He was going to miss it all.
“He was wrong, you know.”
It was a faint voice upon the breeze. In fact, William wasn’t sure he’d even heard the words. Maybe he had imagined them. He looked around, knowing he was quite alone on the hill.
“Gar was wrong, William.”
Now, hewasimagining things. He heard those words more clearly and his heart began to pound, just a little. Maybe it had finally happened—he was finally losing his mind and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He thought that he should probably make his way back to his tent before he started foaming at the mouth and baying at the moon, but as he turned for the encampment, he caught sight of a shadow over in the trees to the south.
A shadow that was moving.
William wasn’t armed, but he wasn’t frightened. At least, not of an armed man. He was more frightened of losing his mind. As he stood there and watched, the shadow came closer until the moonbeams finally illuminated it.
Then, he could see it clearly.
A distinct shock rolled through him.
“God’s Bones,” he muttered. “It has happened. It had finally happened.”
“What has?”
“I’m mad. I am genuinely mad.”
“You are not mad, but youareseeing things.”
William didn’t say anything for a moment. He couldn’t because there was a lump in his throat.
“Kieran? Am I truly seeing you?”
Kieran Hage was fighting off a grin. He was the color of the moonbeams, cold and pale, all shades of black and gray and white, but he looked the way William knew him in his prime—the most powerful man in England. He was young and strong and handsome, not old and ill as he had been at the end.
This was the Kieran that William would always remember.
“You might be,” Kieran said. “Then again, you might not be. I may be a dream beneath the moonlight.”
“Not to offend you, but when I dream of someone beneath the moonlight, it is not you.”
Kieran grinned. “I am not offended,” he said. “But I did come to tell you something.”
“What?”
“That Gar was wrong when he told you that you were too old to be fighting,” Kieran said, his smile fading. “And he was not injured because of you. He was injured because of a Scotsman.”
William sighed faintly, still trying to figure out if this were some kind of fever dream, but he was quickly becoming overwhelmed with emotion.
“How do you know this?”
“Because I do,” Kieran said. “Will you truly question an apparition?”
“Itisyou, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
William blinked his eye and the tears rolled down his cheek. “My God,” he said hoarsely. “I have missed you so much.”
Kieran’s smile turned gentle. “And I have missed you,” he said. “You remember when I lay dying and you came to me? You told me that I was free to let go. You told me that you would ensure our grandsons remembered me. You gave me permission to leave.”
Tears continued to roll down William’s face. “I remember.”
