If she had taken a knife at dinner and stabbed him in the throat, added a few leaves of hemlock to his soup, a few drops of arsenic to his wine. When she thought of it now, the possibilities seemed endless.
If she had ended it herself, before it came to this…
They would all be standing if she’d been more cold-hearted, if she’d been more like him.
Her stomach turned.
She hadn’t wanted any of this.
But the dead lay at her feet all the same.
A hand landed gently on her shoulder.
She turned and collapsed against her father; the strength going out of her all at once. He wrapped his arms around her as if she were a child again, holding her steady.
“It’s not fair,” she said, her voice breaking. “Why should Halverton live when they’re dead?”
“You did everything you could,” he said softly. “It’s not your fault it ended this way.”
She nodded against him, but the words slid past her without taking hold.
She lifted her head and looked again.
At Tomás.
At Morgane.
At the soldiers, some no older than boys, their faces pale beneath the soot and blood.
They hadn’t chosen this either.
They had been sent.
Told where to stand. Who to fight. Who to kill.
Aoife’s chest tightened.
No one here had chosen this.
Even so, they were the ones who paid for it.
A groan cut through the silence behind her. She turned. Cormac’s parents were there, kneeling over him. His father supported his shoulders while Riona cleaned the blood from his back, her hands steady and sure. Clíona and Alton stood to one side, hands clasped together.
Aoife dropped to her knees beside them. “Clíona, fetch the bandages, herbs, whatever we have left,” she said.
Clíona nodded and ran, taking several of the other maids with her.
Aoife reached for a cloth. Small fingers tugged at her sleeve. Eoin stood beside her, pale and wide-eyed. She checked him over quickly.
“I’m not hurt,” he told her.
Aoife breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted the dagger, still clean, tucked into his belt.
“Other people need help too,” he whispered.
Riona looked up. “Go,” she said softly. “It’s not the first lashing I’ve treated.”
Aoife hesitated, unwilling to leave him. There was a knowing in Riona’s eyes. An old, quiet authority. “Go,” she repeated.
