Chapter 13 #2
I kiss the top of her head. “Mark’s beats just as steadily.
” And I flinch a little, having unintentionally wounded myself with my comfort, because now I am remembering, viscerally, how it felt to use his chest as a pillow.
How it felt to be gathered up in his arms after whatever display of absolute depravity and hear the beautiful lub-dub, lub-dub of his heartbeat.
“It won’t be forever,” she says quietly, almost to herself. “Just until Ys is gone.”
“And your uncle?” I ask in a gentle murmur. “Will you let Mark kill him?”
She looks down at where her free hand rests in her lap. Her honeysuckle engagement ring is a shimmer of ruby and gold from the deep navy of her skirt. “I don’t know,” she says bleakly.
But I think she does. I hope she does. I might be angry that Mark has used us, and I might be hurt that his single-minded need for revenge will always come first, but I’ll never be upset about a world where Mortimer Cashel can’t reach Isolde any longer.
The candle flame flickers once but rears up again, not quite done. Hot wax slides down the sconce of the candelabra, and I look away before my thoughts are no longer under my control.
“Promise me that you will stay here,” I ask. “Promise me that you won’t take missions for your uncle, that you won’t take risks you don’t need to take. I know you’re not sure what you believe right now, and I know Mark has deceived you before, but I—I don’t think he’s lying about this.”
She lets out a breath, one I can’t hear, can only feel.
“I used to want nothing more than to be kept in a cloister, to have my days and nights hemmed in by prayer and routine. How peculiar that I’m to be cloistered now, yet it’s the last thing I could ever want.”
“None of us are doing what we want right now, Isolde. Not even Mark.”
The flame is playing hide-and-seek now, dipping low and surging high and then almost disappearing again.
“Then you make a promise to me,” she says. “If I’m to obey and become a meek little nun of Lyonesse, then I want something in return.”
“Anything.”
She pulls back to look at me, and there’s fond exasperation on her face. “You are too trusting. Do not promise me anything .”
“I can’t help it.” I offer her a weak smile. It’s who I am. It’s how I love. With a sickness I’ve never been able to cure.
She huffs a soundless laugh. “Fine then. I want you to call for me if you need me. I mean it, Tristan. I know you’re the bodyguard, used to keeping everyone safe, and I know you’re used to a certain loneliness and left-behind-ness, and you think you don’t deserve anything else.
But promise me that if you need me, you’ll tell me.
And I’ll come. I don’t care if it means my uncle tries to kill me or if it destroys the club—I’m yours the moment you ask. ”
I kiss the side of her mouth. “Is that all?” I ask. “That’s such a small thing.”
She sighs. “Did you think I was going to demand that you sneak back to Lyonesse every chance you can? Or command you to do everything that’s asked of you in my name? I just don’t want you to face something awful without someone by your side, that’s all.”
The flame finally, finally gives up, winking out as a thread of smoke twirls up from the charred wick.
We both hold our breath. Now that the moment is here, it feels impossible, wrong.
Combat was like this—with a stillness and a quiet and an emptiness of action that began to feel permanent, felt like the truth of things, no matter how uneasy.
Until the moment it wasn’t, until it was time to move from an outpost or kick down a door, and suddenly there was no longer any such thing as truth or reality, and everything took on the blur of a hideous dream.
But like with combat, you can’t wait for the moment to come to you. You must meet it, and meet it as well as you can. I set Isolde on her feet, and then I stand too. I take her hand in mine.
“Will you see me off?” I ask, guessing the answer from the slowly shrouding light in her gaze. She’s already closing the doors on herself, clamping down on the wound.
“I think it’s better if I stay here,” she says. “You should have a chance to say goodbye to Mark privately as well. And I…” A self-deprecating smile. “I might try to sneak into your suitcase if given half a chance.”
I want to kiss her. I want to feel the plump give of her lips against mine, lick gently at them until she opens up for me, and then I want to taste her mouth one last time. Who knows how long it will be before we can be together again?
And even after Ys is gone…then what? Will Mark allow us all to be together, like we were so briefly on Samhain? Or will he be too wounded by everything that’s happened, too jealous to try again?
I don’t kiss her mouth. It feels too final somehow, too scripted. Lovers parting in a staged tragedy. Instead, I kiss her fingers, pressing my lips to her knuckles and closing my eyes for the space of a single breath.
“I love you,” I murmur, casting my eyes up from where I still hover over her hand. “I’ll love you past death itself. Into heaven.”
“If only I believed I could meet you there,” she whispers. “I love you with whatever eternity is left inside me. I?—”
Tears are caught on her eyelashes like dew, and she sucks in a breath and whirls away, yanking her hand free of mine in the process. She strides away from me, toward Mark’s bedroom, and closes the door without looking back.
I can still feel the lingering warmth of her fingers on my lips.