“Ye wouldna have made the choice to come?” She arched her brow.
“I wouldna have had to make the choice to come,” he growled, his ire returning.
“It was still a choice.” Evina lifted her head and met his eyes.
She was a tall woman, but nowhere near his height, and certainly not as large as his muscular frame. Regardless, she regarded him with reproach, a fearless mercenary, this warrior woman.
“I thank ye for saving my life,” she said in a tone that bespoke of no gratitude. “But I willna allow ye to put the blame on me when it was ye who made the decision.”
He opened his mouth to argue, and closed it. Damn her. She was right. It had been his decision. Much as he wanted to put the blame on her, and as much as his mind screamed for him to be blameless, she was right.
“This was yer decision as well.” She waved a hand over the destruction. “Ye held onto yer anger these years and let it fester into this, turning ye from a man into a beast.”
She walked away from him and bent to retrieve her cloak.
“Are ye leaving?” he asked.
She scanned the chaos of tossed furniture and did not answer.
“My lady.” Gillespie darted in, his hand waving frantically in the air. “Dinna go, please. I beg of ye.” He bent over the fallen cabinet and strained to lift it. “We will…clean this…”
The massive wooden structure rose a sliver before crashing down once more. He frowned down at it. “It will be cleaned. Please.”
Evina gave a small smile. She set down her cloak, crouched beside Gillespie and lifted the cabinet to its rightful place against the wall with surprising ease. Duncan’s own eyes widened with Gillespie’s.
The lass was certainly different than any other Duncan had ever met. Not that he’d met many in some time.
Evina turned back to Gillespie and considered him. “I’ll think on it.”
Gillespie remained wordless, his gaze darting first to the upright cabinet, then to her. “Of course, my lady. Take yer time. We’ll be here.” His words rambled out with haste and he gave a nervous laugh. “If ye need us. Or wish to talk. We’re here, the both of us.”
Evina smiled again at him, scowled at Duncan, and marched away in the direction of her bedroom. The ring weighed heavy in Duncan’s palm. He had been an arse. He’d said cruel, selfish things, and launched into a tantrum - aye, a tantrum as she’d said - and he’d stripped away the one item of value she possessed.
“Evina.” He called her name more quietly than he’d intended, but she stopped. He strode toward her, and held out the bit of jewelry. “Take it. It’s been gone from my hand for longer than it’d been there. I dinna need it.” And it was true. In less than a fortnight, the ring, the rowan tree, all of it - nothing would matter.
Her face remained solemn. “I dinna need it anymore either. It doesna mean what I once thought.”
“What was that?”
She met his eyes and turned slowly away to make her way down the hall once more. “Hope.”
EVINA WAITED until she was alone with the door tightly closed before she curled into the burning sensation in her chest. While she might be invincible to injury, she was not immune to the pain of a broken heart.
The ring.
She gritted her teeth and shook her head. Her eyes prickled and her throat welled with tightness, as if the pain in her heart was trying to burst out of her.
What a fool she’d been to assume the ring belonged to her father. She’d spent too many days and nights letting her fingertip graze the cool, smooth surface of the stone while imagining the man it had belonged to. A good man with a castle who would take her from the abbey she’d been sent to, away from the abbess who’d pinched and criticized until Evina had run away at the age of thirteen to hire out her sword.
All she had wanted was a home, a family. Love.
Now it was gone.
The ring was not her father’s and she was nowhere nearer to discovering who she was than ten years ago when she awoke with no memory.
A choked cry broke from her lips. A weak, pathetic mewl no warrior should make. She shoved her fist against her mouth, heedless of how her teeth scraped at her knuckles, and tried to heave away the hurt of her grief for the loss of a man who didn’t exist.
She was an orphan, a girl whose past was as lost as her parents. A nobody. A simple mercenary for money whose luck would pass and who would eventually die unknown on the battlefield.
Everything in her blackened with despair and she crumpled into the desolation of it. A wet heat trailed down her face. She touched her fingers to her cheek and they came away wet. With tears.
She blinked.
Blood. Tears. This castle elicited more from her than she’d had in the last fourteen years. She hadn’t known who she was, and she’d been alone, but at least she had hope to cradle in her heart.
Now, she had nothing.
She glowered at the looming bed in front of her with its ridiculous tower of mattresses. Such frivolity for such discomfort.
Anger took hold of her, as fierce and as ugly a display as the one Duncan had shown. The very anger she’d chastised him for now reared up within her. She climbed the stairs, gripped the first mattress and flung it to the ground.
She glared down at the limp bit of stuffed linen with malicious satisfaction. It had been an uncomfortable thing that drew blood and left her brain foggy with exhaustion. She grabbed the second mattress and sent it joining the first. Victory soared through her.
She tugged the third, then the fourth, and kept grabbing until she had only one mattress left. The
