Page 119 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Ava had still arrived safely. Their marriage had still been annulled. Burning the proof changed nothing, and that fact tore through him with searing force.
His hand went to the nearest thing, a low stool beside the fireplace, and he threw it hard against the wall. It struck the stone with acrackand fell on its side.
It has been annulled.
He spun around and swept a brass candleholder off the mantelpiece. It hit the floor and rolled. A stack of sheet music followed, scattering across the stone floor in bent, useless pages. He caught the lid of the piano and slammed it down so hard that the sound ricocheted through the tower like a shot.
Still, it did nothing.
Ava was gone. Their marriage was over. The thing inside him that wanted to strike and break and tear had nowhere to land except wood, brass, paper, and stone. He drove his fist into the wall beside the fireplace, and pain shot up his arm. He welcomed it and hit the wall again.
“Enough,” Hector’s voice cut across the room cleanly.
Ciaran rounded on him, breathing hard, blood bright on his knuckles where skin had split open. Still, Hector did not back down.
“Ye have always spoken about getting an annulment. Why is that a problem now?” he asked.
The question landed harder than Ciaran had expected.
For one beat, he could only stare at his brother.
The fire popped softly behind them. The stool lay broken. The candleholder had rolled under the table. The smell of singed parchment still hung in the air.
A week of misery and of telling himself this was the path he had chosen because it was the safer one. A week of letting the castle rot under his temper while he clung to the idea that he was being brave to go through this. Now that the idea had vanished and the truth confronted him head-on, every layer of sense he had wrapped around it fell away like rotted cloth.
“I…” The word stuck in his throat. He swallowed and forced the rest out. “Nay.”
The silence after was worse than an accusation.
Ciaran dragged a hand through his hair and turned away. He could not bear the look on his brother’s face if it held pity, and he could not bear it if it held understanding either.
He planted both hands on the table and bowed his head. “Nay,” he said again, quieter now. “I didnae want this.”
His own voice sounded wrecked. That hardly mattered. The wreck was there, whether he wanted it or not.
Behind him, Hector shifted once. Then came the next question, calm and direct and impossible to avoid.
“What do ye want, then?”
The room had gone still again, though it was a different stillness now. Ciaran lifted his head and looked across the tower.
His gaze found the map where it had lain hidden and half forgotten among other things on the shelf by the telescope. He had bought it for Ava after the comet. No, before that.
He had bought it because he had listened when she spoke of stars and notes and her mother’s old dream. He had bought it because what mattered to her had already begun to matter to him in ways he never cared to acknowledge.
He crossed the room and grabbed the map. The paper was fine. The markings were still precise, and he remembered choosing them. He also remembered thinking about what her face would look like when she opened it.
His throat tightened.
Everything was there on the map. The listening. The wanting. The care. The moves he had been making for months, while his mouth kept speaking a different language.
Hector’s question still hung in the air.
Ciaran looked down at the map once more, then lifted his head. “I want Ava.”
The words came out without strain this time.
He folded the map carefully, tucked it under his arm, and turned toward the door.
