Naamah's Blessing (65 page)

“Hush.” She stroked his hair. “You know why I am here. I told you. And I never stopped loving you.”

“You
died
!”

“Yes.” Jehanne’s hand, my hand, went still for a moment. “Believe me, it is not the fate I would have chosen. We cannot always choose our fates. But
you
can. Here, today.”

“No.” Raphael shook his head. Wrenching himself away from her, he staggered to his feet, wild-eyed. “Moirin, stop it! This is some trick of yours. I swear to Elua, I’ll feed your precious husband to the ants if you do not cease!”

“Moirin can banish me if she wills it,” Jehanne said steadily. “All she has to do is release her magic, and I will be gone from your presence forever. Is that what
you
will?”

He was silent.

Jehanne went to him again. “Raphael, our deeds have repercussions. If not in this life, in the next.” She gestured at herself. “Or in a limbo betwixt the two. I beg you to heed me, and turn aside from this course.”

Raphael searched her face. “Will you stay if I do?”

She shook her head. “I cannot.”

His expression hardened. “Then you have nothing to offer me. I will take my chances with the gods. What can they take from me that has not already been taken?”

“You would not ask that question if you had children,” Jehanne murmured. “It is my life’s greatest regret that I was taken from mine.”

“Daniel’s daughter!” Raphael shouted at her. “Must you throw it in my face?”

“
My
daughter.” Her voice was unwavering. “Of whom you spoke great folly. How could you even think it for an instant, Raphael?”

He gave a broken laugh. “Why not, Jehanne? Mayhap it
was
meant to be. She could give me the one thing you could not. Her whole heart.”

“Because you molded her thusly?” She raised her brows, my brows. “It is a profoundly wrong notion that violates the very essence of Blessed Elua’s precept. Did I not pity you so, I should despise you for it. But I tell you, Raphael de Mereliot, you would never love her if you did. We may have fought and quarreled, you and I, but it was always born of the passion that lay between us. You cannot separate one from the other. It was part and parcel of what bound us together.”

“Why wasn’t it enough?” Raphael demanded, tears of frustration and pain in his eyes. “Why did you choose Daniel over me? Don’t tell me the same passion lay between you! Was it mere ambition?”

It was Jehanne’s turn to laugh, and her laughter was as hollow as his. “Oh, Raphael! Would you stand here on the cusp of seeking godhood and chastise me for ambition? It’s true, in the history of Terre d’Ange, no Servant of Naamah had ever risen to the throne. I wanted to be the first. But I loved Daniel, too.” She paused. “He was a good and kind man who loved deeply. But there was such sorrow in him, such grief. And I was able to take it away, at least for a time. When I did…” She drew a deep breath into her lungs. My lungs. “When I did, I truly understood Naamah’s blessing.”

“How can you possibly think telling me such a thing will sway me?” Raphael whispered hoarsely.

If I could have looked away from the pain in his face, I would have; but I was a passenger in my own body, and Jehanne did not look away. “I don’t. I am telling you the truth. It is all I have to offer you.”

He turned his back on her. “It is not enough.”

She smiled with regret. “Then I will ask you a lesser boon. Raphael, you must release Moirin from her oath.”

“No.”

“Moirin will lose her magic the moment she honors it,” Jehanne said simply. “And you will fail.”

Raphael turned back to her with a scowl. “What new lie is this?”

“No lie.” She shook her head. “I am not able to lie anymore. The oath Moirin swore to you is in conflict with another. She is Desirée’s oath-sworn protector. While you mean to take my daughter to wife and mold her spirit, Moirin cannot honor both oaths. Her
diadh-anam
will be extinguished.”

He raised his own brows. “And why, pray tell, would Moirin not tell me such a thing if it were true?”

With unrelenting honesty, Jehanne exposed my plan of last resort. “Because she is willing to make that sacrifice to prevent you from succeeding.”

Ah, gods! I would not have consented to this if I had known it was what she meant to do. I thought of banishing the twilight, but the damage was done.

Peace, Moirin.
Jehanne’s voice poured through my thoughts once more.
It is not finished
.

Raphael frowned in thought. “You came here to sway me from my course, Jehanne. It makes no sense at all for you to warn me of such a pitfall.”

“I came here to offer you the truth,” she said calmly. “It is what I was meant to do. More than that, I cannot know.”

For a long moment, they gazed at one another, and a faint hope
flickered in me that somehow, against all odds, Jehanne’s words had reached him. It died when Raphael shook his head. “No,” he said. “I do not trust Moirin to keep her word without her oath; and I do not entirely trust that this is not some trick of hers.”

“In your heart, you know better,” Jehanne murmured.

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “There is another way. Desirée, your daughter… what is the nature of the oath Moirin swore?”

“The Montrèvan Oath,” she said. “Moirin mac Fainche is sworn to regard Desirée’s interests as her own, to seek to defend her from every danger, and hold her happiness as a matter of sacred trust.”

“Elua have mercy! How did
that
come about?” Raphael muttered. “I can’t imagine the realm would approve.”

“Daniel willed it so,” she said. “He saw that Moirin was able to love the spark of my spirit that lived on in our daughter, as he himself was unable to do. Daniel trusted her to care for Desirée’s happiness. And in that, I do believe he chose wisely. Moirin has gone to great lengths in her effort to protect my daughter.”

Raphael bowed his head. Locks of tawny hair touched with silver in the twilight spilled over his brow, obscuring his gaze. “It’s why she came here, isn’t it? Searching for Thierry?”

“Yes.”

When he lifted his head, his eyes were wide and clear. “I will not do as you ask. I will not turn away from my course here, Jehanne. And I will not release Moirin from her oath. But…” His chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath. “I loved you, Jehanne. More than you knew. For the sake of all that has passed between us, I will do my best to love your daughter.” His mouth twisted. “Not as I threatened. Not as a bridegroom, but as one who might have been her father had matters been otherwise.”

Jehanne was silent.

“I will have the power to protect her,” Raphael said softly. “Gifts such as Moirin never dared dream of possessing, political power such as Thierry could never have hoped to wield. I will hold your daughter Desirée’s happiness as a matter of sacred trust. Everything I can do on
her behalf, I will. I give you
my
oath. Does that not suffice to resolve the conflict?”

It did.

Raphael de Mereliot might turn the rest of the world upside down, raze empires in Terra Nova, but so long as he was pledged to protect Desirée’s happiness, my oath to do the same was no longer in conflict with my oath to aid him.

“Yes,” Jehanne whispered. “Ah, gods! Raphael…”

He closed the distance between them in a few swift steps, cupping her face and kissing her, kissing
me
, with fierce, starved ardor. Jehanne clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she returned his kiss with the same tempestuous passion; and I was caught between them, even as I had been when my lady was alive.

It was Jehanne who pulled away, genuine anguish in her voice. “Raphael, I cannot stay!”

His hands fell to his sides, turning to fists. “You break my heart,” he said in a low tone. “Over and over.”

“We break each other’s hearts,” Jehanne said quietly. “But we mend them, too. And someday, we may all understand Naamah’s blessing. Now I must go.”

“
Don’t —”

Now, Moirin.
Jehanne’s thoughts spilled through mine, still tinged with anguish.
Please!

I released the twilight.

Just like that, Jehanne’s presence was gone, extinguished like a candle. I dropped to one knee at the suddenness of it, drawing a ragged breath, my head hanging low. My lungs were my own again. My hands, splayed on the floor of Raphael’s bedchamber, were mine—shapely enough, but scratched and callused with the ordeals of travel, my skin golden-brown once more.

“Moirin.”

I looked up at Raphael.

His face was stony, and I knew without another word spoken
that he hated me more than ever for having borne witness to this encounter.

“I will keep my oath,” he said. “As I expect you to keep yours. Will you be in the Temple of the Ancestors at dawn on the morrow?”

I nodded.

“Good. Now get out of my sight.”

SEVENTY-ONE

O
utside the palace, it was later than I had reckoned. Time moved differently in the spirit world, and it seemed the presence of Jehanne’s spirit had altered the flow of time in the twilight, too.

I returned to the temple of the Maidens of the Sun, thinking to take a moment to collect my thoughts before the sacred fire. A lone figure knelt before the firepit, tending to the coals. She glanced up at my approach.

“Machasu,” I said in greeting. “You do not sleep?”

She shook her head. “I was thinking of Cusi. I, too, wanted to spend the night in prayer.” In a graceful, reverent gesture, she stirred the coals. Low flames flickered. “I did not think you were coming here tonight, lady.”

I knelt beside her. “Nor did I.”

“Is all well?” she asked.

My
diadh-anam
burned steadily in my breast, calling to Bao’s in the distance, no longer in danger of being extinguished on the morrow. Jehanne had kept her promise. She had found a way to free me from my conflicting oaths. Whatever else happened come dawn, I would not be cast out of the presence of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself for eternity because I honored one oath, and broke another. Bao would not die because there was no way out of the oaths that bound me.

For that, I was grateful.

And yet it did not remove the burden of choice from me. It only altered it. Now I could obey Raphael without losing my
diadh-anam
.

But I could still refuse him and be forsworn if it were the only way to keep him from attaining his goal.

“Lady?” Machasu prompted me.

“I do not know,” I said honestly. “But before I went to see Lord Pachacuti, Cusi told me all was well. She is closer to the matter than anyone. If anyone would know, it is her.”

“I think so, too.” Machasu stirred the coals again, then fed them a few sticks of firewood. “Do you think she is frightened?”

“A little, maybe,” I said. “But she has great faith.”

“Do you think it will hurt?” she asked.

I clenched my hand on the newly reopened wound. It hurt, but it had hurt a great deal more when Cusi had cut me with the dull-edged bronze dagger. And although I wanted to utter a soothing lie, it felt like blasphemy in this holy place. “Yes,” I said quietly. “I think it will hurt.”

“I think so, too,” Machasu repeated. “But it will be swift. And then the ancestors will welcome her into the highest heaven.”

I nodded. “So we pray.”

“Yes.”

My handmaiden fell silent, tending the fire. I gazed into the shifting embers and breathed the Five Styles, praying to the Maghuin Dhonn Herself to guide me. The great magician Berlik had broken his oath and been forgiven in the end, finding atonement in the distant Vralian wilderness.

But in the end, Berlik had given his life in penance. It was part of the bargain. What penance had I to give if I broke my oath? It was not the same, not at all. There would be no one to claim my life as a right of justice.

Trust me
.

The words echoed throughout the temple, spoken in a voice as deep as oceans and as vast as mountains. I jerked my head upright, my chin having sunk to my chest. The sacred fire flared and crackled as Machasu fed it an especially dry branch, throwing a massive shadow on the wall—a shadow with an imposing silhouette filled with bulk and
grace that I’d seen but once in my life, but would never forget. A bear, but a bear far, far greater than any mortal bear. As the flames danced it appeared to move, pacing with profound and solemn grandeur, and then shrank and dwindled as the fire subsided from its first eager blaze.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, my voice trembling. I pointed at the wall. “Did you
see
it?”

Machasu gave me an odd look. “Lady, you slept for a time. I did not wake you, for I thought you must need it.”

My ears still rang with the words.
Trust me
. Jehanne had spoken the same words to me.

Mayhap it was why I had dreamed of them.

Or mayhap I had not dreamed. The scent that lingered in my nostrils was not Jehanne’s perfume, but somewhat older and more savage—earthen and musky, tinged with the scent of wild berries.