Naamah's Kiss (13 page)

I'd been there an hour or so when a fair-haired lad hobbled into the room leaning on a crutch, one leg in a splintone of the Academy's scholars whose injury had prevented him from taking part in the raid.

"Oh!" He flushed at the sight of me, having taken a while to notice. "Sorry, I didn't see you there."

I smiled. "I'm good at not being seen."

"You're the" His flush deepened.

"The witch's daughter?" I suggested.

He laughed self-consciously. "My mother would tan my hide for bad manners. Forgive me. I'm Fionn."

"Moirin," I said.

Despite the crutch, Fionn managed a bow. "Well met, my lady."

He selected a text of his own and for a time we read in companionable silence. I caught him stealing glances at me. As the day wore on, sun slanted through the windows, turning his fair hair to spun gilt. It looked as fine and silken as a girl's, and I couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like to run my fingers through it. I tried not to think it, but that only made it worse.

"Will you be studying here?" he asked politely after a while.

"No." I shook my head. "I think not."

"Pity." Fionn smiled. His lips were not as full as Cillian's, but they had a firm, pleasing shape. "You would be a splendid addition."

I wanted him.

The realization jolted me. It was an impersonal desireI didn't even know the lad. But he was pretty and well spoken, and the urge to exert the power of my gift over him was there. And in that moment, a deeper awareness took root and blossomed in me. It wasn't only Cillian's life I didn't want. It was his possessiveness. My mother had said it. He wants you, all of you, all to himself .

She was right.

Aislinn was right.

I sat there dumbstruck at the obviousness and simplicity of it. I had no wish to belong to Cillian and Cillian alone. Mayhap it was the prompting of the goddess my unknown father served, or mayhap it was only that I was sly and fickle after all. Whatever the truth, I could never be the wife he wanted, proper or otherwise. And it wasn't fair to string him along like a trout on a line. I needed to let him go. To set him free to find someone who could love him with her whole heart as he deserved.

"Moirin?" Fionn inquired. "What is it?"

I was staring at him without seeing him. "'Tis naught," I said, collecting myself with an effort. "Forgive me, I was woolgathering." I closed the book I had been reading, rose, and replaced it carefully on the shelf where I'd found it. "My thanks," I said, inclining my head. "You've helped me to discover an important truth."

He stared back at me, nicely shaped lips parted. "I have?"

"Aye." I paused beside him to run a lock of his fair hair through my fingers. It felt as nice as it looked. "Aye, you have."

"Wait!" Fionn called after me as I left, reaching for his crutch, but I ignored him. I felt wretched and scared all at once, but I felt something else, too. As much as my heart ached at the thought of losing Cillian forever, in one guilty corner it soared with a newfound sense of freedom. I would wait. I would pass another night here. I wouldn't spoil his triumph. For one more night, I would be his and his alone.

But on the morrow, I would make an end to it.

"Moirin." Lady Caitlin greeted me sourly in the great hall, carrying a basket laden with the rolled bandages Aislinn and I had made.

"My lady." I gave her a rueful smile. "Have no fear, you'll be rid of me soon enough. I mean to leave your son alone."

She, too, stared. "You do?"

"I do," I said. Just saying it gave me a pang. I steeled myself against it, my eyes stinging. "Only grant him this night's happiness, I beg you. Please believe me when I tell you I take no pleasure in breaking your son's heart."

Her throat worked. "I would like to."

"Then do," I said simply.

Ah, stone and sea! I would that our tale, Cillian's and mine, had ended thusly as I'd written it in my headhurtful, yet fair.

Would that it had.

It didn't.

The raiding party returned without fanfare, driving two dozen head of cattle before them. We turned out to meet them. It was a triumph it should have been a triumph. But the ebullient young men who had departed before dawn were quiet and subdued. Even the horses plodded, heads held low and bobbing with weariness and the semblance of defeat.

One chariot

"No!" I breathed, clutching Aislinn's arm. "Ah, no!"

Even beneath the cloak that covered him, I knew his shape. There was no part of Cillian I did not know. One arm was outflung, jouncing with the chariot's jostling, pale and sinewy and freckled. The chariot-driver looked miserable.

My knees gave way. "No," I whispered.

"Forgive me, my lord, my lady," the miserable chariot-driver was saying. "I did my best, but"

His mother wailed.

"flung loose and trampled"

I ached all over. The words flowed over me, meaningless. Cillian was dead. I'd spent the day thinking about giving myself to some lad I didn't know while Cillian was dying.

"Get out ." A hand knotted itself in my hair, wrenching my head upward. On my knees, I gazed into the blazing eyes of Lady Caitlin. "All he was trying to do was prove himself to you! And it wasn't enough, it was never going to be enough! All the while, you meant to leave him!"

"My lady!" I protested.

She shook me violently. " Get out !"

I got to my feet. No one spoke.

"I loved him," I said. "I did."

A few cattle lowed, a plaintive sound. In the chariot, Cillian's body lay unmoving. I uncovered it, flinching at the sight of his dented skull. Blood had dried in his auburn hair. I kissed his cold lips. "Good-bye," I whispered.

"You should go now," Lord Tiernan said in a stony voice.

It was unfairand yet it wasn't. I had tried to dissuade Cillian from taking part in the raid. But I hadn't loved him enough to wed him. And somehow it seemed to everyone including me that his death was my fault because of it.

Bowing my head, I started walking. When I had gone far enough that I no longer felt their eyes on me, I summoned the twilight and ran, blind and mindless with grief.

It wasn't long before I heard the sound of hoofbeats.

"Moirin!" Aislinn shouted. She passed by me, a shadowy figure on a silvery horse in the twilightbut then she turned and circled back. "Gods be damned, Moirin!" Her voice was raw. "You can't have gotten that far! Show yourself!"

I did.

The horse startled, rearing. Aislinn swore and grabbed at its mane, losing her grip on the rains. For one terrified instant, I thought to see a second scion of Innisclan thrown and trampled. I snatched the loose reins and yanked her mount's head downward.

" Be still !" I shouted at it.

For a miracle, it obeyed. Aislinn took a deep, shaking breath and dismounted. Her face, so like her brother's, was streaked with tears.

"It was their grief talking," she said. "I didn't want those to be the last words spoken to you."

My throat was almost too tight to reply. "You're kind."

"It wasn't your fault." She shook her head. "That stupid, bedamned raid it wasn't your fault."

"I know," I murmured. "And yet."

Aislinn didn't argue with me. She didn't lie and tell me that her mother would regret her harsh words, that I would be welcome to return and share their grief. For that, I was grateful. Instead, she took my hand in hers and squeezed it, fresh tears flowing. "If things had been different" She fell silent a moment, breathing hard and struggling for composure. "I would have been proud to call you my sister."

It was a great kindness and one I didn't deserve. I swallowed against the lump it brought to my throat. "So would I."

There was nothing left to say. Cillian was dead. Aislinn let go my hand and reclaimed her horse's reins. I held its head while she mounted.

In the saddle, she drew a kerchief from her bodice and wiped her eyes. I dragged a forearm over my own, realizing I was weeping without even knowing it.

"Thank you," I managed.

She nodded. "Good-bye, Moirin."

It was a long way home from Innisclan on foot. I remember little of the journey. My grief was so vast and unexpected and complicated by guilt that I was numb with it, which was a mercy. Even the urge to flee had passed. I put one foot in front of the other and kept walking. When it grew too dark to see, I summoned the twilight again and continued.

My senses were as dull as though I'd grown dead to the world around me. In the small hours of the night, I tripped over branches and stumbled through brambles. But step by step, I made my way home.

It was beyond late. The fire should have been banked hours ago. But there it was, burning in the pit on the hearth, the flames silvery and eldritch. I let go my cloak of twilight and the fire turned orange and gold and ordinary.

I was so very, very tired.

"Moirin?" My mother lifted her head. She looked haggard. "I felt you coming nigh onto an hour ago. Whatever is it?"

"Cillian" I couldn't say it.

I didn't have toshe saw it in my face and rose. At the touch of her arms around me, I burst into wrenching sobs. My mother held me close and made soothing, meaningless sounds. When the storm of grief had wrung itself out, I told her how it had happened. And I told her what I'd been doing when it happened, the decision I'd made and the aftermath, my voice dry and flat. She listened without comment.

"Now you feel yourself to blame," she said softly when I had finished.

"Aye," I whispered.

My mother tilted her head. Her eyes caught the firelight and reflected it like a wild animal's. For a moment, I saw her as others did, her features marked by the stamp of the Maghuin Dhonn, uncanny and inexplicably strange. And then it passed and she was only her familiar self.

"It was his time," she said in a gentle tone. "That is all." I opened my mouth to protest, but she shook her head at me. "You could not have saved him, Moirin mine. Not without altering the course of his fate. And what followed may have been worse."

"You can't know that," I said. "Not for sure."

"No," my mother said. "No one can. But if you had gone against the truth of your heart, any promise you made him would have turned to ashes."