Page 48 of The Laird who Craved her

"I ken," she said quietly. "That's rather the trouble, is it nae."

She pushed the heavy door open and walked out into the corridor. She left him standing alone among the rain-streaked windows, and she did not let herself look back. She was absolutely certain that if she did, she would find her own devastating ache mirrored plainly on his face, and she wasn't at all sure her heart could survive it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Finn hadn't slept and lay in his chamber, listening to the storm and replaying calculations from the council, like scouts and watch rotations. The southern pass. A fortnight, he'd told her. He turned the word over like a stone in his palm, wondering if he'd lied about a fortnight. Suddenly, a scream tore through the corridor before he fully reacted. He was out of bed, grabbing his broadsword, and running to her door, feet slapping cold stone, in what felt like an eternity.

The door gave way beneath his shoulder without slowing him down.

"Where is he?" The words tore out of him rough and low, already scanning the room, the window, the shadowed corners. "Did someone breach the…"

There was no one. Only Claire, upright in the bed with the blankets twisted violently around her legs, her chest heaving,her hands fisted so tight in the linen that her knuckles had gone bloodless. Her eyes found him and did not seem to see him at all.

The sword suddenly felt like a foolish, useless thing in his hand.

"There is nay one," she gasped, pulling her knees to her chest, curling into herself the way a wounded animal curls, protecting whatever soft part remained. "It was only a dream, Finn. I'm sorry to have woken ye."

He set the blade down against the wall, and the clang of it hitting stone seemed obscenely loud in the aftermath of her scream. He crossed to the bed slowly this time, the way he might approach a spooked horse, and lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress.

"I heard ye scream, lass," he said. "It sounded like ye were dyin'."

"It was only me own mind." Her voice was hollow, scraped thin. She was fighting something behind her eyes; he could see it, some old iron discipline clamping down hard on whatever wanted to break free, and losing.

"Ye dinnae have to do that," he said quietly.

"Do what?"

"Fight it so hard. The cryin'." He nodded at her white-knuckled grip on the sheets. "I willnae think less of ye for it."

Something in her seemed to give way at that, some final wall crumbling, and the tears came in earnest, silent and furious, as though she resented every single one of them. He reached for her before he'd decided to, his palm finding her jaw, his thumb tracing slow circles against her damp skin.

"They were draggin' me," she whispered. "Same as the road. Same as the raiders."

"They're dead, Claire." He kept his voice low, level, the same voice he used to steady a green recruit before his first skirmish. "I killed every last one of them myself. Nay man will ever lay a hand on ye while I draw breath."

"I despise this." She scrubbed furiously at her wet cheeks with the back of one hand. "Feelin' so completely terrified. I ought to be stronger than this."

"Fear doesnae make ye weak," he said. "It keeps ye alive. Means yer mind's workin' exactly as it should. Ye saw horrors, lass. Ye dinnae just fold those away like an old letter and forget where ye put them ."

She leaned into his hand, just slightly, and he felt the small movement land somewhere deep in his chest, somewhere he'd stopped letting things land years ago.

"My mind feels like it's shatterin'," she confessed. "Every time I close me eyes I'm back on that muddy road. And every time I open them, I'm here, packin' me trunks to be sent to me cousins."

His jaw tightened. Guilt sat heavy and sour in his gut, but he kept his hand where it was.

"The MacSween lands are well defended," he said, though the words came out rougher than he intended. "Leo will keep ye safe from all of this. It's the only road I ken that leads ye anywhere but the blood."

"I'm nae talkin' about the war." She shook her head, and a strand of dark hair fell loose against her cheek. He wanted, absurdly, to tuck it back. "I'm talkin' about me life. I'm terrified because me life doesnae belong to me."

"What do ye mean, lass?"

"I mean I've never made a single choice for myself." The words came faster now, a dam finally giving. "My father decided who I was, who I smiled at, who I was traded to. He treated me as a political asset, nae a daughter."

"He wanted a strong alliance," Finn said, though even to his own ears it sounded hollow.

"He wanted power." Her hands fisted tighter in the sheets. "And now ye're decidin' me fate too. Ye've decided I'm a liability. I'm a parcel bein' passed from one powerful man to the next, and I've nay say at all in where I breathe or where I sleep. Is that nae the same cage me father built?"

He had no answer for that. He sat with it instead, letting the accusation settle where it landed, because she wasn't wrong, and he'd never been a man who could lie well to a woman looking at him like she needed the truth more than comfort.