“Och, lass,” he whispered against her hair. “I am sorry. I am that sorry for all o’ it.”
With her face against his shoulder, she said, “The druids teach that we live not one life, but many. Do ye think that is true? D’ye think we will see them again? Be once more in their company?”
“I hope so.”
And might she meet this man again, be with him time after time? Safe and at home in his presence? But he was not hers. He was not hers yet.
She lifted her face and gazed into his eyes. At what she saw there, all the breath left her body.
The kiss, as inevitable as her heartbeat, breathed new life into her body. Born like a flame, it unfurled deep in her belly and rose, spreading warmth to every limb, melting the numbness that had held her tight. Her lips, as she knew from that moment, belonged to this man. Her heart to him. Her life.
“Liadan. Och, Liadan.” He breathed her name before drawing her to him with such power, her feet left the floor. The second kiss begged entry, and she granted that to him, opened and let him in, tongue on tongue, soul to soul. At that moment she thought she caught a glimpse of her destiny.
When the kiss broke, they were both breathless. She caught his face between her palms and gazed into his eyes. She sought words. Found none.
He rested his forehead against hers and they clung, clung while their hearts settled within, while their beings aligned.
“If we return here,” she said at last, fumbling for the words as if for a foreign tongue, “can we be together?”
“Together?”
“Man and woman.”
“Is that what ye want? Liadan, is that what—”
“It is all I want.”
He drew a breath, and she saw his thoughts move in his eyes. He had killed her brother, or so their society claimed. He was here in her brother’s place, as blood to her. She did not know if they would ever be given permission to handfast.
As impossible as the rest of their world.
But he nodded. “I will make it happen.”
“Then we will return here.” She stepped away from him and looked around the hut. “I will clear the place out. Ch-change it.” If she could. So many memories here. It would be a hard task.
For him, she could do anything.
He drew her back to him for one more precious moment. Kissed the palm of each hand, dropped small, soft kisses on the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, her forehead.
“I must go to practice.”
“So ye must.”
He did not want to leave her. She could feel that in him. He did not need to say.
“I will see ye after,” she promised. But when she watched him duck back out through the door, it brought a pang to her heart.
She had learned that each and every parting could be final. Attack and separation could occur at any moment.
Only the love remained.
Did she love Ardahl MacCormac? She asked herself that question as she worked in the hut, tore it apart inside even more thoroughly than had the invaders. Dragged all the furnishings outside. Swept and shook and purged.
She decided what she felt could not be mere love. Not as she understood that emotion. Love could be strong, aye, but it was also soft. Reassuring. This that she felt for Ardahl reassured her, true, as did nothing else. It also terrified her with its depthof need and its power, a power that had taken the man from a serpent in her eyes to—
But that was where she stuttered and her understanding failed.
She stood with the blanket from Conall’s sleeping place in her hands, arrested by the intensity of what she felt and could not name.
