“Ah, but,” said Earrach, his eyes still pinning her, “let us no’ talk o’ death at a time o’ such joy, eh?”
Aye, but Bradana found no shred of joy in her heart.
Chapter Seventeen
The rain ceasedlater that night. Adair heard it taper off as he lay on his cot, trying not to think or to imagine what went on beyond his narrow quarters.
He knew very well that the party from the north had arrived. He had heard the stir earlier and even gone to his door, the better to listen, catching the telltale sounds above the crash of the rain.
Bradana had dreaded this. Though she’d said little enough about it, he’d felt the terror growing in her as the days passed. As he healed. As they grew closer to one another in friendship.
Impossibly close.
He knew her now. Knew what would make her laugh and what it meant when she looked at him a certain way—she thought about kissing him, though she never did—and when the worries that filled her head threatened to overwhelm her. She was a woman who often appeared calmer than she felt.
A woman possessed of much composure. Would it hold now?
She had left Wen with him for company, so she’d said, but the hound proved just as uneasy as Adair. He paced the small space and whined, which Adair had never before heard him do. He went repeatedly to the door and stared out at the rain.
“Aye, so,” Adair said to him then. “She is out there. Neither o’ us can be with her now.”
Adair struggled to pass the time. At late afternoon he donned his cloak and went out to the midden, taking the hound with him for a break.
They stopped by the communal kitchens and picked up their supper, then returned to their lonely vigil.
Adair sat and wondered what had become of his life. Back in Erin, his days had been full, his nights enjoyable. Not much to trouble him. Baen took care of matters of state. Daerg—the gods help him—was there to take up what Baen could not. Adair went through his days without a great deal to disturb him. Aye so, as a warrior he must answer at any time to the call of the high king. He drilled most every day along with his brothers.
The rest of it was laughter and song, his deep love for the place where he dwelt.
Now there was Bradana.
She had changed everything about his life. Sharpened and focused it. Made it count for something. He would have said he lived for Erin.
Now he drew breath only for her.
She came long after nightfall. Adair had fallen asleep by the time she quietly entered his quarters. The hound’s greeting roused him, Wen’s great tail thumping a beat. She whispered, “All right, then, lad. I am well enough.”
Only she was not. Adair felt that at once. She brought a desperate energy into the small space with her, like a rush of ill wind. Even her voice failed to sound like her own.
“Adair? Are ye sleeping?”
“Nay.” He sat up.
“I am sorry to disturb ye so late.” She came and sat on the edge of his bed. “I had to come.”
He reached out and drew her into his arms.
He did not need to ask what was amiss. She’d been with the man she was to wed in two days’ time.
She clung to him, his strong and dauntless lass did. She trembled down to her bones.
What comfort could he give? They had both known this would come. So he said nothing and only held her while she burrowed in tight, and tighter.
Wen stood close by, whining. They two who loved her best did not know how to alleviate her pain.
He loved her. Loved and needed her, both beyond measure.
She did not weep. For many long moments she did not speak, just held him in a manner that argued she would never let go.
