the look of a man caught, and contained, and rapidly losing ground to a force he couldn't fight.
He crossed the room to her.
He stood close enough that the heat of him radiated through her skirts, close enough that she had to tilt her chin up slightly tohold his gaze. He looked at her face as if he were trying to map every line of her.
"Aye," he said. Low. A rough vibration. "I ken."
His hand went up, his touch like fire, and he cupped her face. His thumb resting at the hinge of her jaw, the same place he'd held her in the library when the world felt less certain.
"I love ye. I've––" he stopped. He tried again, "I've kent fer a while. I wasnae sure it was a thing I was allowed."
"Allowed by who?"
He shook his head slightly, and she finally understood.
It wasn't about the elders, or the King, or the Crown. It was about himself. It was about the debt he'd been paying in blood and isolation since his brother had died, the silent vow that said he didn't get to have things that mattered, because his brother didn't get to have them either.
"Ye're allowed," she said, her voice a soft, fierce promise.
He kissed her.
It wasn't slow, and it wasn't careful. This was the other thing, the raw, starving thing underneath all of that.
She went up on her toes to meet him, her fingers tangling in the dark hair at his nape, and she felt his arms come around her, crushing her to his chest as if he could pull her inside his own skin. She thought, clearly and without a trace of surprise,
Aye. There it is.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The chamber was a cave of warmth, the fire in the hearth crackling away.
The scent of peat smoke clung to the air, thick and earthy, mingling with the musk of their bodies.
Matilda lay on her side, the furs beneath her bare skin still damp. The weight of Ivar’s arm draped over her waist anchored her, his fingers tracing idle patterns along the curve of her hip, as if memorizing the shape of her.
She turned her head, watching the firelight play across the sharp angles of his face. His cheekbones, the stubborn set of his jaw, the way his lashes cast shadows when he blinked. His hair, dark as the loch at midnight, fell loose around his shoulders, tangled from her fingers.