Her father stopped beyond the gates and turned around to face Halverton. “Go back to your house. There’s no one here left to fear you.” Halverton lunged as if to strike him but stumbled, unable to cross the boundary. Laughter rippled through the onlookers. He turned on his heel and walked away.
Aoife halted inside the gate. Riona turned to her, a small, knowing smile on her lips. “You must be looking forward to going home,” she said.
Aoife’s heart sank. “Didn’t Cormac tell you about the oath?”
“He did,” Riona said with a smile. She said nothing more, only turned to follow her husband and son down the road.
Eoin tugged at Aoife’s sleeve. “Aren’t you coming home now?”
She hesitated. Her throat ached.
Her father answered for her. “No. But we can visit her here, can’t we?”
Aoife forced a smile and nodded. “Yes. All the time.”
Their figures grew smaller as they retreated down the lane. Aoife stood at the edge of the estate, the manor looming silently behind her, and listened until their footsteps faded.
Aoife turned toward the house. Everyone else was gone. Only she and Halverton remained.
The courtyard was silent except for her footsteps. The ground around the flogging post was still dark with Cormac’s blood, the sheen of it catching the light. Her stomach turned.
At the foot of the stairs, she stopped. Halverton sat halfway up, staring at his hands. They were raw and bleeding, marks of his struggle to cross the boundary.
She turned to take the other staircase, the crunch of gravel drawing his attention.
“You think you have won,” he said, voice hoarse. “You are as bound as I am.”
“I know,” she said, facing him.
He gave a low, humourless laugh. “Why are you not afraid?”
“Because you taught me what fear is for,” she said. “It keeps people obedient and small. And I’m neither of those things.”
She climbed toward him. He didn’t move. A few steps beyond him, she stopped. Reaching into her pocket, she took out the last of the herbs and bandages she carried, turned back, and descended the few steps between them. She held them out.
“For your hands.”
He reached up and took them without a word.
Aoife turned away, climbed the rest of the stairs, and walked through the open door of the manor. She never looked back.
Chapter 30
A few days later, Aoife and Clíona sat together in their room along the women’s corridor. Clíona was altering a sleeve by the window, pale autumn light falling over the silk as she worked. Aoife leaned back on the bed, watching her.
As soon as Aoife had reentered the house after the uprising, she’d gone straight to her rooms and gathered her things. The dress she’d been wearing the day she arrived lay crumpled in the dark recess of the wardrobe beneath her undergarments. She’d pulled it free and tried to tug it over her head.
The seams strained tight across her back and ribs. The bones that had once pressed sharp beneath her skin had softened now. Enough that the hollow beneath her collarbone was gone.
She pulled the dress off with difficulty, holding it scrunched in her hands. It was proof of how much she had changed.
Cormac had warned her. ‘You’ll tell yourself you’re doing it for good reasons. To keep the peace, to soften him, to help your father, the village.’
Her chest tightened.
That was exactly what she had told herself, that every compromise had been a necessary step.
Had the changes gone deeper than clothing and manners?
