Only the castle’s colors. Only green and gold.
The room was full. Her people stood shoulder to shoulder: council, household, villagers from the outer holdings, stable boys scrubbed nearly raw for the occasion, maids with bright eyes, old women pretending not to cry, and children lifted to bench edges so they could see. Fintan’s little girl stood near the front beside her father with healing hands wrapped in clean linen and a basket of flowers clasped against her chest.
Brennach stood like a carved guardian beside the first pillar. Tomas looked almost uneasy with how much feeling had broken through his usually measured face. Seamus, to his great credit, had managed a clean tunic without making the world end, and though his expression remained stern, the old hostility had gone out of it. Father Cillian waited before the altar rail, hands folded, eyes bright with something that looked suspiciously like peace.
Then Aingeal saw Reginald, and everything else fell away.
He stood at the far end of the hall with no borrowed crest and no false ring. Dark green suited him with quiet dignity. The scar at his brow showed pale in the candlelight. No gold burdened him. No ornament hid him. No falsehood stood between him and the room now.
He looked like what he was. A warrior. A penitent. A man loved beneath his own name. And when he lifted his eyes and saw her, all the steadiness in him faltered.
Aingeal felt the whole hall recede until there was only the sight of him standing there, looking at her as though love had come to him in a form too precious to touch without trembling.
Étaín’s hand slipped into hers. “He looks as though he may die of reverence,” she murmured.
Aingeal’s mouth curved. “Then let him live long enough to say the vows.”
The music began. Harp and low flute and the voices of two women singing old words of blessing and steadfast love. The sort of music people had always used in this land when speech alone was not enough.
Aingeal walked forward.
Each step felt strangely easy. Not because the road behind her had been easy, but because she was not being driven along it by council, fear, guilt, or need. She was walking toward the man she had chosen after knowing the worst and best of him both. And she loved him with all her heart.
When she reached the front, Reginald came one pace forward to meet her.
Father Cillian allowed that breach of custom with what looked very much like satisfaction.
Reginald bowed his head, not out of display, but as if the sight of her had humbled him past habit. “You are beautiful,” he said, too low for the hall and yet not so low she could mistake the tremor in his voice.
Aingeal’s heart turned over. “And you are here.”
His gaze lifted to hers. “Always,” he said.
Father Cillian began the ceremony. He spoke of covenant, witness, and burdens carried side by side. He spoke of the difference between a union made from convenience and one made in full knowledge and free will.
Aingeal thought, not for the first time, that perhaps the priest had chosen his words with more care than chance alone would explain.
When the vows came, the hall held itself breathless.
Étaín stepped forward first. In her hands she carried a narrow length of woven cloth, green and gold, worked through with a single thread of deep red.
Aingeal recognized it at once. The green and gold were the colors of her house. The red had been taken from the strip of cloth Reginald had worn beneath his armor the day Mael Ruadh tried to break the gate. Étaín had woven them together herself. Aingeal’s throat tightened, and she looked at her cousin with love and gratitude.
Father Cillian took the cloth and looked upon Aingeal and Reginald. “Before God, before this house, and before the people who have witnessed truth tested by fire,” he said, “let these hands be joined freely. Not by bargain. Not by force. Not by the will of any council or crown. But by choice.”
Reginald took Aingeal’s hands in his.
His were warm and rough and shook very slightly as he held hers. “I, Reginald FitzUrse,” he started.
The sound of his true name spoken openly where another name had once stood sent a tremor through the room and through Aingeal alike.
“I take you, Aingeal Ní Néill, freely and in truth, as my wife.” His voice deepened. “I offer you no false peace. Only the whole of the man I am, the loyalty I can give, the strength I have, and the love that came to me too late to be easy and too true now to be denied.”
Father Cillian laid the cloth across their joined hands.
Reginald’s gaze never left hers. “I will stand beside you,” he promised, “in truth, in duty, in sorrow, in joy, and in all the days God grants us. I promise you that nothing in me will hide from you again.”
Father Cillian wound the cloth once around their hands. One binding. One promise.
