The world narrowed to the space between them, thick with the scent of hot metal, rain-dampened wool, and his impossible request. Eira’s gaze flickered from Alistair’s stark face to the fire screen she had just completed. The iron lion and dragon, entwined in a battle she had wrought with her own hands, seemed to mock her. Conqueror and conquered. Traitor and patriot. He was asking her to pick a side, but her heart was already a war-torn territory.

“You ask me to betray my own people,” she whispered, the words scraping her throat. Her knuckles were white where she gripped a cold pair of tongs, the metal biting into her calluses.

“I ask you to save lives,” he countered, his voice low, stripped of its usual aristocratic timbre. It was the voice of a commander, heavy with the burden of his men. “The *cochion* are not your people, Eira. They are zealots who would see this valley run with blood—yours included, if you proved inconvenient. I am trying to keep the King’s peace.”

“The King’s peace feels a lot like a cage,” she retorted, a flash of her usual fire returning. She thought of Rhys, his face alight with fierce, desperate pride. He was a zealot, perhaps, but he was also her blood. “They fight for what was taken from them.”

“And I fight to hold what is mine,” Alistair said, his dark eyes unwavering. He took a small step closer, invading her space, his presence overwhelming. “I am not asking for your allegiance. I am not asking you to swear fealty. I am asking for a map. For knowledge you possess that can prevent a slaughter. Nothing more.”

She saw the truth of it in his gaze. He wasn’t asking as a lord to a commoner, but as one soul in an impossible position to another. The lives of his men were real, tangible. The abstract cause of the rebels felt distant compared to the flesh-and-blood man standing before her, trusting her with his vulnerability.

Her resolve, forged in defiance, began to melt in the heat of his plea. “I will not see men die in a trap,” she said, her voice barely audible. The words tasted of treason. “But I will not be the cause of my countrymen’s deaths, either.”

A flicker of hope, of profound relief, crossed his features. “Tell me what you need.”

“Your word,” she said, meeting his eyes, demanding he see the cost of her choice. “Your word that you will take prisoners, not corpses. That you will show mercy where it can be afforded. It is all I can ask.”

He held her gaze for a long moment, the air crackling between them. “You have it,” he vowed. “On my name.”

With trembling hands, Eira grabbed a piece of charcoal and a spoiled sheet of parchment she used for sketches. She spread it on a workbench, the drawing surface still warm. As Alistair watched, his shadow falling over her, she began to draw the twisting, forgotten quarry paths, the treacherous shale slopes, the hidden crevices perfect for an ambush. Each line she drew felt like a betrayal, a severance from her past, from her cousin, from the very soil that held her ancestors. She was drawing a map of her own damnation, and she could not stop.

When she was done, she pushed the parchment towards him without looking up. “Here. May God have mercy on us all.”

He rolled it carefully, his movements precise. “I will not forget this, Eira.” He paused at the door, his hand on the latch. “Bar your door tonight. Do not open it for anyone.” Then he was gone, swallowed by the deepening twilight, leaving her alone with the smell of charcoal and the chilling silence of her conscience.

***

The night was endless. Eira did not sleep, starting at every gust of wind, every distant dog’s bark. She imagined the clash of steel in the quarry pass, the shouts of men in English and Welsh, the grunts of pain. She saw Rhys’s face in the flickering embers of the dying forge fire, contorted in anger, then in death. She pressed her hands to her ears to block the phantom sounds, but the battle was raging inside her.

Dawn broke, grey and unforgiving. The village was unnaturally quiet, a held breath of apprehension. No one met her eyes as she crossed the small green to fetch water from the well. The news, when it came, trickled in like poison. Lord Beaumont’s patrol had not been ambushed. Instead, they had turned the tables on the rebels. They had known exactly where the Welshmen were hiding. Several rebels were dead, more captured. Among the dead was the son of the weaver from the next village over. A boy of seventeen.

Eira felt the blood drain from her face. She dropped her bucket, water splashing over the cobblestones. The baker’s wife, who stood nearby, gave her a look of such pure, undiluted hatred that Eira physically recoiled. The whispers were no longer whispers; they were accusations carried on the wind. *Traitor. English whore. Cochyn y Saeson—the Red of the English.*

She fled back to the forge, the names chasing her. She slammed the heavy door, the sound echoing the closing of a tomb. There was no news of Rhys. The not-knowing was a special kind of torture, a hope that was more painful than certainty.

She tried to work, to find solace in the familiar rhythm of hammer on steel, but her hands shook and her arms felt leaden. The fire screen, her masterpiece, stood in the center of the room like a monument to her folly. She wanted to smash it, to destroy the beautiful, terrible thing that had brought this ruin upon her.

She was still standing there, covered in soot and self-loathing, when the door opened late that night. She spun around, a heavy hammer in her hand, her heart seizing with terror. It was Alistair.

He looked like a different man. The mud on his boots was caked thick, and a dark, drying stain marred the shoulder of his leather jerkin. Exhaustion was carved into the lines of his face, but his eyes, when they found hers, were burning with a fierce, wild light.

He shut the door behind him and strode across the floor, his purpose absolute. He did not stop until he was standing before her, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body. He smelled of sweat, leather, and the cold night air.

“They are alive because of you,” he said, his voice a low rasp. “My men. I am alive because of you.”

“Men are dead because of me,” she choked out, her grip tightening on the hammer. “Welshmen.”

“Men who would have killed me without a second thought,” he said, his gaze dropping to the hammer she held like a weapon between them. He slowly, gently, took it from her unresisting fingers and set it aside. His hands, now bare, came up to cup her face. His palms were rough against her soot-stained skin, his touch both a shock and a homecoming. “This is war, Eira. It is ugly and brutal, and you saved those you could.”

Tears she had refused to shed now tracked clean paths through the grime on her cheeks. “I hear how they speak of me. I see how they look at me.”

“Let them,” he murmured, his thumb stroking her cheekbone, sending a shiver through her entire body. “Their words cannot harm you. I will not let them.”

The chasm between them—of birth, of allegiance, of worlds—was suddenly gone, consumed by the raw, desperate need that flared in the space he had closed. The forge, her sanctuary and her prison, became the only world that existed. In his eyes, she was not a commoner, not a traitor, but a woman of fire and steel who had met his challenge and saved his life.

“Alistair,” she breathed, his name an invocation, a surrender.

That was all it took. He lowered his head and his mouth claimed hers. It was not a gentle kiss. It was fierce, desperate, a release of all the tension that had coiled between them for weeks. It tasted of gratitude and danger, of soot and sorrow. Eira’s hands, trained to grip iron and tame fire, tangled in his hair, pulling him closer. She met his hunger with her own, a lifetime of suppressed passion erupting in a single, searing moment. He pressed her back against a sturdy workbench, his body a hard line against hers, the kiss deepening, speaking a language of touch that transcended words, transcended loyalty, transcended everything but the undeniable truth of their connection.

He broke the kiss only to rest his forehead against hers, their breaths mingling in ragged gasps. The air was thick with the scent of the fire, her sweat, and his skin. “I knew it,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “From the moment I saw you, standing here with fire in your eyes. I knew you would undo me.”

“We are undone,” she whispered back, the terrifying truth of it settling in her bones. “There is no going back from this.”

“I don’t want to go back,” he said, and kissed her again, slower this time, a vow sealed in the heart of the fire.

***

The next few days were a strange dream. The village shunned her completely. Stones were sometimes thrown at her door at night. The forge, once a hub of village life, was now an island of isolation. Yet, it was also the scene of secret, stolen moments of incandescent passion. Alistair would come to her late, under the cloak of darkness, a shadow slipping through the night. In the glowing warmth of the forge, the titles of baron and smith melted away. They were just Alistair and Eira, their bodies and souls mapping a new, treacherous country that belonged only to them.

He told her of the prisoners, how he had kept his word. Most were being held at the castle. He did not mention Rhys. Eira did not ask. She was afraid the answer would shatter the fragile world they had built in the shadows.

But the world outside the forge could not be held at bay forever. One afternoon, as Eira worked on a simple repair—a farmer’s ploughshare, left at her door with coins but no conversation—the forge door was thrown open with a violent crash.

It was Rhys. He looked gaunt, haunted. A fresh scar, livid and red, cut across his cheekbone. His eyes, once full of fire for their shared cause, were now pits of cold ash as they fixed on her.

“Cousin,” he said, and the word was an epithet.

“Rhys!” Relief warred with terror in her chest. “You’re alive. I was so afraid.” She took a step toward him, her hands outstretched.

“Don’t,” he snarled, and she froze. “Don’t you dare pretend you care.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I care!”

“Do you?” He took a step into the forge, his movements stiff. “Huw is dead. Little Gethin, the weaver’s boy. Dead. And do you know why? Because the English knew. They were waiting for us. They knew the paths your father showed us as children. The paths only a few of us knew.” His eyes bored into her, cold and full of judgment. “The paths only *you* could have told them.”

“Rhys, I…” The denial died on her lips. She could not lie to him, not with the memory of Alistair’s kiss still burning on her skin.

The lack of denial was all the confirmation he needed. A terrible, broken sound escaped his throat. “By God, it’s true,” he whispered, the fight draining out of him to be replaced by a hollow grief. “I defended you. When the others talked, I said you were proud, you were foolish, but you were one of us. I told them my cousin would never betray her own blood.” He looked around the forge, his gaze landing on the magnificent fire screen. “For him? For the English dog who sits in a stolen castle? You sold us all for him?”

“You don’t understand,” she pleaded, tears streaming down her face now. “He would have died. His men would have died.”

“They are soldiers! It is their business to die!” he roared, his fury returning with the force of a storm. “Our business is to make sure they do it on Welsh soil! And you… you helped them. You held the knife while he cut our throats.”

He stared at her for a long, agonizing moment, his expression a mixture of hatred and heartbreak. Then he turned on his heel. “I no longer have a cousin,” he said, his voice flat and dead. He walked out, leaving the door gaping open, letting the cold afternoon light spill onto the floor.

Eira sank to her knees, the sound of his words echoing in the sudden, crushing silence. She was utterly alone, adrift between two worlds, belonging to neither. She had chosen love, and in doing so, had lost everything else.

***

That night, she did not wait for Alistair. There was no fire in the forge, only the cold, dead ashes of the day’s work. She sat on a stool in the darkness, the iron lion and dragon her only companions, their silent struggle a perfect reflection of her soul. She had made her choice, and now she would live with it. Or die with it.

The door creaked open. Her heart gave a painful lurch, thinking it was Alistair returning early, but the silhouette was wrong. Taller, broader. And then another figure slipped in behind him. And another.

Rhys stepped into the faint moonlight slanting through the high window. His face was set like stone. The men with him were strangers, hard-faced and grim, the symbol of the *cochion*—a red dragon’s claw—crudely stitched onto their tunics.

“Eira ap Rhys,” Rhys said, his voice formal, devoid of any warmth or kinship. It was the voice of a judge. “You stand accused of treason against the people of Wales. Of providing aid and comfort to the English invaders, resulting in the deaths of our countrymen.”

Her breath hitched. This was not a confrontation. It was a sentencing. She looked past Rhys, at the cold eyes of the other men. There was no mercy there. Only a righteous, chilling certainty.

“Rhys, please,” she begged, rising slowly to her feet. “Don’t do this.”

“It is already done,” he said, his voice breaking for just a second before hardening again. “You will come with us. You will face the justice of the mountains.”

One of the men stepped forward, a rough rope in his hands. Eira backed away, her hand reaching instinctively for a hammer, a tool, anything. But she knew it was hopeless. She was trapped. Her love for an English baron had saved him from an ambush, only to lead her into a trap of her own. As the rope settled over her wrists, her last thought was of Alistair’s face, of his vow to protect her, a vow that could not save her now.