After leaving the tea room, Aisling took Gráinne with her to the Goldenbridge quarter.
She would soon be leaving Dunmore and Kilmore both, with no telling whether they would ever see each other again.
Before they parted, she wanted to find something for Gráinne.
After some thought, she brought her to a silversmith’s shop.
“See if anything catches your eye.
Pick a few pieces.
Call it my wedding gift to you, since by the time it happens, I’ll likely be far from here.”
At that, Gráinne could no longer hold back her tears.
She caught Aisling’s sleeve, her voice cracking.
“Sister…”
Aisling smiled gently and rested a hand on her head, her eyes soft.
“Don’t cry.
From now on, you’ll have to learn to wipe your own tears.”
She had had a sister once in her old life, though they had never really spent much time together.
Gráinne swallowed her tears, forcing a small smile, and nodded.
“I’ll listen to you, sister.
I’ll grow up, slowly.”
Once she had settled herself, the two of them threw themselves into choosing jewelry.
Gráinne rarely had money of her own, and being bullied so often had left her with few nice things to show for it.
Halloran’s Silversmiths was the shop every noblewoman in Dunmore favored, filled with the most exquisite pieces money could buy.
She looked almost overwhelmed by the choice, carefully holding herself back.
After a long search, she picked up a peony shaped hairpin.
It was about the size of a palm, worked in pure gold, each petal thin as a cicada’s wing, full and lifelike, curling naturally at the edges.
Tiny pearls dotted the center, catching even the dim shop light beautifully.
It was exactly the kind of piece the nobility prized.
Gráinne turned it over in her hands for a long while.
She was just about to hold it up to her hair to show Aisling when a slim hand suddenly shot out and snatched it away.
“That hairpin is mine!”
The voice was pretty and thoroughly spoiled.
Everyone turned to see Aoibhinn holding the hairpin.
With the marriage settled, whatever tension Aoibhinn had been carrying had finally lifted, and she had gone right back to her usual arrogance.
She had come out that day to wander the quarter, looking for something new to catch her eye.
She had stepped into Halloran’s, a shop she visited often, and spotted the peony pin the moment she walked in.
She grabbed it without a second thought.
Aoibhinn’s mother, Lady Neala, was the king’s favorite, and Aoibhinn herself had made an art of playing sweet and obedient in front of him.
Between that and her mother’s standing, the whole palace catered to her every whim.
Gráinne, forgotten and small, was not even worth Aoibhinn’s notice most days.
Normally, Gráinne would have swallowed her anger and let it go.
But this was the last gift her sister would ever give her, and she could not bring herself to hand it over.
Frightened as she was, she found the nerve to look up at Aoibhinn.
“Sister Aoibhinn, I saw it first.”
“So what if you saw it first?
Could you even afford it?”
Aoibhinn lifted her chin, looking down at her without a trace of guilt.
Gráinne shrank back instinctively, her shoulders shaking, her eyes still cast down.
But for once, she did not back off entirely.
“This…
this is a gift, from my sister…”
Only then did Aoibhinn notice Aisling standing beside her, calm as ever.
Why was she out shopping as though nothing had happened?
Wasn’t she frightened?
Shouldn’t she have been locked in her room somewhere, crying?
Why did none of it seem to touch her at all?
Aisling noticed the strange look on Aoibhinn’s face and met her eyes evenly.
“What did you want to say, Aoibhinn?”
“You…
you know you’re marrying that man, don’t you?
The Prince of Dunmara?” she asked hesitantly.
Aisling nodded calmly.
“I know.”
“Aren’t you scared?” Aoibhinn blurted.
Aisling blinked slowly, her voice steady.
“The decree has already been issued.
Whether I’m frightened or not changes nothing.
I can only accept where I stand and move forward.”
Aoibhinn listened to how steady she sounded, something faintly sorrowful lingering beneath her words, and suddenly remembered that day hiding outside Rosemount Palace, overhearing her mother and Sibéal plotting to have Aisling take her place in the marriage.
Something in her chest tightened uncomfortably.
She felt, all at once, that she had done something shameful.
To escape her own fate, she had let someone else be pushed into it instead.
It had not been her hand doing the pushing exactly.
Her mother had managed all of that.
But Aoibhinn had overheard the plan that day at the door and known perfectly well what was being done to Aisling.
And she had done nothing.
At the time, all she had cared about was not being the one married off to that man.
Who took her place had not mattered to her at all.
But now that it had actually happened, now that it had become real for Aisling, something like guilt crept in.
She had also heard that it was Aisling’s dance at the banquet that had caught Ronan’s eye in the first place.
If she had warned Aisling, told her to hide that night, would Aisling have avoided all this?
But Aoibhinn also knew that even if she had been given the chance again, she would not have said a word.
As much as the guilt gnawed at her now, it was nothing compared to how terrified she had been of leaving Kilmore and marrying that man herself.
For the first time, Aoibhinn saw just how dark a corner of herself she had never looked at before.
Overwhelmed, she could no longer meet Aisling’s eyes.
Even the beautiful hairpin in her hand suddenly held no appeal.
She shoved it into Gráinne’s arms.
“Never mind, I don’t want it anymore.
Take it, if you like it so much.”
Then she turned and hurried off, almost as though she were running from something.
Aisling had caught the guilt and evasion plainly on her face.
Aoibhinn clearly knew something, but she could not bring herself to face Aisling over it.
Aisling held nothing against her for it.
Aoibhinn might know something, but she likely had not been directly involved in arranging it.
Otherwise, she would not have looked so shaken.
In this world, everyone looked out for themselves first.
Underneath it all, Aoibhinn was just another piece being moved around in a game far bigger than herself.
Her fate had never really been hers to decide.
Gráinne, still holding the hairpin, stared after Aoibhinn’s retreating figure for a long moment.
Sister Aoibhinn seemed…
different today.
After a quiet moment, Aisling tucked the peony pin into Gráinne’s hair.
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Then she picked out a few more small pieces for her besides.
Once Aisling had seen her safely back to the palace gate, she told Róisín to have the carriage turn toward the west gate instead.
The decree was already public.
Aisling would be heading north soon, and she had a limited window of time to put everything in order before she left.
As the carriage passed a small farmstead five miles outside the city, surrounded by carefully tended fields, the sky sat clear and bright with spring.
Willow branches drifted like smoke in the breeze, the ground carpeted green, and farmhands were busy at their work all around.
Taken at face value, it might have looked like something out of a peaceful old painting.
But none of these people owned the land they worked.
They were servants, laboring simply to survive another season.
As the carriage drew closer, Aisling could make out how thin they were, their skin rough and dark as old bark stretched over brittle bones, their backs bent low enough to look as though they might snap at any moment.
And still, this counted as a decent life for them.
Working themselves half to death in a field was still better than most alternatives.
They had enough food to keep from starving, and no soldier’s conscription waiting to take them off to die.
That was as much as most common folk could hope for.
Seeing the carriage approach, they ducked down along the field edges, heads bowed, only daring the occasional careful glance upward.
Nobles passing by in the past had not taken kindly to being watched by common laborers.
A whip would be pulled out, servants ordered to beat anyone caught staring.
They had learned, long since, never to look up openly again.
They lived like shadows, invisible in the presence of families like Aisling’s.
She watched them pass by the window.
Already, their suffering was immense.
And in four years, when the clans finally broke through the gates and set foot on this land, real hell would begin.
By then, even being a tenant farmer would be a luxury they would envy.
They would be killed outright in the massacres, dragged away to die as cannon fodder on some front line, starved slowly, or reduced to livestock for whoever conquered them.
Cannibalism.
A handful of dry, careful words in some history book, standing in for the crushing, sorrowful weight of real lives.
Aisling looked away and lowered the bamboo blind, closing her eyes to rest.
About a quarter hour later, the carriage stopped in front of a small manor.
This, too, was a farmstead.
Low buildings of earth and timber stood beneath a layer of gray dust, except for one small brick courtyard set in the middle.
The manor belonged to Aisling’s father, originally granted by King Diarmuid himself when the old estates were divided up.
Later, when Aisling had been sent to live in Ardmore, Aunt Bríd had taken charge of the deed and eventually passed it on to her.
Aisling had been managing it herself for years.
Besides this one, there were a handful of other properties, modest but not insignificant, all originally held by Bríd.
Looking back, it had almost certainly been her father’s own doing.
Outwardly, he had looked too broken and hopeless to manage anything, so he had handed it all to Bríd instead.
She had served in this house for years and earned a real reputation for being steady and capable, which had allowed him to rest easy about it.
And since she stayed close by Aisling’s side anyway, having the properties in her hands had made everything simpler for both of them.
Later, once Aisling’s health had improved enough for her to take on real responsibility, she had taken the properties back from Bríd herself.
Over the years, quietly and carefully, she had built a considerable fortune from them.
Halloran’s Silversmiths was hers too, in fact, though most of its profits went toward grain instead, quietly supporting Ardmore and stockpiling supplies in key towns across the kingdom.
Back then, Aisling had not imagined she would end up heading north herself.
She had only been preparing, as best she could, for the chaos she knew was coming.
She stepped down from the carriage, her feet touching the packed earth.
Cormac, already told she was coming, had dressed properly and brought his men to meet her at the gate.
She stepped through into the small courtyard.
The gate creaked shut behind them, the latch drawn tight.
Cormac and his fifty armed men stood ready, weapons in hand, tension radiating off every one of them.
“My lady,” Cormac said, his eyes fierce, “are we taking you back to Ardmore?”
Aisling had nothing to say to that.