“My lady.” Ember made a low and graceful curtsy. Before she turned away, she let her gaze flicker to Alistair one last time. He watched her, eyes intent.
LEAVING THE GREAT HALL alone, Ember climbed the stairs slowly. With each step, her body felt more and more like it had been wrung out as clothes after washing. The stress of standing before Eira, Bosque, and Alistair, not knowing what they wanted of her, would have been enough, but new fissures in Ember’s resolve were opening.
The small glimpse of Eira’s former self had stirred Ember more than she wanted to admit. And witnessing the remnants of those characteristics Ember had envied in Eira provoked other memories she’d stored away. Memories of Alistair.
It was too easy to recall the joy she’d felt when he’d arrived at her father’s manor, surprising her in the very place he’d secretly instructed her in swordsmanship. Her hopes for rising in Conatus had been hopes for both of them. Ember had always imagined they would fight together and care for each other, not as lovers but as friends. She knew Alistair had felt betrayed when she’d rejected his professions of love, but to Ember it was Alistair who had played the traitor. Alistair’s desire for her forever altered their relationship. She could never return his feelings, and he would always resent her for that.
Though he had allied himself with Eira and Bosque, Ember couldn’t forget the boy she’d grown up with. A boy she still cared for and was loath to hurt. The sweet triumph she’d known when she realized Alistair still loved her now tasted rotten. Yes, Ember would be able to go forward with her plan—a strategy that Lukasz, Kael, Father Michael, Cian, and even Barrow deemed cunning—but she couldn’t stop the rising disgust she felt toward herself. Alistair’s love had been twisted by his jealousy. It wasn’t the love Barrow showed her; that rare passion that could only grow out of respect and admiration as well as the fire of attraction. But beneath the sullied layers of possessiveness and lust, Ember believed Alistair did love her. That love had spurred him to protect Agnes when most would have condemned her. Still, any warmth Ember felt toward Alistair was tempered by the likelihood that desire to protect his family name had also motivated him.
Nevertheless, that she must use Alistair’s love as an implement of war unsettled her deeply. And yet Ember could see no other path.
“There you are!” Agnes peeked out of her room and rushed to meet Ember. “I’ve been waiting for you all morning.”
“I was summoned to the great hall,” Ember told her. “Will you sit with me? I must speak with you.”
“Of course.” Agnes beamed at her younger sister. “Let me get my sewing.”
With a groan, Ember pushed through her chamber door, leaving it ajar for Agnes. She slumped into a chair, afloat in her growing self-pity.
Agnes closed the door behind her, settling into the chair beside Ember’s.
“You shouldn’t sit like that, Ember. It’s uncomely. And you’ll wrinkle your dress.”
“I know” was all Ember said.
Shaking her head in disapproval, Agnes returned to her sewing.
“I’m riding with Lady Cian and Father Michael to the coast tomorrow,” Ember told Agnes. “We’re going to Mackenzie.”
“At Eilean Donan?” Agnes’s fingers flew as she embroidered, carrying on the conversation without erring on a single stitch. “Why do you go there?”
“Father is there,” Ember said quietly.
Only a slight hitch in the rhythm of Agnes’s needle and thread indicated her distress. “Is he?”
“Father Michael wishes to plead your case to him,” Ember continued, watching Agnes closely. But Agnes didn’t look up. Her face remained a picture of calm. “So you can be restored to our family and return to Father’s estate.”
“If Lady Eira and Lord Mar believe that wise, I am happy to go,” Agnes said. “I miss Mother.”
Ember frowned. “You don’t question the counsel of Lord Mar?” Lady Eira didn’t trouble Ember half as much.
“Why should I?” Agnes’s needle slid up and down, up and down. “He has shown me nothing but kindness. I am grateful for him.”
Ember sputtered. “You are a simpering child, Agnes. Have you nothing more to say about your own future than to leave such decisions to a stranger? How can you spend each day happy? Is all you need from life a spool of thread and a silver needle?”
The needle stopped. When Agnes looked up, Ember barely recognized her sister’s face. Gone was her pacific smile; the rosy glow of her skin had dimmed.
“You have always been impetuous, Ember,” Agnes snapped, “but I never thought you a fool.”
Staring at Agnes in disbelief, Ember was rendered speechless. Agnes, it seemed, still had plenty of words to offer.
“Do you think I take pleasure in this?”
Ember shrank back as Agnes threw her embroidery the full length of the room.
“I—”
“Do you know what it is like to carry the child of a man who cast you off and yet still feel love for him?” Agnes hissed. “Do you think I can help but hate myself for that?
“I have nothing,” Agnes continued, her voice quiet with rage. “No title. No family. I have no means to provide for myself or my child. I came to Tearmunn a beggar, carried here by a nag purchased with the little money Mother secreted to me before Father drove me from his home.”
Agnes cupped her face in her hand, recomposing her expression into that open, innocent beauty that had drawn praise as long as Ember could remember. “I wear this mask because it is all I have to barter with. Would Alistair have taken me in if I came to him bearing bitterness and a withered spirit?”
Ember reached for Agnes’s hands, but Agnes drew them back. “I feign happiness, for it is the only kind of joy that I have.”
Though she tried to fight it, Ember’s eyes flitted over her sister’s belly.
With a broken smile, Agnes said, “No. I do not hate the child.” She laid her palm against the swell of her abdomen. “Though I am ashamed that I cannot forget my love for Henry, because he doesn’t deserve it, this child is innocent of his father’s sin. I shall not forget that.”
Agnes looked away, and her voice hardened. “And because of that, I will go wherever Eira wishes to send me, so long as I can find protection for me and my child. Whether that is to remain here, to return to Father’s house, or to be packed off by him to become another man’s wife—if any man would suffer to raise a bastard.”
“Agnes!” Ember had never heard anything resembling a curse pass from Agnes’s lips.
“Is it too much to bear when I speak the truth, dear sister?” Agnes said, chastising Ember with her gaze. “Shall I return to wearing my mask for you?”
Ember threw herself at Agnes. Tears welled in Ember’s eyes. “Why have you kept this from me? I love you. Have I been so poor a sister?”
With a sigh, Agnes touched Ember’s cheek. “My love for you kept me from burdening you with my heartaches.”
“Your pains are mine.” Ember laid her head in Agnes’s lap. “I would help you bear them.”
“Oh, Ember.” Agnes’s voice was thick, but when Ember looked up, her sister’s eyes were dry. Tracing the line of Ember’s tears with her fingertips, she said, “I have no tears left, I think.”
Her voice dropping to a hush, Agnes said to Ember, “Please don’t pity me. I couldn’t bear the shame of it.”
“Never,” Ember promised. Taking Agnes’s hands, Ember said, “I must tell you something—”
She fell silent, hearing footsteps approaching the door. Ember quickly rose, rubbing her tear-stained cheeks. Agnes also stood up and hurried to collect the embroidery she’d thrown across the room.
The sound stopped, and both women looked to the door, but the knock they waited for didn’t come. Instead Ember heard a faint rustling on stone.
“Oh!” Agnes picked up the scrap of parchment slipped under Ember’s door before Ember had identified the source of the quiet sound.
“Do you often receive notes in this m
anner?” Agnes raised her brow.
Ember hadn’t received any anonymous notes. That was part of the reason she was so eager to get her hands on the one Agnes had claimed.
Holding out her hand, Ember said crossly, “Give it to me.”
“That’s very rude,” Agnes chastised Ember in a mocking tone. “I think I should read it, don’t you?”
Ember frowned at Agnes, surprised by her sudden change in demeanor. “Are we simply moving on, then?”
“There’s nothing more to say, Ember.” A bit of sadness crept back into Agnes’s voice.
But there was more to say. Before the note’s writer had approached her door, Ember had been on the verge of confessing everything: Eira, Bosque, Barrow, Alistair—the coming violence Ember saw no way to avoid. By remaining at Tearmunn, Agnes would be in terrible danger. Agnes had to know the truth. But now Ember could only think of what might be written on the parchment in her sister’s hand.
Agnes continued, “I will not act the helpless, fallen woman in your company any longer. Not when it’s only the two of us.”
“Good.”
Without warning, Ember leapt forward and snatched the parchment from Agnes’s fingers, twisting away from her sister and skipping across the room in victory. Agnes didn’t bother to attempt to retrieve it.
“I’d ask what it says, but I know you won’t tell me.” Agnes went to the door. “I’m in need of a nap as it is.”
“Agnes, wait,” Ember said, then she glanced down at the note in her hand.
Standing with the door partly opened, Agnes looked back at Ember, her eyes questioning.
“Never mind,” Ember mumbled, her eyes fixed on the parchment. “It’s nothing.”
Agnes closed the door, leaving Ember alone. Numbness crept over her skin, and she went to sit on the edge of her bed. She gazed at the single line of words scratched in ink on the parchment.
Come to me in the great hall when the others have sought their beds.
The note wasn’t signed. Nor did it need to be.
WELL AFTER NIGHTFALL, Alistair still wondered if leaving Ember a note had been a mistake. He didn’t know what he would say to her. What he would do. But Alistair had been consumed by the notion that he couldn’t let Ember leave Tearmunn without speaking to her first. Going to Ember’s room would have been easier, but he needed her to come to him.
The manor corridors were quiet but for Alistair’s footfall. He opened one of the doors to the great hall, but left it slightly ajar as he entered—a signal to Ember that he was within. Lacking torches or daylight, the empty hall proved as eerie as the catacombs in which Alistair spent most of his time.
Thin beams of moonlight cast their glow on the stained-glass windows, rendering colors dusky as wilted flowers. The moon’s pale face offered light enough to see, but Alistair’s gaze was drawn to another light source.
Walking toward the skeletal tree, Alistair peered into the rift. He’d been reluctant to examine it closely, knowing it was a gateway between worlds. Alistair had no desire to risk being dragged from the earth into the nether from which Bosque hailed. Alistair associated the rift with darkness, but by cover of night he witnessed the subtle play of light within the undulating shadows. Metallic threads appeared and disappeared within the gaping hole, chasing one another like glowing minnows in a black pond.
“Alistair?”
Ember hesitated in the doorway, the torchlight from the corridor outlining her body.
Alistair cleared his throat and took a deep breath before he answered, “Here.”
Closing the door, Ember took cautious steps into the hall.
“Your eyes will adjust to the dimness,” Alistair told her. His voice was steady, unlike the thrumming of his heart. She’d come. But now what?
Ember stopped just short of Alistair, but she looked past him at the rift. “What is it?”
“A door between worlds,” Alistair answered. “Eira opened it to seal our fate with Lord Mar’s.”
Nodding slowly, Ember said, “He is not of this world.”
“Has it taken you so long to realize that?” Alistair meant to tease Ember, but she flinched. He’d been too harsh with her, and now like a pup that had been beaten, she expected more abuse.
Alistair tried to make up for his gaffe by giving her an answer. “By joining forces with Lord Mar, Eira has increased our power beyond imagining. The beasts we once fought now serve us. It is truly a marvelous thing.”
Ember didn’t answer, but she stared at the ripples of light that moved through Bosque’s gateway.
Finally she looked at Alistair. “You asked me to come here.”
“I know.” His throat tightening, Alistair hunted for his next move.
Ember’s fingers laced together, twisting nervously against her gown. “I am sorry to have earned your hate, Alistair. I never meant it to be so.”
Her words surprised Alistair enough to keep him silent, and she spoke again.
“I’ve watched for you on the practice field each day from my window, but have yet to find you there.”
“I rarely take to the field,” Alistair told her. “Bosque has given me a more important task that consumes my days.”
Ember spoke with hesitation, her voice just quiet enough to show submission. “I wanted to see you and had given up hope that you would visit me.”
“You wanted me to return to you?” Alistair asked.
Ember stared at her tangled fingers. “Only to tell you that I understand why your heart turned from me. I was naive to convince myself it could be otherwise.”
Letting her words sink in, Alistair turned the conversation in another direction. “Do you look forward to visiting Eilean Donan?”
“I shall enjoy the ride and the highland air,” Ember said. “I do not relish my father’s company.”
“And Gavin Mackenzie?” Alistair watched Ember’s face closely, seeking any reaction.
“I’ve never met Lord Mackenzie’s son,” Ember answered, dropping her gaze. “I know not what to expect.”
Alistair lowered his voice. “I remember a time when you agreed to run away with me rather than be married off by your father.”
Ember began to smile, but the small sign of mirth quickly vanished. “I had reason to choose my words with less care. I no longer have the luxury of flouting my father’s plans.”
“You’ll assent to him, then.” Alistair had trouble controlling the anger that boiled under his skin. “And marry as he commands.”
“What am I to do other than marry?” Ember cried, walking away from him. “I no longer fight with the Guard. I forsook my place in Conatus. The only advantage I have over Agnes is that no man’s child grows in my belly.”
“If you must marry, then marry me,” Alistair said hoarsely, reeling from his own outburst.
Ember went very still.
Blood roared in Alistair’s ears. What had he done other than give her another opportunity to crush his hopes? While she stood silently, her face hidden from him, Alistair ground his teeth.
“You are cruel to taunt me,” Ember finally whispered.
A wave of emotions crashed through Alistair. He grasped Ember’s shoulders, turning her to face him. “I say this truly.” Alistair cupped her chin in his hand. “Marry me.”
“After all that’s happened”—Ember’s voice shook—“everything I’ve done, you would still take me as your wife?”
“I have loved you since I was a boy.” He stroked her hair; its fiery shade had become raven in the low light. “I can hardly remember a day before I loved you.”
Ember looked down. Tears caught in her lashes before trailing over her pale skin.
Bending to her, Alistair tasted the salt water on her cheeks. He brought his lips to hers, a gentle touch. Ember’s mouth opened, and he drank in her breath. Alistair kissed her slowly, waiting with each movement for Ember to respond. When she returned his embrace, Alistair struggled for control. He wanted to take her. All of her.
But he?
??d erred in that way before. Pushed her too soon. The wisest choice Alistair had made about Ember was letting her go. She couldn’t be ruled, at least not knowingly. When Alistair had acted as the aggressor, Ember had pushed him away, thinking him a tyrant. Now he was her champion, and she welcomed his kiss.
Knowing these things, Alistair pulled Ember’s arms from around his neck and forced her to take a step back.
“Will you let your father make you the wife of Gavin Mackenzie?”
Ember shook her head. “I will only become the wife of Alistair Hart.”
“Ember,” Alistair breathed.
“I will marry you, Alistair.” When Ember reached for him, Alistair didn’t try to stop her. When she lifted her face, he kissed her. Overwhelmed by the taste of her, the softness of her skin, Alistair gave in to his craving for Ember. His lips moved down her neck, lingering at her throat. But when his hands molded to the swell of her breasts, Ember stiffened.
“Are you afraid?” Alistair didn’t move his hands, but kept them still. He could feel her heart racing. “Because it is not in my mind to hurt you, my love.”
Ember swallowed hard, her pulse jumping at her throat. Not wanting to push her too far, and reminding himself that Ember was still a maid, Alistair conquered his impulse and slid his hands to her waist. Her breath eased, and Alistair kissed her tenderly.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he murmured against her lips. “I only want to please you.”
She nodded, and he returned to the path his lips had taken over her skin. Then he knelt before her.
“Ember.” Alistair wrapped his arms around her thighs, his cheek pressed to her stomach. He closed his eyes, reveling in the gentle tousling of her fingers in his hair. “My Ember.”
For the first time Alistair could remember, he basked in the sense that all was as it should be.