Étaín’s fingers pressed more firmly over hers. “Aingeal.”
“No.” The protest came sharp and then broke. “No. Let me say it, or I never will.” She drew one ragged breath. “I love him.” She closed her eyes. “I love him,” she said again, because once had not punished her enough. “And I did not mean to. God knows I fought it. After the first kiss, I told myself it was only blood and relief and gratitude. After the second, I tried to make it anger.” Her throat ached. “But it was not. It was him. It has been him for longer than I want to admit.”
Étaín did not look shocked.
Aingeal laughed again, without humor. “I had begun to hope he would stay.”
This time, Étaín sighed and closed her eyes.
“There,” Aingeal whispered. “Now you know the full extent of my foolishness.”
“That is not what I know.”
“It should be.” Aingeal lifted her gaze, raw and bright with tears she had stopped trying to hold back. “I had begun to imagine asking him to remain. To be my husband. Not because the council wanted Donal O’Raida. Not because of alliance. Because I wanted him.” Her voice broke. “I thought perhaps marriage to him would not feel like surrender. I thought perhaps…” She stopped and pressed her lips together hard.
Étaín waited.
Aingeal hated the kindness of that waiting. Hated how it drew truth out of her. “I thought perhaps with him,” she said at last, “I might choose and be chosen in return.”
The old memory came not as shadow, but as blow. Máire on the hillside. Wet grass underfoot. The flushed misery in her sister’s face. That terrible, childish, desperate truth.
I wanted to be chosen.
Aingeal went cold all over. She bent forward, elbows on her knees, and covered her face with both hands.
“It is the same,” she whispered.
“What is?” Étaín asked softly.
Aingeal lowered her hands and looked at her cousin with naked misery. “I wanted too much once before. I let wanting turn to shame, and shame turn to anger, and anger turn to ruin.” Her breath shook. “Now I have done it again. I gave my heart where I should have been wiser. Where I should have seen more clearly. Where I should have held myself back.”
“Aingeal.”
“I have loved wrongly again.” The tears came freely now. “I am humiliated. Do you understand? Not only in the hall, though God knows that is enough. The whole castle watched him be stripped of Donal’s name while I stood there like a fool.” Her voice shook harder. “But it is worse than that. I let him become dear to me. I let him stand at my side, speak in my hall, touch me, kiss me. And all the while there was this great dark truth in him, and I did not know whether I was loving a man or a lie.”
Étaín bowed her head for a moment.
Then Aingeal said the word she had been circling since she left the council chamber. “I am ruined.”
Étaín’s head came up at once. “No.”
The force of it startled Aingeal. “I am,” she insisted, though weakly now. “How can I not be? The alliance is gone. The castle is weaker. The council will look at me and wonder whether I can judge anything rightly. And I…” Her voice thinned again, trembling. “I still love him. Even now. Even after all of it.”
Étaín shook her head hard. Tears glistened on her cheeks now, too, but her face had gone fierce. “You are not ruined.”
Aingeal laughed bitterly. “Then what would you call this?”
“Hurt,” Étaín said. “Betrayed. Humiliated. Heartsick. Angry, if you have any sense at all. Grieving.” Her voice sharpened. “But not ruined.”
“I chose badly.”
“Yes,” Étaín said.
The bluntness of it made Aingeal stare.
“Perhaps you did,” Étaín continued. “Or perhaps you gave your heart to a man with darkness in him and did not yet know how much. But loving him does not make you ruined.”
“It should.”
