AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Yes, my Máthair always did.
His chest rumbles beneath my touch. “I told myself, my reasons for leaving home were noble, but ‘twas ambition that truly drove me. I stained the virtue of my intention to help my folks with glory seeking.”
“But you did good things for Father Colm, right?”
“Aye, it was my job to keep the lads wanting to become priests anonymous until he could ship them off to Spain or the Holy Father in Italy.” Torchlight shines off his tears. “A musket ball to my leg was all it took to break me and doom the good father.”
In a panic, I reach into the pocket of my dress to touch the musket ball Sionnach gave me at the gate lodge. Thankfully, it’s still wedged in a corner of fabric.
His breath stutters and catches. I stroke his curls. It takes a few minutes to calm him, but he’s able to continue. “Father Colm was arrested on my word and killed. I got free and ran to my folks, shamed and broken. I couldn’t even help Da with the fields ‘cause of my useless leg.”
The despair in his voice brings tears to my eyes.
“Da planned to indenture himself to get me and Ma to America.” He slaps the side of his thigh. “One night, I left ‘em without a word, only a letter of farewell, knowing they had clear passage money enough for two. Da could travel as a free man. No one needs the burden of a son whose cowardice destroyed a good man like Father Colm and those he would have led into a life of service. Dying from a festering wound was too good for me.”
I hold his face in my hands, stroking his strong cheekbones. “Máthair wouldn’t cut a deal with Finnbheara if she didn’t think you were worth it.”
“If I’d known of her past with the king and that such a bargain was possible, the letter with blessings for their journey and news that my end was coming fast would never have been written. Ma and Da would have sailed to America and not found out for years what became of me.” A strangled sob cuts off his words.
“Sionnach, what virtue of yours is lost?”
I’ve seen so many emotions on this man’s face, but the one he wears now breaks my heart. He’s crushed. The hope that’s driven him for two hundred years is gone. I lay a hand on the side of his neck. His pulse beats against my lifeline. “Tell me.”
The golden ring around his irises has faded to dull brown. “Sacrifice.” He stares past me. “A decent man would sacrifice himself and not speak Father Colm’s name to the English. That wasn’t the way of it with me. I failed.” Creases stretch along the sides of his mouth. “I’ve traveled back and let the soldiers beat me and offered my life instead of speaking the father’s name.” He nods his head to the window. “But I never rise. I’m never free.” His chin drops to his chest. “I wasted decades on myself that belonged to saving the other souls. My obsession with self-preservation robbed them of the devotion I owed them.”
I lay palms against his breastbone. “If trying to change your history didn’t work, there’s another answer.”
He lifts his head as if it were as heavy as one of the boulders in the river below. “This is a question that doesn’t need your solving, my darling Eala. There’s one reason Father Colm, as himself or Charlie or the other characters he’s been, chases me through the Veil. He seeks rightly deserved revenge.” He sits straighter. “As it should be. My earned fate is to spend eternity watching others sing their soulsongs and pass on, never to follow.”
I shake my head. “This isn’t right. Why would Father Colm try to keep you from saving souls? Wasn’t that his life’s work as well?”
He cradles my head in his hand. “That’s why Finnbheara sent you. For them—the souls. Not for me. Now my ma will not live in eternal disgrace because her son’s lost virtue kept others from finding theirs for so long.”
The Máthair I knew would not be consumed with her own eternal disgrace. She lived for the people she loved. Her son. Me. She asked Finnbheara for a human child to raise and love in order to save Sionnach. It’s my compassion for humanity, not any oak or swan essence that’s shown me the way to restore virtue to the souls.
The virtue of compassion my grandmother taught me.
Warmth starts at my heart and radiates through my body. Veil Sprites incandesce. As if his gentle touch rested on my shoulder, St. Augustine’s words come alive in my thoughts. “Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”
I pull the musket ball from my pocket. “You thought this was your key, didn’t you?” He nods. “You believed if you went back and were killed to protect Father Colm, your soul would be at peace. If the man was as good and holy as you claim, he’d never trade your life for his. Much less chase you across time trying to damn the entire soulfall when you fail.”
I take one of his hands in mine. “Restoring your virtue is to forgive yourself. The sacrifices you must fix are the ones you’re holding that don’t belong to you. Believe you’re worthy of your mother’s sacrifice. Allow Father Colm to be at peace for his sacrifice of giving his life to a cause he cherished. Let go of your guilt and shame. Celebrate his vision and own the good part you did play in it.”
He sets his other hand on mine. “How?”
I run a finger across my burn. Sionnach can’t dip inside a Veil in flames to parlay with the beast he thinks is Father Colm. And then it comes to me.
He needs to talk to Máthair.
Not the Glade of Chimes or New York City Máthair. His Ma.
“By going home. Tell your parents the whole truth. You turned spy because you loved them and wanted to save your family from starving. Confess your ambition if that’s what clears your conscience. Repent your part in Father Colm’s death and give your parents the chance to forgive you. You owe it to Máthair after what Finnbheara’s favor cost her.”
His gaze holds fast to mine. Slowly, I see the beginning of trust in my words easing the tension in his face.
A gust of frigid wind howls up the stairs, blowing out the torches in the room one by one except the flame closest to the archway. Sionnach puts his body between me and the stairs as a hand reaches in to snatch the single burning torch from its bracket. A figure raises the fire before him. Our visitor’s black shadow flows in an unnatural direction outward from the flame instead of reflecting on the turret wall behind.
“A miserable worm like you, spy, does not deserve forgiveness.”
