Her face changed. The shift was small, but he saw it. “I came to apologize,” she admitted.
He did not answer.
“What I said in the hall was unfair.”
“It was not entirely false.”
“No.” She tightened her hand around the lantern handle. “That is why it was cruel.”
The horse shifted behind him. Reginald stroked its neck once, needing the simple motion.
Aingeal drew a breath. “Étaín is not the danger.”
“No?”
“No.” Her voice thinned. “I am.”
He went still.
She looked down at the lantern flame. “I have been jealous before. I have wanted to be chosen before. I have let that wantingmake me small and hard and reckless. I hurt someone I loved. Not in words. Not only in words.”
Reginald felt the edge of the confession, bloody and old.
“Máire,” he said softly. Pain crossed her face.
He waited.
“I saw Étaín touch your sleeve today,” she said. “It was nothing. A kindness. And for one moment, I hated her for being easy to love.” She gave a small, broken laugh. “How ugly that sounds aloud.”
“It sounds human.”
“I do not want to be merely human if human means hurtful and dangerous.”
He crossed the distance between them slowly, stopping short enough that she could retreat if she needed.
“I know something of calling a dangerous thing by a cleaner name,” he said.
Her eyes lifted.
“I called obedience virtue,” he said. “I called anger duty. I called consequence necessity because the other words would have required me to look at myself too closely.”
She watched him as though every word mattered.
“Is that what you hide?” she asked.
The truth rose in him. Canterbury. Becket. He could have ended it then. Destroyed her hope before it grew larger. Saved her from him.
But he didn’t. “It is part of what I hide,” he admitted.
She absorbed that with a small, visible effort.
“No more public blows,” she said at last. “From me.”
“No more evasions meant to punish you,” he said. “From me.”
“That is not the same as truth.”
“No.”
