“You cannot tell me what I mean, what I feel,” he said softly. “I have known Margaret for a long time, we have been good friends and true, but she can never be to me what you are.”
Hope lifted in my breast, light as the sun bursting through a cloud.
With his next words, Thomas dashed it. “Men of my station rarely marry for love.”
I heard the bitter laughter of the baroness then. She knew she held a distant second in her husband’s affections, if his heart had any place for her at all.
“Your station,” I echoed. “Yesterday, you had none.” Save as my shepherd king, Dumuzi, Adonis, Endymion, all rolled into one. But which of their lady goddesses would suffer such treatment? “Your rise comes at the death of a child.”
It hung in the air, raw and painful. And I did wish I could take the words back.
Thomas dropped his hands from my face. “Perhaps my father was right. You should not have been allowed into the manor again.”
My welcome—rescinded.
The room grew too close of a sudden, and it became difficult to breathe. We of Faery may not enter where we are not invited—though those who uninvite us do so at their own risk.
“Fie upon your father!” Flame leapt inside me; I might have spat out venom with every word. “An ill death may he die.”
“That is enough.” Thomas’s expression was granite hard; for the first time I did see his father in his face.
I was not done. “Your father rejected you. Your whole life he did. How can you believe he welcomes you now?”
“Bess.” Thomas closed his eyes, breathed deeply. “Because there is no other. None to take his title when he is gone.”
Good. Let the house de Lyne fall into obscurity, lose its holdings and its repute. What care had I? “He promised he would not step between the two of us. We could marry if I saved Malcolm’s life.”
Failure, failure, failure,echoed inside me. Every iron weapon in the place seemed to cut into my skin, but none so painfully as the look in Thomas’s eyes.
“And did either of you consider my feelings on the matter?” His voice was brittle, fragile yet sharp.
“You said you wanted me!”
“I still do!” His gaze dropped to his fingers. They curled; his arms lifted as if to enfold me in his embrace. Tears streaked his handsome cheeks. “Do you not know how much I have missed you? Do you not understand how lonely my bed has been, how your absence has kept me awake at night? How my heart leaps whenever I see your face? And yet...” He trailed off, shoulders slumping. “We do not always get what we want.”
I fought myself then. Every inch of my body longed to go to him. Wipe the cares from his brow. Kiss away the tracks of his tears.
Instead, my words were sharp as glass. “So much for the power of men.” I swallowed, beat down the compassion, and let my hurt speak instead. “For all I know, your father moved the poppet himself.”
Thomas cocked his head. “Poppet? What poppet?”
“Did no one find one in Malcolm’s room?”
Thomas shook his head. “The room had a strange aroma, of flowers and blood. A peculiar weed had grown and wound its way around the bedpost; we plucked it out, but it appeared to grow back.”
Oh, thank Mab.My work had not been undone.
But Thomas continued. “My brother, he arched upwards, body contorting itself in pain. The priest did murmur a brief prayer, and Malcolm’s flesh grew slack, never to move again.”
I screamed, a pitch to shake the rafters and make goblets shatter, should there be any about.The priest!His prayers undid my faery spells. I said Malcolm was not to be disturbed.
Thomas cringed, though his brow still softened into pity. “Lass, you are overcome.”
“Overcome!”
A part of Faery I had made Malcolm’s room. A part of Faery banished in an instant. My work was rendered useless, destroyed.My enchantments were undone.
I was undone.
