To protect her. He opened his mouth.
Aingeal stopped him with a look alone. “No,” she said to Tomas. “Do not ask that question as though it belongs first to the council.” Her gaze moved over them all now, bright and fierce and utterly without apology. “You all wished for Donal O’Raida because he came with land and men and political ease. You chose him for me. And none of you knew him. You are as guilty of shame in that as I am.” Her mouth hardened. “If there is ever to be marriage here again, it will not be because an alliance demands it. It will be because I choose it.”
The words rang.
Seamus let out a breath through his nose. “Then that is your decision too.”
“Yes,” Aingeal said. “It is.”
Something in Reginald gave way all at once. Pride. Pride in the woman who stood before them and claimed the right to choose herself.
Brennach rose first. “I have my answer.”
Tomas gathered his tablets more slowly than usual, as if refusing to hurry through the weight of what had just been spoken. “As do I.”
Father Cillian stood with a quiet rustle of wool. “Then I will not stand against it.”
Seamus stayed where he was longest. He looked at Reginald once, hard and long, then at Aingeal. “I do not like him.”
Aingeal’s mouth almost curved. “No one asked you to.”
Seamus gave a rough half-snort. “Then I do not stand against him either.”
Étaín came away from the window at last. She said nothing. She only crossed to Aingeal and laid a hand briefly against her arm as she passed. Then she left with the others.
The chamber emptied by degrees. Brennach first. Then Tomas. Then Seamus, already muttering about doubled patrols and insufficient horses, as if the world had become safer simply because work remained to be done. Father Cillian paused at the door, looked back once, and went without speaking.
At last, only Reginald and Aingeal remained.
For a moment, neither spoke.
The room felt larger with the council gone, and yet the space between them seemed smaller than it had before. He looked at her and found no words equal to what she had just done. “You should not have done that,” he said at last.
Her brows lifted slightly. “Which part?”
“All of it.”
She came around the table slowly. Not close enough to touch. Close enough that the air between them thickened with everything unspoken. “I am tired of halves,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
He almost laughed at that, but it would have broken on the way out. “You owe me nothing,” he said.
“No,” she answered. “I do not.”
She stopped before him and lifted her chin, that fierce line in it he loved because it meant she would not hide. “I see you clearly now,” she said. “More clearly than I wanted to. More clearly than is easy. I do not excuse what you did. Not O’Raida. Not Canterbury. Not any of it.”
He lowered his gaze once. “You should not.”
“No.” Her voice softened only by a degree. “But I also see the man who stayed. The man who fought for my people when he had every reason to save only himself. The man you are choosing to be now.”
For a moment, he could not breathe.
Aingeal’s eyes never left his face. “I am not choosing Donal,” she said. “I am not choosing a fantasy. I am not choosing what would have been easiest for my council or my pride.” She drew one slow breath. “I am choosing Reginald FitzUrse. In truth. In full knowledge. And if that proves to be folly, then it will be mine.”
He had spent so long believing love, if it ever came to him, must come clothed in ignorance or falsehood. This was neither. This was choice. He said, hoarse now, “Aingeal…”
She took the last step. Close enough that he could see the exhaustion in her face, the cost of command and confession and grief, and the courage beneath all three. “I am asking you to stay,” she said.
The old pact shattered quietly between them in that one sentence.
