Epilogue #2
“I do not think that is possible, Lord Locke.”
He paused at that, his brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Rory drew a deep breath. “Nothing,” she lied. “So. You are here to dissolve the bond? I believe a letter would have sufficed, after all. There was no need to come all this way.”
“Perhaps I wanted to see you.”
Such an odd sensation in her chest, those words provoked. “Don’t flatter me, Lord Locke. We both know that it was merely a convenient arrangement, our marriage, from which we both benefited for a short while – nothing more.”
He smiled, and she flushed as the memory of the exact ways in which they had both benefited from their union arose, flooding her veins with an unaccustomed heat. “Very well,” he said, reaching out to brush a leaf from her shoulder. “I came here to see how you wished to proceed.”
Rory watched as Locke reached into his pocket and pulled a scrap of off-white cloth from his pocket, and in spite of herself, her breath caught in her chest. “What’s that?”
“You don’t recognize it?” The amused quirk of his lips, the gleam in his hazel eyes belied the mild surprise in his voice. “It’s our binding cloth.”
“How would I recognize it? One scrap of linen looks the same as any other.”
His gaze, bright and knowing, never wavered from her own. “So it does,” he said after a moment. “But regardless, my lady – here it is.” He held it out to her, and she watched the soft white grow darker as the rain fell, seeping into the cloth. “Do with it what you will.”
Rory’s breath shuddered out. “It should have been burnt, to dissolve the binding, and now you’ve gone and soaked it through.”
“It will dry,” he said. “Soon enough. For now, take it, my lady. It is yours to do as you see fit.”
He was very close to her now, so close that she could see the glistening drops of rain shimmering on his eyelashes, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes.
Rory looked away, down at the earth beneath their feet, half-frozen still, waiting for the warm caress of spring to bring it back to life once more.
“That’s not true,” she said after a long moment of silence – not an unpleasant or uncomfortable one, with the feel of his hazel eyes on her face and the sound of the rain falling all around them, cool and gentle and cleansing.
“We have to break the bond together, to say the dissolution vows, just as we said our first ones.”
“Do you know the words for the ritual?”
She did. It had been one of the first things which she had done when she returned to the vale, a curiosity she had yielded to during the long sleepless nights that so often plagued her.
The solar was filled with manuscripts, and it had taken her hardly any time at all to find the information she was aching to know, the lines which would forever sever him from her, if spoken – the antithesis to those ancient words which they had given to one another so reluctantly on that cold winter-worn evening as the sun settled down to sleep behind them.
She knew them by heart, as clearly and vividly as she knew the original vows.
The threads that bound us, the ties that kept us – unbraid them, unwind them, for both above the earth and beneath the sea, in the skies above and the depths below, our paths have parted.
In this life and the next, I wish you well.
Rory hesitated. “We’ll need a witness.”
“You know that we don’t. Our binding is between us, and us alone.
The witness is merely window-dressing.” He moved even closer, the cloth still clasped in his bare fingers, a silent proffering, hers for the taking, and her eyes fluttered shut in defense against the awareness of him, lean and strong and warm.
“Take the cloth,” he said, low yet firm.
“The choice belongs to you and you alone.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” The question burst out of her as she yanked away from him, unable to bear his closeness for another moment. “You severed this bond between us the very moment you rejected me.”
“Rejected you? I declared you High Queen of éire, in front of the entire damned kingdom, with all the gods as my witness.”
“Yes,” she said, sharp with scorn. “Very clever of you to do so. For how else were you to ensure the throne of Leinster was returned to you?”
His hand fell away, the rain-soaked bit of cloth hanging loose at his side. “You are angry with me.”
“I’m not.” She took another careful step backwards, away from where he stood, watching her so intently. “I merely want to know why you are neglecting your duties as king to go gallivanting about the countryside through the rain when a simple letter would have sufficed.”
“I did not reject you.”
“Save me your excuses.” Rory forced her hands to unclench, to lay flat against her thighs. “Now that you’ve had the time and space to concoct them.”
Locke said nothing for a moment, then held up the scrap of cloth, raindrops slicing like dozens of tiny, sharp-bladed knives down his face.
“I’ve rarely been honest with you, my lady,” he said, a distant rumble of thunder dulling the edges of his voice.
“Just as you have rarely been honest with me. Not much of a marriage, is it, when all one has to cling to are lies.”
“I would have died had I not deceived you,” she said. “As would you, had you not deceived me.”
“I know.” He tossed the cloth towards her, and she caught it in her hands instinctively.
“But it wasn’t all a lie, was it?” He paused, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him, keeping her gaze fixed on the cloth in her hands, its knot still tied, albeit a bit laxer than it had been when pulled tight around their hands.
“At least,” he said, and his voice was closer now, soft and steady under the drum of the rain and the roll of the thunder. “At least, not for me, it wasn’t.”
She swallowed. “No,” she said. “Nor for me.”
Then his fingers, cool and damp to the touch, were sliding through hers, tugging her forward so she could rest her forehead against his rain-soaked shoulder, his chin nestled into the wet tangle of her hair.
“I walked away from you,” he murmured into her ear, “because you were, first and foremost, my queen – the queen of all of us – and I was the king of a broken land, one that had suffered more than it deserved at the hands of those sworn to protect it, and standing by your side in that moment, as your lord rather than their leader – well.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “I don’t care,” and his arms tightened around her, welding themselves to her waist, pressing her so close to him that she could not tell where her body ended and his began.
“More importantly, however,” he said, “if I had touched you at all in that moment, my lady, I would not have done my duty to my people. I would have let myself fall into your arms, would have led us both far away from that hellhole, from all the blood and the smoke and the despair, and let the dawn swallow us both whole, disappearing over the horizon, never to be seen again.”
She laughed, a residual sob caught in her throat giving it a hoarse sound. “I ran away once before, you know, rather than do my duty.”
“Did you now?” His lips brushed against her ear, the warmth of his breath sending shivers of anticipation rushing down her spine. “How did that work out for you?”
“Poorly.”
“So you understand then, why I could not risk the temptation of letting you lead me down such a path.”
“Oh, so now I would have been the one doing the leading? Because the way I remember it –”
“Semantics,” he whispered, then pressed his lips to hers, not hungry or fierce, as before, but something far sweeter than any embrace he had yet given her.
She pulled away, breathless, heart pounding. “Do you mean this?” She asked, searching his face, his eyes, for any sign of duplicity or deceit. “Do you truly mean to make your vows to me tomorrow, and be bound to me forever, as man and wife?”
He smiled, lazy and slow. “I truly mean it,” he said. “Life is rather dull without you in it, I’ve found.”
“You’re the king of Leinster though – and I will not leave the vale, Locke. Not again.”
“I would not ask you to do so.” He tilted his head back to study the oak trees looming over them, barren of their leaves. “I could grow used to this place in time.”
“But –”
“I ceded the throne,” he said, still staring up at the cloudy sky. “To Tadhg. He’s a distant cousin, you know, thrice removed on his mother’s side, I believe, but that’s not what matters. He’ll make a far better king than I, of that you can be sure.”
“Locke.”
“I wrote to Dil, told her what I intended to do.” His shoulders fell as he let out a soft sigh.
“I suppose, even now, she did not trust me to do as I said I would do, and that’s why she didn’t tell you.
” He looked back at her then, lips quirked in a smile.
“I thought you knew, and that you would also know why I was doing so – that you would be expecting me.”
A starburst of warmth exploded in her chest, something fierce and vibrant and glowing with heat, that then immediately grew ashen as her heart sank anew. “No.”
“No, you weren’t expecting me? Yes, I realized that –”
“No,” she said again, gently pushing against his chest, trying to free herself from his arms. “No. This cannot be, Locke. We cannot be.”
He let her go, but said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
Rory inhaled shakily. “I do not mean to have children,” she said.
“I told you that, long ago, when we first met. I cannot risk allowing this – this curse to continue past me, to plague my children and grandchildren. Not only the knowings, but this power, to call forth and awaken the serpents who would destroy the world.” She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“It is a terrible thing, what lives inside me. Better to let it die with me, to let it end.”
“I agree.”
She nodded, keeping her eyes shut tight, refusing to give in to the rising sorrow in her throat. “So,” she said. “That’s that, then.”
His hands encircled her elbows, firm and steady, and she opened her eyes to see him standing close again, smiling like a loon.
“Have you learned nothing, my lady, over the course of our time together? You should know by now that I am not that easy to dispose of.” He rested his forehead against hers, nudging playfully at her nose.
“I told you once that I would be a shite father, Rory. You speak of things better left to die? Let the MacMurchada name be one of them as well. Look at the ruin and the despair my blood has brought upon our motherland. Surely that’s a fitting price to pay, that the MacMurchada line be no more.
Besides.” He ran his hands up and down his arms, soothing and slow.
“We have that gods-cursed nephew of yours to see to the raising of, now, do we not? I imagine we’ll be busy enough mitigating whatever chaos he might make without the bother of running after the little hellions you and I would surely produce together. ”
She smiled at that. “They would be hellions, wouldn’t they?”
“Without question. Liars and thieves – nay, assassins – from their very cradles, no doubt.” His lips trailed along the curve of her cheek, making their way down her throat. “Truly,” he murmured, “we’d be doing the world a mercy, sparing it of the havoc they would inevitably wreak.”
“And you would be an awful father,” she said, eyes fluttering closed as the rain and his lips swept over her skin, setting her alight with desire, with something achingly akin to happiness. “Just as I would be a terrible mother.”
“True,” he agreed. “You have about as much maternal softness in you as a rock, my lady.” She pinched his arm, and he laughed against her skin, the sound of it sending new thrills dancing along her spine.
“So we are agreed, then? You and I, throughout the years of whatever time is left to us, and whatever magic we might make together?”
“We have never once agreed on anything,” she said, and immediately regretted the loss of his lips on her skin as he pulled away.
She looked up through the gray mist of falling rain into his face – the sharp line of his jaw, the bronze of his hair, dark and dripping over his forehead, the unquenchable light of his keen hazel eyes.
Hers, she thought with a bittersweet pang. He was hers, freely offered and unconditionally given, if she wished him to be.
“Then let us agree on this one thing,” he said, a roguish grin softening the hard lines of his features that sorrows and aging had given him, so that he looked almost boyish in the foggy light of the early morn.
“And after that, we can continue our contentious ways. It’ll be a lively life, at the very least.”
He held out his hand, a silent proffering, with only her kestrel and the trees and the rain to witness his making of this vow.
Rory closed her eyes for the briefest moment, a storm of bittersweet memories swirling through her, the good and the bad, the sorrowful and the blessed, and then bid a silent farewell to all her former griefs and her joys alike.
She opened her eyes to see him still standing before her, hand outstretched, patient and smiling, yet intense, as though he knew what momentous thing had passed through her in that brief silence.
Without saying a word, Rory reached out, and placed her palm against his, fingers twining tight with his own, and squeezed.
Yes, it said, without words, without speech. To you I grant my living and my dying, that neither above the earth nor beneath the sea, in the skies above or the depths below – none shall part our love.
They stood for a moment, hands and hearts intertwined, then Rory smiled up at him, reaching out to wipe the rain from his brow. “Come along,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
THE END