Chapter 43
Chapter forty-three
RORY
As a matter of fact, it would be several tomorrows before they would ride to war.
“It’s not your fault,” Locke said a few nights later, for at least the tenth time since Finn had pulled her aside to whisper delicately in her ear that to ride out to battle the following morning with so little preparation would be, at best, a quick path to mass suicide.
“It was an emotionally fraught moment for you, for all of us, and again – it really did pack a punch, so to speak, in the moment. Very inspiring, and whatnot.”
“Except that I was wrong.” Rory scowled as she stalked across the darkening encampment, all the other kings having retired to their respective tents to rest before the planned assault on the Albion forces in the morning.
“Merely a matter of semantics,” Locke said soothingly. “Tomorrow, three days, a month – really, all that matters is that you sounded ever so dramatic,” he said now. “An impressive declaration.”
“I sounded like a fool.” Rory threw aside the flap to her tent and stormed inside, and Locke, without any hesitation, followed her.
They had not been alone together in months, Rory realized with a sudden, not-unpleasant jolt of anticipation.
She shook her head, turning to face him.
“The truth is, Locke, I know nothing of war, or what to expect tomorrow morn when we take our stand on the field. Imagine the irony of that, if you will. I wield the magic of the Mórrígan, the goddess of war herself, and I haven’t the faintest idea of the workings of warfare or battle strategy or – or any of it. ”
He edged closer, handing her a goblet of wine. Rory accepted it without hesitation, taking a long, fortifying drink. “Honestly,” said Locke, “nor do I, my lady.”
“Oh, yes, you do. You fought in the last war, with Ironstring. You know plenty of the terrible truths of war, I am sure.” She waved her hand, cutting off whatever objection he was about to make.
“Besides, you were a prince, with all the training and study given to a future king. I remember the lessons given to Niall that I was not deemed important enough to be a part of – lessons of war that I was not taught, nor did I have much interest in learning, to be honest.” She sighed. “Much good it did him.”
“As depressing as that is,” said Locke, “take heart from that very fact, my lady – and also from the fact that we have Oisín, the greatest warrior ever to walk the earth of éire to ride into battle by our side.” He shot her a sly grin. “Well, greatest warrior, save Cuchulainn himself, of course.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “That was our first fight,” she said. “On the day we met”
“The first of many.” He stretched his legs out in front of him, rolling his shoulders as he relaxed into the chair. “We are like oil and water, my lady – doomed to always be at odds.”
“Not always, it would seem.” It was as much as she dared to say about that moment a few nights ago when she had watched him kneel before her in the dirt, head bowed with his back to two of the deadliest enemies they would ever face, utterly defenseless but equally trusting of her to protect him, to defend him from harm.
The sword in his hand, she thought with a strange swelling sensation in her chest. The shield at his back.
“Och, well.” He gave a small shrug. “It serves my interests. Who better to restore to me the throne my father forfeited than a High Queen of éire?”
The warm sensation deflated. “True.” She swallowed, trying to rid herself of the bitter taste that had suddenly coated her tongue. “Which I will, of course, grant you, as I once promised.”
“You did fulfill your end of the bargain,” said Locke absently, running a finger along the rim of his goblet.
“I stumbled over the corpse of my father while chasing after you that night, you know. He had been properly eviscerated. Excellent knife-work from you, that.” He smiled a smile that had none of that warm, affectionate humor that she had come to expect from him in recent weeks, but more in keeping with the Locke she had first known – cunning and sly, full of duplicitous meanings.
“Even without your magic, you proved yourself a true killer.”
For the world, she would not have let him see her flinch, but she felt the blow of his words all the same, a rising welt on that secret tender part of her soul which she had allowed him to glimpse and to come to know, one that would darken to a throbbing, long-lingering bruise of hurt.
“I tried to warn you of as much,” she said crisply, setting aside the half-drunk wine and rising from her chair.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak with Finn, and then retire.
I am quite exhausted, so if you would be so kind as to be gone from my tent by the time that I return, I would appreciate it. ”
She turned away, then stopped at the feel of his hand against her forearm, light and tentative. “Rory,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She kept her back to him, gaze fixed on the flap of her tent. “No need to apologize,” she said. “You spoke the truth.”
“Rory,” he said again, and this time it was a struggle not to look back at him, to resist the pleading crack of his voice as he said her name, so soft and so sad.
“I’m in a black mood, I admit it, and am lashing out unjustly.
I should not have said that.” She remained silent, and the pressure of his fingers tightened.
“It rankled,” he said, “to hear it from your lips – that I fought alongside them, alongside Ironstring. It is true, I don’t deny it, and yet…
it rankled, that I stood by while my father committed unforgivable atrocities.
” She heard the rattle in his throat as he exhaled.
“I should not been cruel to you,” he said again, “should not have taunted you with my father’s death. ”
“And yet you are quite right. I did kill him.”
“I hated my father,” he countered. “In fact, I distinctly remember asking you to kill my father.”
“Yes, as a trap,” she said. “As a way to try and lure me into your confidence, to gain my trust so that I would not suspect what doom it was you were leading me towards.”
“Perhaps it began that way.” His hand fell away as he rose to stand behind her, hovering at her shoulder, his breath caressing her ear. “We both know that it is not how it ended.”
Rory drew in a steadying breath. “I really do need to speak with Finn.”
A heavy pause. “All right,” he said after a moment. “Will you still be wanting me gone when you return, my lady, or will I be welcome here once you’re finished?”
“Are you asking if I am willing to sleep with you, Lord Locke?”
“I certainly wouldn’t say no,” he said, a hint of his former lightness returning to his voice. “After all, it has been months, if you might recall. But that is not in fact what I am asking – only that I might wait for you to return, so that we can finish this conversation properly.”
She thought about it – balancing the hurt of his words and the healing warmth of his hands on her skin, the heavy burdening of her mind and the lightness, the delicious absence of all coherent thought she felt when they were together.
How, for a moment, there would be nothing between them but the night, brow to brow as they lost themselves in one another.
“You may stay,” she said, “so that we can talk.” She pulled aside the tent flap and walked out into the night without looking back. “We’ll see how that goes before deciding about the rest.”
She left without waiting for an answer, pushing Locke and his wounding words and his clever hands from her mind, seeking the familiar shape of Finn’s shoulders in the darkness, barely illuminated by the faint starlight in the moonless sky, sitting by the banks of the river in the distance.
Rory moved through the tents, ignoring the weight of the soldiers’ stares on her back as she left the cluster of tents, and sank down without a word onto the damp riverbank next to Finn.
For a long while, they sat in silence, listening to the rumble of the river below them, both of their heads tipped back to stare up at the vast abyss of the starry sky. “Finn,” she said at last. “I don’t want to die.”
“Neither do I,” he said, unsurprised by her sudden declaration.
“I have dreaded it for five centuries now. Yet it comes to us all, in the end, when our allotted time has been spent.” He looked down at his hands.
“But do not be afraid, a bhréone. I do not think that it is yet your time. I think that you have not accomplished all that you were meant to do.”
“I might tomorrow,” she said. “Perhaps then the goddess who gave me these gifts will think that I have wielded them for too long and strip them away from my corpse.”
Finn nudged her shoulder with his own. “In that case,” he said, “I promise you, that if I am yet living when she arrives, she shall do so over my dead body.”
Impossibly, Rory laughed. “You would fight the goddess of war and fate, the Phantom Queen, for the sake of a dead woman, Finn? You’re a fool.”
“But I am your fool,” he said. “Your faithful servant, even unto death.”
Her laugh gentled into a sad smile. “I want you to know,” she said, “that Pól ó Flannagáin may have sired me, but when I enter the realm of the dead and the lady of death asks for my name, I will tell her that I am Rory ó Conchúir, daughter of Líadain, and that Finn the bárd, once known as Oisín mac Cumhaill, was the only true father that I ever knew.”
His head dipped, eyes fluttering closed. “You honor me, a bhréone.”
“Thank you for getting me out of that cell, Finn,” she whispered, reaching out to clasp his hand in her own. “No matter what happens tomorrow, thank you for bringing me home.”