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“Has this plan ever been tried before?” he asked, wanting to make damn sure that they were making the right decision.
“No,” Liam said, shaking his head. “Since ye came up with the plan, we haven’t had a chance to test it out.”
“Why not?” he asked, doing his best to ignore his wife as she softly cried, “Please don’t.”
“Half of us were either making our own attempts to break the curse or we were too late.”
Meaning he’d already been killed.
“We did our best, lad, to watch after Macha when ye couldn’t, but nothing helped. She was either too far gone in her grief over losing ye or the curse took care of things,” Declean quietly explained.
“We tried to approach her, but that didn’t end well either, lad,” Finn sheepishly added.
He had questions, a lot of them, but for right now he was content with just sitting back and holding his wife while this curse and his plan to save his son was explained to him. Besides, he’d have all his memories and answers by the end of the night, but he wouldn’t have her. Right now he needed to hold her one last time before he was forced to say goodbye.
“We figured that if we couldn’t break the curse fer yer son, then the best thing would be to free him from this curse by making ye promise to stop trying,” Liam explained before adding with a glare, “But ye kept breaking yer promise and pissing us off, lad.”
Which would explain the ass whooping Liam had dished out, Tristan realized with a wince.
“We’re not happy that ye broke yer promise and are forcing our hand on this one, Tadgh, but we’ll do what needs to be done,” Liam promised, making Marty tremble harder in his arms.
For their son, Tristan would do anything, including giving up his own life, but he had one question that he needed answered before they went through with this.
“Will I be able to watch over them?” he asked, closing his eyes and tightening his hold around Marty as her sobs tore at his heart.
“I’m sorry, lad, but once ye fail to break the curse, ye won’t get to see her again until the next time she’s born,” Shayne explained.
And if this worked, and their son was freed, then he would never see her again. This was too much to ask her to go through and it needed to end. It would kill him to never see her again, but he would give her the freedom that she deserved.
“This time she knows about us before the curse took its hold and we’ll be able to stay by her side without scaring her,” Shayne said, giving him the one promise that would make this situation tolerable.
He allowed himself another moment to simply enjoy having Marty in his arms before he opened his eyes and did what needed to be done. Ignoring her sobs and the way she clutched desperately to him, he leaned down and pressed a kiss against her forehead, one on each cheek before he pressed his lips to her trembling ones.
“I love you so much, Marty,” he whispered hoarsely against her lips, “so goddamn much.”
“Please don’t do this, Tristan,” she pleaded against his lips.
“Shhhh, it’s fine, baby.”
“No,” she sobbed, shaking her head frantically as she pulled away from him. “It’s not!”
“It has to be done, lass,” Liam said soothingly.
“No, it doesn’t!” she cried.
“Marty,-“
“There has to be a way, Tristan! There has to be!”
“Lass, if we don’t remove him before the curse kicks in, then we won’t have a chance to save yer son.”
“No,” Marty said, stubbornly shaking her head. “You don’t know that. Maybe you missed something-“
“Each of us has our own trigger for the curse, lass,” Declean explained, interrupting her. “And yers has always been started by Tadgh getting a babe on ye. It triggers Tadgh’s death and, as a result, yer death. It’s what called us to ye.”
“Then it shouldn’t make a difference whether you end his life or if you give us a little more time to figure this thing out!” Marty cried, grabbing his hand and squeezing it, making it hard to do what had to be done.
“If we take him, lass, it won’t be a true death. That’s why he came up with this plan in the first place. We’ll simply pull him out of his body and that will be it. If we let the curse take its toll, his death will trigger a series of events that will end with yer death.”
“I won’t allow that,” Tristan said, pulling her attention back to him.
He forced himself to ignore the tears streaming down her face as he leaned in to kiss her one last time, but she wasn’t having that. She pulled far enough away from him so that she could cup his face in her hands as she flat out begged him not to do this.
“You don’t need to do this, Tristan. We can find a way to beat this thing.”
“If it means that you and our son get a chance to live,” he said softly as he gestured to Shayne, “then I don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you do!”
“No,” he said, turning his face so that he could press a kiss against the palm of her hand just as Finn and Aidan appeared on either side of her, “I don’t.”
With a slight nod, Finn and Aidan disappeared, taking his heartbroken wife with them.
“I’m so sorry, lad,” Shayne said softly as he moved towards him.
He ground his jaw shut tightly when he heard Marty scream his name from somewhere upstairs, probably their room. He carefully stood up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the way his heart pounded in his chest at the thought of never seeing her again.
“This is why you never pushed me towards her, isn’t it?” he asked as he tried to force his mind away from everything that was happening.
“Yes,” Shayne said with a sad smile. “I was in no rush to get here, lad.”
“Tristan!”
He forced his eyes closed as he fought against the urge to go to her and drag her into his arms, but he couldn’t. If he so much as saw her again, he knew that it would break him.
“Do ye want to give her a proper goodbye, lad?” Shayne asked and he knew that he was being offered one last night with his wife, but he couldn’t take it….he just couldn’t.
“No,” he forced the word out of his mouth as he opened his eyes and faced his oldest friend and protector. “Send me home, Shayne.”
“Verra well, lad,” Shayne said quietly as he moved his hand towards Tristan’s chest. “Let’s bring ye home.”
