“This is the queen that was promised?”
The druid stilled. It was only a moment, but enough to draw ire.
“Come forth,” barked a voice. “Let us seeHer Majestyproperly.”
All eyes were upon him, but none so heavy as those molten golds. The king was wordless, aside his jeering court. But he need not have spoken; all his truths were written on his face.
The druid stood, a virgin upon a battlefield, while the Vaich sat atop his throne, striking in size and grandeur despite the lazy slump of his posture. There was no age within his eyes, no weathered hue upon his skin. Yet there was something distinct about him. The druid recognized it at once.
The pungent stench of unearned pride.
The druid waited. He did not know for what. A judgement… a sentence…
“Speak your name.”
It was not the violent growl he had heard in the wash chamber. These words were laced tight behind fragile restraints.
“We of the wildlands do not bear our names forth.”
“Speak your name,” the Vaich demanded again.
The druid remained still. “It is Cerys.”
A mutter rose from the court. Hirí watched him in quiet amusement, her smile obscured by the dim of her veil.
“And I suppose it is some cruel trick that you would carry that name as a man,” said the Vaich.
“Neither my name nor my state of being has ever mattered much to anyone. Does it disturb you, King in the West?”
The Vaich’s fingers curled around the rests of his throne. “You are bold,” said he. “That is a matter to be feared. Or pitied.”
The druid could not aspire to the first, and thus he must have been perceived, regrettably, the latter.
“It is all a cruel trick,” the Vaich repeated, his dark voice an absent mumble. “They say you are Chosen of the Moon.”
“I do not say so.”
“I heard your name spoken with my own two ears! Would you call me a liar?”
“I would not.” The druid fixed his gaze upon the older woman. The woman he understood to be the source of his abduction. “I would simply say your prophetess has misinterpreted.”
“The Oracle has never been wrong,” the Vaich said tersely.
“Suppose that is for me to decide,” he said.
Rage festered within the crowd, boiling over into sneers and irritable scoffs. The Vaich appeared even more incensed—a turn the druid noted with some enjoyment.
“Youwill decide nothing.” The king shrunk back in his seat like a threatened animal. It seemed to the druid his very dominion was in question—the way his muscles tightened, even as his throne wrapped around them. “I wished to have a look at you, and now I have done so. You will remain at Rhyd-hal untilmydecision is made.”
“And what, pray tell, does such a decision entail?” asked the druid.
The fury of those golden orbs raged untethered. The druid thought, if not for decorum, that beast of a man would have come down from his throne and answered him once and for all.
With a scowl, the Vaich leaned forwards, the words pushed between his teeth.
“Yourpurpose.”
Chapter eight
