She stopped short. “You’re joking.”
“I saw it myself yesterday. They were eating lunch together at the forge.”
Aoife stared at him. “I saw my father three days ago. He didn’t say a word.”
“He probably wasn’t sure how you’d react.”
“Honestly,” she said, shaking her head, “I don’t know how to react.”
They followed the path down towards the hawthorn tree. The sight stopped them both in their tracks.
Lord Halverton stood there with an axe, hacking at the trunk. Each blow sent a dull tremor through the ground. Thetree that had once shimmered faintly with otherworldly life was splintering under his hands.
Aoife caught her breath. The anger radiated off Cormac, like heat from a furnace.
She half-expected him to spring forward. He didn’t move. His fists tightened at his sides, knuckles white. His shoulders tensed, locking himself still.
She touched his wrist.
He didn’t look at her. His breathing slowed.
“He’ll be cursed for that,” he said.
In that moment his restraint unsettled her more than his rage ever had.
“You’re not going to rush in there and give him a piece of your mind?”
He exhaled slowly. “While I was lying in bed, I realised how much worse I made things for you. All my fire and noise, it never fixed anything. It was your calm that won the day.”
Aoife shook her head. “It wasn’t calm. It was stubbornness. Watching you refuse to bend is what made me stand up.”
He smiled at that. “We make a decent pair.”
“Maybe,” she said, smiling.
They both looked at the hawthorn. Halverton was still striking, slower now.
“What do you think they’ll do to him?” she asked.
“The Sheedar?” Cormac said. “Turn him into a monster, maybe; make his outside match his inside.”
Aoife’s mouth curved in a faint, bitter smile. “I don’t think there’s any way to make him ugly enough for that.”
They watched as the tree slowly fell in on itself. “You were right,” she said finally. “Some people can’t change. Wanting to change him was another trap.”
Cormac looked at her sidelong. “You don’t feel sorry for him, do you?”
“No,” she said firmly. “He went through terrible things, but there’s no excuse for what he’s done. I don’t owe him forgiveness, and he’s never asked for it.”
He nodded. The wind caught his hair, lifting it slightly, the colour almost black against the autumn sky.
Cormac refused to go inside the house, and as the light thinned, it turned too cold to stay outside. They parted reluctantly, with Cormac’s promise to come again soon.
***
After that, he came every day.
Some days he barely made it to the bench beneath the apple trees before the colour drained from his face. Aoife learned the signs: when to support him, when to press a cup of water into his hands, when to pretend she hadn’t noticed his shaking.
