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“And why not?” Finian asked, glancing down at his lounging friend. “Ye’re going to be real busy, are ye, these next few days?”
“I am.”
“With what?”
“Guarding your sorry arse. Again.” He started getting to his feet. Finian clasped his forearm and dragged him the rest of the way up, relief and gratitude rushing into all the cold hollow places that had formed when he realized Senna was out there alone, on her way to Rardove.
“My thanks, friend,” he said in a low voice.
“You’ve saved my sorry arse a few times, friend, for much less noble reasons than rescuing an innocent. And anyhow,” he said, nodding to the king, “The O’Fáil will no’ let me leave you.”
The king watched them but didn’t say a word.
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Amid the cries of their countrymen, they strode out of the room.
The O’Fáil tracked him and Alane down the stairs, past the flickering circles of torchlight and down into the darkness. When they reached the doorway to the bailey, he put a hand on Finian’s arm. Alane ducked out the door.
“She said to say you would make a fine king.”
Finian was running his hand over the various hilts and blades one last time, checking. He glanced up. “Ye told her?”
“Listen to me, Finian, ere you risk your life and the outcome of this war over a woman. You’ve been waiting for this moment for years.”
Finian lifted his gaze from the hand wrapped tightly around his forearm. Long hair hung over the king’s shoulders, but there were strands of gray shot throughout. Careworn wrinkles lined his face, and there was a light tinge of bluish haze in the eyes regarding him. In the dim, wayward light, his foster father looked old for the first time.
“You cannot go after her.”
“I can, and I am.”
The O’Fáil’s voice dropped to a baritone whisper. “Finian, I’m asking you as a father.”
The whetted edge of despair sliced a thin sliver off the surface of Finian’s heart. Throwing up his chin he clamped a palm on the king’s shoulder.
“Don’t, then,” he said thickly. “She’s my debt.”
“You haven’t a bigger one than her?”
Finian’s fingers tightened on the king’s shoulder. “Would ye have me dead?”
“I’d have you recall your loyalties, Finian. She chose this. Let it be.”
“And I choose this.” He said it loudly, hearing the belligerence in his words. It blanketed the anguish.
“Finian,” The O’Fáil said sadly. “You could be a king.”
Silence boomed through the small antechamber.
“So we’re losing you for a woman,” he said bitterly, when it was clear Finian had already given his answer. “Who did I raise you to be?”
“Ye didn’t raise me to abandon women, sir.”
Darkness turned The O’Fáil’s shaking head into a purpling transition of shadows, but there was no mistaking the warning in his next words: “I could stop you. Call up the guard, cut you down where you stand.”
Finian turned and kicked open the door.
“She said she did not need you,” the king called after.
