Epilogue
Six months after Rory O Conchúir, the High Queen of éire, knelt before the Lia Fáil and heard its roar shake the earth for the first time in a thousand years, she awoke just before the dawn, as she always did, and went for a walk in the rain among the trees surrounding the castle of her mother and her grandmother before her in the vale of Inagh.
It was a breaking of tradition, her decision to forgo the ancient seat of the High Kings of éire at Tara and rule from this quiet corner of the realm, but it was necessary.
She had tried, but every time she looked out across the green-grassed plains of her new kingdom, she could still see them, the shadowy echoes of her greatest griefs.
Finn’s broad shoulders withered away into dust and bone. Niall’s shattered blue eyes.
Locke, walking away from her, that unspoken, unwavering rejection – that brief vision of hope, of happiness, fading into nothingness along with him.
She had been wrong, when she was a girl – ghosts were real, far more real than most of the living, perhaps the realest thing of all, and their presence was too terrible of a burden for her to bear.
So she had done what her brother had always wished her to do, what she should have done years ago.
She went home.
Six months, and at long last, the lingering scars of war – the screams and the wails; the clash of steel and the grunts of so many swords ravaging skin; the blood, oceans upon oceans of it, faces bathed in it, hands awash in it, seeping into the once-green earth; the scampering of rats and the circling of the crows – it felt as though those scars were finally healing.
As though she were healing.
The woods helped too – the soothing shadows of the trees, the warbling call of the birds and the rustling of the hares in the bushes, the dappled sunlight dancing through the branches and warming her bare arms. Murph helped as well, perched on her shoulder, nibbling reassuringly on her ear when the shudderings and the shakings became too much to bear, when she had to brace herself against a tree, hands on her knees, until her breathing grew steady again, in and out, slow and sure, and she could resume her walk.
She hadn’t thought it possible at the time, but the boy had helped too, with his straw-blonde hair and too-blue eyes and rare but heartbreakingly familiar crooked smile.
Miach, he was called now. Rory had thought it a judicious decision to rename him, this sometime-son of her brother’s, to bless him with a new identity and a new path, and the hero from a sad tale of a resentful father and a murdered son and a sorrowing sister seemed fitting.
He was a sweet enough lad, as far as world-devouring monsters go, with a good head for mathematics and an enthusiastic if somewhat unnerving love for blood-pudding.
Little Micah, her brother’s monster-child, and the three serpents slumbering deep within his chest, who would only wake if she were to will them to.
Rory was fairly certain that she never would.
She had had enough of nightmares, of myths and monsters – enough of blood.
Dil stayed close, too, rattling about the vale with unshakeable good cheer, a steward of indefatigable dedication and affection.
It was nice, sitting in the solar in the twilight, a fire burning low in the hearth, her feet tucked underneath her and her hands wrapped around a goblet of wine, listening to Dil laugh and chatter with the other stewards, even if she herself said nothing, but merely sipped her wine and drank it all in, the soothing sounds of peace and of home.
At long last, she was home.
If she thought about Locke in the deep quiet of the night, lying alone in her soft bed – imagine what magic we might make if we ever found ourselves in a true bed together, my lady – piled high with furs and goose-down pillows, she made sure it was a fleeting thought, no self-indulgent flights of fancy about where he might be or who he was with.
If he might ever think of her on such silent, interminable nights, an endless dark sky void of stars.
To you shall I be the star in the night, the brightness of the day.
She would roll onto her stomach whenever the memory of his voice, his bright hazel eyes, boring into her own, washed over her, pressing her face into the pillow until her eyes burned and her lungs ached from the lack of a full breath.
Just because it had become true for her, she reminded herself, did not mean that it had been true for him.
He had what he wanted – his birthright, his throne – and she had what she wanted – her vengeance – and all was well.
As for that brief glimpse of the future that might have been, that feeble, flickering candle of promises never-ending, it was for the best that it remain merely a distant dream of a memory, the ghost of a life she’d never deserved in the first place, sent to haunt her in the night and sometimes in the waking hours too, and nothing more.
So yes. All was well.
She repeated this to herself again as she walked through the rain early one morning, a fortnight before Imbolc.
She had woken in the dark, aching for him – the whisper of him in her ear, the feel of his fingers entwined in her own, the warmth of his body curled against hers – and had spent the rest of the night reading by the fire, avoiding sleep and the too-cruel dreams that would no doubt plague her if she succumbed to slumber.
A soft patter of rain against her window roused her from her reading just before dawn, and on impulse, she dressed, warm woolen breeches and a snug sheepskin doublet and thick leather boots.
She braided her hair with quick, practiced strokes as she slipped down the stairs through the still-sleeping castle, pausing only to tug on her cloak and pull her hood over her eyes as she stepped out into the rain and headed for the trees.
Murph followed, as he always did, orange eyes scanning the shadows for mice, his gray-and-black wings melding as one with the forlorn mist that lay heavy over the glen – and Failinis too, the hellhound of Lugh now dwarfed, after the curse the witch had struck his heart, into a rough-haired, average-sized dog.
Rory let her fingers trail along the trunks of the evergreen trees, inhaling deep the scent of cedar and petrichor and home, and whispered her mantra to herself – all is well, all is well – familiar and constant as the sunrise.
If she said it often enough, then surely, soon all would, in fact, be well.
From far above, Murph gave a low screech of warning, as Failinis paused, ears pricked, and Rory spun around, a too-familiar panic rising in her chest.
“Easy, my lady,” said Locke, drenched to the bone, his bronze hair plastered against his forehead. “I didn’t come all this way only for you to at last kill me dead once and for all.”
She let out her breath in a whoosh as Failinis bounded forward, tail whipping joyfully. “You arse,” she said. “You frightened me.”
“At long last,” he said, gently pushing aside the hound’s enthusiastic ministrations. “We are even. After all, you frightened me every day of our acquaintance.”
For a moment, it almost toppled her, the sight of his smile, the wry drawl of his voice, and she nearly threw herself into his arms, desperate for his warmth.
But then the memory of his distant face, the sight of his back walking away from her, rose like a thundercloud in her mind, and she caught herself. “What are you doing here?”
“Can a man not take a three-day ride through the rain to come and see his wife?”
“Another man might,” she said dryly as Failinis bounded off into the rain-soaked trees, hot in pursuit of a brown-eared hare that had dared to brave the chilly morning mist. “You would not. You would wait for dry weather and auspicious skies, and even then, I imagine you’d still think twice.”
He smiled. “How well you know me, my lady.”
Her bruised and half-broken heart mewled softly, a keening wail of sorrow at the sight of his smile, but her expression did not change.
She would never let him know, this husband of hers, that he had ever possessed the power of wounding her.
“You might have written first, you know,” she said, “to let me know that you were coming.”
“I thought about it, but then I said to myself, why bother? She’ll know I’m wanting to see her.” He tilted his head, hazel eyes shining even through the mist of falling rain. “Won’t she?”
“She would not.” Rory slipped her hands inside her cloak, ostensibly to protect them from the chill of the rain, and not because she wished to find their trembling from his keen gaze. “She does not consult with the shadows any longer, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s a pity. It is a very handy gift, those shadows of yours.”
“You did not think so, at one point in time.”
“Well,” he said. “I was young, and foolish.”
“And now, a mere twelve-month later, you consider yourself to be old, and wise?”
“Very much older,” he said with a smile, stepping closer as the rain drummed harder all around them and the wind began to whine high in the branches of the trees. “Marriage will age a man considerably, you know. Not much wiser, I’m afraid though.”
She looked down at the leaves beneath her feet, the rain pooling in puddles all around her. “Dil says that your reports from Leinster are always timely,” she said. “Very circumspect and thorough. You are proving, it would seem, to be a rather good king.”
“I hope so. It’s a bit boring, though. No one warned me of that.”
“I believe that I did,” said Rory dryly, and his smile widened.
“So you did, my lady. So you did.”
For a moment, the only sound was the drum of the rain and the howl of the wind, until Rory at last cleared her throat. “Why are you here, Locke?”
His brows arched. “The feast of Imbolc is in a fortnight.”
“Yes? And?”
“And,” he said gently. “Tomorrow marks a year and a day since first our hands were bound.”
Her heart stilled for a moment in her chest. “So it does. I had forgotten.”
“You wound me, my lady.”