Alton turned to her. “You can’t hide him here, not with Halverton in the house.”
Clara bit her lip. “Could we… get him called away? A message from the tenants, or the magistrate, something urgent?”
Alton shook his head at once. “I don’t know. He’s been acting strangely. He hasn’t set foot off the estate in a couple of weeks.”
Cormac opened his eyes again, the effort visible in the tightening of his jaw.
“He’s right,” he murmured. “As soon as it’s dark, I’ll go.”
The words landed like a stone in her chest.
Alton nodded once, acknowledging a decision none of them liked. He smoothed a hand down the front of his jacket.
“Lord Halverton sent me to ask if you’re feeling better,” he said, carefully neutral as he addressed Aoife, “and to request you join him for lunch.”
Aoife blinked. Lunch. The mundanity of it landed strangely after talk of fleeing in the dark.
“Tell him I’m not,” she said sharply. “I’ll see him tomorrow.”
Clara inhaled sharply. “Aoife, no.” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Request does not mean you have a choice. He expects you at lunch, and if you’re not there, he’ll likely come looking for you.”
Aoife closed her eyes and tried to settle the panic clawing up her throat. When she opened them, she kept her voice low.
“I can’t sit across from him today. Not like this. Not with—”
Her gaze flicked to Cormac, pale against the pillows.
“He’ll see it on my face.”
Clara shook her head. “Then you’ll have to hide it,” she whispered. “Better that than have him walk through this door.”
Aoife’s fingers curled against her palms. A slow-growing tension.
“I’m tired of hiding,” she said, the truth spilling out before she could soften it. “I’m tired of not being myself in this house.”
The words burned because they were true.
“This last day… as awful as it was… I could finally be myself.”
A silence followed.
Alton’s expression shifted from sympathy to caution before hardening.
“Don’t give up on him, Miss Aoife,” he said. “Perhaps he expects too much of us, but without him, I’d have nothing. And, frankly, neither would you.”
His voice wasn’t cruel; it was loyal the way a man becomes loyal to the only shelter he’s ever had.
Aoife bit back the response that rose sharp and bitter on her tongue. She had chosen this house because the alternative was probable death. She could not share Alton’s gratitude for the man who forced her to choose.
“That’s how he keeps you,” Cormac said, voice thin but steady. “All of you. He gives just enough to keep you alive, to keep you grateful, to keep you afraid of losing it.”
Alton stiffened, a wounded expression crossing his face. “We get the same as all the other servants in the empire: food and shelter for our labour. Any master would do the same.”
“Would you?” Cormac asked. “If you were the master?”
Alton hesitated for a long, painful moment.
“I’ve known you five minutes,” Cormac went on, “and I don’t think you would.”
