She pulled back, gazing up at him. “I told you that I do not want you to do that,” she said, struggling not to tear up. “I want you to be happy. If you can love again, I hope you do. I could not bear it if you spent the rest of your life miserable because of me.”
He bent down and kissed her, sweetly and tenderly, feeling the heat of their contact flow through his veins. It would be so easy to succumb to it, to lose himself in her deliciousness, but there was a roomful of people waiting downstairs. If he thoughthe could jump through the window with her and get away with it, he might have tried in a moment of weakness.
But he couldn’t do that to her.
Or to himself.
“I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “Until the end of all things, I will love you. Do not forget me in the years to come, Cadie. My dreams will be of you and only you.”
She broke down, then. “And I love you,” she murmured, holding his head between her hands and looking into his eyes. “We may not be together in this life, but we will in the next. When that moment comes and you pass through the veil between life and death, wait for me. When my time comes, I will be looking for you.”
He nodded, kissing her eyes, wiping her tears away with his thumbs. “I swear it,” he rasped. “I will wait for you.”
With that, he peeled her hands from his face, kissing them both before letting go. Then he held out a hand to her, indicating for her not to follow him, as he headed to the door. Cadelyn didn’t move, but she quickly wiped at her face, quickly composing herself. He stood by the door, watching her.
“Are you ready?” he asked softly.
Cadelyn nodded. “I am.”
He smiled at her, an encouraging smile, and opened the door. Stepping through it first, he held it open for her so that she could pass through and precede him down the steps and into the common room.
It was the most difficult thing he’d ever had to do in his life.
Without Kress in her line of sight, Cadelyn was surprisingly composed, considering the emotional upheaval she’d just gone through. She didn’t look the worse for wear. She headed down the steps, seeing people she didn’t recognize gathered in the common room, including an older woman wrapped in a heavy,ratty cloak who rushed right to her the moment she hit the bottom of the stairs.
Shocked, Cadelyn found herself looking into a face very much like her own. She wasn’t even able to speak a word before the woman was practically throwing herself at her.
“Cadelyn,” the woman breathed in a heavy Welsh accent, her eyes glimmering with unshed tears as she looked her over. “Cariad, it is me. Do you know me?”
The woman was so close to her that she was crowding her and Cadelyn had to take a step back. The woman was overwhelming her already.
“I do not,” she said. “Are you… Nesta?”
The woman nodded eagerly, reaching out to grab Cadelyn’s hands. “I am your mother,” she said. “Were you told of me,plentyn? Was I remembered to you?”
Plentynwas the Welsh word for “child”. Very quickly, Cadelyn was feeling set upon by the woman. She knew the woman was eager, and Cadelyn could see the emotion in her eyes. But the reality was that she was a stranger who spoke strangely and dressed strangely. She also smelled like a pile of wet leaves. For every step Cadelyn would take back, the woman would take two forward.
“I… I did not even know of you until a few years ago when William Marshal told me of my true heritage,” she said. “Until that moment, I thought that I was an orphan of English parentage. I did not know that I was Welsh.”
Nesta had her by the hands, lifting them to her cheeks so she could feel her child’s flesh against her. “My sweet Cadelyn,” she murmured. “You were not an orphan. Your father sent you to William Marshal to protect you from… to protect you. But now that you are returned, you shall be an inspiration to your people. You are theirtywysoges.”
Cadelyn had backed up so much that now she was against a table, watching the woman rub her face all over her hands. “What is that?”
Nesta stopped rubbing and looked at her. “It means princess,” she said. “Do you not know your mother’s tongue?”
“I know English because I was raised English. IamEnglish.”
Something flashed in Nesta’s eyes then. It was perhaps anger, perhaps outrage, perhaps even a little fear.
“You are notSaesneg,plentyn,” she said patiently. “You are Welsh.”
Cadelyn didn’t like the way the woman said it. There was something hard behind those words, as if there was no room for any other consideration. She was telling Cadelyn what she was when, in fact, Cadelyn was tellingherwhat she was– English. Cadelyn pulled her hands from the woman’s grip and slipped around her, moving for the knights.
“I appreciate that you have come, Mother, but let me make something clear,” she said. “I may have been born in Wales to Welsh parents, but I was raised by the English and English, I am. I am sorry if you thought you would find a woman who was eager to assume her Welsh heritage, but I am not. Wales is simply a faraway country with an odd language and big mountains, so I am told. It means nothing to me.”
Nesta looked at Cadelyn in astonishment that was more than likely fed by rage because her pale cheeks flushed. She blinked rapidly as if she could hardly believe what she was hearing.
“What is this you are saying to me?” she asked. “Did The Marshal not tell you of your heritage?”
