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This matter between them had nothing to do with ruination or fortifications. It concerned something else entirely. And ’twas time for him to acknowledge it, before he left her behind, lying to himself as he broke her heart.
Then, by the window, she heard the others. Small groups of men, talking, murmuring among themselves, like the buzzing of bees. Or a stampede from far away. She tipped her head out the window and listened hard. They were talking about war.
They were talking about her.
She pulled her head back inside, threw on a yellow overtunic, flung a cape over her shoulders and marched down to the hall.
She did, though, do one thing Finian had bid. She kept her blade close.
“I’ll not return her,” Finian kept repeating, after the other men had left. Each time he repeated it, his heart sank further. Until finally the king nodded grimly.
“So you love her.”
Finian threw up his hands. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
The king lifted his shaggy brows. “Because you’re willing to take us to war for her.”
Finian stared, unwilling to repeat, yet again, that this war had been coming for some long time. He said only, “She saved my life. I’m not sending her back.”
“She’s distracting you. Weakening you.”
Like your father.
Which was exactly his deepest fear. The O’Fáil didn’t say the words, but he didn’t need to. They reverberated in the air between them, like waves of heat.
“I’ve never been distracted before,” he replied in a low voice, packed with fury.
“You’ve never run out on us before, either.”
“I’m not running out on ye!” But he didn’t meet his foster father’s eye. “I’m right here.”
The O’Fáil looked at him for a long time. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Finian took a deep breath. The king waited, he waited, and they stared at each other through the ensuing silence. Yes, Finian realized. Disappointment could pass into the territory of regret. At this very moment, his foster father was crossing the border.
“The reason ye cannot send her back,” Finian said, hearing his own voice coming in from far away, “is because she’s a dye-witch.”
The king didn’t say anything for a very long while. It gave time for the wrenching pain to twist around Finian’s heart like a steel wire. Och, if this was loyalty, it was a hurtful thing.
The king ran his hand across his beard a few times, then over his knee. “I thought she looked familiar.”
Finian looked up sharply. “My lord?”
“I suppose you were wise to not mention it earlier,” The O’Fáil went on in a musing tone.
Finian felt the bite of impatience. Enough of intrigue. “And why was such a thing wise?”
“Because men have a way of going mad when dye-witches come around.”
Finian nodded curtly. He hadn’t held his tongue out of wisdom, seeking only a private moment with his king. He’d done it for very different reasons indeed. Ones he barely understood. If he’d been protecting something vulnerable, a creature weaker than himself, he could grasp the meaning of his silence, an action of near treason, certainly disloyal. But what he felt was nothing like that. Nothing at all. Protection, aye. But of an entirely different sort. And he had never felt it before.
He did not like it. It made him…weak. Just as his king had said.
The O’Fáil studied him, lips pursed. Then he ran his palm across the smooth tabletop. “Did you know Rardove had himself another dye-witch, decades ago? I saw her once.”
Finian felt cold. “I did not know that.”
“Aye, he did.” The king stopped making palm circles on the table. “She looked an awful lot like the lass you brought to me.”
