A redcap could not deny the truth. So he clenched his teeth and said nothing.
By the time they arrived at the cabin, most of the blood was gone, having rolled up Gallagher’s body—even over his face—to obey the summons from his cap. Delilah had no visible injuries. Yet her breathing was shallow. Her pulse thready.
“Delilah, please wake up,” he whispered as Lenore slammed her door and rounded the front of the van. “Please, please come back to us. If not for me, then for Alina. She needs you.” He lifted her limp form, clutching her to his chest. “Ineed you.”
Lenore slid open the side door and stood back while Gallagher climbed out of the van. He carried Delilah into the cabin, past the silent, shocked faces of their adopted family. Past Zyanya, who held the sleeping baby in one arm.
Gallagher carried her into the bedroom and kicked the door shut. He laid her on the bed, propped up on pillows, then he sat on the side of the mattress, her hand clutched in both of his. “Delilah. Please open your eyes.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. Then her eyes struggled open. “I had to do it.”
“You have no reason to apologize. I swore to save you, and I failed.”
She tried to squeeze his hand, but her fingers hardly twitched. “You did your job. Saving me from this was never the goal. You saved meforthis. Your oath is fulfilled.”
“No. Delilah, this isn’t ov—” But he couldn’t say it. Because he knew it was a lie.
“Alina is your job now. You swore you’d protect her. And your word is your honor.” Delilah’s eyes closed.
They never opened again.
The next morning, Gallagher dug another grave. He stood in a cloud of grief, clutching his tiny daughter, while Zyanya said words he wasn’t ready to hear, over the body of the woman he’d sworn to give his life for.
He threw the first clod of dirt, and flinched when it landed. Then he watched, jaw clenched, while Claudio filled in the grave.
One by one, his friends went inside, teary-eyed, and dealt with their loss. When the baby started crying, Mirela came out with the promise of a bottle and a fresh diaper. Gallagher handed his daughter to her. But he did not move from the spot where he’d been standing for more than an hour.
He couldn’t leave Delilah. Not yet.
Finally, when the sun began to sink below the forest canopy, he exhaled so heavily his lungs seemed to collapse in on themselves. Then he knelt, and with one hand pressed to the fresh dirt, he told Delilah’s grave what he’d never gotten a chance to say to her.
“I love you. I have always loved you. And when I die, it will be with your name on my lips.”
Epilogue
The birds in the park were singing.
The redcap registered that fact like he registered the number of children on the swing set and parents sitting on benches. The number of cars in the parking lot and the position of every tree, relative to the sun and the shifting shadow it would cast all day long.
The world had changed since that day five years ago—since the Blood Harvest, as Delilah’s sacrifice had come to be called—but Gallagher had not. He still saw every danger and every possible way out, whether around the threat or straight through it.
“Daddy, can I swing?” The little girl tugging on his hand was the spitting image of her mother. Dark hair. Freckles. And a wicked gleam of intelligence and obstinance in those bright blue eyes.
He’d started losing arguments the day she started speaking.
“Of course,Acushla.” The word meant “darling” in Irish, but the literal translation was more likepulseorvein. Because she was his lifeblood. The very beating of his heart. “Go ahead.”
Alina let go of her father’s hand and raced toward the playground. Mulch flew from beneath her sneakers and she plopped joyfully into the last available swing.
Other five-year-olds might have needed a push to get started, but Alina was strong and eerily coordinated. For as much as she looked like her mother, she was her father’s daughter in ways he didn’t even notice most of the time.
In ways those around them seemed to feel, but were unable to articulate.
Gallagher stayed well back from the playground, but the other parents still stared. It was the middle of a sunny day and he was roughly the size of a house.
The world may have been changing, but change wasn’t a light switch to be flipped. It was a road to be traveled. And like most roads, it was broad, smooth and well-lit in some places, but dark, narrow and full of potholes in others.
With a sigh, Gallagher began to pull glamour around him. He couldn’t entirely disguise his size in broad daylight, but he could put out the mental suggestion that his height and bulk were surely an illusion. He wasn’t standing next to anyone or anything, so perspective wasn’t an issue. And all the other parents were seated while he was standing, soof coursehe looked really tall.
