Chapter 33
Chapter thirty-three
FINN
Wife.
Her beautiful face grew thunderous at the endearment – an ominous sign, one that did not bode well for him.
“Your wife?” She seemed to grow taller somehow, sitting astride her luminous white mare, staring down at where he remained bent low at the waist. “I am surprised to hear you name me as such, my fawn, since you forsook those vows you made to me. Do you not remember?”
“I do,” he said, daring to straighten slightly, his hands still pressed beseechingly against the cool damp earth.
“I have no justification for my abandonment of our marriage-bond.” Despite her answering silence, the flash in her lilac-colored eyes spoke volumes.
“I know that to request your forgiveness is an impossible thing, but I ask you, dear wife, I implore you to extend your clemency, that generosity of spirit of which the great bards of éire once sang, that was so revered throughout our land.”
“And what mercy,” she asked, nudging her mare a few steps forward to loom over him, “would you ask of me, whom you scorned?”
He dared not so much as flinch even when her mare’s hooves danced dangerously near to where his fingers lay splayed out on the ground.
“I am denied entry to the realm of Magh Meall,” he said.
“Forbidden to set foot upon the plains of delight. I ask that you grant me passage beyond the star-studded sea, so that I might enter the realm of eternal hope once more, for the sake of my homeland, that it might survive the encroaching storm that threatens to swallow it whole.”
“You speak of the Bright One,” she said, and he risked a glance upwards at her face, framed by the cascading waterfall of her white-golden hair. “The cailleach of the western realms, once-beloved of Manannán mac Lir.”
“Yes.” Hope fluttered in his chest, a fragile blossoming.
She had always hated the cailleachs. All the old gods did.
“She threatens to destroy the land that I love, the land that your kin first came to so many millennia ago, which they protected and loved for so long. I ask that you help me now, despite the wrong which I have done to you, in order to save that same land from a terrible fate.”
She studied him, her lilac eyes darkening to a deep, intense violet.
With a single fluid motion, she swung down from her mare, white skirts whirling, and it took all his willpower to remain unflinching and still when she reached out to cup his cheek in her palm.
“What price will you pay,” she asked, deceptively soft, “for this clemency to which you have no claim?”
He had prepared himself for this, steeling himself to submit to whatever request she might make of him. “Anything,” he said. “I will pay any price.”
“Then,” she said, the caress of her hand disappearing from his skin. “I ask that you return what I gifted you, my fawn.”
Finn’s stomach tightened.
He had not been expecting that.
“You no longer have need of it,” she said coolly, as though sensing his hesitation. “You have admitted that we are forsworn, that you do not intend to return to my arms and my bed.”
“I would,” he said through stiff lips, “if it would please my wife.”
She smiled, an ugly thing that marred the otherwise golden perfection of her face. “It would not please her – to be forced to beg for the grace of your touch? To wheedle and bargain for my beloved’s attention? Do you think, my fawn, that would be particularly pleasing to me, to my pride?”
He shook his head, heart thundering in his chest as he contemplated it, the consequences of what he would be agreeing to, should he return this particular gift of his erstwhile wife’s.
“You ask for mercy,” she said after a moment, long-tipped nails tapping against one another.
“I shall grant you this boon, then, in memory of our time together, and the pleasures you did once provide to me.” She leaned forward, her golden hair glinting with the movement as it fell over her shoulder to brush against his cheek.
“You may keep my gift,” she whispered into his ear.
“Keep it forever, if you like – so long as you do not use your other gifts, my fawn.”
“Please –”
“This is my mercy,” she said, pale lips smiling in a vague, cruel way, as though she knew the exact manner of the choice that would soon face him, by placing this condition upon him – the safety and security of his home and his queen, or his own.
“The only one you shall receive from me, and more than you deserve. Keep my gift, enjoy its blessing as you like, but as a mortal man like any other, bereft of story and song.”
“This is no life, to which you condemn me,” said Finn, rising to his feet to meet her gaze head-on, a reckless defiance thrumming through him. “It is a living death.”
“I condemn you to nothing.” She stepped in close to where he stood before her, eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder, and ran her palms across his broad chest. “It is your choice to make, my fawn – as it was yours to break the vow you made to me.” She stepped backwards, gliding towards her waiting mare.
“Let us see how much you are willing to sacrifice for this land which you loved so much more than me.”
He inhaled a shallow breath. “And what of my initial request?” He forced himself to ask as she mounted her mare in that same smooth, graceful way.
“You have your vengeance. You have condemned me to choose between two unwelcome fates. I accept your justice, your ruling. Will you now grant me passage across the star-studded sea, or no?”
She opened her mouth to answer – and then went rigid, her ever-present grace vanishing from her lithe form.
Instinctively, Finn reached up to where she sat frozen on the bare back of her white mare, but she held up a hand in wordless command, tremors shuddering through her as she bent over her steed’s neck, gasping for breath.
She raised her lilac eyes, gone milk-white and hollow, to his face. “No,” she said, the incandescent beauty of her features distorting, twisting with something that he would have thought, had it been anyone other than an all-powerful immortal such as herself, might have been terror.
“It has happened,” she said, and Finn somehow knew – knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, what – who – had evoked such dread in a deathless goddess. “A terrible darkness has been reborn.”