“Did you ever wish… wish to run?”
The Vaich frowned. “Run?”
“From what you were meant to do.”
“I never considered it.”
Of course, the king wanted his crown. It was true in every word he had ever said. Yet the druid wondered how the man would be different if power had never fallen into his hands.
“Will you dream again tonight?” asked the Vaich.
“If I am fortunate, it shall be quiet.”
But nothing was ever quiet in the Fáoth. Twelve years and he had avoided its sounds. Now he was forced to endure them.
“When first you said you dreamed, I didnae believe you. But now I see it sure as flame. The visions haunt you.”
“Aye,” said the druid.
The Vaich seemed as if he wanted to press. The druid knew the question looming on his mind.
What does it mean… to dream?
“Then, for your sake, may they stay at bay,” he said instead.
The druid stared.
The king was far from a mystery, yet there remained an oddness. The two of them could not have been more different—more distant. Their unspoken words were violence… and yearning.
They didn’t know each other at all, if only entirely for lack of trying. What were they to one another? Enemies? Reluctant allies? Or some incalculable thing, caught between resentment and desperation.
Maybe even the gods did not know. Somehow, something had inextricably bound them, and in the three months since, they had become hopelessly tangled in their strings.
Chapter forty-eight
The Green
“We delve deeper, and yet I see no comings… no goings,” Skyre complained. They sat upon the mare’s back, but the thick brush made her going slow, falling into an unpleasant rhythm that jostled him terribly. “I begin to think this all some ploy. Perhaps you’ve plotted to rid yourself of me.”
For days now, they’d been riding, and each one proved more uncomfortable than the last. And not for the chafe of the saddle, but the agitating grind of the druid’s backside against him.
The druid hummed. “You gave your word. Do you regret it?”
Maybe he did.
“It’s all very…suspect,” Skyre muttered instead.
“My kin are peaceful by nature. What have you to fear?”
“Aye. And if they’re half as much like you, I’ll be in my grave before the first night’s through.”
“Suppose it is true. Suppose the moon was meant to kill the sun.”
Skyre grunted. “That is not what the Odes say of it.”
“No? And what do they say?”
He glanced down at the druid beneath his chin. The smaller man remained still and steady, but there was nothing calm about the feel of his body.
