“Were you going to be a druid?” I asked idiotically. Anything to distract myself from why we were here.
He looked at me blankly.
“What?” He shook his head. “No, no, my mother came here a lot to study. She had little interest in me but I was dragged along.”
“You have a mother?”
He snorted. “Yes, I am born of woman.”
“I meant… You’ve never mentioned her.”
His brows pulled together. “She and I are not on the best of terms, but I don’t want to talk of her now.”
I stared vacantly at the pallet.
“I can’t.”
My words drifted out into the cold air. I felt exhausted, the words more effort than I had to expend. I continued to stand as Gideon sat heavily in one of the chairs. I doubted the novice druids were as large, and absently I worried for the chair.
“So you’ll die, then.”
“I suppose.”
“And your child?” His words were like stones, each one hitting me sharply.
A spark lit inside the dense fog of my mind, but it was small and the fog was comforting. It protected me; it was heavy and obscured everything. Devyn would be in there. I would find him.
Gideon stood up and in one stride had enveloped me, his hands like bands around my shoulders as he shook me.
“Live, damn you!”
“Why?” My voice was flat and dead, but a part of me was genuinely curious at his answer. What did Gideon care? He had little use for anyone, much less me. I was surprised he had done this much.
“Because it doesn’t end like this. Live. If not for your brother then for Devyn. You carry his child. Does that mean so little to you now?”
The spark caught and spread, the glow spreading and thinning the edges of the fog. It did matter. Suddenly, the pain in my arm registered again. It was coming back.
I could do this. I could do anything for this child.
I nodded.
Gideon stepped back from me, then after a moment turned away and started a fire as I stood listlessly behind him.
“Can we just do this, then?” I asked peevishly as he failed to return to take up his task.
Gideon turned from the fire. His face was dark in the backlight.
“Kiss me.”
I jolted. What? No. I shook my head. “Can’t you just…?” I waved a hand aimlessly. This wasn’t anything… special. It was just an act and it needed to be done. It didn’t matter how perfunctorily the deed was performed.
“No. I can’t just…”
His hand gently traced the edge of my face and I pulled it away. Tenderness was not part of the deal.
“What do you mean?” I stared stonily at him. Gideon was not immune to me. There had always been an awareness that rippled between us. An awareness that disgusted me now. Had Devyn known? Had he seen? Was that why he had asked this of Gideon? No, he had asked him to be Griffin. This had happened after. The fog moved in again.
“Dammit, Cat.” Gideon commanded me back from the fog that threatened to engulf me. He stepped towards me, gently turning my face up to his.
I pulled away.
“No. Just do it.”
“I cannot just do it,” he gritted out in a hard voice.
I looked at him in bewilderment. What did he…? Oh. I looked down at his trousers. He was right. Nothing.
Fine. I tugged at the laces on my bodice. The blood on my fine velvet dress caught in the firelight as it fell to the floor.
Finally, I stood before him in the all but transparent chemise I wore underneath. “Come on, then.”
He hadn’t moved. I knew I wasn’t making this easy for him, but this was as much as I could do. He scrubbed his hand over his face.
“Maybe we can wait,” he said.
I felt frozen. Like I was made of ice from my core out. Ice was good; it kept everything firmly in place. It wasn’t just the pain in my arm I couldn’t stand, it was the pain tearing through me that Devyn was gone. I had to keep saying it to myself to remember this new truth, this unbearable reality that had come into being.
Reality. It had to be faced. For Devyn. For the new life inside me. I could do this.
I took his hand and drew Gideon down with me towards the pallet.
We sat looking at each other for a moment and then I lifted my hand and traced his features with my fingertips. Not Devyn. Where Devyn’s cheekbones had been sharp, his were blunt; where Devyn’s eyes had been dark brown, Gideon’s were bright amber. I ran my hands through hair that was long and uncut in the fashion of a Celtic warrior. I pulled the tie that bound it and it fell loosely over his shoulders.
He had hard stubble across his jawline; he would last have shaved yesterday, before the party. How long ago that seemed now.
I pulled his face down to mine and rested my cheek against his scratchy one, breathing him in – his newness, his differences. His breath expanded and deflated his chest.
I pulled back, our eyes meeting in the flickering light as I loosened the ties of his tunic then tugged it off. He helped me remove it. His shoulders were broad, his arms so much more muscular than Devyn’s. Of course, he had spent his life training, not in the city. I let my hands trace down the contours of his upper arms, along the vein-rippled inner forearms as he sat still with his palms facing up. I lifted my hand to trace the bramble of white roses twisting around a sword over his heart where Devyn had worn the Mercian sigil. His chest rose and fell with his breaths, shadow and light moving across the golden expanse. Still, he did not move.
Again, the pain throbbed through my arm, insistent, reminding me. The intensity of it was building again. It was now or never.
I pushed Gideon down onto the pallet and he went,
