Tomas grew very still.
“I will require a public oath of lineage and loyalty,” she said. “Before God, before this house, before the steward, before the men expected to trust him. He will swear to his name, his blood, his loyalties, and the deeds by which he claims standing.”
“That is done in some courts,” Tomas said carefully.
“Not like this.”
“No,” he agreed after a moment. “Not like this.”
“If he hesitates, we learn something. If he refuses, he goes.”
“And if he swears?”
The question found the weakness in her plan. Aingeal held his gaze. “Then we learn something else.”
Tomas studied her with that quiet perception that had always made him both useful and irritating. “Do you want him to fail?”
Aingeal looked toward the shuttered window. In the yard below, steel rang once, clean and bright. “I want the truth.”
“That is not the same answer.”
“No,” she said. “It is the only one I can afford.”
Next, she went to the chapel and found Father Cillian near the lectern, his open book held beneath one thin finger. WhenAingeal entered, he lifted his head and closed the book without asking why she had come.
“I will not have any marriage blessed in this house without full declaration,” she said.
The priest’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You suspect him false?”
“I suspect concealment.”
Father Cillian watched her with the grave stillness that always made her feel weighed rather than merely seen. “You don’t have to be afraid of marriage.”
“I am not,” she proclaimed to herself as well as him. “I am careful.”
His face softened in a way that felt more dangerous than rebuke. “You were careful once before.”
The chapel narrowed around her. She remembered kneeling here as a younger girl, shaking so violently she could hardly speak. Bloodless hands. Torn gown. The sick knowledge that one wild moment had remade every year that would follow. Father Cillian had heard her confession. He had not called her monster.
That mercy had nearly broken her.
“I will require truth,” he said at last. “I will not bless what I have not seen rightly. Nor will I be made an instrument of deception.”
Relief moved through her too swiftly. It almost felt like weakness.
By midday, the course was fixed.
She met Donal in the corridor outside the armory. He was coming from the yard, sleeves rolled, a faint sheen of effort at his brow. He stopped when he saw her.
“The council meets at midday,” she said.
“I will attend.”
“You will swear before them.”
His gaze stayed on her face. “To what?”
“To everything.”
