She dropped to her knees and snatched it up, fingers trembling.
Cormac’s handwriting, messy and barely legible. Her heart lept.
She unfolded it carefully, smoothing the creases. The first words blurred as her eyes stung, and she had to blink them clear.
‘I put this where I knew you’d find it.’
Aoife swallowed hard, the tightness in her chest stretching painfully.
‘Don’t let them change you. I can bear losing you to that place for a while, Aoife. I can bear the distance and not knowing when you’ll come home. But if you stop being yourself, I’ll have lost you for good, and that I couldn’t survive.’
She blinked to clear her vision. Her eyes prickled, and the next words blurred on the page.
‘I’ll keep an eye on Eoin and Maire until you’re back. I know you think this is forever, but you’ll find a way through. You always do.’
She pressed the letter to her knee, breathing slowly. He didn’t know about the oath. If he did, he’d understand how hopeless it was.
‘Try to make friends in there, but remember your old friends are right here waiting for you. The distance isn’t as great as it feels.’
Her throat tightened painfully.
‘I’m right here whenever you need me.’
She needed this, needed him. His voice in her ear saying she wasn’t trapped forever, wasn’t lost.
Her fingers drifted to the soft leather bracelet on her wrist. She ran her thumb along it, inhaling the comforting scent woven deep into it: ash bark and wet leather.
The smell of him.
“I’m not giving up,” she murmured, clutching the letter. “I won’t.”
She folded the letter, slipped it into her pocket and sat for a moment longer, staring at the sunlight slanting through the window, dust motes drifting in its path.
A plan was forming, fragile as the first green shoot breaking soil. She’d have to be cautious. Patient. She’d need to speak toHalverton, but she couldn’t force anything, not when one wrong move could close every door she had left.
The long game, then.
She closed her mother’s book gently and set it aside as the door burst open.
“Hand them over.” Halverton demanded, his tone calm and even as he held out his hand.
“My lord?”
“I have been informed you reacquired the items I confiscated yesterday.”
Aoife weighed the cost of telling against the cost of keeping the secret. She needed the ointment for the gardener. She couldn’t help people without her things. If she lied and said they weren’t here, well, there were a dozen members of staff who could contradict her. When she didn’t answer, Halverton strode into the room.
“I wanted to say a proper goodbye.” She blurted out.
Halverton turned to her slowly. “I beg your pardon?”
“The things you confiscated were important to me. I wanted to say goodbye properly.”
“To inanimate objects?”
“Yes.” He already thought her beliefs were nonsense. Why not add another to the list?
Halverton sighed. “Teaching you to understand what nonsense your beliefs are might have to take a higher priority than I originally thought. Where are the items now?”
