Page 70 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"I am nae a bargaining piece, Fearchar. I am nae the Crown’s agreement tae be carried from one clan tae another. And I am not some frightened girl waiting for her brother tae decide where she ought tae live."

Her voice softened, but only slightly.

"Marcas gave me the choice tae leave."

That finally made something flicker across Fearchar's face.

"He told me I could go. I could have ridden back tae Chisholm if I wanted. I could have ended this match."

She glanced towards Marcas then, only for a moment.

"But I didnae."

Her gaze returned to her brother.

"I stayed because I wanted tae."

A silence fell over the hall.

Neilina drew one more breath.

"And if ye want to ken whether I chose him..." Her voice caught for the briefest instant before she steadied it. "Aye. I did."

She looked directly at Fearchar.

"Marcas is my choice."

Fearchar's sword didn't lower immediately. His eyes moved past her, to Marcas, hard and assessing, and she watched him weigh the whole room in the way she remembered him assessing every threat since she was a child, carefully and without giving anything away.

"Marcas." She turned, found him tense and furious and holding himself in check with visible effort, his jaw set the way it had been the night in Struan before he broke a stranger's face. "Let me speak tae him. Alone."

"Neilina, he's come with a blade in his hand and a dozen men at his back⁠—"

"And he's my brother, and I ken him better than any man in this hall, and he willnae hurt me." She held Marcas's gaze.. "Please."

She watched it cost him. Watched the same instinct that had driven him through a locked room and across a village street warring visibly with the promise he'd made her on his own gates, and watched him choose, finally, to honor it.

"The garden," he said, low, to her alone. "Nae further than that. And if I hear ye call for me, I'll be through that gate before either of ye finishes the thought."

"Understood."

He stepped back, and it was, she thought, the hardest thing she'd yet watched him do, harder than facing an archer's arrow, harder than standing before his own furious council, simply standing still and letting her walk toward her brother without him at her side.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The garden was cold and grey, dusk beginning to settle around them. Fearchar sheathed his sword only once the heavy gate had shut behind them, though his whole body remained taut, the soldier's stance she recognized from a lifetime of watching him prepare for trouble.

"Ye look well," he said, finally, some of the fury draining into something more raw. "I expected—I dinnae ken what I expected. Bruises. Chains. Cailleach's letter said⁠—"

"Cailleach's letter lied tae ye." She kept her voice even, though her chest ached at the sight of him, older somehow than she remembered, more worn. "What did it say, exactly?"

"That MacKinnon took ye by force from MacRath's protection. That he holds ye under guard, that his council speaks openly of using ye tae claim Chisholm land, that he shows ye a gentle face while his men watch yer every move tae keep ye from ever truly leaving."

"And ye believed all of it?"

"I believed enough of it tae ride here with a dozen men," Fearchar said sharply. "Ye vanished from MacRath's stronghold in the night, Neilina. Ye think I'd hear that and simply trust it would sort itself out?"

"I think ye sent me tae MacRath's in the first place without asking me whether I wanted tae go," she said, the old grievance rising fast despite everything else crowding her chest, "and I think that's precisely why Cailleach's letter found such easy purchase in ye. Ye've never once, in yer whole life, asked me what I wanted before deciding what was best for me, and he kent that about ye well enough tae use it."