Chapter 4 #2
As he sang, éadha saw the two of them riding west together as Lambay apprentices to join the Channellers’ never-ending battle against the dragons.
Fighting together, shoulder to shoulder.
And the longing to tell Ionáin about her new gift was so strong that before she could even remember her promise to Magret, she’d climbed to her feet, her mouth open to tell him everything, just as she always had her whole life.
The look of strain that came over his face as he finished singing stopped her.
“I only came in because Béithe sent me. She wanted me to make sure it’s clean, in case Lady Ferne wants to sit here. But I’m glad I found you. I need to talk to you about yesterday.”
éadha stared, the words she was about to say dying on her lips. Why wasn’t he meeting her eyes anymore? Why had one hand gone to his head, twisting into his tangled mop, his old familiar tell of worry?
“I shouldn’t have done that. Kiss you.”
A chasm seemed to open up inside her. How could he think that moment they’d shared had been something wrong?
Glancing up and seeing the expression in her eyes, Ionáin hurried on.
“I mean, not that I didn’t want to.” He flushed, and his voice trailed away.
They were so close they were almost touching, and the longing that surged inside her was as sharp and strong as the twist of her power last night—to reach up and cup his cheek, to turn his mouth to hers.
To see if the same shock would go through them, if his lips were as firm and as warm as she remembered.
She could see, too, the same question in his eyes.
In the way they were locked on her lips now, as if they held the only answer to that question.
Her hand was already beginning to lift toward him when he finished more quietly, “But I’ve no right to do anything like that. Not until after my Reckoning.”
éadha dropped her hand, frowning in confusion. “But it doesn’t make any difference to me what happens at your Reckoning. It never has, not ever.”
Ionáin half smiled, the look of strain on his face fading as he said, “You know you’re the only person on all of Domhain I’d believe when they said that?”
“Well then?” said éadha.
“You know if I fail I’ll be sent to Westport and I probably won’t come back. I can’t tie you to me while that still might happen. It wouldn’t be right.” At his words, éadha’s new power surged furiously. Let them try, she thought.
Ionáin was still talking. “And it matters to me, too, whether I pass or not. I need to know who I am before…before I start anything else. Even that.”
“Why?” she said stubbornly. “You’ll still be you, I’ll still be me. We’ll still be us regardless. Power won’t change who you are.”
Ionáin looked at her directly then, and just for that moment, of the two of them, he seemed for the first time ever to be the older one. “You know that’s not true, éadha. Not on Domhain.”
And éadha remembered the power flooding into her last night.
How it’d changed her whole sense of the world, made it seem limitless, and she knew even though she’d told the truth, Ionáin was right too.
In the same moment she also realized it wouldn’t be right to blurt out the news of her own gift to him.
Not while he was still trapped like this, in an agony of waiting to find out whether he’d a gift of his own.
It wasn’t, she thought, that Ionáin wanted just anyone to be the Keep’s Channeller; he wanted to be the one to save his Family.
Even as she thought this, Ionáin leaned in to her again, this time resting his forehead against hers.
She could feel his warm breath soft on her cheek, and an involuntary shudder went through her at the heat of it.
Reaching down, he caught her hand, stroking his thumb along the inside of her palm, and it felt like she was being marked, that if she looked down she’d see a line drawn across her skin.
“This’d be a lot easier if you weren’t right here though.
” He lifted his other hand to tuck a stray curl behind her ear.
éadha swallowed, her throat going dry at the absorption in those blue eyes now.
As if he couldn’t help himself, his finger slid down to the sensitive skin behind her earlobe, then traced slowly along the line of her jaw, coming to rest against her mouth.
Without thinking, her lips parted at his touch, so his index finger slipped down to rest on the top of her lower lip.
Ionáin’s eyes widened, and for a second she thought his self-control would break, but then he let out a frustrated growl and stepped back, raising his hands in the air like someone pleading for a truce.
“This is only going to work if I don’t touch you. Possibly also don’t look at you. So maybe you go over there”—he pointed to the other side of the stream—“while I stay here. Push me in the stream if I look like I’m cracking.”
éadha grinned suddenly at how ridiculous this was: two old friends suddenly not able to stand beside each other. “I think we’ll manage,” she scoffed.
“Speak for yourself” was all Ionáin said as he bent to begin gathering up shards of broken tiles, and after a minute, she crouched down to help him.
By noon they’d tidied the Lady’s Well to Béithe’s grudging satisfaction.
But there was to be no letup from Reckoning preparations, as she immediately sent éadha up to the East Tower to help her aunt and the other seamstresses with Ionáin’s formal Reckoning robes while Ionáin was told to go and entertain the newly arrived guests.
éadha’s heart sank; she was well aware of how clumsy her fingers and how precious the robes were, handed down through generations of Ailm lords.
Her aunt greeted her with a matter-of-fact “You can hem the undergarments. That way if you prick your finger and get blood on them, no one will see it.”
Relieved, she settled down in a corner of the high, bright sewing room.
The hemming was mechanical work, and her mind was free to wander into daydreams of her aunt’s face and the faces of the other women in the room when they found out she was gifted in just a few days’ time.
After an hour or so, though, the peace in the room was broken as Lady úra, Lady Ferne, and her attendants swept in, pulling Ionáin along in their wake.
The new guests, it seemed, wanted to see Ionáin dressed in his ceremonial robes.
Watching from her corner, éadha groaned inwardly, knowing how much Ionáin despised all this. The fuss, the women cooing and laughing around him.
Lady Ferne was talking to her sister-in-law as they both sat down. “You know my view, úra. You need to be thinking about pairings already. Lambay is too late. Have you thought about the Manon girl? If her father would consider Ionáin, she’ll be this year’s prize, no doubt.”
úra smiled politely but didn’t respond directly, instead saying, “Indeed, Ferne. I think, though, we’re ready now for the fitting.”
éadha’s aunt stepped forward with the heavy robe.
The room fell quiet as Ionáin began to strip, and though éadha knew he loathed being put on display like this, she still felt proud of the way he held himself there in the center of the room.
As he tugged his tunic off, her heart twisted in sudden longing to see his lithe frame appear, tanned a golden brown.
The narrow hips framed by slim-fitting pants, his long, finely muscled legs.
But, like everyone else in Ailm’s Keep, he was also especially lean after a lifetime of tight rations, and as soon as the robe was draped across him, it was obvious it’d need to be taken in.
“Well, if even the robe doesn’t fit…”
It was Lady Ferne again, her voice loud in the silence, while her attendants turned their faces away, tittering. éadha felt her new gift stir into restless, furious life. How dare they? She had to fight down a sudden urge to lash out.
“Remove it, please,” said Lady úra, her voice tight.
But the robe’s gold ties had become knotted.
For a few horribly long moments, Ionáin was stuck, surrounded by a huddle of women nervously unpicking the knots.
Finally they released him, and he strode out of the room without a word.
éadha tried to catch his eyes, but they were fixed on the door, and in a moment he was gone.
Later she went looking for him, clambering up onto the Keep roof, even hiking out into the forest, but no one could hide like Ionáin when he didn’t want to be found.
The next morning, she woke before dawn. Her sleep had been broken by a nightmare in which she’d taken Ionáin’s place in the sewing room, trapped, immobile beneath the jeweled carapace of heavy robes.
She’d stood surrounded by a throng of noblewomen pressing in on her, watching her in scornful silence as she tried again and again to find and hold a thread of power and channel it through a needle held by Lady Ferne.
When she woke with a start, in her mind’s eye she sensed at once two silver threads shimmering in the air in front of her.
Just like the ones she’d seen before on the fell and in the courtyard.
Still not fully awake, her heart pounding from the nightmare, she reached out toward one of them without thinking.
Catching it with her awareness and unspooling it very gently toward her.
As she did, a shock ran through her. Where before she’d drawn power from the threads only to fling it out immediately once more, this time she just lay there for a moment, letting it pour softly into her.