Reginald stood over him, breathing like a man who had just survived something worse than battle. He kicked Mael Ruadh’s sword away and it clattered over the edge of the walkway. He looked at Aingeal. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “You didn’t kill him.”
“I chose,” he said.
Aingeal’s throat closed.
Below, Cormac’s horn sounded three short notes.
Victory.
The raiders were breaking. Men threw down weapons in the yard. Others fled toward the marsh, only to find Seamus’s riders waiting. Brennach’s voice roared orders. Tomas, alive and furious, was shouting for rope, water, and someone with sense enough to stop bleeding on the clean rushes.
Aingeal looked at the unconscious man at her feet. Then at Reginald.
The whole battle seemed to draw itself around that moment: the fire, the lie, the confession, the grave, the offer, the gate, the choice not to kill when killing would have been easiest. Trust did not return like a song. It came like stone laid one piece at a time. Built.
For a moment, Aingeal’s heart trembled. Then she stepped into him, not as surrender, not as absolution, but because the battle had ended and he was alive. His arms closed around her with careful, disbelieving strength.
He had saved them. He had saved her.
Then she stepped back and held her hand out to him.
He looked at it as if he did not dare believe. Then he took it.
Together, they turned toward the wounded castle below.
Chapter thirty-six
Aingeal crossed the yard toward the damaged gate.
Mael Ruadh was in chains.
The raiders who survived were locked beneath the granary under Seamus’s watch, which meant they had already begun to regret surviving. The wounded filled the lower hall. The gate had held, but only just. One hinge had splintered, two beams had cracked, and Tomas had spent an hour glaring at the damage as if numbers alone could shame wood into repair.
Three of Aingeal’s men had died. So had four raiders.
Mael Ruadh lived because Reginald had chosen restraint at the top of the wall, and that fact had traveled through the castle faster than any herald could have carried it. FitzUrse could have killed him. FitzUrse did not.
Reginald stood with Brennach and Seamus beneath the gatehouse, sleeves rolled, one shoulder braced against a cracked support while two men hammered a temporary plate into place. He had blood on one cheek, not all of it his, and a dark bruise rising at the corner of his jaw. His movements were slower now. Pain had found him in the quiet after battle.
Seamus said something that made him look up.
Then Reginald saw Aingeal approaching. He stepped back at once, as though some old rule still told him to give her space.
Seamus noticed.
Brennach, who saw everything and forgave little, pretended to examine the gate hinge.
Aingeal stopped before them. “How long until the gate is sound?”
“Sound?” Tomas said from behind her. “Three days, two carpenters, iron we do not have, and prayer.”
“Usable?” she asked.
“Tonight,” Reginald said. “If we double the inner brace and keep riders inside until morning.”
Seamus grunted. “He is right.”
