Her back straightened when she meant to slouch. The Eldrossi accent slipped easily into her speech before she could stop it. And when someone touched her without warning, she froze as though bracing for him.
Lady Eva hadn’t faded; she had settled deeper into her bones.
She wasn’t sure she could bear watching him discover it too.
She swallowed the words.
“You should,” she said instead.
Cormac held her gaze for a moment longer. He nodded.
A quiet sadness moved through her chest, strange and steady.
It took her a moment to recognise it.
She loved him.
And because she loved him, she would not ask him to stay.
Chapter 32
More than a year had passed since Cormac left.
The estate had grown quieter with every season. The servants had left one by one until only the gardeners remained, living in the bothy beyond the orchard.
Halverton still kept to his side of the house, which stood mostly empty now.
In the early days, he’d tried to leave the estate. The Sheedar turned him back every time. Once a fallen oak blocked the road. Another time a wall of mist rose so thick that he could not see the gate. Once the sky darkened without warning and rain fell so hard it turned the drive to mud beneath his horse’s hooves.
He had never crossed the boundary.
At first, he raged against it.
Furniture crashed, glass shattered, doors slammed hard enough to shake the walls.
When that failed, he turned to strategy.
He tried to bribe the gardeners to carry letters beyond the estate. Most ignored him. A few took the gold, though whether they ever delivered the messages was another matter. The handful of letters that left were never answered.
After that, he took to waiting by the gates, calling out to passing traders.
Aoife had watched him the first time he tried it.
A delivery of silks had arrived, ordered long before his fall. The merchant had dismounted to hear what Halverton wanted, wary but curious. When Halverton caught at his sleeve and raved about curses and monsters in the woods, the man’s expression shifted.
He pulled free, hurried to his wagon, and drove off without another word.
Halverton tried the Sheedar next.
More than once Aoife saw him by the stump of the old hawthorn, speaking into it as though it might answer him. He shouted promises, threats, and bargains. The Sheedar, for their part, did not care to listen.
After that came the quieter attempts.
He walked the boundary for hours at a time, searching for some weakness, some place where the unseen barrier might give. Once he made it as far as the outer field before the ground itself turned him back, leading him to the house no matter which direction he chose.
He had even come to the servants’ side once.
Aoife hadn’t seen it herself. One of the gardeners said he’d found Halverton standing in the yard at dawn, asking after Mrs Harrow. Not commanding. Asking. Mrs Harrow had long left the house, and no one bothered to fetch her.
