“No,” Aingeal answered at once. “It does not.” She pushed away from the table and stood fully upright now, no longer braced against the wood. “I am not asking this council to forget what he did. I am not asking you to pardon the lie. I am not asking you to pretend I was not humiliated before my own people.” Her voice sharpened. “I am asking you not to be fools.”
Seamus straightened. Brennach’s brows rose. Tomas went still.
“You speak of clean answers,” Aingeal said. “There are none. You speak of sending him away as if that restores the alliance, repairs the insult, strengthens our walls, or steadies the border. It does none of those things.” Her eyes moved from one man to the next. “What it does is leave us weaker because our pride is injured.”
Reginald felt the truth move through the chamber like a blade drawn slowly free.
“The question is not whether he lied,” she said. “He did. The question is whether we are stronger with him or without him.”
The room remained silent.
Then she said, with devastating clarity, “This castle needs him.”
Reginald had thought himself prepared for anything in that room except those four words spoken in her voice.
Aingeal turned to Seamus. “You know it.”
Then to Tomas. “You know it.”
Then to Brennach. “You know it.”
At last, she looked toward Father Cillian, whose grave eyes had not left her face.
“And I know it.”
The chamber had gone very quiet.
She drew one breath, and when she spoke again, her voice lowered. “And I need him.”
Shock went through Reginald so cleanly it felt cold.
No one in the room moved. Even Seamus seemed to forget anger long enough to stare.
Aingeal did not flinch from the words once they were spoken. “I need him in council. I need him on the wall. I need his judgment where steel and strategy are concerned, because this castle has enemies, and they will not spare us because my heart has been wounded.” Her gaze never wavered. “If any man in this room thinks my saying so makes me weak, let him ride to the north ridge tomorrow without FitzUrse’s eye and tell me how much strength he finds there.”
Brennach’s mouth twitched once. Not humor. Approval.
Seamus looked as though he wanted to argue, but he knew he would lose if he tried.
Tomas spoke first. “Then your judgment is to keep him?”
Aingeal turned toward Reginald then.
He had faced kings, raiders, councils, and armed men with less fear than he felt standing beneath her full gaze in that room.
“Yes,” she said. “My judgment is to allow him to stay.”
The words struck him deeper than accusation had.
Brennach leaned back slowly in his chair. “As what?”
Aingeal’s voice did not shake. “As Reginald FitzUrse. Openly. Without stolen name or false claim. If he stays, he stays under his own truth.”
Father Cillian nodded once.
Tomas said, “And marriage?”
The old instinct rose in Reginald at once: to spare her the answer, to refuse it for her, to turn the moment aside before she had to stand in the wound again.
