The boy’s face lit with fierce pride.
Donal did not flatter. He did not coddle. But neither did he humiliate. He taught as though skill were owed to willingness, not hoarded by pride.
Aingeal watched him laugh when one boy nearly dropped his sword trying to bow too elaborately after a successful turn.
The sound moved through her with dangerous ease.
They had worked well together at the border, in council, in urgency, and in silence. He did not press against her authority. He strengthened it. He saw a problem and looked not for how to command her, but how to stand beside her against it.
Maybe she truly did not want him to leave.
She went utterly still. A few days ago, the pact had felt like safety. He would go before vows. She would be spared a marriage she had never chosen. He would vanish before whatever had begun between them could become something she could not bear to lose. Now, it felt too late.
She could ask him to stay. Not as the council’s solution. Not as an alliance. As Donal. As the man she had come to know in arguments, glances, silences, strategy, blood, and one devastating kiss.
From the far side of the yard, he looked up.
He had felt her watching. It seemed he always did. He dismissed the boys with a gesture and crossed toward her, stopping a careful distance away. “My lady.”
The title nearly made her laugh. “You are determined to use that now.”
“It feels safer.”
The answer startled a smile from her.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. Only for an instant.
Enough to make her pulse leap. “You should not be out here yet,” she said. “Your wound.”
“Will not improve by staring at walls.”
“There are men better suited to that than you.”
“Then the castle is fortunate in its abundance.”
She shook her head, but the amusement faded as she looked more closely. He seemed more tired than he had in the infirmary. Not only in body but something in him had tightened overnight, as if the kiss had not eased him but opened some deeper difficulty.
“You are quiet,” he said.
“So are you.”
“I thought too much speech might worsen matters.”
“What matters?”
His gaze returned to hers. “Everything.”
For a moment, neither moved.
Then Seamus called his name across the yard, and the spell broke.
Donal inclined his head. “I am needed.”
“Yes,” Aingeal said, though what she meant was, I know.
He hesitated just long enough for her to see the same struggle in him she felt in herself. Then he stepped back and went.
Aingeal remained where she was long after the yard returned to its ordinary noise. It was not only desire anymore. Nor merely trust, though something like trust had begun to root itself in her in ways she had not permitted for years.
